Starfinder

THE BATTLE OF RHOON FALLS

“MERCERON IS GONE.”

Fiona could still hear Moth’s voice in her head, telling her the news. She would remember the sound of it forever, how he struggled to speak the words, and how a tear dropped from his cheek right onto his shirt. In that moment, all the amazement about his cloud horse evaporated. Even Fiona’s grandfather staggered.

Maybe she had known he would die. Maybe she just didn’t want to admit it. Without the Starfinder, the old dragon had nothing else to trade, but Fiona had never let herself wonder about that, pretending instead to believe in miracles, stupidly sure that not only Moth and Skyhigh would return, but Merceron with them.

Only he didn’t. Just like her parents, Merceron had gone away for good.

To Fiona, there didn’t seem much reason to remain with the others. Rendor and Jorian and Skyhigh all had so much to discuss. Even Moth had the cloud horse to tell them about. After endless hours of debate and arguing, Fiona had simply left their “war council,” as Jorian called it. Stealing a pen and sheets of paper from Donnar’s notepad, she found herself a quiet place away from the heated, pointless talk of battle, deep enough in the woods not to be seen from the village.

Fiona looked up through the trees and saw the moon, anxiously appearing in the dusky sky. Soon, Jorian or Moth or someone else would start to worry and come looking for her.

She shook the pen to start the ink running, and began to write.

“There,” whispered Alis, pointing through the trees.

Moth hunched down so Fiona wouldn’t see him. Her back was turned against the village as she leaned against a giant, half-dead trunk. Moth hesitated. Fiona had excused herself from the meeting and never come back, but Alis had easily sniffed her out.

“Okay,” said Moth softly, “I’ll talk to her. Go back to the others, Alis.”

The Redeemer looked disappointed. “Let me talk, too. She is afraid of me, perhaps. That is why she hides.”

“I don’t think so. It’s Merceron.” Moth gave a wan smile. So far, no one really trusted Alis but him. “Go back to the meeting. They need you. Just tell them we found Fiona and that we’ll come soon.”

Alisaundra hooked her claws into the silver chain around her waist, thinking. “Merceron offered his life blood for his friend. Within Mistress Esme, Merceron lives on. You should explain that to Fiona.”

“Yeah,” sighed Moth, himself still stinging from Merceron’s death. “It’s just… that’s not how things are where we come from, Alis. Don’t you remember? It’s hard for humans to believe in magic.”

Alis struggled with the notion. “When I am all human again, then I will remember,” she said. “I’ll remember everything soon.”

“You will,” Moth promised. “I’ll help you. But right now…”

Alis put up her hand. “I know. No more talking.”

She turned and headed quietly back to the village. Moth considered the distance between him and Fiona. Strewn with dead leaves, there was no way for him to sneak up on her.

“Well?” Fiona called suddenly. “You coming or what?”

She barely raised her head as she spoke, even as Moth approached through the trees. When he reached her, he saw a wrinkled sheet of paper in her lap and a pen moving in her hand.

“Fiona?” He loomed over her. “We were expecting you back. What happened? What are you doing out here?”

“Writing a letter,” Fiona replied.

Moth knelt down next to her, realizing why she hid her face. Her usually white cheeks were speckled with red blotches, her eyes puffy from crying. He reached out and touched her shoulder.

“Hey…”

Fiona tensed. “I just couldn’t stay back there, Moth. All that talk about fighting and death. All those things out there waiting for us. Ogilorns! Whoever heard of a flying jellyfish?”

Moth tried to be gentle. “Fiona, we have to get ready. We can’t run and hide.” He looked at her. “You know that, right?”

“You mean my castle?” scoffed Fiona. “Yeah, some castle! All I did was bring the centaurs trouble by coming here. That’s all any of us did, Moth—we just made trouble for everyone. If we had stayed in Calio…”

Her voice trailed off as she looked down at her paper, but Moth knew what she meant.

“Merceron would still be alive.”

Fiona swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

Moth sat down next to Fiona, getting close as he shared her tree trunk. “Merceron did what he wanted to do, you know. He gave Esme back her life. She’s back with her own people now. And Alis says he’s still alive in a way, because his life is part of Esme’s now.”

“She’s a Redeemer, Moth. I still can’t believe you brought her back here with you.”

“She can help us. She knows more about the Skylords than any of us, and she’s strong as a dragon! She’s the one that put that hole in the Avatar.”

“And the cloud horse?” asked Fiona. “What are you gonna do with that thing?”

