Chapter 27: Feast After The Battle
"You know this challenge... is a fight to the death, right?" Tanaka murmured; his voice monotonous, ready to take the challenge if he needed to. The sound of his fingers digging into a fist stretched across the battlefield. "You know you can’t defeat me..."
"And I’m not going to spare you just cause you’re my son..." He looked down on Belk with a hardened gaze sharp enough to pierce the soul. The boy’s face was riddled with bruises and dried blood, yet that smirk— the same jagged grin that defied him, the elders, and the storms that would pass them by, spread across his face, despite the stinging pain.
"Guess I’ll die then," Belk croaked, his voice frayed at the edges, fingers wrapping around the hilt of the N.O.V.A gun, the alien metal shining under the intense gaze of the sun.
For a heartbeat, Tanaka’s resolve wavered. The wind carried the ghost of his wife’s laughter—Aurelia’s laughter—threaded with the scent of scorched amber from Belk’s experiments. Then his calloused hand clamped onto Belk’s shoulder, the weight of a mountain pinning the boy in place. "First, you rest," he commanded softly, his voice roughened by unspoken grief. "You’re in no condition to fight."
Belk’s eyes widened slightly, his smirk faltering when met with his father’s generosity. He nodded, the motion sharp and sudden, as if the very action dislodged a lump in his throat.
"Tell your ally to call off this battle," Tanaka said, turning toward the village. The fortress walls loomed behind him, their ancient stone pockmarked by centuries of storms and siege-fire. "Let them join us."
"Chief, are you sure? I get your prince but the witch?" one of the guards whispered as they left, questioning the chief’s sudden trust.
"We’ve been fighting all this time," Tanaka murmured, with a soft smile spreading across his face "yet they hadn’t killed any of ours, I trust them,"
The soft winds shifted, blowing through the hair of the young scientist, carrying the dying embers of the battle as many hunters and scouts retreated on the chief’s orders. His hands quaked harder now, streaks of shimmering tears falling unknowingly down his cheeks.
"Huh...?" He muttered, raising his trembling palm to catch the tears as they fell. "Why am I—"
He breathed heavily, laughing through his trembling breath, his hands reached for his face. Wiping the tears away as they fell, tears that seem never ending.