Proverb II: Strength Comes From One's Character, Not Their Size Or Their Age
As Ragna sat on the ramparts of the palace walls, the beautiful sound of birdsong wafted overhead. Just beneath him sat the large black gates that led into the palace proper, as stalwart and impregnable as they had been when he had first come here. Now, though, there were actual guards manning it, like they had before the old administrator had run off.
The wind blew slightly at his clothes. While his pants and undershirt remained unchanged from his first day, the tailors did not make jackets like the one he'd been wearing before his unfortunate fall into the Cauldron (or more accurately, before Nu's attacks had torn it apart), so he'd been forced to settle for a jacket similar to Chouhi's. However, his was colored solid red, lacking the navy decorations on the front, the short sleeves, and the blown-out shoulders; instead, it was fitted normally, and the sleeves extended all the way to his wrists, hiding the bindings on his right arm.
He dangled a piece of grass in his mouth, and let out a long, tired sigh, gazing out over the bustling village of Xizang—no, it was more a city now, Ragna told himself—that now served as the capital of the Zhuo district. It felt so much longer than it truly had been since his arrival in Youzhou, and it had been a time of much adjustment and adaptation. With Gan, Kan'u, and Chouhi at his back, the villagers had slowly become a group of decently trained soldiers, and commerce began to revitalize Xizang, encouraging growth and a slowly expanding economy. Gradually, Ragna, Kan'u, and Chouhi had been pushing the Turbans out of Zhuo, and in the process, getting more people to move in, swelling Xizang's civilian and military populace.
However, the bitter pill Ragna was forced to swallow even in the face of this good fortune was all the mounting evidence that he was possibly never going to get back to where he "belonged"—or to put it another way, when he belonged.
He'd never asked anyone about Hierarchical Cities or anything similar again, as it was clear enough after what he had seen that those things simply didn't exist. These people lived a lot like he had lived with the Sister, Saya and Jin at the church all those years ago—they pulled water from wells and didn't have bathrooms inside of their homes. They cut wood and used it for fuel. They tilled and harvested the land with the strength of their backs and the sweat of their brow.
Even without that visual proof, though, he'd gotten his last bit of evidence not too long after taking over Zhuo's governance. Within his first week of administration, Ragna had managed to get his hands on a map of the country, left behind by his predecessor in one of the palace rooms. Ultimately, he'd needed Kan'u's help to read it, and the results disappointed him.
No cities that he knew of were listed anywhere. He did recognize the name of the country, though—but "China" had not existed as its own entity for well over a hundred years. All individual nations had been effectively dissolved with the advent of the Black Beast, as it had destroyed pretty much every major population center thoroughly and brutally. While certain regional names still existed (such as his own birthplace of "England"), they had been generally abandoned in favor of the NOL's system of categorizing Hierarchical Cities. Moreover, there were no maps larger than that anywhere to be found; in fact, Kan'u expressed explicit confusion when Ragna asked about other lands outside of China, and said that few people had bothered sailing the seas to the east, nor had anyone gone much further south than "Nanban". They'd come back with fantastic and strange tales of what was out there, but there were so few willing to make the journey in the first place that it was all hearsay.
As insane as it sounded, Ragna had believed since then that he had gone back in time. It was the only explanation for everything he had seen and lived through with his own eyes from then till now, and it made him wonder just what the hell the Cauldrons actually were if they could be used for time travel. More importantly, though, it made him wonder if Nu had come along for the ride without him knowing about it, and just wound up somewhere else.
He shuddered at the thought, and closed his eyes. He truly felt sorry for whoever or whatever would have to deal with her, and while he would have been happy to put an end to any rampaging she would have done, he would have needed to find her first—and if she was anywhere outside of "China", then that was a trip that he couldn't waste time on. He'd long since lost the ability to to walk away from these people, ever since he had first accepted the role of their administrator and the so-called "Messenger of Heaven". For better or worse, he would have to tough it out and do the job that they needed him for—he had nowhere else to go and no one else to rely on, and they needed him as much as he needed them.
More than that, though, he appreciated how much they appreciated him. People respected his opinions and acknowledged his work, sometimes to an uncomfortable degree (there were a lot of gifts still showing up for him at the castle gates, and everyone would stare at him on patrols, oftentimes bowing when he passed by their stalls or shops). He was more used to being hunted like a wild animal, and the positive attention had done a lot to take the bite out of being stuck here. Still, he couldn't help but wonder if there was a way back to the world he knew, and if he would take the chance to go if he got it.