Moth flushed. “Yeah, that was kind of stupid,” he admitted. Comet, despite having taken Moth to Pandera, had already disappeared into the mountains. “Maybe she’s gone to back to the Skylords. I was hoping she’d stay with me, but that was dumb.”

“You could have ridden her out of here, Moth,” said Fiona. “You should have ridden her out of here, gotten home while you had the chance.”

“I am going to get home, Fiona,” Moth insisted, “and so are you and Skyhigh and your grandfather—”

“No,” said Fiona, shaking her head. “Not my grandfather.” Again she couldn’t look at him. “He didn’t talk about this in the meeting, but he’s got a plan, Moth. If we can’t beat the Skylords on our own, he’s gonna blow up the Avatar.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Moth. “That’s what they were talking about when I left.”

“Just when I thought I had a family again!” Fiona raised her face to the moon. “Now he’s gonna kill himself.”

Moth wasn’t sure how to comfort her. “An explosion that big… it might destroy the Starfinder too. That’s what he said, Fiona. He doesn’t want the Skylords to get it.”

“Crazy! Everyone on the Avatar will be dead!”

“He’s doing it to save everyone, Fiona. To save you.”

“I don’t want him to!” cried Fiona. “I want him to be alive!”

She thrust down her pen and let the paper tumble from her lap. Moth picked up the letter she’d been writing and read the first few lines.

“What’s this?”

Fiona snatched it back. “I told you, it’s a letter.”

“To whom?”

“To my family.”

“Uhm, you don’t have a family, Fiona.”

Fiona looked exasperated. “Just pretend then, okay? Jorian said we’re soldiers now. It’s what soldiers do before battle; they write to their families.”

Moth didn’t understand, but didn’t want to embarrass her either. “Who will you send it to when you’re done?”

“No one,” said Fiona. She picked up her pen again. “Maybe someone will find it someday after this is all over.”

“You mean when you’re dead?”

“Yeah,” said Fiona. “When we’re both dead.”

Suddenly, Moth remembered something Rendor had told him. “You have no faith, Fiona,” he said. “You don’t believe in anything, and if you don’t believe, we’ve got no chance at all.”

“That’s right, Moth, we have no chance,” Fiona snorted. “You were at the meeting. Weren’t you listening? The Skylords are coming, and all we have is a broken down ship to try and stop them.”

“Really?” snapped Moth. “What about Jorian? What about Skyhigh and Alis, even? You don’t have faith in any of them!”

Fiona sighed as if talking to a child. “Moth, we’re going to die here, just like Merceron. That’s why I have to write this letter, to tell people so they know what happened to us.”

“Oh,” said Moth scornfully. “You think that’s what your family would want to hear? That you’re scared? That you’re about to die? That’s not what soldiers write in their letters, Fiona. I know, because Leroux told me stories about them.”

“Leroux told a lot of stories.”

Moth took the pen from Fiona. “This is a story about an Eldrin Knight at the battle of Rhoon Falls.”

“Everyone died at Rhoon Falls.”

“Right,” said Moth, “but there was this one Eldrin Knight that wrote a letter to his mother right before the battle. He told her not to worry, because they had so many men and weapons that their enemies would be crazy to attack them. He told her about the good friends he had in the company, and how he was safe. His mother got the letter a whole day before she found out he’d been killed.”

Fiona went blank. “So?”

“Don’t you see? His mother had a whole day of happiness. It was like a gift!”

“Moth, he died.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t tell his mother that! He could have written her a letter saying how scared he was, but he didn’t. He didn’t want her to worry. That’s the kind of letter soldiers really write home, Fiona. If you weren’t just pretending—if you really had a family to write to—that’s the kind of letter you’d write, I bet.” Moth handed Fiona back her pen. “I have to get back now,” he said. “Don’t stay here too long, okay?”

When Moth was finally out of sight, Fiona took her letter and tore it into tiny bits, showering the ground with them. Then, on a second piece of paper, she began again. She wrote for nearly an hour, pausing when her hand cramped, telling her mother and father not to be afraid for her. She wasn’t alone, she told them, because she had friends to help her fight. She had a magical centaur named Jorian who could shoot an arrow clear to heaven, and a boy named Moth who wasn’t afraid of anything.

Grandfather’s here too, she wrote. He told me he misses you, Mom. I know he won’t let anything happen to me.

When Fiona was finished, she folded the letter neatly one time and placed it under a rock near the tree for anyone to find. Then she stood up, brushed the dirt and grass from her backside, and headed for the village.