Umbalt's Story

Rachel gathers up the 4 and wants advice but she's not sure if she should because everyone was close to Toe and Sindy. She decides to ask Mina for help and she says to test their loyalty. She sends Umbalt from her scholar work to train soldiers formerly under Sindy's command but none of them really trust her.


She decides that she wants to fix a part of the middle ring of the city so that trade can happen again which can help fix the lower rings of the city. The soldiers slack off in the beginning because they don't see the point and don't understand why Umbalt is ordering them around, and some feel that way because they believe Umbalt abandoned them to be a scholar. Umbalt sucks it up and work on her own instead. She relaxes only when she's with Mitsunari and together they draft up plans to speed up the process and when she goes to work the day after planning is shocked to find out that the soldiers and the locals are working together - they felt guilty that Umbalt was wiling to work on her own to help the people under the hot sun and began rebuilding without being told to.


Umbalt is so happy she runs back to the palace to get the plans to put them to use immediately but finds a soldier trying to tear them away from Mitsunari. She tries to get him off but then he throws himself at her like a maniac who has rabies. Mitsunari calls for help and throws the guy off her with the help of some other soldiers so Umbalt books it back to the construction site but on the way the man turns into a frogman and lunges at her carriage so she smacks it in the face with her boot and the man is arrested but it turns out he was healthy the whole time. Umbalt who became infected with this mysterious condition began to feel apathetic as she finally realises fully that her friends are now her enemy.


The locals started giving out supplies to the soldiers which boosted their morale, and under her command a big portion of the middle ring is fixed. The soldiers respect her more now and the Empress is pleased. Umbalt doesn't feel proud but instead unease and anxiety. She starts seeing a person in her dreams and eventually does not wake up from sleep. Mitsunari worries but then realises that the guards can't see or hear him. With nobody to turn for help he decides to start his own journey to make Umbalt come home. As he's wandering he hears about a miracle doctor, Nyanyasu, and somehow knows that he can trust them.

Plot points/Scenes

By Yuu and Muwi:

(Livewrite session)


Rachel gathers the rest of her Council members to ask for wise counsel, but she's conflicted because she doesn't know how to trust and who's influenced by the betrayal. Especially Umbalt, who was very close to Sindy.
The city is still in disarray because of the earth splitting, but Rachel is good at damage control, and so, she asks advice from a reliable - though fickle and mischievous in nature - source, which is Mina.
Mina likes to fuck shit up, so she proposes, "Give them a test of loyalty". But Rachel is also disturbed because she wants to believe in them - and she believes pure loyalty is unconditional loyalty, that it's unethical to do something out of an investigative reason. But Mina counters with the old "trust but verify" saying, and Rachel is doubtful but she gives it a try anyways, with very careful planning and as kindly as she possibly can.


She sends Umbalt off from her scholarly decrypting work to the training field, to train the soldiers who were once under Sindy's guide. And she sends Naga - serious, sometimes fickle but is not above bending the laws - to fulfill the task given by Rachel. Her loyalty is unending, but that is what Rachel fears, and for Umbalt, it hurts.
It hurts that she is being forced to face the reality of Sindy's actions - the brunt of her betrayal - in the confused, shunned looks the soldiers gave her, because she had stopped her swordsmanship work a long time ago, and barely anyone knew her before she was a scholar, except the members of the council.
So Umbalt, who was not only stricken by grief by the betrayal of her friends, had three problems to face. One was gaining the trust and confidence of the soldiers, the second, returning and using her prowess for something that she had once strayed before, and thirdly, the doubt that had risen in her heart, doubt that she could do this, that had been fed the whispers circulating around the kingdom about her loyalty.
Because if Sindy and Toemeyo, one of the closest members of the six, had betrayed them, then who will next?



