Chapter 30: Painful Aftermath

Honor Gillen Hawksley stumbled, trying to make her legs work right. She did not fall but it was a close thing. Pain radiated from everywhere; she could not find a single part of her being which wasn’t bleeding or bruised. Her right arm was cut at the elbow and wasn’t working correctly. Her legs were battered, and she couldn’t be certain, but she thought her ankle might be broken.

She paused a moment, catching her breath and trying to will the pain from her mind. Her eyes rolled to the puffy white clouds scampering ironically across the blue sky with the sun playing hide and seek behind them. The softest of warm breezes touched her face as she swallowed tightly, the slightly whistling breeze carrying the coppery stench of carnage intertwined with dust and dirt and smoke. Her eyes turned to the nearby forest, its dappled shadows beckoning to her.

She forced herself to swallow the pain as she once again drove herself forward. She had to keep moving. She had to save her charge. She had to save the princess.

In her mind, though - even through her pain and determination - she couldn’t help asking herself the question: what was that thing? It had looked like a knight. Well, it had looked like someone dressed as a knight. To be fair, it had looked like Yren – but that made no sense. Yren was just a man, little more than a boy, really. This – this thing was big and blue with blazing eyes and blue flames licking up around its plate armor. It wasn’t human. Was it some kind of demon?

And it had gone after the princess.

She could heal herself – but there wasn’t time for the prayers. There wasn’t time for the absolution. She didn’t have time to meditate to her god. She certainly didn’t have the time for the debilitating malaise which would come after channeling her god’s power. Not if she wanted to save Ataya.

She wasn’t sure she had the strength for the prayers, anyway. Healing was done through the grace of her god, Burr – but the power had to flow through her, and it exacted a heavy toll.

She tried to quell the rising panic. Step after step, moment by moment, panic licked at the edges of her consciousness. She tried to ignore the icy feelings in her veins - but it wasn’t working.

Right. Left. Right again. She couldn’t keep her breathing even. There was pain, so much pain. The princess was, however, her responsibility. Her sacred ward. She would give her life for the young woman – and for a while back before she reached the smithy and even for a short time after, it seemed she would be forced to give her life in service of her ward.

Then the demon had come.

Maybe it wasn’t after the princess at all.

Gillen lifted her right hand, sword still clutched within it, and awkwardly wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. The demon had, after all, saved her. Or, at the very least, it had let her live. She knew she was dead as soon as those armed men crawled from that alley. Ten of them versus her, Sir Givens and Bremer – in the state the three of them were in, it would have been a slaughter. It should have been a slaughter.

Then that – that thing was there. The Red Guard she faced didn’t have time to draw breath much less swing their weapons. Before they could even move, the demon had ... it had surged. It hadn’t moved. What it had done couldn’t be called movement because nothing could move that quickly. One moment it was in one place and the next it was in another. Its arms had been a blur as it killed the Guard. Stripes of blood flew in every direction, and she’d watched the blood land and spatter, drops of deep red against dirt and stone and wood. In less time than it took to speak the words, the demon had used its unnatural black swords to cut the life from the five Red Guard directly in front of her.

And then it had done the same with five more across the street. Five more after it had batted away two fire balls; the same type of fire balls she had watched melt into oblivion blooded knights! Fire balls she had seen melt ghost-steel encased knights, melting the plate armor, the men – everything! And that thing had just batted the fire balls away.

She had no idea how many steps she’d taken when the sound tickled at her hearing. It came as a vast roaring on the wind. She felt the heat of it, an impossible warmth that seemed to suck what little coolness existed straight out of the summer air. She let her eyes gaze up and her mouth dropped open in traumatic disbelief.

The late summer morning had started warm and grown warmer. Out of place with how the day had gone, the sun shone bright in the sky with few clouds to mar its path across the heavens. Until now, until this very instant, it had been the brightest light in the sky.

