Arcane Exfil-Chapter 57: Need to Know

Arcane Exfil-Chapter 57: Need to Know

Cole had cleared his schedule with surgical precision – told the others he had ‘administrative shit’ to handle, which wasn’t technically a lie. The administration in question just happened to involve comparing beach resorts versus mountain lodges instead of filing incident s. The whole point was keeping it under wraps until he had something concrete to present, ideally with photos and cost breakdowns that would preempt the usual democratic clusterfuck of group decision-making.
He’d expected it to be an all-day operation: comparing routes, trying to find the best spot that’d satisfy vacation for five people with wildly different ideas of what constituted ‘relaxation.’ And that wasn’t even accounting for the weather.
Yeah. Somehow the
weather
of all things had turned into actual research – tracking down records at the library, cross-referencing documented seasonal patterns, the whole nine yards. He’d really taken the weather app on his phone for granted.
Rummaging through records aside, it was a task that only took a couple hours. Alexandria’s tourism infrastructure was overwhelming as hell, but their actual choices weren’t. The capital had everything from opera houses to Parliament tours to three separate museum districts, to botanical gardens that probably required a PhD to fully appreciate.
None of which helped with the actual problem: they were stressed and homesick, and no amount of high culture was going to fix that.
Then he’d found the perfect answer in a tourist guidebook’s front page – some facility established by that Japanese guy from the Aurelian Empire who’d apparently reconstructed almost every comfort he’d missed from Earth.
Of course, video games and anything electronic were out of the question. Still, the guy managed to establish a place with hot springs, a golf course, a bowling alley, an air rifle arena, and ‘five-star hotel service,’ which was pretty self-explanatory. It was the whole isekai package in one compound. Brilliant, really.
The place took private bookings, which meant avoiding the spectacle of nobles treating them like zoo exhibits while they tried to relax. Plus, the pseudo-airsoft would give Miles something familiar to bitch about. Done. Filed. Ready to present whenever someone asked why he’d bailed on OTAC.
So now he had six hours to kill. He’d really oversold the time requirement – not intentionally, just hadn’t accounted for a convenient Isekai Park left behind by one of their predecessors. Could’ve knocked this out over lunch. Hell, could’ve done it while taking a shit.
The house was too quiet without the others around. Tenna was somewhere upstairs, Lisara probably prepping dinner, Darin probably working on their burger franchise or toy company or whatever other side projects the team had dumped on him.
Cole had been contemplating whether to just bite the bullet and head to OTAC anyway when Melnar straightened up from the hedge line, setting his pruning shears aside. The man didn’t usually interrupt his work for conversation.
Cole pushed off the living room couch as the gardener approached.
“Sir Cole.” Melnar gave a brief bow. “A word about your medic, if you’ve the time.”
Mack. Cole’s brain immediately went to the worst-case scenario: something he’d missed, something visible enough that the groundskeeper felt obligated to mention it. But nothing immediately came to mind. “Yeah, of course. Come on in, take a seat. What’s going on?”
Melnar heated the lukewarm pot on the tea table, then poured two cups. He slid one over to Cole and took his seat. “Your medic sought me out last eve. We spoke a while.”
So Mack had gone to the gardener instead of literally anyone on the team. Par for the course, actually – find someone with enough life experience to understand death but no professional obligation to do anything about it. And above all, no awkwardness.
It was the same reason soldiers ended up spilling their guts to bartenders instead of their buddies or the therapists the military kept insisting were ‘available 24/7 and completely confidential.’
Cole gave a nod, and Melnar continued, “He asked of children – whether a man bears fault when they die beneath his charge, though no choice remained, nor any path unbarred by fate.”
Of course he did. The miscarriage, the docks – Mack collecting second opinions like they might add up to something different than the first. Like if he asked enough people, someone would finally say “yes, you should’ve saved them” and at least confirm what he already believed about himself.
“I gave him what comfort I could; yet even as he spoke, I perceived his questions were not of the children, but of himself – of battle and its reckonings, of the absolution he seeks and no man may bestow for another.”
And Melnar could give him that absolution, if the problem was actually about tactical decisions. But it wasn’t. Melnar couldn’t give him what he was really looking for – permission to keep hating himself. The old soldier had probably seen through that immediately.
Which left Cole with one question: why was Melnar telling him this? If Mack had sought him for solace, then that should’ve stayed between them. Privacy was the point of going outside the chain. So why bring it up now? What did Melnar expect him to do with it?
“Why tell me this?” Cole asked. “If he came to you—”
“—then he wished his words would travel further than my ears,” Melnar said, keeping a gentle tone. “He spoke as one who cannot bring himself to confess directly, yet hopes another will carry the burden to where it belongs. Some truths are meant to be overheard, if only by design.”
“And you’re certain he meant it that way?”
Melnar nodded. “Aye. He wished the truth known, though lacked the will to name it himself. Some burdens, when spoken, are not meant to linger with him that hears; only to be passed, gently, to those who ought.”
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Cole folded his arms. “Yeah, I’m guessing he wasn’t ready to speak to us just yet. But did he say anything else? Or was he just venting?”
Melnar shook his head slowly. “No, it was more than venting; his thoughts wandered – now to the children, now to his orders, now to that fleeting instant wherein choice deserted him. At one moment he condemned himself, at the next he sought to reason it away; it was the speech of a man divided between knowledge and acceptance. He knew not what he sought from me. He is… lost.”
