Chapter 17: Comrade
Armored Dragon Calendar Year 417 – Days Before the Metastasis
[Mike POV]
I had known Claude for almost my entire life.
We had grown up in the same village, played the same games, attended the same lessons. I remembered him as a child before the transformation.
Loud and boisterous, the kind of boy who found joy in tormenting those weaker than himself.
He had been cruel to Sylphy. That was the memory I carried most clearly from those early years.
The green-haired girl who cried when he threw mud at her, who ran away when he chased her through the village streets.
I had never participated in the bullying. Well, not really. Maybe I had laughed a few times, and there was that one incident with Somar where we might have collaborated on something involving frogs.
But I had mostly watched from the sidelines, which was completely different from actual participation. Completely different.
The point was, I hadn't been as bad as Claude. That was the important distinction.
Then one morning, everything changed.
Claude had woken up different. The boy who loved cruelty had vanished overnight, replaced by someone who looked the same yet felt entirely alien.
He stopped tormenting Sylphy. Started training with an intensity that seemed impossible for someone his age, watching the world with eyes that carried knowledge no child should possess.
The first time I noticed the change, we were playing in the village square with the other children. Claude had been about to start another round of torment.
I could see it in the way he was positioning himself, in the cruel smile forming on his lips. Then he stopped mid-motion, as though someone had flipped a switch inside him.
When he turned around, his eyes were different. Older and tired in a way that made no sense for a six-year-old child.
He apologized to Sylphy that day. Actually apologized, with words that sounded strange coming from his mouth. And then he walked away, leaving all of us standing there in confused silence.
I had watched him transform into something strange and powerful over the following years. Had seen him build an organization that spanned territories, commanding adults twice his age with an authority that brooked no argument.
Had followed him into dangers that should have terrified me, yet somehow felt necessary.
The first time he asked for my help, I was eight years old.
"I need someone I can trust," he had said, his voice carrying a weight that seemed impossible for a boy so young. "Someone who will do what needs to be done, even when it's hard."
I didn't understand what he meant. Not then.
But something in his eyes made me want to help him anyway.
Over the years, that help had grown into something more. I had become his messenger, his merchant, his connection to the outside world.
I had learned to read people, to negotiate, to move through the spaces between powers without attracting attention.
But I had never truly understood him. Not until the night he told me the truth.
The hidden headquarters was quiet tonight. The usual bustle of activity had been replaced by an unusual stillness.
The others had been sent away tonight, on assignments meant to give us privacy. The torches flickered against the stone walls.
And the air carried a tension I couldn't quite name.
We sat in the main chamber, surrounded by maps, reports, and the accumulated evidence of years of preparation. The documents covered every surface.
Years of planning distilled into ink on paper.
"Miko," I said, testing the word. "That's what you are?"
It sounded strange on my tongue. A term I had never heard before, carrying implications I couldn't fully grasp.
"It's what they called it." Claude stared at his hands, his expression distant.
"A vessel for memories. A bridge between what was and what could be."
"And the memories you carry... they're from other people? Other versions of yourself?"
"Something like that. The details are... complicated." He laughed without humor, the sound hollow in the empty chamber.
"Honestly, I still don't fully understand it myself. There are at least three distinct presences in my head. Warriors, scholars, survivors. All of them feeding me knowledge I shouldn't have."
I thought about the impossible skills I had witnessed over the years.
The combat abilities that belonged to a master, not a child. I had seen Claude fight during our operations against the slavers, watched his body move with precision that defied his age and training.
There had been moments when he seemed to become someone else entirely, his movements flowing with a grace that spoke of decades of practice.
I remembered the first time I saw him fight seriously. We were twelve, ambushing a slaver caravan on the northern road.
I had expected chaos, had expected the clumsy violence of children playing at war. Instead, I watched Claude move through the enemy like water through sand, his blade finding throats and hearts with surgical precision.
Thud.
He had killed three men before I even drew my weapon.
The analytical insights that seemed to come from years of study. When Claude assessed a situation, when he analyzed an enemy's weaknesses or predicted someone's behavior, his conclusions were always eerily accurate.
He understood people in ways that took most adults a lifetime to learn.
He had warned me the merchant would betray us. I argued the man had been helpful, giving us information and supplies, and asking nothing in return.
Claude shook his head and said, "Watch his hands when he talks about money. Watch his eyes when he mentions the eastern territories."
I watched. And I saw what Claude had seen.