A tower of flickering blue had supplanted it. An almost-blinding, angry blue fire burned up from somewhere in the forest. It spiraled up – a hundred feet, a thousand. It burned up all the way to the top of the world where it spread and licked against the great dome of existence. It was the end of the world, the end of all things – she knew it. It towered above them and she waited for it to come crashing down, to wash the world in fire.

And then, it dwindled. Faded. And was gone.

Her eyes turned once again to the forest so near and yet so very far away. The closest trees writhed angrily with the wind as it rushed to replace that towering flame. When her eyes rose slightly to look above the tops of those nearest treetops, she absently noted the scattered white plumes rising here and there.

White smoke meant the fire, which had burned its way up to the very sky, had been put out. It meant it had somehow ended almost as quickly as it had begun. If the fires yet burned, the smoke would be billowing darkly.

She stood there, stunned for a second. She was still alive. The world was still alive.

Was the princess still alive?

One step. Two.

Left. Right.

She had to find her. Her steps increased their speed but only marginally. Marginally, though, would have to do. It was all she had left.

“Let me help you.”

She turned her head, the effort involved nearly driving her to the ground. She recognized Sir Givens, but just barely. His face was pale and drawn and his movements were stiff and unnatural. Fully half his face was red with blood, though his face lacked the scratches and nicks to suggest the blood was his. At least, the blood was not wholly his. His battered, dented chest plate squeaked jarringly as he moved, and it was likewise spattered with blood. Her glance quickly took in his armored arms and legs and the ever-present blood was there, too. The blood was freshest at the joints, indicating likely more of the blood across his torso was his own.

She struggled for only a moment before allowing him to lift her right arm over his shoulder. She actually had little choice. Her right arm had gone numb and only the pinprick needles on the tips of her fingers suggested the arm was even still attached.

She watched, dispassionately, as more blood dripped over his already covered armor. Her blood.

“What in chaos was that thing?” she asked, her jaw tight against the pain as he jostled her in a vain attempt to steady them both. The question was almost rhetorical. All she was looking to do was keep her mind off the pain.

“No idea,” Givens responded, his armor screeching in protest as he secured her arm around him. There was more grinding of metal on metal as he circled her waist with a tight grip. He felt her struggle against him anew and pulled her tighter. “Let me help you.”

“I’m fine,” she lied through clenched teeth. She was a knight – she could show no pain. She was the First of the Third – she could show no weakness.

“Don’t lie to me, Gillen Hawksley,” Tergin admonished. “You can barely stand.”

He tightened his arm even further around her waist with another metallic squeal. “Chaos! I can barely stand – and you took it worse than I did.”

She wanted to argue – but she lacked the energy. He was right. She could barely stand – and she wasn’t sure she could make the tree line. It was so close...

The two hobbled along, neither of them sturdy on their own but together they managed a stalking, stumbling gait. Tufts of dried, scraggly turf thudded under their feet with each plodding step, carrying with it the faint odor of dusty earth. Here, in the open, the sun battered at their helm-encased scalps, the fingers of heat driving down through their skulls and pounding dully into their brains. Only their training and experience kept them going. Only the countless years of marching kept them from dropping to their knees. They moved together in a stunted lock step with the weariness of their legs, the constant agony of sprained or broken bones and the painful cuts and abrasions along their arms and legs dragging on their sagging bodies.

They made the forest, but it was dense right at the edge of the town, filled with bramble and thorn bushes. With their armor, the thorns couldn’t scratch them but they hooked together like some magician’s weave, barring the way from the two. It took them a few tense moments to break through the underbrush, the sheer force of their wills finally pushing them past the growth.

As the comparative silence of the dense forest stole over them, their labored breath sounded tortured even in their own ears. Gillen was depending on a swollen foot that felt like someone was stabbing it with a knife. Tergin was overcoming armor which was bent and cracked around arms and legs and an old, failing body riddled with cuts and slices and bruises.

The First of the Third, though, could not remember a time when she wasn’t a knight and she kept to her training. She’d been taught to ignore the pain. She’d been instructed to do what must be done even if she were on death’s doorstep. Gillen knew her charge was out there somewhere, probably hurt and possibly dying. She had to find the princess!

