The Pair That Cried War

"How do I know what you're saying is true?"

The guards weren't buying it. Kies and Nina had been trying to convince them for some time now with no success. They needed some way to prove that they were telling the truth.

"This is your last warning. Please leave before I am forced to arrest you for causing a disturbance," the guard warned them.

Nina tugged on Kies' sleeves. "Let's go. This isn't going to work."

Just as Kies and Nina were about to leave, Siegfried called out to them. "Hold it you two!"

The guards saluted Siegfried when they saw them approaching. As he got closer, one of them started to explain the situation to him. "Sir, these two have been claiming that Silverfield will be under attack soon. and wants us to send a message to the king telling him to prepare our defenses," said the guard that was closer to Siegfried. The other one nodded his head and confirmed everything that his partner said.

Siegfried looked at Kies and Nina and said, "I know you're uneasy after yesterday's attack, but you don't need to worry about another one."

"No, there really will be another one," Kies tells him.

"What?" Siegfried looked at Kies and could tell from his expression that he was being serious. "And how exactly do you know that?" he asked.

"I just do," Kies responded.

"If you are telling the truth then you need to give us some evidence. Where did you learn that information from? Did someone tell you?"

'A strange voice in a forest told me.' But Kies couldn't exactly tell them that. If he did, they would think that he was either playing with them or had lost his mind. "Someone told me," he said.

"Who?" asked Siegfried suspiciously.

Kies thought about it for a moment. The voice resembled that of a man. He sounded neither young nor old. Now that he thought of it, it didn't exactly sound human. There was some kind of coarseness in his voice. Kies decided to use that to describe them. "A man with a hoarse voice."

"What did the man look like?"

"I didn't see him. I only heard him say that."

"And how do you know if he is even human, and what he is saying is even reliable or not?"

Kies didn't. He knew that the voice was definitely not human and that it may just be messing around with him. But judging from what the voice had done for him so far, Kies knew that it was telling the truth and he didn't know how he was supposed to explain this to them.

"Well, I'm guessing that you know the voice is trustworthy, otherwise you wouldn't be trying to warn us," Siegfried said after a pause.

One of the guards that had been listening bumped in and said, "But Sir, what he is saying doesn't make much sense. The battlefront is days away. If the war was somehow pushed all the way back to here, then there would be messengers sent to inform us days ahead of time."

The guard had a point. The battles that were going on were far away from Silverfield. Besides, the war was currently at a stalemate, with both kingdoms running dangerously low on resources. It would be more believable if Kies had run up to the guards and told them that the war was ending than what he was saying right now.

The guard continued and said, "Plus, if we are going to be attacked, then it wouldn't be by the Otanian empire. It would have to be by someone else-" The guard stopped what he was saying and then thought for a moment. "Wait..."

Everyone suddenly had the same suspicions pop up in their minds.

"Do you know anything else about the man that told you this other than how he sounds?" Siegfried asked Kies.

"Come to think of it, I don't think he sounded human..."

Everyone went silent and the tension in the air suddenly grew heavy. The group started to have suspicions that it may have been a demon that told Kies this. Demons have the habit of giving warnings before they attack. The reason why they do that is unknown, but it is speculated that they do it because they enjoy watching other creatures panic.

"Wait." All eyes turned to Nina. "Um, it might not have been a demon. If it were then they would have announced it to as many people as possible at once, not a single person." Although what Nina said makes sense, the guards still looked extremely concerned.

Siegfried placed his hand on his head in frustration. "Whatever it is, it can't be good." He turned to Kies and asked him, "Can you tell us everything you know about that voice? Don't exclude the small details, it might be important."

***

Kies and Nina were walking back home after explaining everything to Siegfried and the guards. Kies didn't tell them much at all, or more like he couldn't. He lied to them, saying that he ran into the man in an alleyway and that he was the one that told him that.

The guards were suspicious of his explanation since there were several holes in the story but Nina vouched for him, saying that Kies often took shortcuts through the alleyways and that strange things were happening in there all the time. Even with the messy explanation that Kies gave, after hearing what she said, the guards brought it completely and didn't ask any more questions.

"Kies, do you want to tell me everything that happened now?" Nina already knew that that was not what happened. She wanted to know what was going on.

Kies looked around and saw that they were alone before taking a deep breath. "We've both known each other for a long time, but I'm pretty sure that even you will have a hard time believing it."

"Well, I believed you when you said you were hearing a voice."

"It's a spirit."

"What?"

Kies explained to Nina that the voice came from a wind spirit. He told Nina about the demons and how a wind spirit had saved him, and then about the conversation he had with another wind spirit and that it told him to go to the forest.

"To make things easier to believe, let me show you something." Kies shot a blast of wind at the ground, sending dust everywhere. After the dust cleared up, Nina looked down and saw a crack on the pavement where the wind hit.

"How..." Nina looked at the pavement in astonishment. Wind magic wasn't supposed to be strong enough to knock over a child let alone damage something like stone.

"The spirit made me more powerful," Kies explained. "It happened earlier in the forest."

"Did the spirit tell you anything else?"

"No." Kies knew very little about the spirits as they only appeared three times to him and spoke to him twice. In the two times they talked, the spirit didn't tell Kies anything that would give him a clue to its identity or motives.

"Kies, you need to be careful. Even though it saved you and made you stronger, I don't trust it," Nina warned him.

"I know. I'll be careful."

***

"How many more?"

The wind spirit murmured something to the cloaked figure.

"Are you sure!?"

"..."

"No, I don't even have the power to communicate with you from far away or channel my voice through you anymore let alone break his seals from here. We need to bring him here."

"..."

"Don't just hover th-" The cloaked figure suddenly clawed at their chest as if they were in pain, but made no sound that would indicate that they were.

The spirit murmured something to the cloaked figure.

"Y-yes, the battle is w-when you will make your move. It w-will be the perfect cover. Make sure to s-stay out of sight, not like anyone c-can see you anyway, but do be c-careful. Now go. Q-quickly."

The spirit flew off, leaving the cloaked figure alone at the broken tower again.

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