Red

A few weeks later, Curtis was on the battlements where a few of his friends were assigned. They were the guards that were stationed in this part of the city wall. After he explained his situation to them they had agreed to his decision of leaving and were more than willing to help him get back to his family. They more or less understood how he felt as they are motivated by their families and didn't want the kid they saw grow to be apart from his family for any longer. Curtis has been in Candelabra for ten years. To be apart from your family for that long is something they didn't wish on anyone else, so they began to help him with his plan.

"It's done, we already have enough supplies stored for you for a month. It should be enough for you to get back to your homeland and more if you ever get stuck somewhere." a guard called out to Curtis who was inspecting the finished longboat. He had been coming to the battlements every other day, checking on the boat and smuggling more supplies for the voyage. They were the people he trusted. He had waited for this moment for weeks now, he finally saw hope in seeing his family again.

"You should leave tonight the wind should be perfect, tomorrow we are going to get rotated out. We didn't want to rush you but there was bad news from the front lines, they need us, young people, to back them up," he said, catching him off guard and this immediately caught Curtis's attention.

The last time he was in the frontlines was a year ago. He was under orders from the council to support an area they were pulling back from. They had abandoned an outpost back then. He was told that they had finally finished evacuation from that area, and since there was nothing else of note there, they were completely abandoning it. The battles Curtis fought there was the bloodiest he had ever been in. Hordes of enemies attacked their final outpost. The war giant Hjilmar himself was there to make sure nothing too disastrous happened.

They were unprepared for what happened, sure they didn't think much of that area as evidence of their current actions, but the enemy didn't think so. They prepared a sizeable amount of troops to throw at them, for what reason? It was simple. It was to lessen some of their fighting power. For years now the war was getting crueler than ever. The frequency of attacks they suffered had increased. The size of their attack teams had ballooned up. The council didn't even know how they still had that many troops.

That day in itself was one of the days they had increased their ferocity. Before they had thought that the enemy had already shown their fangs. But no, they haven't really seen the tip of their fangs until today.

He was committed to an advance team. He didn't think much of it, he had done a few reconnaissance missions a few times before. They were assigned to make sure that the enemies would be spotted once they had attacked. It wasn't hard to spot them. They were like a flood. From the horizon, they had encompassed the edges of his view, hordes of chaos-spawn flowed like water charging towards their direction. Their team immediately lit up a signal flare, warning the outpost about the incoming attack before proceeding to retreat to safety.

"They're too fast! We won't make it in time, we need to hold here." his squad leader called out. And he was right. They were charging towards the outpost at full pelt. And they were right in the middle of it, they were stuck between a rock and a hard place. "There's a cave, just half a mile from here. We could hold there until this tides over. Let's move!"

And so they moved, ran for their lives. They couldn't even bear to turn their heads to see what was coming. Their war cries rang out like drums being hit so hard it would make your ears numb. The moment they arrived at the cave they were already missing one person. By the time he swung his ax, he had already been cut. And by the time he was done. It was already the crack of dawn.

Curtis didn't remember much from that day. Just that after the battle he was being called Red, presumably from how he had looked when he checked himself in the mirror later on. His armor was damaged, he didn't even know how much until after he had come back, it had been dyed a bloody color, he smelt like iron, his helmet was half-destroyed, he didn't even remember how it had happened he was lucky that his face still remained intact, his hair was matted with bits and pieces of his foes, he had even lost his ax, Edna didn't even scold him that day, just leaving with the words that she'll make him another one.

He was tired, exhausted, drained, every word that meant he was sapped of strength could be used to describe what he felt. It was a miracle that he hadn't collapsed, the only thing that could have helped him hold on was the will to live. But he felt that wasn't all, he felt bloodlust looking at himself in the mirror. Anger, excitement, pleasure, it was all displayed in his eyes. He had been fighting for so long that he had lost all sense of himself, it was only the beast inside him that had manifested itself had been the only reason he was still standing.