Not only was the earth is disarray, the hearts of the people were shaken and they stood in the damp earth that could sink them anytime. Since she was only asked with training the men as she pleased, with the people still traumatized by the conflict between Rachel and the two Gods, Umbalt considered labour work as a type of training, as well as also restoring the middle ring of the kingdom. That way, trading could at least resume, and it would be a fine way to pass out supplies to the outer ring.
However, many of the soldiers, used to a more strict training regime, refused to worked as mere labourers fixing house - “if we’re not swinging our swords and spears, how are we supposed to get strong?”. But Umbalt merely flared at them, “if all the families within the kingdom are scattered, and morale is low, how do you expect a weak kingdom to train you?”
But the soldiers were soldiers still, with their muscled body and flat footed posture, and despite it all, they did what soldiers did and followed orders. Umbalt realized, though, that this did not mean that they had trusted her orders, moreso because she was the one speaking it. And so, she rolled her eyes, braved through it with straight face, not letting anger dissipate the anxiety she felt and not letting the hurt surface on her skin or in her words. She had to be careful, and she had to do it quickly.

It was the third day when she realizes that things are moving slower than they were supposed to. She heard passing chatter on the townspeople that the soldiers were lazy and did even lesser work than they did. Furthermore, they even slowed down the rebuilding process.
Umbalt is not eager to be possessed by temper, but she turned on her heel and demanded the townspeople to explain their accusations, because no matter how disliked or disrespected she was, she was a soldier herself, a proud member of the Council, and she refused dignity and pride to be lost in all the chaos.
It was the first in a long time she had learnt to use her voice in a way a commander would, but it came to her easily, and she kept that thought in the back of her mind. The townspeople, fumbling over their words and eyes narrowing offendedly still, explained that they saw some soldiers being leisurely with one another and barely moving a muscle, instead using their grim smiles to encourage the townspeople to do it for them. Umbalt fumed and rushed over the destruction site that she had assigned the soldiers to.


She had realised there and then that neither parties had been wrong after all. Some soldiers were working as they said, but some weren’t - calling them "Sindy's soldiers" filled her with an ache she wanted to ignore, and shamefully, she couldn't call her hers just yet. In fact, they looked quite... unlike themselves, even if she didn’t know them personally.
Those who had known her before she was a scholar, she noticed, did not work, and they mocked her - "how do you expect people to work without leisure? we're simply following your orders.". And the more they cemented the thought that she was not fit to lead soldiers anymore, the less they worked. Experienced soldiers that she had once lead and fought under the same banner influenced the younger, less experienced soldiers telling them that she was hypocritical, and that she was a coward with no right to speak of loyalty.


She fumed, but resignedly, she understood as well, and that bitter thought lodged itself in her heart. Frustrated and fuming, she willed herself not to spit fire and instead took matters into her own hands and began to work herself.
The soldiers were astounded, but she worked and worked and did not stop until the sun dyed her skin honey. Umbalt did not expect gratitude or respect from this; she understood it as fulfilling her duty and doing her job for the country - and, something she would never admit to herself, a small step to saving her friends.


And so this pattern continued - each morning she woke up, she ate her breakfast in a timely manner and walked pass the library, heading instead outside, towards the gates of the castle. Sometimes she missed the quietness and the serenity of the library, where she and Mitsunari would debate certain terminologies, picking each other's brains, and there was a fulfillment to that that she'd never experienced before, even during the time she served as a soldier.
She willed her feet to move to the rubbles again, prepared to shut down the rambunctious, leisurely voices crowding of the soldiers and the complains of the locals. Instead, she rolled up her sleeves and prepared for another day of hard work.
At night, when she was tired and aching, words were hard, and her library companion Mitsunari could only stroke her hair with his tiny hands and hoped that the magical dust on his wings gave her calm and soothed her to sleep, Mitsunari realises this is not something he could readily ask – Umbalt was not one to ask for help or to be helped unless he needed it.


One night, Umbalt talks to Mitsunari about the scrolls, about FROGRON, about her life as a soldier and how she never expected to end up as one again. And on a relatively free and less tiring day, Umbalt and Mitsunari plan for a way on how to make the reconstruction/fixing process of the city faster.
Satisfied, Umbalt woke up the next morning with a clear mind, and her footsteps no longer remained as heavy as it used to be. When she arrives at the site of destruction, she is met with an unexpected scene - the soldiers and locals were working together.
"what happened?" She asked to a nearby bypasser. "I don't know. they just decided to help out.".
Umbalt notices that the bars were still open – so they still had the alternative of slacking leisurely – yet chose not to. Did she win their respect? Was there respect when she decided to take matters into her own hands every day? Was there respect when they did not know that her body ached with unfamiliarity every night?