Sir Givens continued because retired or not, he was still a knight. He’d had the same training with the same mandates. A retired knight was still a knight. Always a knight. He still held that title and he still cherished the title. He would honor his knighthood until his dying breath.

Which seemed intent on coming far sooner than he’d like.

In the dry summer heat, the taste of dirty grit coating her tongue and the feel of it crunching against her teeth, Bremer had watched Gillen stumbling for the southern tree line. Her small hands trembling, she watched her father staggering after the younger knight. For an instant, she hesitated, her allegiances torn. Gillen and her father were hurt. They were heading off in the same direction Yren had left – if that flaming, blue thing truly was Yren. If Yren hadn’t burned alive in that unimaginable tower of blue flame. She wanted to go after them, but she knew her father would refuse her help. She suspected Gillen would, as well. And she truly didn’t want to know for certain if that thing had been one of her best friends or not.

She closed her eyes, lifting them briefly to the streaming heat of the sun. Her mouth was dry, and she didn’t want to swallow the grit inside of her mouth. Her face scrunching in annoyance, she turned her face down, spitting precious saliva in an attempt to purge the foul taste from her tongue.

Finally, closing her eyes and saying a silent prayer to the god Yan, she turned. First, her steps started to the north. Andwynn was out there somewhere, out there with the rest of the townspeople. She could only hope her younger sister was alright. She half expected to see Teran running up, a joke on her lips. She knew, though, that somewhere out there was likely the broken husk of Teran’s body. Another casualty to add to the town’s dead.

She paused hesitantly, her eyes re-closing for a moment. Then, she resolutely turned to the shop, to those most needing her help. Taking a deep, steely breath, she raised her bow, readying it, just in case. She moved cautiously, her feet light and barely rising from the dirt road into an almost shuffling gait. Gritting her teeth, her eyes narrowed, and she took a in a deep, hard breath.

She had loved visiting the smithy when she was younger. Its quiet, pervasive heat made the place feel cozy even on the most blustery of days. Its sweet smell of sawdust and ash welcomed all who crossed its threshold and the sound of hammer on anvil in a regular, even beat seemed like a dreamy, other-worldly heartbeat.

It was different now. It was angry. It was foreboding. There was a stench about the place that purged her memory of every bright feeling she’d ever had. It was a fetid odor of death and decay. There was still an odor of fire, but it was wrong somehow, almost buried beneath a perverse musty smell on the wind. Overlying it all was the coppery smell of blood; lots of blood. She winced at the smell, terrified at what it might portend.

She heard faint sounds in the distance. She paused a moment, listening intently. It sounded like muffled voices, quiet but real. It was a sign someone was still alive. She moved through the doorway and nearly stumbled. A few dead bodies were littered around the devastation which had been the blacksmith’s shop. Shelves lay upended and the pretty pieces of bronze and iron and silver and steel lay scattered along the shop floor.

She moved to the inner area, the forge area, and gasped. Blood soaked everything and bodies lay littered like refuse everywhere her eyes could see. The blood was spattered everywhere, in some places still dripping almost silently. That horrible, thick, red liquid pooled on the stone floor of the forge area and it seeped into the mortar grooves around the stone.

She just managed to bite back the bile rising in her throat. She was so over-whelmed, she at first didn’t see the huddle of people at the far end and she completely over-looked the two knights working their way towards her. Even as the knights stepped carefully around the dead, her eyes didn’t see them, but her ears heard them. She ignored that soft whisper of metal on metal and metal on stone, listening instead to her friends at the far end of the forge.

“He’s gone, Momma,” Bena whispered in a quavering voice. The younger girl’s voice sounded so loud against the death-drenched silence. Even at this distance, Bremer could see the tears pouring down the young girl’s face. Those tears streamed down Bena’s cheeks, punctuating the all-consuming, gruesome pall of death which lay heavy on the smithy’s forge. The tears sparkled as they fell, the glint and shine of them painting a stark counterpoint to the duller luster of the blood that soaked the very walls.