Micro-expressions of greed and calculation. Barely visible but unmistakable once you knew to look for them.
We cut ties with the merchant the next day. A week later, we learned he had been feeding information to slavers in three different territories.
Then there was the knowledge of events that hadn't happened yet. The warnings about the disaster that had driven his every action since he was six years old.
The certainty that the orb in the sky would tear the world apart, scattering everyone he loved across impossible distances.
"And the disaster you've been preparing for, that comes from these memories too?"
"Yes." Claude finally looked up, and his eyes were ancient in his young face.
The contrast was unsettling, a child's face carrying weight that shouldn't exist.
"I've seen it happen, Mike. Felt it happen, hundreds of times, in hundreds of different ways. The village torn apart. People scattered across continents. Most of them dying before they can find their way home."
His words hit me like a blow to the chest.
He wasn't speaking hypothetically. He wasn't sharing fears or suspicions.
He was describing memories, experiences that felt as real to him as the conversation we were having now.
"Two months," I said. "That's what you told us."
"Less now. Weeks at most."
He stood, pacing the small room with restless energy. His footsteps echoed in the quiet chamber.
A rhythm that matched the tension in his shoulders.
"The rings I gave everyone, the tracking stones. They're my last hope. If I survive the initial event, if I can reach the people wearing them..."
"You can find them."
"I can try."
The silence stretched between us. I had a thousand questions, a thousand doubts.
The rational part of my mind wanted to dismiss it all as impossible, as the delusions of a child convinced he carried prophecy.
But looking at Claude, seeing the burden he carried, I couldn't bring myself to voice those doubts.
I had seen too much. Had witnessed too many of his predictions come true.
Had watched him build an organization that shouldn't exist, led by a child who shouldn't be capable of leading.
Whatever Claude was, whatever forces had transformed him, the results were undeniable.
He was eleven years old.
Five years of knowing that catastrophe was approaching.
Five years of preparing, planning, trying to save people from a disaster they couldn't see coming, of isolation, unable to share the truth with anyone who might understand.
I tried to imagine what that must have been like. Waking up one morning with the knowledge that everyone you loved would die.
Having no way to explain it to anyone, training every day for a battle you couldn't describe.
Building an organization from scratch because it was the only way to save even a fraction of the people who would be scattered. Doing all of it alone, because who would believe a child claiming memories of the future?
"Why tell me now?" I asked.
"Because you deserve to know. Because if something happens to me, someone needs to understand what we've been preparing for." He met my eyes steadily.
I saw something in them that I hadn't expected. Vulnerability, exhaustion, the desperate hope of someone who had been alone for too long.
"And because you're my friend. The only one who's been with me from the beginning."
I remembered the boy who used to bully Sylphy. The child who had cried in the forest clearing five years ago, babbling about deaths and failures I couldn't comprehend.
The young leader who had given me purpose when I had none, who had seen potential in a village boy with no remarkable talents.
He had changed so much. Become something I couldn't entirely recognize.
But he was still Claude. Still the person who had trusted me with responsibilities that mattered.
Still the leader who had built something worth believing in. Still my friend, despite everything that had happened between who he was and who he had become.
"Come with me," Claude said, rising from his chair. "I want to show you something."
He led me through the headquarters to a back room I'd never entered before. The door was reinforced with metal bands, and when he opened it, a wave of residual heat washed over us.
A forge. Smaller than his father's workshop, but meticulously organized.
Workbenches lined the walls, covered with tools and materials I didn't recognize. In the center stood what looked like a modified smelting apparatus, its chimney venting through a concealed hole in the ceiling.
But it was the objects on the main workbench that caught my attention.
Rings. Dozens of them, arranged in neat rows.
Some were metal, others stone or compressed earth. Each one glowed with a faint inner light, barely visible in the forge's dim illumination.
"Tracking stones," Claude said, picking up one of the stone rings. "Seeker enchantments, I call them. What matters is what they do."
He handed me the ring. The stone was warm, smoother than it looked, and I could feel a subtle vibration against my palm.
Not unpleasant, more like holding something alive.
"Each one is attuned to a specific monitoring stone," Claude continued, moving to another workbench where larger crystals sat in metal housings. "When someone wears a tracking ring, I can track their location using the corresponding monitor. The connection works across any distance, though the precision degrades beyond about ten kilometers."
"Ten kilometers," I repeated. "That's not very far."
