It took Xavier a week to get to Orphen on the common wagons. After collecting his belongings and money from his hiding places, it took another week to return to the Poem Dynasty. It was a lot easier to travel when you weren't a criminal. No more hiding in the woods and sleeping in the trees to avoid monsters or wild animals.
Instead of returning to Humol, he bought some clothes at a discount from the merchants for a few silver coins. The price of clothes and other luxuries had fallen, but rations, weapons, armor, drugs, and medicines increased in price; these were the most sought-after items. His wounds were healing, but scabs could still be seen on his face. The dragonburns took longer to heal and hurt more than normal burns. Xavier finally made it to Liev's Tower.
'Magician Xavier de Vonder, Leader of De Vonder House' Xavier announced himself to the knights at the door as he showed the papers that Cliford had given him, including his release from the army because of his injuries, as well as the pardon and revocation of his exile.
'What does your honor, Mr. De Vonder, require from the tower?' asked one of the knights without much enthusiasm. They weren't the same knights that tried to kill him years ago, but the knights despised the magicians in general, especially the stuck-up noble magicians.
'Liev's tower still holds some of my belongings. I would like them to be returned to me,' replied Xavier.
One of the knights entered the tower.
'Master Delfin, there is a magician at the main door, Xavier de Vonder; what should we do with him?"
Hearing the name, Delfin finally lifted up his face and looked at the knights. His face turned pale for a moment, then changed to contempt. 'This rat is still alive?' he murmured. It was not pleasant news. However, he recalled his past mistakes and how he had murdered an innocent magician and exiled another while promoting the real culprit and recommending him to the regulators. Delfin still had some remorse, if the bare minimum.
'What does he want?'
'He says his belongings are still in the tower.'
'Belongings,' repeated Delfin, confused. After thinking a little, he recalled that Xavier had been driven out of the tower with nothing but the clothes he was wearing. All his belongings had been destroyed or dumped years ago. All except his mage badge.
'Allow him to enter.'
The knight withdrew from the master office and then escorted Xavier inside the tower. Xavier entered the master's office with his head up. Instead of a noble suit, he was dressed in hard leather hunter clothes, which were the best protection a civilian could get his hands on. He did not bow in reverence, trying to point out that he had no respect for the master. Unfortunately, a cough attack ruined his apparent superiority. The black smoke that escaped from his lungs told the master about his real situation.
"He got the Miasma disease; he will eventually end up dead in a few years, like all the worthless shadow magicians." Delfin thought.
'I did not intend to delay the matter any longer than necessary. Mr. de Vonder. Your belongings disappeared from the tower a long time ago. We only have your magician's badge.' Delfin approached a drawer in a corner of his office.
'Please look for yours,' he said, sitting back at his desk.
Xavier approached the drawer, looking at various badges. It was easy to find his; it was on the top of the pile and engraved with the crest that his grandfather made up. The image of the sparrow flying towards the sun brought him memories. Xavier took the dual mage badge with some nostalgia and anger. When he received that badge, he thought that his life would improve and that he would have a more promising future. In fact, he had lost his family, his innocence, and almost his life, and now he was a sick man with only a few years to live. The horrors he saw, the things he had done in order to survive, sometimes he had nightmares. The only good thing was the ten gold coins in his pocket. He had spent a lot on his travels and his recovery the last month; he had not been able to work because of his injuries, and knowing that his days were numbered, he decided to enjoy some good food, drink, and some company for a few days.
As he remembered what he had been through, a badge caught his attention. He knew the crest, three dry branches forming a triangle. It was easy for him to take the badge with his thieving skills. After closing the drawer, Xavier pinned his badge to his leather jacket and turned toward Delfin. The master dropped two gold coins on the table.
'Compensation for your clothes and other belongings that were destroyed. I think that should be more than enough,' said Delfin without looking at Xavier.
'Wow, how generous. How do you compensate for the torture, exile, attempted murder, and all the shit I've been through in the last few years?' Xavier asked.
'You, arrogant!' The anger in the teacher's face was evident. The air around his body was warming up, causing his image to look distorted. He was preparing for the attack.
'Go ahead!' screamed Xavier. 'It's not the first time you've killed an innocent man. Xavier threw Aleum's badge on the master's desk. Do you recognize it?'
The teacher tightened up his jaw, making his teeth screech, but his magic energy dissipated.
'In life, I make decisions for the sake of the dynasty; I have the duty to stop and eliminate the worlocks where they hide. If any unfortunate bastard ends up dead as colateral, so be it!' Delfín answered, looking Xavier in the eyes for the first time.