Umbalt was not vocal – she had no charisma like the Empress, no confidence like Naga, no wily ways like Toemeyo and no mysterious charm that Sindy had. She was just a quiet scholar that appeared when needed and disappeared when did not.
But under the rising son of that day, she felt loyalty spring forth in her heart, growing on her where Sindy and Toemeyo had stepped on before. It seems that, the soldiers and the locals who watched her work under the burning sun felt some sort of guilt that they had pushed everything unfairly on a single person. And before she turned up to work that day, without prompting anyone, slowly began to work.
Umbalt, delighted to see that the everyone was working together, far ahead of the mental schedule she set herself, quickly excused herself to quickly run back to the palace - to the library - where her plans that she had concocted with Mitsunari were.
Except when she ran towards the library she saw a shocking site. A soldier was attempting to yank the rolled up plans from the little fairy's hands!


Umbalt shouted at the man to back off, but the man simply turned and looked at her with dead, soulless eyes - the eyes of a possessed person.
Toe and Sindy had been at the kingdom for so long, even with their disappearance their influence remained like a sick disease, easily worming into the hearts of those who were still fearful of what might happen, whether it be jealousy, or laziness, wrathfulness at the hopelessness of the situation - like a leech it would latch onto these lidded feelings, and make you fucking explode on the inside.
The man screeched like a manic bird and threw himself at Umbalt, up close he looked like an animal that had rabies or something. Umbalt reflexively kneed him in the jaw as she scrambled backwards as Mitsunari quickly flittered away shouting for help.
The man reached out to grab her ankle with a vicegrip so strong it would surely leave a mark, but Umbalt high fived the man's face with her booted foot, and continued shoving his squishy face back to force him to let go. While all this is happening he's still screeching like a tone deaf bird trying to sing.


Mitsunari flies back with two men in tow who blink at whats happening - a screaming armored man getting pummelled by Umbalt's foot, who can't get up because the man refused to let go. And with some effort, haul the man by the neck and threw him on his back.
Admittedly so, it looked very much alike a breakup scene - they thought he had confessed to Umbalt and he had taken the rejection extremely badly. After all it was no secret that some of the 6 - now 4 - had their own secret admirers inside the palace walls.
Umbalt scrambles to her feet and quickly snatches up the remnants of the plan, nodding to the men. Believing that they would handle the situation, she made her way back towards the palace steps where her carriage waited, except she heard a crash and saw the man now running on all fours chasing after her.


Umbalt boarded the carriage and told the driver to hurry up - the more the man was ran loose the more he looked... non-human. Perhaps you might call this a curse, a corruption of the body, a transformation from human flesh to the body of a beast.
The man spared a glance at the gentleman that rode the horse attached to carriage, and with a leap that resembled more frog than human, he tackled the gentleman. Umbalt panicked - she was still unused to having weapons on her person. So she got out of the carriage and whacked the man/phantom/frog with the heel of her boots, and said "begone thot", and the man dropped unconscious, his features returning to the semblances of a normal person.
Umbalt helped the coach master up, and they both bought the man back to the palace - where she was trying to escape from in the first place - and had his health checked. Apparently, he was healthy and right as rain, and were it not for what she had remembered she would have thought that she imagined it all. But she remembers, still. Toemeyo had that power, and she's only ever seen it been used once, and she still remembers the way Sindy patted her back and told her not to worry and to stay at home to guard Rachel during one of their missions - a mission that had ended with a tragic lost.


She remembers that her friends are now her enemy, and that they were more powerful than she had ever imagined. And so, this fact sunk into her finally, and like a person at rest, she closed her eyes without her knowing, an ink blot of apathy had bloomed into a dark flower of the night.
This feeling grew more and more each day, even when the soldiers started to salute her presence, even when Mitsunari's beaming smile washed away the day's tiredness. Every night before she fell asleep, she did not think of plans or her swordsmanship or the lost scrolls waiting for her. Instead, she thought about the members of the six before they were anything less than six.
Almost as if she had been infected by her encounter with the man-turned-frog-turned-man, the word that someone was willing to attack Umbalt to prevent her from rebuilding spread amongst the soldier's ranks. The soldiers that had been working under her seemed to grasp some concept of important of their task, and for the first time, showed genuine concern thereafter. They guarded the plans she had made as if it was a national treasure, and although they didn't fully trust her as a person and as their commander, trusted that what she wanted to do was for the benefit of the kingdom.


