Liberi Reader

Thank you for your assistance, Mr...

—Talulah.

You want to leave the tundra? You will be crushed under the armor of Ursus.

Dad? Why right now? Didn't we alread—

The Shieldguards have already gone to collect resources. Take the squad. Order them all to move.

...Alright.

You and your project will get everyone killed.

And the Northwestern Tundra can't keep us alive forever. The larger our group grows, the more food and energy supplies we need, and the villages that revile us far outnumber the ones that support us.

One season of mossoats, each year... even if we all pitch in for the tilling, how much would we harvest in the end?

Will our fields be destroyed by the Patrol Unit? The guerrillas can easily dispose of them, but the other Infected can't.

You are hastening their deaths.

Our only choice is to leave the tundra. Not for Sami, and not for the barrens... we'll head east, head south, head for warmer places.

How will you survive? How will you allow us all, so numerous, to survive?

The guerrillas save people. The guerrillas sacrifice none but ourselves. Only warriors sacrifice themselves.

But there are Infected in every city and their surroundings, so many more than there are on the tundra.

You permanently protect the north, detesting all that the Infected of the north endure... so you've had little chance to understand the kind of life the Infected of the south have.

Do they live well?

They live miserably.

You want to absorb them.

I intend to unite with them.

When the Empire turns its gaze to the Infected, you will bear the brunt.

I don't want them to unite by my side. No. I want them to unite under one encompassing philosophy.

Philosophy? The Infected are taken as sawdust on the tundra, as slag in the mines, as warnings in the villages, as unknown fuel in the cities.

The tundra Infected are certainly not ignorant nor foolish. We do not cradle fantasy. All philosophies are fantasy before they are put into practice.

On the tundra, there are still mines, patrol forces, foolish and lackadaisical guards. We have places to obtain our resources.

The resources throughout this icy tundra will sooner or later be exhausted, because we have no method of extracting our own.

We have no enduringly mobile nomadic city, no specially qualified Catastrophe Messengers...

Go to the city and we have nothing at all.

We will earn new friends.

Who are your friends?

I recognize your project has merit to it.

But at the same time, it is also nothing special.

How many strategists have died frustrated on the tundra? You speak of it, and I see no reason it could be done, nor on what it would be realized.

Why could the last Emperor make the land tremble? Because he held fast to it, never talking of any wild, far-flung vision. He only walked in steps.

Which you cannot do.

......

Sir!

You say I may be crushed by the armor of Ursus, and I concede that. They will sooner or later turn their attention to us here. There will always come a day when they catch us. None of us can escape it.

'Let them come?' Is that how you approach it, sir?

That the tundra would prepare you better for a battle?

You are seeking a new battlefield?

I'm looking for a chance to win.

As far as so many more Infected are concerned, that's hope. But to fighters like you and me, that's a crossroads. The only crossroads where we can break from our intrinsic strategy.

To wander the tundra, in the end, is still nothing more than a slow death... much like the little life we have left as Infected. I need to repeat this point, over and over, because we're all fully aware of it.

——

Perhaps my daughter is convinced by you.

But I will not be convinced by someone who has never lost hope in the truest sense, who has only ever spouted an empty miscellany of armchair strategies.

......

Talulah? Where are you going?

I'm fine. Just going to check if there are any survivors in the mines.

The guerrillas have already set out, and the village is starting the move too. The army isn't following our tracks, either...

Dad? What's up with you?

*cough*...

Just a normal cough.

——

Is somebody there?

...I know you're all here. You're not with the army. You haven't even broken a twig with your steps.

I mean you no harm. If you're not Infected, I'll leave you be, unless you need assistance...

D—don't come any closer!

Don't move! If you do, I'll shoot!

Ah.

So that's how it happened.

That's how you found Sasha and Eno... they were never willing to talk about the past.

If we never found them, they would've certainly passed away.

Perhaps, ever since Patriot refuted me, it was the one bit of good I'd done.

So what's happened today, then?

...I was careless with my Arts during training, FrostNova's cloak was hung up nearby, and they spread to it. Now she's out for my life.

And you promised you'd help sew it back up?

To tell the truth, Alina...

Oh, whatever. Give it to me. Knowing you, I'm scared you'd sew yourself to it.

Don't you want to join our group? If we have your gift with words, there's a decently better chance I'll talk Patriot over.

I've told you before, Talulah... My Arts would be useless with the guerrillas.

I can stand the blood, but I don't want the initiative to harm people myself. You'll be facing much more than just the Infected Patrol Unit, soon enough.

I suppose if I had dragged you along... I'd have been bothering you too much.

Ah, you put it that way on purpose, didn't you?

No, I...

Don't remember wrong, now. It was I who wanted to go with you.

And up to now, it's been for one reason. It's because... Talulah, I feel like there's every chance you'd forget.

Forget what?

Forget just what it is you want to do.

I've been striving all this time for the future of the Infected.

That's not what you said, back at the very start.

......

Talulah, we all know people can change.

If bit by bit, we shake ourselves clean of all the things we've persevered with, or if we replace them with something new, then there's a certain point where we realize we just haven't persevered in anything, right?

In a constant battle and with things changing all the time, it's only natural I'd alter my policy. If rigor sets into our thinking, it could very well make us weaker.

And where'd that stubborn part of you go?

——

Do you want to prove that the Infected are just like normal people? Or do you want to prove that normal people are just like the Infected?

What's the difference?

If there's only Infected, then who's even a normal person? Would we want all people to catch Oripathy? Or to cut ourselves off completely from the normal people?

But if there were only normal people, no Infected... then the people who caught Oripathy would be normal people underneath, normal like the people who haven't.

Elders are just normal people, Ancients are just normal people, villagers who all know each other are normal people, and whoever's living in the cities should be normal people all the same.

Talulah, do you want to return to your family?

You're all my family.

No, we aren't.

If we cleared all this Oripathy off our skin... would we be able to go back home?

You and I are of a mind on this. We couldn't.

The tundra, and our lives, have completely changed us. The Infected already have no way of returning to their former lives.

Talulah, do you feel proud of yourself for being Infected now?

Why would you ask?

Because you can cast Arts without a staff? Because our lives are so fleetingly short? Because even though we've gone through so much hardship, we can still persevere and live on?

what reason would you choose?

I don't need to choose any, Alina.

I'm proud just to be an Infected. Because this world still hasn't killed me yet.

And for that matter, we don't need anything to cause us to pursue fairness. We should've been pursuing fairness in the first place, that's why.

And if the world won't give it, we'll just have to take it from it.

Then you really are brave.

You're not laughing at me, are you?

Of course not. How could I?

Mn, well... I feel they're all brave, too. All the people struggling against the fate that's been forced on us.

Then I'm sure you feel—

Hm.

Feel what?

That our fates are just rotten.

Well, obviously.

I don't feel that way, Talulah.

...That's another of your ironic remarks, Alina.

No... what I mean is, the fact I can sit here, talking with you, knowing we have our guards outside the village protecting us—fate has already been very kind to me.

Don't say that. Fate's a jealous one. Talking about those things is just tempting it to take them away.

But I don't believe in fate, Talulah.

Because you can change it?

Because I can't see it.