Xavier drew closer to the desk until he was face-to-face with Delfin and picked up the coins and Aleum's badge, staring at him in the eyes.
'I will remember those words.'
He turned around and left the office, leaving behind an angry and humiliated Delfin. After leaving Liev's tower, Xavier stopped for a moment in front of Morr Forest. The Morr Forest turned out to be his escape route when he was exiled from the dynasty. However, the jungle in front of him did not have that magical element of old; that feeling of discomfort that it transmitted only by approaching had disappeared. He looked into the infinite desert. It was no longer infinite; in the distance, you could see the mountain that was the center of the world of dragons. Everything had changed after the breaking of the sky. Although the jungle of Morr was still dangerous, it was no longer a mystical maze. Still, basiliks and other monsters roamed among those trees. Some brave mercenaries were already beginning to venture into the jungle in search of unclaimed treasures.
'It is time to put things in place,' said Xavier, making his way to Farpas and leaving behind Liev's Tower.
The whole village was surprised to see Xavier, dressed as a hunter, approaching along the way. The few men and women who had survived the invasion of Veldat were in the fields working as usual; the village was even more miserable than before. The invasion of the kingdom had decimated the population of Humol. Almost all the villages around Mennor and Farpas had lost inhabitants. If even the homes of the lords had been attacked, the villagers of the towns would have suffered even worse. The only survivors were those who were not in the village during the attack or those who fled at the first sign of the invasion. Xavier ignored the villagers and walked straight towards what used to be his home.
The door of the house was open; someone was still living there. Xavier came in without asking for permission and looked around. As he touched the rustic wooden table with its rough surface, he began to remember many things and to feel nostalgia; after all, he had lived his childhood under this roof. At that moment, a few steps were approaching. His brother, Orli, came into the house.
'Well, you're still alive, little brother,' was Orli's greeting.
'I am no longer your brother. My brothers don't sell me to the guards.'
Orli was dressed in the typical dirty, worn-out, ragged clothes of the peasants. His face had a scar on the right side; he had lost an eye and an ear; his nose and upper lip were deformed; and he was limping from his left leg.
'What makes you think I won't do it again?'
'Oh, you can do it, but you won't be getting anything. I am a free man; they accused me unjustly, as I said from the beginning.' Xavier said, but he was still grasping the handle of his short sword.
'Congratulations! Why are you here? Pa and Ma are dead, and I suppose Ferol is dead too. A lot of people in the village died in the kingdom attack.
'That's why you look like that?' Xavier pointed to his face.
'No, this was later. I joined the army as a volunteer to attack the kingdom. I got hurt. The funny thing is that a few hours later, they agreed on the temporary peace agreement to fight the world of chaos. If they had reached that agreement a few hours earlier, I would not have been wounded; my sacrifice was useless. Orli sat on one of the chairs at the table. What are you doing here? Have you come to claim the house, Mr. magician, leader of the glorious House of Vonder?' Orli said this last with sarcasm and laughter.
'Pft! The glorious house of De Vonder is nothing more than a bunch of lies, rubble, and hunger.' Xavier opened his arms, referring to the house. 'No, I just came by out of nostalgia. I'm going to live far away from this place; I don't want to...' A cough attack interrupted the conversation.
'Miasma disease,' said Orli without much excitement. He had seen a few sick magicians on the battlefield. They joined the army as mercenaries looking for some money.
'How long do you have left?'
'No idea. Months, years, who knows? It doesn't matter. If the dragons lose, we'll all be dead, so it doesn't matter.'
In every kingdom, the stories of the front had already been heard, of how each dragon was as strong as a hundred knights and as powerful as an academy master or a titled magician. However, the miasma still continued to advance.
'Is it really that bad?"
'Well, worse than that,' replied Xavier, touching the scar on his face.
'Hey, I'm sorry about the guards, Dad...'
Xavier interrupted him.
'I know that Euraclius had gone mad and that he believed himself to be a true nobleman; he was too far away in his delusion and grandpa lies. But that doesn't take away what you did; don't blame the dead.'
Xavier turned around and stood in front of the main bedroom. Nostalgia invaded him. This was the house he grew up in, but it was no longer his home.
'The house is yours, I don't want it, but I'm going to deprive you of my surname. There's only one De Vonder.' Xavier entered the room that his parents used to occupy, and there, in a rustic drawer, he found the bronze seal of the family. The ring had been destroyed at Liev's Tower after his exile. During the invasion, no one bothered stealing a worthless bronze seal. Orli had found it on the floor, beside the clothes and all the worthless belongings of the family.
'I understand,' replied Orli, lowering his head; after all, he had betrayed his brother.
