The cause of the mercenary’s despair was a report from one of his most trusted subordinates: Priest Yan had been burned at the stake.
That report had arrived before the mercenary had even been able to infiltrate the lands of the church where it had taken place. While he had been lying low in a city near the border, his idol’s time had come.
“Commander! Commander Yan!”
The mercenary standing at his side had tears rolling from both eyes as well, and they were by no means only grieving ones. Yan’s most trusted subordinates all knew the priest personally. They knew the kind of person he was and had a degree of respect and affection for the man. His unilateral execution had instilled a mix of sadness, rage, and hatred in all of them. If Yan hadn’t stopped them, some of them would probably have stormed across the borders to try to rescue the priest.
Emotionally, the commander himself felt the same way. The difference was that he understood that hasty action would genuinely not improve the situation, and he had the self-control to keep his head in the middle of the emotional turmoil. He had needed to lay down the law with his subordinates.
“Stay calm.”
“Listen to me.”
“If we throw our lives away for nothing, he will be no happier.”
Those had been his main warnings to his men. He was a veteran mercenary and a superlative commander. He was not, however, beyond human enough that he could overcome his humanity. He had been unable to think of how he could take a mere twenty men against the de facto rulers of the continent to rescue a single man, and while he had agonized over plans and strategies, the man in question had been put to death.
When people finally lost something that they were willing to gamble their lives on, they usually fell into one of two categories. Some fell into despair, effectively becoming zombies, while others had their hearts filled with the fires of hatred and swore vengeance. For those such as the commander, where violence was their occupation, it was rather easy to see which way they would go.
The commander’s voice started off inaudible, but increased in volume until he was speaking clearly. “...it. This will not go unanswered. Who do they think they are, acting holier-than-thou after he died? After they killed him? They won’t get away with it.”
“Right.”
“Commander Yan’s right.”
“This is wrong!”
The small room contained Yan’s most trusted comrades. While there were those who would agree, there were none who would gainsay him. They spurred each other’s anger on to higher levels, stoking their fury until it would consume them.
It was at that moment there was a knock at the door. The quiet noise echoed through the room.
The reactions from the men were exactly what you would expect from such long-serving mercenaries. Yan was instantly on his feet giving wordless hand signals. His men immediately moved to their prearranged stations and placed their hands on their weapons.
The air was thick with tension as Yan looked at one of the men who kept all concern out of his voice as he spoke through the door.
“Aye, who is it?”
Yan and his men were hiding in the district by blending into the slums. They had fake names and histories to avoid rousing suspicion and had interacted with the locals. Whoever was at the door could therefore be a local who had come for no real reason. However, after a short few moments, a voice replied.
“Some guy gave me a letter. Said to give it to the Yan here.” It was a young voice. Someone had asked a child to run an errand for them. There were children even in the slums, so that wasn’t an issue in and of itself. The problem was Yan’s name coming from the child’s mouth.
The commander was incredibly famous for a mercenary. He also had a particularly distinguishing feature in his single eye. Therefore, since he had taken up residence in the hideout, he hadn’t left the building even once, leaving all interactions with the outside to his subordinates. And yet, his location was known. Who in the world had sent this letter?
Yan moved on silent feet out of the shadows he had hidden in, returning to the middle of the room with a stern expression. Then he spoke in a low voice.
“Come in.”
The door slowly opened at his words. It permitted the person to enter. He was, as the voice had led them to believe, a young boy. He wore shoddy clothes that were patched in places, with his face and hair dirtied by grime and grease. He was the very picture of a slum child and couldn’t have been older than his early teens.
He twitched as he saw all the powerful men standing around the room. However, he soon shook his head and mustered his courage, standing as straight as he could as he entered. The commander signaled one of his men with a glance, and the fellow shut the door.
The boy’s shoulders jolted in another flinch, but there was no other choice. They couldn’t allow whatever was discussed here to leave the room.
“I am Yan. What’s this letter?”
“H-Here.” With a shaking hand, the boy held out some parchment.
“Someone light a candle,” Yan ordered as he took it.
“Sure.”
In the light of the candle, Yan cast his eye over the paper. His expression immediately shifted.
“Commander?”
“I’ll explain later. You all wait for now,” he stated, his expression firm. This letter was definitely intended for him.
It started off with words of condolence for the priest’s unjust execution and as a slight comfort, offered assistance in restoring the body. It spoke of a special spell that could completely restore a corpse to pristine condition, no matter its current state.
“Fuck, now of all times. That definitely cooled me down,” he muttered to himself.
Indeed, his thoughts, which had been churning like lava, had suddenly slipped into ice-cold clarity. He had focused on vengeance because there was nothing else more important to him. He didn’t care what he lost anymore, up to and including his own life. Nothing he could gain now would satisfy him. That attitude allowed him to dedicate everything to revenge. This was particularly true when the target was an organization he could almost certainly not defeat.
But the flames of his vengeance had immediately been extinguished by the letter in his hand. If he could retrieve Priest Yan’s corpse, it could be restored. To those of the dragon faith, the corpse being burned was the worst state it could be in. If there was some way it could be restored, then the commander would prioritize that over any fruitless attempt at revenge. The mercenary was logical enough that such an objective could sweep away even the black flames of his vendetta. With logic returned to him, his even sharper intellect and insight could begin to shine.
His eye—a bluish-gray—gleamed as he glared at the parchment. He needed any information he could get. It was high-quality parchment, but not so much that it would stand out. The ink itself also seemed to be good, but the letters written in it were too clean, so nothing about it was useful. It was overall neat and tidy, so there were no clues.
Once he realized that, the mercenary felt something pulling his attention. Instantly, he started to examine his thoughts.
What caught my eye? Did something seem off? It’s clean? Too clean? What’s wrong with it being clean?
With that, Yan realized the problem lay with who exactly had given him the letter.
“Wh-What?” the urchin asked, jolting as Yan fixed him with a single-eyed glare.
The mercenary didn’t give any mind to the scared youth, however, simply continuing to observe him.
“Seriously, what?” the boy demanded, mustering every ounce of courage he had to hold back the tears at the sight of such a scary man glaring at him. But still the commander didn’t let up.
“Commander?” one of his men asked. Even they seemed to find the fixed stare excessive.
Eventually, Yan came to a conclusion. He needed to verify it, though. “You.”
“Wh-What’s with you?!”
While the boy reared back in fear, Yan continued in an even tone.
“Did you look inside? Did anyone but me and the person who sent it read it?”
It was an odd question to ask. A street urchin wouldn’t have had the education to read it, and how would he know whether anyone had seen inside it when some stranger had asked him to take it somewhere?
The boy began waving his hands around. “I-I ain’t looked! I don’t know about no one else; I just got asked to bring it here to some guy called Yan,” he explained.
The explanation made Yan certain that his hunch was right. “I see. You swear it?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Now that he had the promise, Yan’s blue-tinged eye narrowed as he spoke menacingly to the boy. “Right. Then swear it on your father’s honor.”
The reaction was dramatic. The boy’s face froze in surprise for a second, but then he eventually let out a sigh and stood up straight. That was the only change—standing up straight—but it had changed him entirely.
“Very well. I swear upon my father János’s honor, no one has seen the contents of that letter.”