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“We aren’t peaceful. we aren’t strays, lost, confused. We are the fire of the people, we are the light and the fuse.”
The King’s voice rang over the crowd, eyes clinging to each syllable like gold to the poor. People stopped in their tracks, wandered from the alleyways and the shadows to listen to the man standing on cardboard boxes speak, call out to them as if they were his own. Ren had that effect— authoritative but human, theatrical yet personal in a way no other ruler could be. At least in Etho’s experience; he didn’t have much of it, to be fair.
His job wasn’t to listen, though. No, he was meant to scan the fields, employ his field experience in the busy streets of the city. Look for anyone shifty-eyed, lingering behind corners, reaching for sharp edges. And of course, as Ren had pleaded, look extremely intimidating when doing so.
So Etho stood tall, arms crossed, over the mass of people, doing his best to give a sense of danger while still maintaining focus. He was an instrumental part of the Red Ward, after all. Every outing, every piece of media shown with the famed Red King, Etho must be present as well. As the Ward’s White Night.
Even if the name originated long before their little militia team.
He thought back to his days before the Red Ward, before he had moved to the city and before everything had gone wrong. He was just a soldier, serving his time in the fortress that made up the capital of the South. As far as he knew, Ren was entertaining a career in Southern politics; but it’s not like he ever knew him back then, as foreign as their roles were to each other.
Etho had climbed the ranks of the military quickly— ribbons, medallions all a blur in his mind. He wasn’t even fighting with any sort of purpose; he simply knew the Wardwatch had a future he desired to protect. He shouldered his prizes, the greatest of all a fur coat given to him by a retreating Northern general, and wielded his sword.
The white of the fur, and the way he fought as if time were but a passing thought— that was what earned him the moniker of White Night. Not as a pseudonym to some sort of knight, though he guessed he might have appeared that way, but simply as what he was. A soldier. For the future of the Wardwatch.
Blinking back to the present, he watched as the crowd multiplied, people hooting and grinning in adoration. Etho thought of his former purpose, to preserve the future of a long-gone nation. He might have failed in doing so; he might have lost everything he worked for. But in meeting Ren, he found another way.
He glanced at his friend, gold crown shining as he gestured to the crowd. Faintly, Etho smiled to himself. Yes, he had found another way— not by keeping the future, perhaps, but by creating another light.
By giving dawn to another Night.