The few parts of his memory that he could recall was that from his team of seven, only 4 survived, with each one of them nursing heavy injuries, their squad leader was thereafter relieved of his duty, the terrors of fighting had manifested itself on him, Hjilmar had looked at him in concern, he himself was caked in blood. He had explained that he should have been here sooner if it wasn't for the number of enemies that were thrown into them. In that flood, dozens of elites were strewn in to hold back the strong ones so that the pawns could do some damage, that was why he had taken too long.

The soldiers who saved him that day had called him Red ever since, it wasn't out of fear but rather out of respect for him, when they arrived he was the only one standing in his team, a mountain of corpses were surrounding him, a makeshift wall that proved rather effective in throttling the tide. At first, they had thought he was a chaos wraith, one of Chaos' elites, but the shouting from the people behind him had confirmed his identity.

Curtis had slept for a whole day after that event. Afterwards, all information about the battle had been kept strictly confidential, a need-to-know only basis of level of security. The council had ordered a reevaluation of their information system, the way that the enemy had prepared for that attack was un-natural, they knew ahead of time what was going to happen in that place. They wanted to damage their forces as much as they could. Unfortunately, the wargiant himself had overseen the evacuation, something they didn't account for.

Moving away from his thoughts, right now, Curtis didn't have any information about the state of the war and the ladies didn't give him any information, no matter how much he asked. The last piece of news he was told was that everything was going fine and they had tightened their defences. But now, they were already pulling people from the city? That changes things, that meant that the war was getting to the point that they needed more people. Curtis became anxious.

"What happened Pat?" Curtis asked, hoping that it wasn't as bad as it sounds.

"News was that a part of the frontline got breached last night, they need a few squads to reinforce it. 4 other squads are joining us. So you need to leave tonight. We don't know what'll happen when the new people stationed here see the boat." Pat replied. Curtis nodded. He would need to leave tonight.

The plan was that when the wind started to pick up, Curtis would sail through the night into the portal to his homeland. Once he was through the portal it would take roughly 3-4 days to get back to land. And once he was on land he would need to find out where he was. The portal was fickle that way, it would spit him out randomly, this was the one piece of information he had gotten about getting home, Edna had said it in passing, that the portal to the Origin Continent was mysterious, it had no set destination, who knows it might even spit him out directly on dry land, but that had a minuscule chance of happening.

Looking at the longboat assembled in front of him, it was almost a dream. The guards were more resourceful than he had imagined. They were able to smuggle the necessary materials to build a boat and hide it long enough for their plan to not be exposed. They had brought parts of it up every time they started their shift so that they wouldn't be noticed, and took turns assembling it in the middle of the night so that they didn't catch any unwanted attention.

Curtis had wondered how they would be able to help lower the boat as the wall was impossible to scale realistically. It was built so high that when he looked down, he couldn't even see the rocks in the water. They had assured him it was fine as it wasn't going to use any ropes. The process of lowering the boat onto the water was going to be done with the help of one of their abilities, it negated the use of rope, to which Curtis had reluctantly agreed. He wasn't sure how it was going to happen but this was his only chance to get out, he had decided to trust them as they were willing to go this far for him.

~~~

Sitting inside the boat Curtis made one last check for all the provisions he had packed. Food? Check. Armor? Check, he had worn the armor he had used when he fought. It shone a silver gleam, like his ax. Speaking of which he had taken the ax Edna had fashioned for him. It was a large 30-inch silver battle-ax. Its blade arcing a moon-like crescent; shining a silver gleam reflecting the moon above his head.

The guards had left him alone in the boat to prepare for the mechanism to lower the boat. They said that they needed her help. Her? Curtis wondered, from the beginning since he had started to carry out the plan, he had never met a female soldier that was assigned to this part of the wall. Most of the time they were assigned in more meticulous jobs, that needed the touch of finesse. Finishing his last check for the equipment he would need. Curtis stepped out of the boat to wait for the guards to come back.

"Ready to go huh."

Turning around he saw someone he had never expected to be the one to help him get home.