'Farewell; we will never see each other again,' said Xavier, leaving the house. Now his family had disappeared forever.
Xavier was sure Orli would be very angry if he knew that he was responsible for the attack on Humol. But he would never find out; as far as Xavier was concerned, the village deserved it.
Xavier left Humol with the intention of never returning; as he walked down the road, the images of the bodies of Trina, his mother, his father, and his brother Ferol on the ground, crying, appeared in his mind. He went north, towards Mola. He decided to live in Fuera Mola, near the border of the Orphen kingdom, where he had a decent reputation as Aleum. The village was also near the Morr Jungle. The jungle was still dangerous, but it was a place to flee in case something went wrong; no one would enter there to voluntarily pursue him, even now. Maybe he overestimated his ability to survive, but if he did it once, he believed he could do it again.
"I'd rather die in the jungle than fall into other people's hands." He remembered the torture he had suffered or witnessed during his lifetime as a fugitive, and at least within the jungle, there were no social castes, conspiracies, or nefarious plans; it was all about survival.
Xavier bought a piece of land in the most remote part of the village, almost in the trees of the jungle. After paying workers and materials, three gold coins had been spent on construction. His house was small, but it was well constructed. It was not luxurious, but quite resistant. The stone walls, the wooden ceiling, tiles, and clay. His room, a kitchen/lounge, and the toilet. Although he had no interest in forming a family and the possibilities were scarce, he included a second room. Life took too many turns. It wasn't much, but it was more than enough.
Xavier spent his days in peace; his only discomfort were the nightmares that occasionally tortured his nights. He worked just the bare minimum in the fields and sometimes took some jobs as a mercenary on an escort mission or entered the woods to hunt. Gradually, he developed the courage to enter what should be the beginning of the Morr jungle. There were rumors that inside the jungle grew some herbs that could be used to slow down the progression of his disease. The jungle had changed a lot. Those sudden changes in temperature were gone; it was no longer that irrational maze he experienced years ago. The jungle was now closer to a common jungle, but it had nothing ordinary about it; its vegetation was abundant and no one had explored it; it was easy to get lost; and there were dangerous monsters inside. As he slowly explored the jungle and claimed for himself some of its natural resources, the war continued. He only learned about the development of the conflict through the rumors he heard in the taverns of Mola.
Almost a year later, the war ended abruptly. The Dynasty announced that its court magicians had found a spell that restored the barrier between the worlds. No more miasma world, no more dragons, no more war, and no more forced recruitment. However, the price of victory was astronomical: thousands of recruited soldiers, guards, knights, and magicians from all kingdoms were trapped in the world of dragons. Of course, the Dynasty had been the least affected; everyone knew that they had done so on purpose, but nothing could be done about it; the other kingdoms barely had the military force left to secure their territory and defend it.
The restoration of the barrier affected the human world. The Infinite Desert had changed; upon reaching a certain point, the direction in which you were moving changed, and you found yourself walking to the point from which you had departed. Something similar was supposed to happen within the Morr jungle, but the jungle monsters were a lot more dangerous than those in the desert, and as it was not an open surface with a wide range of vision, it was easy to get lost, so only a few brave or desperate people ventured into it.
Xavier dared to enter the jungle's periphery on some occasions in search of those rumored herbs, but eventually things became dangerous.
"What is that?"
He wondered as he watched a group of reptiles devour a basilisk. He had hidden himself among the trees when he heard the sounds of a violent fight. Six lizards, bigger than a man, relently attacked the huge snake. Despite its attempts to defend itself, the combined and synchronized attacks of the lizards were too effective; their physical strength was far superior to what would be expected of their sizes, and they eventually defeated the snake.
Xavier preferred not to take risks. If those lizards could beat a basilisk, he wouldn't have a chance. He went back to his house. From now on, he had to be more careful with the jungle; he didn't want to end up on the menu of the lizards. Even after investigating with the mercenary guilds Farpas and the guard tower library, he could not find what species the reptiles belonged to. It was best to stay away from the jungle for the time being.
He decided to forget about the jungle; he would not go in there unless it was necessary. These were quiet days; he didn't know how long he had left to live, but at least he would try to live in peace. That was what he swore every day as he saw the sun set from the front of his house. The dreams of wealth, nobility, and power of his father and his family were long forgotten; he had no desire to join the high nobility. After all, that was not his world; he had learned that the world of fortune and nobility was stained with far too much blood, and he didn't want to add more ghosts to his nightmares. From time to time, in dreams, he saw the faces of those children, Trina, his family, Mon, Aleum, and the mercenaries. The long road towards his peace was covered with bodies. The world was full of horrors, and he did not want to be part of those calamities again.