"Far enough to find someone in an unfamiliar territory. Far enough to know if they're alive."
His voice was flat, matter-of-fact. The voice of someone who had thought through every limitation and accepted them.
"The teleportation will scatter people across the entire world. Continents apart."
"But if I can get close enough, within ten kilometers, I can find them."
I looked at the rows of rings. Counted.
Fifty, maybe sixty completed devices.
"How many can your tool produce?"
"Five tracking stones per day, working at full capacity. Thirty-five stones every four weeks." Claude's jaw tightened.
"We have maybe eight weeks left. That's two hundred and seventy stones, assuming nothing goes wrong."
"Two hundred and seventy," I said slowly. "For how many people?"
"The organization has over a hundred members now. The Greyrat household, the village children I've been trying to protect, people in Roa and the surrounding territories."
He laughed, the sound bitter. "There's never enough. There's never going to be enough."
My merchant's mind was already calculating distribution priorities, logistics, who needed protection most and who could survive without it.
"We focus on key people," I said. "Organization leadership, critical contacts, your family."
"That's the plan." Claude gestured at the rows of completed rings. "Charles gets one, you get one. Tobias, Mira, Somar, everyone in the inner circle. Then my parents, my siblings, Rudeus. After that..."
He trailed off, his expression distant.
"After that, we do what we can."
"Yes."
I studied the forge, the tools, the meticulous organization that spoke of years of preparation. Claude had built all of this.
Had spent years creating devices that most mages couldn't even conceptualize, let alone produce.
And he was eleven years old.
"The monitoring stones," I said. "Who keeps those?"
"I have the main set. Charles has backups. If I die, he can track everyone who's wearing a ring." Claude's voice was steady, clinical.
"The system works without me. That's important."
The casualness with which he discussed his own death made my chest tight. But I understood.
He had been living with this reality for five years. Had accepted it, planned around it, made peace with possibilities that would break most people.
"You won't die," I said. "I won't let you."
For a moment, something flickered in his eyes. Surprise, maybe.
Or gratitude.
Then it was gone, replaced by the careful mask he always wore.
"We'll see."
Back in the main chamber, I asked the question that had been building since I first saw the forge.
"What do you need me to do?"
"Survive. That's the only thing that matters."
He pressed one of the enchanted rings into my palm. The metal was warm against my skin, pulsing with a faint energy that spoke of the magic woven into its structure.
"Wear this. Stay alert. When the sky tears open, run. Find shelter and wait for me to come."
"And if you don't come?"
The question hung in the air between us. Claude's jaw tightened, and for a moment I saw the weight of everything he was carrying flash across his face.
"Then Charles takes over. The organization continues, the mission continues." His voice was steady, but I could hear the strain beneath it.
"I've built something that can survive without me. That was always the plan."
The words were practical, logical, driven by the cold calculation of someone who had to prepare for every possibility.
But I heard what he wasn't saying. The fear that he wouldn't survive, that the disaster might claim him before he could find the people he had sworn to protect.
I looked at the ring in my hand, small and simple, carrying a promise I didn't fully understand. The metal caught the torchlight, gleaming with an inner fire.
"I'll wear it," I said. "But I'm not giving up on you that easily. If you're going into the disaster, I'm going with you."
"Mike..."
"You've been carrying this alone for five years. That ends now."
I met his eyes, refusing to look away. The determination in my voice surprised even me, but the words felt right.
"We're partners, remember? You said that when we started this. Partners don't let each other face things alone."
For a moment, Claude looked like he might argue. I could see the objections forming behind his eyes, all the practical reasons I should stay behind and coordinate.
Then something in his expression softened, and he almost smiled. It was the first genuine smile I had seen from him in months.
It made him look young again. Not the ancient warrior or the burdened prophet, but a boy who was tired of being alone.
"Partners," he agreed quietly. "Alright. We'll face it together."
I slipped the ring onto my finger, feeling its warmth settle against my skin. A connection I didn't understand, but somehow trusted.
The disaster was coming. But for the first time, Claude wasn't carrying the burden alone.
We sat in silence for a while after that. Neither of us willing to break the moment.
The torches flickered on the walls, casting long shadows across the maps spread around us. Territories we had fought to influence, people we had worked to save, an empire of good intentions built by children who had no business building empires.
"Mike," Claude said finally, his voice quiet. "Thank you."
I didn't know what to say to that. So I just nodded, and we sat together in the darkness, waiting for the world to end.
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