The quiet sound of wedge-heeled shoes clicking on stone drew Ragna out of his thoughts, and he looked over his shoulder to see Kan'u striding up to him. "Lord Ragna, there you are," she said, frowning softly at the slightly grumpier expression on his face. "Is something the matter?"
Ragna spat out the blade of grass in his mouth and shook his head, then turned back toward the city below and before him. "Not really. Just thinking about stuff." He chuckled dryly. "Still can't believe I've been here a whole four months. Just seems so damn unreal, you know? This place was a wreck back then, but look at it now! Better than it ever was before those assholes came and trashed it."
"Because of you, Lord Ragna," Kan'u said with a smile. "You're the one that brought everyone so close together by fighting off the Turbans and doing your best to support our soldiers and the civilians." She took a few steps closer to him and rested her hands on the wall as well. "And to think you said you weren't suited to this work."
Ragna grunted as he looked over to her. "Trust me, I ain't. We gotta find someone that actually knows something about managing shit that isn't related to armies. We're doing OK now, but none of us in charge know jack squat about things like farming and commerce." He rubbed the back of his right hand, tracing his fingers over the red, bisected shell attached to the back of his glove via a metal plate. "Shit'll get ugly real fast if we don't get a hold of someone that does ."
Kan'u folded her arms and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Lord Ragna, your language is slipping again."
Ragna shrugged and turned away from her, declining to answer altogether.
What a stubborn man, Kan'u thought, sighing in annoyance. How exactly someone so foul-mouthed and irreverent could also be one of the strongest warriors that the Zhou district had at its disposal was beyond her. At the same time, though, she remembered all the small things he did that proved his character beyond the outside appearances. On patrols, he would move quickly and efficiently, and more than once had beaten thieves unconscious with his bare hands. In battle, his personal unit had yet to see a single casualty, as he would mow down the majority of the enemies in his way and leave his soldiers to clean up the confused stragglers—that, and he trained them personally in his own unorthodox style of combat to mimic his successes on a smaller scale. And despite how roughly he spoke to people, he never seriously spoke down to them, whether it was a civilian, Gan, or even herself or Chouhi. He was honest when someone gave him bad ideas, and didn't always suggest a solution, but the way he spoke somehow made it clear that he took issue more with bad ideas and not the people that suggested them.
A smile crossed her lips, and Ragna happened to turn back toward her to see it, as he'd started wondering why she was so quiet. When he saw the expression on her face, he raised an eyebrow. "The hell are you smiling about?"
Kan'u blushed, and shook her head, but before she could speak, she heard footsteps approaching from her right. Both she and Ragna turned to see an infantryman in green livery come up to them, bowing shortly. "Lord Ragna, Lady Kan'u," he said. "We received a messenger from the border. He says that one of our outposts just got raided by Turbans."
Ragna's confused expression became razor-sharp hostility the moment he heard those words. "Oh, really? Where are the bastards headed next?"
"Here," the soldier replied. "The messenger said that General Kousonsan was on the way back to her Ryousei district, but she basically planted herself down to block the Turbans' passage into Zhuo. She's holding them even as we speak, and she's requesting backup of some kind. If she takes too many losses, we might have to engage them on our own."
Ragna cracked his neck, then scowled as he looked out to the city again. "We'll march to Kousonsan's position and carve up some Turbans. If we wait for them to make it into our territory, they're gonna kill a hell of a lot of people, and I'm not about to let that shit fly."
"Then, shall I go and give the orders to the troops, Lord Ragna?" Kan'u asked.
"Not just yet," Ragna replied. "Come with me to talk to that messenger first. Soon as we find out where we're headed, we're marching out, double-time. And someone tells old Gan he'll be running the place again 'till we get back."
The soldier saluted. "Leave that to me, Lord Ragna. If I may?"
Ragna waved a hand in his direction. "Yeah, you're dismissed. Thanks for the heads-up."
The soldier bowed and departed. Ragna knitted his fingers together and stretched downward, grunting at the pleasant burn in his left arm, then turned to face Kan'u with a grim smirk on his face. "Ready to go deal with some morons?"
Kan'u nodded once, her mouth set into a firm, businesslike frown. "As always, Lord Ragna."