“Oh, Ardt!” Elva was kneeling next to one of the bodies. A chain-mail clad body drenched in blood. Issa stood nearby, her hands covering her face and her body wracked in sobs.

The two knights intercepted Bremer before she could get far past the inner door. “Honor Hawksley?” the woman asked but for a split-second Bremer could not move her eyes from the Tulat family. Even when she did acknowledge them, it was only to stare at them.

“Heading south,” Bremer finally replied woodenly, a look of horror stretched across her face at the dripping death covering the room. Her very soul was horrified at what she was going to find when she made it over to Elva, Bena and Issa.

“She lives then?” The man asked this time, his face worried.

Bremer’s voice stuck in her throat. Bena had moved, putting her hand on the trembling woman kneeling next to her. In that space, Bremer could see the face of the blacksmith, the face of her father’s friend, the face of her friends’ father. She could only nod at the knight as she moved further into the room.

The day refused to seem real to Bremer. The whole of it seemed like some dreadful nightmare and she couldn’t wait to wake up. There were so many dead, not only in this room but out there. Teran. Ardt. Friends she’d known all of her life and people she’d barely met.

Now, they were gone. They were gone and the Red Guard were gone, too. Bremer couldn’t seem to make sense of any of it. Her tears joined Bena’s and Issa’s and Elva’s. Nothing would be the same anymore. Nothing could be the same anymore!

The knights brushed past her, but her attention wasn’t on them. It was on the bodies littering the floor in a vast sea of death. The bodies and pieces of bodies were everywhere, in mounds two and three deep in some places. Overcome by grief and horror, she still stepped carefully, trying desperately to keep her feet and legs from touching the dead.

“Issa?” she asked gently, reaching her younger friend first. Issa’s hands came away from her bloated face, her eyes red and tears leaving streaks down her dirty cheeks. She seemed lost. She looked as if the entire world had fallen in on her. There was misery and pain etched in jagged lines through her face and her eyes were haunted and unfocused. At first, Issa didn’t recognize Bremer but then, when she did, she threw herself into Bremer’s arms, almost spearing herself on the cocked arrow Bremer still held absently.

“My Dad is dead!” Issa wailed, knocking the bow and arrow to the side and wrapping her arms around Bremer’s neck. She buried her head in the older girl’s shoulder.

Bena knelt down next to her mother, hugging her closely. The youngest Tulat felt strange. Untethered. She felt more than she had been – and strangely less. A part of her was missing – but it had been filled by something more vast and powerful than she could contain.

The boundless presence that filled her was speaking. The voice was a constant whisper, bypassing her ears entirely and resonating, instead, in her very mind. It was filling her head with sounds and words and songs and a myriad other things she couldn’t begin to comprehend. It was overwhelming her, stripping away any real ability she had to focus.

She felt split. Her mind and soul were broken and in pieces. She shied away from that voice, those sounds. She tried to pull away – but there was only so much space within her own head. There was only so much space within her own body.

She tried not to listen. She tried to push against whatever was in there with her – but the voice was familiar. She’d heard it not long ago. She’d heard the voice on the lips of her brother. She’d made a horrible deal with that voice, agreeing to the bargain without thought of the consequences.

“Yren.”

That word shone above the other words and sounds. It reverberated in her mind, bringing with it all of the thoughts and memories she’d ever had of her older brother. The heat of the forge reflecting off his features as he worked the metal. The utter concentration suffusing his face as he hammered, his muscles clenching and releasing, clenching and releasing. Her brother reading to her at night, when she couldn’t sleep. Her brother bent over her, kissing her forehead to drive all thoughts away and let her finally rest.

She shook the thoughts off, desperately pushing them away. Her father was dead. He was dead and it was her fault. She’d chosen.

“You are my high priestess.”

She pushed that thought away, too. Now was not the time. She needed to grieve. She needed some penance for what she’d done. She needed some penance for the man lying dead in front of her.

“There is no penance, child. Death lost this day, but it comes for all in its own time. I have claimed you. You are mine.”