Cole felt his heart drop, even though it was a reality he’d already accepted. “Yeah, that sounds about right for him. He’s been like that since the warehouse. It’s like he’s just stuck there.”
“Aye,” Melnar said. “And men who are stuck thus seldom know what they seek. They speak of blame, of penance – but beneath it lies another wish entirely.”
“Which is?”
“Erasure. To wake and find it undone. They long for the world as it was before the breaking. And knowing that it will never be so is a wound all its own.”
Cole frowned. Melnar had a pretty poetic way of speaking – as did almost everyone in Celdorne, frankly, but the main point was that Mack wanted those kids alive. Simple as that. No amount of talk was going to resurrect them, and he’d keep shopping for verdicts until someone confirmed what he already locked onto his mind: that he should’ve done the impossible.
The theology was clear enough. Man’s fallenness, living in a broken world where children possessed by demons had to be put down. Where wives miscarried and medics couldn’t save everyone. The sovereignty piece – that God permitted these things for purposes beyond human understanding – that’s where most people hit the wall.
Cole had wrestled with it himself after particularly bad ops. Why did that damn goat have to mess up that raid? Why did Torres have to die? Why did God allow the AQAP to even exist? Or the existence of evils that precipitated the rise of these organizations? Or the existence of evil to begin with?
The answer wasn't comfortable, but it was solid: human free will meant people could choose evil, choose stupidity, choose to fuck with forces that got children possessed. God’s sovereignty meant He permitted these choices for purposes beyond human comprehension. The intersection of divine sovereignty and human responsibility – that paradox theologians had been wrestling with since Augustine.
Even with years of faith, it was hard to hold both truths simultaneously.
And Mack didn’t even have that foundation. Cole couldn’t just hand him Romans 8:28 while he was drowning in guilt and expect it to function as a life preserver. God working for good in all things would probably sound like mockery to Mack, and who knew if that’d push him away.
The medic was already at Melnar, which meant he’d probably work through the whole compound eventually. Tenna, Lisara, anyone who’d listen.
And when all was said and done, Mack would arrive at one of two outcomes. The ones who found something solid – usually faith, sometimes family, occasionally just raw stubborn refusal to quit – they made it through scarred but functional. The others either ate their sidearms or just… faded. They ended up as husks, technically alive but no longer present.
So what else could Cole do for Mack?
“We stay present, keep things normal, don’t push,” he mused aloud. “Let him shop for his answers, maybe guide him toward the answer we like, and make sure he knows we’re here when he’s done looking. And pray to God he finds something that holds.”
“Aye. It is a hard thing, to stand by and watch whilst another man contends with his demons.” Melnar softened his voice. “Yet presence, though it would seem a little thing, is no mean solace. When a man is cast down, his brother may raise him again; but woe unto him who falls alone, with none to lend him hand or hope. Many a soul has been preserved not by miracle nor might, but by the mere assurance that he was not forsaken in his darkest hour.”
“Yeah.” Cole let out a heavy sigh. “Still, it doesn’t
feel
like enough.”
“What more would you do?” Melnar asked.
Melnar had him there. What more
could
he do?
Cole answered honestly, “I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
The old soldier let that hang there, probably searching for words that wouldn’t sound like bullshit. “You’ve done as much already,” he finally said. “The small things that tell a man he still has worth – the work you trust him with, the counsel you seek, the company you keep. Such acts may seem small, yet they lay firm ground beneath a soul that falters.”
Yeah, that checked out. At least Cole now had reassurance that he wasn’t fucking it up.
“The household has marked it too,” Melnar added. “Lisara prepares his favored dishes, Tenna inquires after him more often, and young Darin does what small kindness he may, though he knows not the cause. Your medic is not alone in this, Sir Cole; there are many who shoulder a share, each in their own way.”
The weight in Cole’s chest eased slightly. “Right.”
“You carry this weight as well,” Melnar observed quietly. “The burden of command – of watching your man suffer, and finding no swift remedy at hand.”
“Part of the job.” Cole said it reflexively, but Melnar’s look told him the older man was
not
convinced.
“Aye,” Melnar allowed, “it is part of your charge – the keeping of men and all that follows it. Yet that makes the weight no less, nor bids you bear it without reckoning the cost. No man can hold up the heavens, Sir Cole. The burden is meant to be shared — by your company, by the staff, by those who pray beside you, and by the Lord Himself, who grants rest unto the weary.”
Cole wanted to brush it off, say he was fine, that this was just what leaders did. But Melnar’s words hit closer than he wanted to admit. He was tired. Tired of watching Mack fall apart, tired of trying to figure out how to help him, tired of feeling like every decision might be the wrong one. He was… weary.
“The Lord is not for the fallen alone,” Melnar said softly. “He is for the strong also – for those who endure, who press on when others have spent their strength. For strength itself needs grace no less than sorrow.”
Cole’s eyes settled on the man. He listened.
“So then, remain steadfast. The Lord sees those who bear their burdens and does not forget them. For such as endure, He has appointed a rest – not the rest of idleness, but of peace; and it will come in His time, as surely as the dawn.”
Cole hadn’t asked for the sermon, but gee if it didn’t land anyway.
“Thanks,” Cole said. “For coming to me. And for the reminder.”
Melnar rose and gave a slight bow. “It is my privilege to serve, Sir – both you and your medic.” He moved towards the door, then paused right as he was about to leave. “Should you have need of counsel again, you will ever find me at hand.”
“Appreciate it.”
Melnar left. Cole still had six hours to kill, and the vacation planning was already done. Maybe he’d head to OTAC after all. Better than sitting here thinking about problems he couldn’t fix.

Chapter 57: Need to Know