Resurrection: Sacrifice

“Welcome back.”

Sera knew the voice, knew it better than she knew her own.

The part that she couldn’t comprehend was how she could hear anything at all. She had sunk into the darkness moments before, sure that she had done the right thing by sacrificing herself.

Sacrificing herself to save the person who was speaking to her now.

“I don’t understand,” she replied, resisting the temptation to open her eyes.

“I…brought you home,” came Armand’s reply, his voice thick with unshed tears.

Her confusion turned to horror as she slowly began to realize what he meant.

It was never supposed to be like this.

Sera and Armand had known each other since they were children—she was the blacksmith’s daughter in their village, and he was the potion-maker’s son. When the Red Spears Guild visited their village shortly after Sera’s 16th birthday, the Guildmaster declared that the Chosen One was from their village and that they had just come of age. The Guildmaster insisted that the Chosen One was ready to join the fight against the tyrannical Emperor.

Sera was sure that Armand was the Chosen One–and he was certain that it was her.

They joined the Guild in the second year of the rebellion against the Emperor. Over the next three years, they fought side-by-side against the Emperor’s creatures of darkness and his mercenaries alike. They grew even closer, isolated from their bitter guildmates who had wished to be the Chosen One.

When Guildmaster Veneleth died in battle in the fifth year of the rebellion, Sera and Armand were left vulnerable. The new Guildmaster, Perris, declared that he was the Chosen One, and Veneleth had only declared otherwise to distract enemy spies from the truth.

Sera and Armand packed up their tents that night and set out on their own to fulfill their mission.

After six months of careful planning, they managed to sneak into the capital while posing as traveling merchants. Armand’s gifts of magic and charm made the ruse easy to pull off. They got their chance a few weeks later. The Emperor was holding a grand gala for his victory over what he called the “traitorous” Red Spears Guild, and Armand snuck them in as part of the entertainment. They waited until the festivities were dying down before they made their move.

They got as far as the antechamber to the Emperor’s bedroom before they were caught.

Armand tried, as usual, to talk his way out of it. The guards, however, refused to listen. Sera barely had time to parry the sword stroke that would have killed Armand.

At that moment, she knew what she had to do.

“Go,” she whispered to Armand.

“W-what?!” Armand’s reply made it clear that Sera’s words had shocked him more than the clash of blades.

“Go! The Emperor’s power lies in his magic. I won’t be able to stop him, but you can.”

She whirled around, blocking the next blade as the four other guards prepared to enter the fray.

“I won’t leave you,” Armand hissed as he shot a bolt of flame at the guard in front of him, causing the enemy to wail in agony.

“Go, Armand,” Sera replied back, with a blissful kind of acceptance.

“But-”

“It’s you, Armand,” she whispered, desperately parrying blades to buy him just another moment of time. “It’s always been you.”

She looked over to smile at him and saw the tears running down his cheeks.

“I’ll come back for you,” he whispered in reply. “I promise.”

“Just go,” she said, still smiling but now with matching streaks of tears running down her cheeks. She kicked out at the guard closest to Armand, buying him just another second of time.

Then, she felt the blade sliding into her back.

She knew the wound was fatal, and was at peace with her death. She had saved the Empire and saved Armand.

Now, she realized that she might not have saved him after all.

With an icy sense of dread, she opened her eyes.

Instead of being in a dark corridor of the castle, she was in an open-air pavilion at the center of the Emperor’s former home. She appeared to be at the center of an altar, surrounded by pools of blood. She could hear a crowd of people celebrating somewhere in front of her, but she wanted nothing less than to see the scene in front of her.

Swallowing down her revulsion, she managed to meet Armand’s eyes.

He looked just as he had when she knew him, though perhaps a few years older. His dark curls hung out beyond the edges of his crown, just below his shoulders, and his piercing green eyes were shimmering with tears. His smile was the same kind smile that he always gave her when they had gone out to find potion ingredients as children and she had brought him a flower instead.

Her disgust quickly faded, met by a sense of seemingly endless sadness.

"How…how could you?” Sera whispered, feeling more betrayed than anything else.

“I promised I’d come back for you,” he whispered in turn.

The warmth in his smile might have been the worst betrayal at all.

