Chapter 16: On the March

Elara surveyed the small cluster of faces gathered around her. A handful of villagers, really. The younger ones flickered with an almost painful hope, their belief in her a fragile flame against the vast darkness Kael had wrought. The older ones held a different kind of conviction. A desperation. Their simple tools, clutched in nervous hands, seemed pitifully inadequate. Not an army. Never an army. Just a scattering of souls, hopeful and raw.

A plan, however, had solidified within her. A grand, perhaps naive, design. She had plunged them all into this chaos. It was her burden to pull them out. The only path she saw, hazy but insistent, was to group people together and strengthen them with the knowledge of editing the documentation. To arm them, not with steel, but with the power to unravel Kael's tyranny, to stitch the world back together. Or, at the very least, to mend it into something less broken.

"We will go from town to town," she announced, her voice surprisingly steady, a performance of leadership she desperately hoped she could embody. "We will seek those who refuse to bend. We will teach them. We will forge a true army. An army of knowledge. An army of change." The words tasted a little hollow, even to her.

In the morning, they left the quiet village, the dust of the road clinging to their worn shoes. Elara led, her heart a leaden weight in her chest, yet a stubborn knot of resolve tightened in her gut. They must have looked like a strange procession. A young common woman leading a few ragged figures, ghosts against a world slowly succumbing to madness.

The first town they reached was small, its fear a palpable shroud. It remained largely untouched by Kael's creeping shadow, a fragile bubble of normalcy. Elara drew the townsfolk to the village square, hoisting herself onto an old wooden crate. She stretched, trying to lengthen her frame, to project an authority she didn't feel. Her story spilled out, simplified, stripped of its most terrifying truths. Kael, his inexorable advance, the secret. A way to fight back.

"You can change the world!" she proclaimed, her voice gaining a desperate intensity. "You can learn to edit the documentation! You can stop Kael! Join us!"

A ripple of fear spread through the crowd. Eyes widened, some averted, some backed away, inch by slow inch. The idea hung in the air, vast and terrifying. Playing with fire, indeed.

But others stayed. A flicker of desperate hope ignited in their eyes, warring with the fear. Rumours of Kael’s oppressive grip, the endless, grinding war. She craved an escape, a weapon. They wanted to learn. They yearned for power.

Elara and her fledgling force moved among them. They drew the brave, or perhaps merely the desperate, aside. Elara began to teach, mimicking Liam’s patient guidance. "Touch" the words, she instructed. Her small band, already initiated into the secret, helped, demonstrating the focused will required, the strange, ethereal connection to the documentation.

Some grasped it quickly. Their faces, pale with shock and then flushed with exhilaration, bloomed when their first small alteration shimmered into being. A word shifted, a phrase rearranged, a tiny ripple in reality. Astonishment warred with pure delight.

Others struggled. It was a peculiar, stubborn skill, like forcing the mind to speak a language it refused to acknowledge. Some of those who faltered simply drifted away, retreating to their quiet lives, unwilling to touch this new, volatile power.

But enough remained. Enough to nourish the fragile bud of hope in Elara’s heart. They stayed. They swelled the ranks of her growing, peculiar army. Not soldiers, no, but something far more potent. They were wielders of words, and words, she now understood, could reshape the very fabric of existence.

They moved to the next town. Then the next. The cycle repeated: Elara spoke, some fled, some joined. Some returned to their daily lives, hoping to hide from the terrors. Her army swelled, slowly, inexorably. It wasn't vast, but it grew, a silent tide of individuals who, with a thought, could rewrite reality.

A thrill, sharp and exhilarating, surged through Elara. She was doing it. She was unmaking her mistake. She was reclaiming power for the people.

Yet, the world remained a dangerous, unpredictable place. And power, Elara was learning, was a fickle, double-edged blade.

One sweltering afternoon, in a sun-baked village square, Elara sat on a stone bench, guiding a new recruit. He was young, his eyes bright with a hungry eagerness. He had just managed his first small edit, making a flower in the documentation glow with a small luminescence. He radiated triumph.

"Now, what else can you do?" Elara prompted, her voice laced with fatigue, but her gaze still encouraging. "Think of something simple. Something useful."

