The Unity War, Pt. 1

TW: Domestic Violence, War

The 37^th of Kalivet, 836 AC (After Cataclysm)

(11 Years Ago)

Corrill Bowman lay wide awake in a hammock, gently swaying along with the movements of the ocean. After three days of rough seas, the benign yaw of the ship should have put him right to sleep, but he could never find rest on the eve of battle. He shifted restlessly and stared up at the deck of the ship above him, straining in the low light to see where he’d carved Tovanii’s name into the wood. It was a childish thing to do, to be sure, but in many ways he was still a boy. When you’re taken out of Charhollow at the age of 16 and have a rifle thrust into your hands, you simultaneously grow up very fast and not really at all.

He thought of the first time he’d seen Tovanii. It was love at first sight, and he wouldn’t have believed in that, and still didn’t, really. It was love at first sight not because Tovanii was a beautiful man (which he very clearly was), but because Corrill’s unit was hunkered down in the streets of Arvaedh, about to be overrun by ghosts, and Tovanii and the other Silver Nails had arrived just in time to save all of their lives. The image was forever burned into his consciousness; Tovanii, at the head of the column, with his flowing white robes, clasped at the neck, his beautiful bearded face above the clasp, his eyes smiling even while his mouth was twisted into a grimace of battle. He rode his powerful Severosi charger into the frey, adeptly guiding the dappled grey and white horse towards threats Corrill didn’t have the ability to even see. Tovanii’s spirit lance swept through the air, and Corrill could also still remember the sounds of the spirits dying and how much worse it was than just people dying. The other Silver Nails must have done something to help, but Corrill couldn’t remember any of it, no, he could only remember Tovanii’s outstretched hand, pulling him up onto the back of the charger, and them riding off, towards the rest of their lives.

It took too long (by Corrill’s estimation, anyways) for them to actually get together. Too many excuses to go deliver something to the Silver Nails, too many flirtatious comments, too many winks, too many “ghost hunting” training sessions. But finally, four nights ago, they had spent the night together. As they lay in Tovanii’s bed, bodies entwined, sheets askew, the only things that mattered to each of them were the other and a strange feeling that everything would be okay. They knew that as they lay there, the Imperial military’s engineers were laying charges on Blackvale’s seawall, and that their ships would rush through the gap, and that either the war would be over or the Skovs would repel them and it would go on for another ten years or they would die. That night, though, it felt like maybe the war was already over.

In the hammock, Corrill tried in vain to hold on to that feeling, and, as was always the case before he had to fight, his mind turned to darker things. Back in the hovel in Charhollow, staying up late with a candle, reading a book about wizards that he’d found. It was missing pages and he still couldn’t understand all the words, but he could get the gist. Then, his father, stumbling drunk, coming through the door and entering his son’s room, angry that he was still awake, and then angry that he could read, and then grabbing his belt and…

Corrill shut out those memories, not for the first time and certainly not for the last. He couldn’t help his mind from drifting to three days before, to standing on the tarmac at Whitecrown, standing at attention with the rest of his unit, Shimmi to his left and Junker to his right, watching Admiral Scurlock strut back and forth in front of the thousands of assembled women and men, yelling so hard that Corrill could see the spittle fly from his mouth at three hundred paces (although Corrill did have excellent vision), howling about how even though the moment of victory was nearly at hand, they were never to be complacent for even one second. Corrill remembered what he’d thought that day, so soon after the night he’d spent with Tovanii, and he realised that that night was the first time ever he’d actually had the luxury of complacency. His life, his father, his poverty: these were the things that had never allowed him to be complacent. But he had been complacent for that one night, and he wanted to get back to that moment so badly that he knew that he’d do everything to survive. He stared idly at Duskwall, paying no attention to Scurlock’s rantings.

Corrill opened his eyes and tried to think about nothing for a while, but it didn’t work. It never did.

The 38^th of Kalivet, 836 AC

The water was up above Corrill’s waist and he sloshed through the crimson-hued dark water with a tremendous sense of urgency. He was completely soaked, his yellow and black imperial military uniform covered in mud and blood. His usually well-styled black hair was pasted to his forehead, and a gash above his right ear was still leaking blood down the side of his head and likely needed medical attention. His grey eyes scanned the area where he’d seen Tovanii’s horse go down. He waded past the bodies of Skovs, of Imperials, not really taking notice of either. Nothing would halt his progress. He could still hear screams and explosions off in the distance, but he knewthe rest of the fighting was a formality; they’d won. Not that any of that would matter if… He didn’t want to finish that thought.

Fires were still burning on the surface of the water where he’d seen Tovanii. The Skovlanders knew that the seawall would be breached eventually and had mined the harbour. He’d seen thousands die in the initial landing, and of his unit only he and Junker had made it to the rendezvous point. Junker had taken a hook to the head from a huge Skov when they took the Leviathan blood processing plant with a ragtag group of survivors from other units. It was at that point when Corrill realised that the Silver Nails, bringing up the rear and cleaning up the ghosts, would have no idea of the trap they were walking into, and headed back on an Akorosian goat. He’d arrived just in time to see a blast go off 30 feet from Tovanii, and to see him topple into the sea. He swung his arms frantically in the cold water and yelled Tovanii’s name, even though he knew it wouldn’t do any good. He grabbed at a body part, only to find it was a severed arm. Smoke stung his eyes and filled his lungs, and he realised he didn’t have much time. Frantically, he dove under the water, swimming forward, for a brief moment being reminded of swimming in the filthy canals in silkshore, catching eels for dinner, and he saw an arm wearing a white robe, and grabbed at it, hoping, praying to gods he didn’t believe in that it was his arm…

From there, things were a blur. He didn’t really remember pulling Tovanii through the water on to the shore, he didn’t know exactly how he’d tried to get him breathing again, and hadn’t fully realised that seeing him cough up all that dirty water meant that Tovanii was still alive. But finally, as Corrill lay on the black sand beach, with Tovanii in his lap, feeling his lover’s shallow breathing against his legs, the moment set in and tears streamed down his face, mixing with the blood and dirt and sweat, and, amidst the sounds and of death and the fires of war, allowed himself to feel complacent once again, just for a moment or two.