She shook her head, willing the words into the background. With a reluctance she could feel, the words ebbed – but their import did not. Their demands of her did not.

“Momma, we have to go,” she said quietly, her voice ridden with torment as she succumbed to the demands of the goddess within her mind.

“I can’t go, Bena,” Elva wailed, her head tilting into her youngest daughter’s chest. “I can’t leave him.”

“Yren is out there, Momma,” Bena continued, her voice hiccupping with sobs. The words in her mind would not be denied, only postponed ... and then, only for so long. “He’s out there ... and he needs us.”

“You go,” Elva replied, her hands clutching at Bena’s left arm. The woman’s voice was awash in agony, her words coming as whispers and moist, guttural phrases. “You go. I can’t – I can’t leave him. He needs me.”

Bena looked up from her mother to Issa, who was fiercely clutching Bremer. There was so much pain, pain she wished she could remove. The people around her were filled with the pain she had, in a sense, caused. This had been her choice. It had seemed so simple at the time. It had been so gravid with purpose but such an easy choice to make ... at the time. She knew the pain and guilt of it, though, would hound her. Her head fell as she realized she would have to live with this choice for the rest of her days.

With a haunted look etched deep on her features, her eyes glanced up at Bremer.

Bremer nodded through her tears. “Go, Bena. I’ll take care of them.”

With an anguished sigh, Bena looked at her mother. Elva had finally released her daughter’s arm and, instead, placed her trembling hands on her husband’s chest. There was blood pooled on the chest, but she doubted her mother even noticed. Bena looked up at her older sister wailing in Bremer’s arms. Finally, she looked at her father, his face frozen in shock. It was an accusing face. It was asking her how she could have done this. It asked how she could have thrown away his life as she had. Only she knew the choice was no choice at all – but the sentiment suddenly seemed hollow and weak.

Finally, she nodded and stood. The voice within her pushed her on.

With a last, tearful glance at her father’s body, Bena closed her eyes and walked through the dead bodies piled along the floor.

Bremer saw no hesitation in the girl’s stride but she somehow managed to miss every single body part, every single droplet of blood. To Bremer, it seemed the young girl was following some internal map which pointed the way around all of the detritus. It was almost as if she floated through the human carnage, removed from the death and destruction.

Bena walked out into sunshine. She lifted her hand over her eyes, blocking the glaring light as best as she could. It was incongruous. A day like this, a day laden with so much evil and death, didn’t deserve sunlight. She had colored the day in darkness – the utter darkness of a moonless night. In her mind’s eye, even the stars were gone, hidden behind the blackest of clouds, light only by the occasional streak of thunder. The day deserved the pouring, driving rain of the worst of storms. A bleak vision for a bleak day.

At her thought, a voice within her chorused into song. Its voice whispered musically within her, explaining, instructing. She could change the weather, change it to the dark, stormy day she felt the events deserved. It would be so easy, she just needed to stretch forth her hand...

Bena shook the voice away. Another voice, the voice of her goddess, quietly told her what she already knew - the capability to do something didn’t necessarily make it right. Even in her grief, she recognized she had so much to learn.

But she trusted the second voice. She had put all of her faith, all of herself, into Deia.

She heard a faint sound to her right and she turned, eyes blazing, and her hand rising to strike – but she stopped. Dakin Oovert was staggering towards her, blood running freely down the front of his mail shirt from a knife still stuck in the upper part of his chest. She noted that his leggings were stained with more of his blood, but where the blood running down his chain armor was fresh and dripping, the blood on his legs was drying.

Even dirty and injured, through the over-whelming guilt searing through her dark thoughts, she supposed he was handsome. He had thick, dark-brown hair which hung down to his shoulders in what was the fashion at the time. Unfortunately, his hair was dirty and matted with sweat, but it was still attractive. He had a long, thin, aristocratic nose between high cheekbones and just under soulful, brown eyes. His lips were average, not thin and not thick, but they seemed expressive. He had a lantern jaw and a cleft chin. She could see how some would fall for him.