The young man's eyes, already too bright, gained an unsettling glint. The eagerness receded, replaced by something cold and acquisitive. He wasn't contemplating simplicity. He was contemplating something vast.

"I want gold!" he muttered, his voice a tight, low rasp. "A huge pile of gold! Right here! Right now!"

Elara's blood turned to ice. No! She knew the terrible truth of it. Gold couldn't simply be conjured. Not without fracturing the very foundations of the world. It would devalue all other gold, shatter the fragile economy, and plunge people into a deeper, more desperate chaos. It would break the world further still if he didn't drown them all in gold right now.

"Stop!" Elara's voice snapped, sharp as a whip. She lunged, her hand reaching for his arm, desperate to disrupt his focus. "You can't! It will ruin everything!"

But the young man was lost, adrift in his own burgeoning greed. He swatted her hand away. His eyes blazed with a possessive fury. "Get away!" he snarled. "This is my gold! My gold!" He raised his hands, focusing with an alarming intensity. He was going to cast the spell, to summon a shimmering mountain of worthless treasure. Right now, on top of them all.

Elara lunged again, desperate to tackle him, to prevent the irreversible mistake. He moved too fast. He twisted, grabbing a thick piece of discarded wood, swinging it with a desperate strength. It struck her arm with a sickening thud. A cry tore from her throat. She stumbled backward, her vision swimming.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Just then, one of her guards, a quiet man of surprising strength who had joined her crusade days ago, surged forward. He had been watching. His small shield snapped up, deflecting the young man's next wild swing. "Stop it!" the guard bellowed, his voice laced with uncharacteristic fury. "Control yourself!"

The young man cursed, a strangled sound of frustration. He knew he couldn't face a trained guard. His eyes darted wildly. With a furious, almost animalistic cry, he spun and ran. He sprinted down the dusty street, faster than Elara had ever seen anyone move, vanishing around a distant corner. Gone.

Elara clutched her bruised arm, the throbbing pain a dull counterpoint to the frantic pounding of her heart. She stared at the empty street, a cold, heavy dread congealing in her stomach. He would find a quiet corner. He would make the change. He would cast the spell. All because she had taught him.

What was she doing? She had tried to mend, but was she merely fracturing the world in new, more insidious ways? She was handing a terrifying, volatile power to those who couldn't comprehend its true cost. People who would wield it for selfish, grasping ends. Just as she, in her own misguided desperation, had once done.

That evening, Elara gathered her closest, most trusted followers. Her voice was quiet, stripped bare of its earlier certainty. "We need to stop," she told them, the words tasting like ash. "Stop teaching people how to rewrite the documentation. It's too dangerous. Too many are using it for the wrong reasons."

They stood confused but unquestioning. After a moment, they nodded, one by one. They would obey. But the seed of doubt, cold and relentless, had been sown deep within her own mind. This grand design, this "army of knowledge," felt suddenly hollow, a fragile shell crumbling from within.

Even as Elara ceased her teaching, the world continued its terrifying shift.

They stayed in the next town longer than usual. She contemplated their next move, unsure. All options had drawbacks. Drawbacks, worse than the next. Rumours spread. Faint whispers. Dark, unsettling rumors began to swell into a cacophony. Scouts resting, passing through the town, carried fresh, brutal tidings.

One scout even tried to deliver an official report to the innkeeper. Upon discovering the mistake, his eyes darted around the room. He stumbled. Everyone watched him. "What," he mumbled, "Where is General Mutong? Where is the army of Lord Krishra?" He fell over a low stool, slapped away help, and ran out of the inn screaming.

Chaos truly reigned.

"People are changing the documentation," one man reported, his face a grim mask. "They're changing things. Not to bolster armies. But to gorge themselves. To steal." He looked at his ale and then downed it. "They all died... or worse. Three thousand men! The night came alive. They are all mad." He grabbed someone else's ale and downed that too. The owner merely looked on in shock.

Armies shattered. Turned on themselves. Broke.

And families, hollowed out by the relentless grind of war, had learned to edit. They twisted the documentation to conjure food from thin air, to force others to surrender their meager coins. Children and parents became bandits, not with crude blades, but with terrifying, reality-bending magic. A new kind of terror was born.

