With the conclusion of the duel, the combatants brushed off. Derrin sheathed his sword and gave Zara a bow. Red raised an eyebrow at that but decided not to mock his honor. Zara's sword vanished in a puff of purple mist. The pair noticed Red watching them and approached.
"How long have you been sitting there?" Derrin asked.
"Long enough to see you get your butt kicked," Red grinned, "Made my day."
Derrin scowled, and Zara just shook his head, "Are you always like this?"
"Yes," they answered at the same time.
"So what's next?" Red asked, "I mean, not like right now, but with the pirates."
Zara shrugged, "Nothing at the moment. I will continue doing exactly what I have been doing. I'm not risking some foolhardy plan that'll end with my friends dead."
"Now there are four of us. Isn't that enough to do something?" Red asked.
She gave him a flat stare, "There are four of us, yes. However, that doesn't really matter because there really are only two of us. You and Vizim are just kids, and I'm a soldier. It is my job to protect kids. I'm not throwing kids into the fire on some hopeless crusade."
"On that I also agree," Derrin replied sternly.
"What you're saying is the two of us need to sit here and do nothing for how long? When exactly do you expect proper support to arrive? And when that happens, are you going to even be able to get your friends back at that point?"
"I don't know what it is you are trying to argue, Red," Zara snapped, "But this is where we stand. You are not a high-level mist user, a fighter, or a soldier. If what you said is true, then you're an engineer. I'm not going to knock you for that. However, we are in no place for an engineer. It may not look like it, but we are at war."
Derrin didn't need to speak for Red to tell him he agreed. He could pretty much predict everything that Derrin would do at this point. He wasn't really sure why he was arguing this point in the first place. He hadn't come to this island looking for a fight; he'd already had that opportunity aboard the gearborn ship.
However, he also had no intentions of spending the next several months cooped up in this fort. He had dealt with that for 16 years on Wale Port. It took getting kidnapped for him to finally step into the outside world. Red was not interested in exchanging one trap for another.
"You say that as if we didn't fight our way off a gearborn ship."
"Oh, Derrin's told me all about your great escape. It took Ayjax to rescue you, or you'd be dead in a cell. It took Derrin to ensure you made it off the ship safely, no doubt. You will no longer be fighting pirates. I don't even know why I'm arguing with you because my answer will not be changing."
"Oh, he said all of that now, did he? He made sure I made it off the ship?" Red couldn't help but laugh.
Any further arguments were cut off by his choked laughter. Zara stared at him like he'd gone mad. Red doubted Derrin had said this to Zara; at least, he hadn't phrased it in this way. He probably told her that he didn't want Red fighting because of his honor or some such notion. However, he would not have left out the parts of their escape that had been Red's doing. Zara clearly believed Derrin was trying to make Red look stronger than he actually was.
"You're an engineer, Red. All of you are the same. I don't value you any less for being what you are. But you are not a fighter. Engineers don't belong in the battlefield doing what I do."
"I don't need someone I just met telling me what I did or didn't do. Most of what you just said is right. I am not a soldier, nor do I wish to be one. I also don't possess a powerful heart. And yes, I am an engineer, and just because you can't wrap your mind around an engineer also being a fighter doesn't mean it's any less true."
"You simply don't understand what an engineer is truly capable of. They run the world yet are looked down on as inferior simply because they aren't fighters. Well, I'll tell you something, Zara," Red's voice dropped to a low growl, "Every engineer fights for what they believe in more than you ever will."
Red tried to control himself, but his anger got the better of him. He wasn't upset about being called weak. He wasn't upset about not being called a soldier. He wasn't even upset about being denied his role in the escape from the gearborn ship. He was upset at her comment about engineers.
It was something he had seen before. Engineers were supported and pushed to their fullest extent. They essentially ran the world. Without them, the seven seas as they knew them would crumble. But in a world centered around war, only soldiers were viewed as strong.
Engineers were just as strong as anyone else. They bled like everyone else. They lost friends and family like everyone else. They died just as much as everyone else, and yet, they were looked down upon simply because they chose to fight from behind the scenes.
Red still remembered the conversation he had with Vizim while they prepped the bomb. With Derrin away scouting a path, it left the two of them alone. Vizim had finally opened up about his past and life. He didn't say a lot, and yet he didn't need to. His story was not an unknown one. Families fell under bad fortune and had to borrow to stay aloft. In the end, it didn't matter, and they all perished. The borrowed money didn't vanish, and the debt was simply transferred onto the survivors.
That is what happened to Vizim. His family had all died from illness, leaving him as the sole survivor. The sole inheritor of the debt. He had essentially been sold into indentured labor aboard Cairen's ship. Despite his intelligence and potential for greatness, he had been forced to remain.
Cairen treated him like a son. However, that didn't mean he could freely leave. Vizim had to make up the borrowed money. In the end, none of that mattered because Cairen's ship sat at the bottom of the sea, and the man was most likely dead. Vizim was free by all intents and purposes, but that didn't weigh any less upon him.
This was why he lost his cool. Well, that, and exhaustion from the last few days. At the end of the day, Zara was not only insulting him but also his friend. His friend, who had just lost everything and was still being treated like his sorrows didn't count.
Zara's eyes narrowed, she opened her mouth to retort, but Derrin cut her off, "This is growing a bit heated. Why don't we have breakfast? You haven't yet, right?"
Red held Zara's gaze but gave Derrin a short nod.
He sighed and stepped in between the two of them, "Zara, why don't you go first?"
She turned her frosty stare on him before striding off. Dust kicked up in her wake, but she didn't so much as flinch. Red opened his mouth to call something after her, but Derrin poked him in the chest.
"Are you alright? You got rather worked up."
Red's eyes narrowed, "Yes, I'm fine. I was just angry that she was acting like engineering was somehow an inferior occupation, as if it somehow made a person lesser."
Derrin shook his head, "I understand what you're saying. She should have handled this better, but you should give her a break. I bet you're angry for Vizim's sake, but her situation isn't much better."
"What are you talking about?" Red bristled, his lingering anger sliding into his tone.
"She's trapped, Red. Just as trapped as the rest of us. Only it's worse for her because her own friends are the barrier keeping her in. She doesn't know who she lost or how many during the initial attack and is stuck doing nothing about it."
"That was why I was offering to help, only she didn't listen."
"You're right, she didn't listen. In that, she and I agree. You and Vizim are not going to be getting into any more fights with the pirates. Besides, why are you so interested in fighting anyway? I thought you'd rather be an engineer. That's what she's offering you, isn't it?"
"This is a cage, Derrin. Don't you see? I have spent my entire life in a cage disguised as an island. This is no different," Red gestured around himself, "Only, it is, because there is stuff I can actually do."
"That I am not going to argue with. How about this? I will talk to Zara and try to get her to utilize your crazy plans. She won't turn down your assistance as long as it doesn't allow fighting."
"I have a feeling she'll be unimpressed."
"No, she will be very impressed. It may not seem like it, but she values engineering. Zara values it probably far more than most. She doesn't think you two are any less capable of helping simply because of that."
"If you say so," Red hesitated, "How do you know so much about her already? We just got here."
Derrin turned away, "You can learn a lot about a person from a simple spar."