Following the plan, construction of the middle ring sped up, with locals and soldiers doing their part, slowly a large and functionable portion of the city came back to life. Locals, getting inspired by soldiers who would normally be within the upper ring, handed out what little they could give to energise them. Soldiers in turn would get a little inspired to push themselves harder by the goodwill of their own people.
While Umbalt's heart slowly became something that wasn't her own, the hearts of the men slowly began to move. They couldn't deny that Umbalt was indeed a good leader - without her presence it would have been difficult to follow the instructions needed to carry out such a large scale plans. To them it was as if, as soon as they needed something, they just needed to turn around and it would already be prepared for them. In fact, she didn't let anything slip under her, she would almost always be overprepared.
Now that the success of the plan was proven, it would be easy to implement it around other areas of the kingdom. Empress Dowager looked at the progress with pride, "even under the dark cloud that is Toes and Sin, the Kingdom of Rachel is still strong".


Umbalt did not feel pride – even though it was from the Empress herself, she could not raise her chin freely or feel joy as if she would when she had understood the dead language that she admired in the scrolls. Rather, she was filled with a sense of unease mixed with underwhelming sensations. She told herself it was nothing, and that work was normal, and went on about her day.
The night and days blurred together – she stayed awake through some night and at day, she was busied by training the soldiers under her wing. Her feet did not shuffle pass the libraries quietly anymore. her strides were hurried, and her gaze always seemed frantic.
This caused the productivity of the soldiers and the workers to increase, and Rachel applauded Umbalt for her hard work. But again, she could not accept, so she nodded slightly, gave a tiny smile and head on towards her next task. Perhaps it was the loss of her friends that made her so.
She stood taller, and her hands, always loose or busy with books, were now positioned very naturally at her hip, where her sword was. To the soldiers, it was the look of a confident captain, and they admired her even more and looked at her with acknowledgement rather than dry distaste. To Umbalt, however, she did not recognise herself. She knew it was for the best – there were plenty of reason to think so; the Empress, the livelihood of the the people under the kingdom's sovereign, the soldiers she guided. But she was simply tired, and that appeared to her in the form of a young man.


The first time he appears it is in her dreams. He wore a mask of sorts, and never spoke. His eyes always seemed to regard her as alien, as if he didn't understood her – which was weird in itself, since she was the one that was suppose to react in such a way. In her dreams, the both of them did not speak, they sat on a patch of grass facing the river and let the wind pass them. In her dreams, she found solace and peace like she did in her library with Mitsunari.
And one day she did not wake up.
This worried Mitsunari - no matter how many time he tugged at her hair or plied her cheeks, she did not move. Her pulse was still there and her breathing was steady, then why?
Perhaps it had been overexertion – a lack of energy? But Umbalt had never complained before. It didn't help that Mitsunari knew full well that she was exhausted, and simply hoped that the night would wash away her stress.


But he had been naive, and immature. No one was that strong, not even Umbalt. It was the very reason Sindy and Toemeyo had left them in the first place. Mitsunari had never relied on anyone else as he did Umbalt, and he chided himself for it.
He should've been more careful, more concerned. Umbalt was the only one that could remember him – little lost fairy with no bigger ambitions than being of service – and somehow he knew that he was using her so foolishly. He would rather disappear than cause trouble for Umbalt.
And so, with whatever magic dust was left on his wings, he sought for help. But the guards could not see him, because they do not remember him, and the Empress was unreachable with her own matters. Naga and Halley were sent away to investigate the other villages.


And so, Mitsunari began his journey – his first ever ambition, one he wanted more than anything he ever did in his life – for Umbalt to come home.
Wandering amongst the locals, he heard whispers of a miracle doctor in town. The doctor was miraculous in appearance as he was in skill, with blonde hair and cat ears. And Mitsunari somehow knew that he could trust this person.

Relations

Protagonists

Scholar Umbalt

Allies

Empress Dowager Rachel
Mitsunari

Neutrals/Bystanders

Info Broker Mina

Plot type

Character arc

Related Characters

• Empress Dowager Rachel
• Info Broker Mina
• Mitsunari
• Scholar Umbalt
• Sindy
• Toemeyo

Related Organizations

• Council of the Six