Rumours spoke of others. Those who called themselves "The Holy Brigade." They saw the knowledge of the documentation as an abomination, a dark, blasphemous magic. They moved with the zealous fervor of crusaders, vowing to scour the world of anyone who wielded the power to edit. To "eradicate" them. To kill them. They even forged a spell, cold and final, that killed... and prevented revival. No respawning. They hunted the innocent and guilty alike. Death... nothingness followed their path.

Still more factions emerged. "The Evangelists." These were the rapturous devotees of the new power. They believed it was a divine gift, that all should embrace it. They wandered from town to town, spreading the word, urging everyone to learn. They saw it as liberation. Elara despaired. They were blind to the abyss opening beneath their feet and everyone else's feet.

Each report, each rumour, each wild rambling, a knot tightening in her stomach. Despair, a heavy, suffocating blanket, wrapped itself around her. She had tried to fix things. She had tried to help. But every effort seemed to twist, to curdle, to worsen the very chaos she sought to quell. The world spun, irrevocably, into utter, unbridled madness. Once peaceful farmers, driven to desperation, became brigands, preying on their own with warped, powerful spells. People butchered each other for the mere possession of the knowledge. Food became scarce. Rivers were poisoned. And people twisted.

The very air felt thick, heavy with the stench of the madness she had unleashed. She questioned everything. Was this truly her fault? Could she ever truly mend this? Or was she merely digging a deeper grave, burying the world further in its agony?

Elara kept her small band moving. It gave them hope, a purpose, a future. They became unsettled, though. They began to question her when they stayed in one place too long. How long could she wander? How long could she keep this fragile state? She didn't know what to do next, and they followed her. Their hope rested on her.

One day, they stumbled upon another group. Not a disciplined force like Kael’s, but a surging, volatile mass of desperate, powerful individuals. Bandits mingled with Evangelists, and some terrified souls clawing for survival by any means. They had all learned to edit the documentation.

Without warning, a fireball streaked towards Elara and two others on horseback. She cast a modified spell, and the fireball smashed into an invisible wall.

Lightning rained down on her band as well as the opposing group. Her horse startled, reared up, and flung her to the ground.

Twisted spells tore through the air. Fireballs burst, spontaneous and deadly. The ground churned from mud to stone and back again. People, their faces contorted with rage and fear, sought to erase each other from existence with mere words. It was savage. Bloody.

The clear sky shimmered and grew in intensity. The blue changed into an unsettling white light.

She crawled. People screamed. Colour faded into muted greys and whites. The light grew more intense. Everything was a shade of bright white.

Panic gripped her, and she ran. Her eyes were open, and she could feel the stones and grass under her soft shoes, but the blinding light erased everything visible.

She ran, with no way to tell in which direction. No way to tell how far. She ran. Whimpering. Her chest shook and her arms trembled.

The light began searing her skin. She could hear screams in the distance.

The burning started as a tingle and grew stronger. She tripped and tumbled onto stones. She heard a small stream and clawed herself toward the sound.

Her skin felt on fire. She splashed through the water, but it gave no relief.

A low rumbling sound grew. The earth beneath her trembled slightly.

She pulled herself up and continued to run. Branches smacked her in the face, but she ran.

A root caught her foot, sending her tumbling down a hill. She crawled on. Pain wrapped around her. The rumbling shook her ears and gently shook the ground.

Then the light faded, only a little. Only a little enough that she could make out where she was. She had wandered into a shallow ravine, and in front of her was a darkness. A small cave.

She raced on all fours to enter the cave. She hit the back wall and cowered against it. The burning had ceased. The shaking of the ground felt dampened. But the rumbling in the air continued.

After what felt like an eternity, the light outside the cave faded, taking the rumbling with it. The earth settled down.

Her breathing slowly returned to normal. She waited and listened, looking toward the entrance of the cave. She could only see more rockface.

Finally, she managed the courage to peer out of the cave. Everything seemed normal. Normal, but eerily quiet.

Slowly, she crawled up the bank, and then she saw. The forest in front of her was roaring with flames.