“How can you look at me like that?!” Sera shouted, not masking her sense of betrayal. “How many people did you kill to-”

“None,” he stated flatly. “This is bull’s blood, nothing more.”

“Why should I believe you?” Sera shot back, and she couldn’t help but choke out the words. “You-you’ve taken his place! How can I believe that you’re not-“

“Look around you,” he managed in a shaky voice, just shaky enough for her to give him that small chance.

Beyond the blood-smeared altar, the castle looked transformed. The gilded banners and statues of the Emperor were gone, replaced by symbols of all the nations in the Empire and some of the more prominent Guilds. She even saw the Red Spears Guild sigil.

Behind Armand, the crowd appeared subdued. The celebration had faded in the wake of Sera’s horrified reaction.

But they all looked…fine. There were no starving people begging for bread, no mothers pleading to see their jailed children.

“I don’t understand,” Sera repeated as she took in the scene.

“Don’t you?” Armand managed a sly grin, despite the fear in his voice.

He had always been charming, after all.

Sera let the silence hang in the air for a moment. She had always been amazed at how they could have a conversation in a room full of people as if there was nobody else there.

“You were the Chosen One,” he continued, immune to the gasps of the crowd and Sera alike. “You were the one who made the choice that day. At the final moment, you sacrificed yourself so that I could fight him.”

“B-but you-“

“I only finished what you started. After I…left you in that corridor, taking down the Emperor was easy in comparison.”

He turned to the crowd behind him. “Would you let me have a moment with the Chosen One?”

The crowd nodded in unison; some were frustrated, but most looked relieved to not have to be a part of this moment.

When the last person had left the pavilion, Armand turned back to face her.

“I tried to build the Empire that you would have built,” he said, and only the desperate sorrow on his face convinced Sera not to lash out at him. How dare he blame her for what he had done?

“I tore down his old banners, I opened his old vaults, I did what I could for the common people. Every day for a year, I worked myself to the point of exhaustion, trying to make things right as best I could.”

“Every night, I had nightmares about you and that hallway. I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t let YOU go. I found an ancient revival spell rooted in blood and spirit magic instead of necromancy. I delegated what I could to my advisors, and tried to find a way to bring you back that…that you could find a way to bear.”

“Armand, this is…WRONG.”

“What they did to YOU was wrong,” he shot back, despondent but not angry.

“If you really believed that I was the Chosen One, then why did you do this? You took my choice away from me.”

“But-”

“I chose you,” Sera added, sobbing freely. “I always chose you, I chose you over myself, and now you-”

“I brought you back.”

“You made that choice for me. You had no right-”

“NEITHER DID YOU!” Armand screamed, and Sera finally saw the truth in that moment. “Neither did you,” he repeated, barely choking out the words. “If I had stayed to die for you, would you have been able to bear it?”

Sera tried to reply, but couldn’t. Her silence was her answer.

“You made the easy choice. I made mine. Even if you hate me forever now, I can go to my grave knowing that you got the chance at life that you deserved. I chose you. I will always choose you.”

Sera let go of the conflict in her heart, almost as if it had never been there at all. “I did make the easy choice, didn’t I? I chose silence and sleep, instead of carrying on. I saved you, but I also left you behind.”

“I can’t pretend to know if I would have been strong enough to let you rest. That doesn’t change where we are now.”

She walked towards him and cupped his face in her hand.

“I have to leave. I need to find a way to…make peace with this.”

Armand placed his own hand over hers and nodded. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, before meetings hers again.

“Then go, with my blessing.”

She pulled her hand away, slowly, regretting every moment of it, before she began to walk away.

She had made it to the gate before she found herself compelled to look back. Armand, of course, had been watching her go.

“Will I ever see you again?” Armand’s plea was child-like, the desperate wish of one who thought he might be abandoned forever.

“Of course,” Sera said, her desire for distance at that moment dramatically outmatched by the truth in her heart. She might not ever be able to forgive him, but that mattered far less than her getting a chance at the life she’d always wanted.

The life that she deserved.

“I’ll come back for you,” she added, sealing her commitment.

“Promise?” Armand replied.

She nodded and gave him one last proclamation before turning away and heading off towards the setting sun.

“Always.”