Three Broken Kingdoms-Book 1 of the Lost Continent (Completed)

Chapter Thirty-Seven: A Funeral

Nala wondered if she was being stupid in her happiness. Stupid in her unhampered hope as the valkyries sent the Kallian Army to die in the flames. Well, not quite unhampered. The Kallian Army could never have truly been so black-and-white as to be deemed an enemy. They were the cruel nobles and brutal soldiers, but also the conscripted and the beaten down, who only wanted to earn coin for the families and survive being Medea's soldier.

But the valkyries now marched, seemingly unstoppable, into the Kallian Empire, seeking the death of its Empress and the rise of its rebellion. According to what she had been able to intercept, the valkyries still intended on giving the rebellion this Empire. At that time, Tarua Teris would reveal itself to the valkyries and help them besiege the cities.

Perhaps even the cautious Chancellor was letting the new and yet familiar thing called hope get to him. He called a meeting that was more a celebration for his Council: Nala, the spymaster, Ruben, a 'general' and his various other advisors. It was a dinner, really, wine and all.

"First, I must thank you all for the devotion you have showed to our cause. Without any one of you, I might name a thousand times we might have been destroyed and our goal forever lost.

"After thirty years of darkness we are now faced with a clear, real chance that shines like a light through the dark. After thirty years of struggling and seeing no brightness at the end of this tunnel, we still stand strong and ready. For three decades, we kept going against all odds, against all reasonable hope.

"When they told us: there is no reason to your hope! No sense to it, nothing to hold it strong, we told them: what hope is it that must have reason and sense? What is hope, if not a belief without anything to support it that endures still? Your hope with reason and sense is no hope at all, and if it needs such reason and sense then I would not have it.

" Hope is not something born of real possibility, but of people who would laugh in the face of it. Hope is something you cling to desperately in the darkest, most hopeless of times, and you cling to it because it should not be there at all. Hope is the force that kept us fighting even when there was no chance of victory. Hope is the reason that we now stand on the cusp of bringing something good to a land long deserted of light. To you, friends, I toast, and I toast, too, to hope."

Nala felt the Chancellor's words echo in her soul. His speech had been in her heart for the past three decades and had been in the hearts of Kallians since the Warlord Era, when there had been no Kallias but the Deserted Lands.

Hope had been the only thing that kept her going when the Empress, cruel and unmatched, had taken the country with an iron fist. What had kept her going after the massacre of her friends and fellow protestors during the tenth and eleventh of Medea's reign and kept her going through the sixteen years ahead in a doomed rebellion. What had kept her fighting when she was separated from her husband and nephew and endured when they had perished entirely. Hope had led her to this moment, at the cusp of a truly impossible victory.

"To hope," Nala chimed, and raised her glass to her lips.

"To hope," they all repeated, and drank.

The night was beautiful and twinkling, hope above them like a star. They drank a little too much and ate plenty, laughed too loudly and smiled more than seemed reasonable. They were comrades as they drank and ate together, spoke with each other, and camaraderie seemed to mark the night. It was beautiful and sweet and bright from beginning to middle.

And from beginning to middle alone. When the end came, as all ends come, it was ugly and bitter and dark.

The Chancellor started to speak and found that he could not. At first, they thought it was water. And then suddenly they realised that he was choking.