The air bit into Prince Ji Yong's wounds like a sharp whetted blade looking for blood.
His lungs burned, back hurting as his horse galloped surrounded by five guards, also on horses, who looked as beaten down as him.
None of them had eaten properly since three days ago when the leader of those men, old general Wei, had broken him free from that hellhole prison that his brother had put him in.
General Wei was an old retired general with a beard as white as snow and a belly as round as the barrels of bai-ju that he loved to drink.
He had been Prince Ji Yong's first sword teacher as well. It a disappointing, short time that ended with the then little prince wailing until classes were cancelled and his mother, Concubine Yao, put her foot down so that he would not need to grab a sword ever again.
What idiocy.
That marked the start of his father's dissatisfaction, and losing his approval was one neither he or his mother could afford.
He was a prince, a potential heir to his father's throne, but with a doting overprotective mother and his own short-comings, he was left as impotent as a commoner who had never seen anything beyond the cows that grazed.
Sure, she and general Wei worked hard to build connections and supporters for him from a young age, but in the end it all proved meaningless… One accusation and the half foreign bastard and his mother were demonized and thrown away.
Another jump and his stomach lurched.
He remembered, almost in a burning feverish haze, his brother's guards grabbing and holding him down, pungent vile porridge forced down his throat, mouth covered so he would swallow it and his own bile. He coughed violently, pulling at the rains until the horse stopped. He rushed to the side of a tree trunk, holding onto it as he bent slightly down, barfing his insides out. The men also stopped.
"Your Highness, please, we have to rush. There isn't much left, just over, at the top of that mountain is the border, once we cross it you are safe."
He could see the concern in their eyes, the loyalty he was undeserving of, a pang of guilt as he realized that these men were throwing their lives away for him, abandoning the very kingdom they vowed to serve out of respect for his mother and the kind of woman she was.
He gulped down some air, hopped on again and they set off. His kind mother…
A headless corpse at his brother's feet, hair ornaments broken, hair sprawled and robes dishevelled, her pale skin full of purple and black marks.
He choked, eyes watering as they made it further ahead, joy spreading on general Wei's face. The border! It was close.
An arrow tore right through his shoulder making him fall down. Hoofbeats.
Prince Ji Yong's eyes widened. One of the guards stretched out his hand. He took it without a second thought, feeling his body pulled up, leg over as he adjusted himself keeping a hand around the man's waist and head looking back at the army of imperial guards sent after him.
They shot more arrows, some piercing the horses who neighed in pain. One of the guards fell, two arrows impaled in his body, one in his back right at his spine, the other at the back of his neck piercing through.
"Fourth formation!" General Wei roared. "One at the back, don't let the arrows hit the prince!"
More deaths to protect his meaningless, wasteful life. Brave well-respected men dying for the half-blooded imperial fool that had not bothered to learn neither sword nor had the brawns for pen.
The half-blood whose mother was taken as a concubine to soothe the bad blood between two kingdoms, her exotic beauty charming the Emperor enough to warm his bed a few nights before she was discarded for other younger concubines.
Yet somehow, though she was untouched for years after, when the Emperor died poisoned by demonic arts all fingers pointed at her- the woman who saw him from distance at gatherings and drenched her pillow with tears of loneliness and self-hate.
The border was not too far. He could see the great wall from a distance, his grandfather's men at different points looking out.
Beyond that wall lay his mother's kingdom, the one she was taken from as a young princess, torn from her mother and father's warmth, her siblings into a kingdom whose culture and customs were different and she had to learn how to please a man twice her age to survive.
An arrow swished past his ear, embedding itself on a tree's truck. Another of the guards fell, and then another, the wall so close yet so far. Another shower of arrows and the horse he was on was shot down.
They abandoned the hurt animals setting out on foot, swords drawn out. A searing pain exploded in his stomach, blinding agony as his robe and flesh was ripped from behind by the sharpness of an arrow that was shot at him. His vision blurried, legs giving under him as the world turned dark.
Prince Ji Yong woke up in the embrace of a warm summer, no longer on the blood-soaked ground. He was sitting on grass, his mother a bit further away surrounded by flowers of all sorts.
Her silky robes shimmered, a happy expression as she traced her fingers over a fragile stem as one of her most trusted confidants, an older maid from her kingdom scolded her for ruining her delicate fingers with labor any maid could and should do instead. Concubine Yao didn't care though, it was her garden and she wanted to tend to it herself. A maid grabbed him, his small body pulled up as he rested his head on her chest, a humming sound made the woman's bosom vibrate and bit by bit his eyes closed his mother's voice growing further and further away.
"Help me!" The maid whispered. He looked up, a horror-filled gaze as the woman's face contorted. Blood trailed from her eyes, skin decaying until he fell from her hands.
His little body hit the ground with a thud, eyes watering as he looked on. Slender fingers melted, flesh to bone to nothing.
Prince Ji Yong woke up in a wooden carriage, soul and body shaking as the woman's whispers for help resonated within him, stirring an emotion it should not. But, he couldn't dwell on that.
The carriage moved at a slow pace, guards that laughed and jabbed each-other back and forth. The wound from his stomach bleed, clothes stained as he pushed his sleeve over it.
His mouth felt dry, too dry to speak, to ask about the men and General Wei. He could just look on as they arrived at the destination- an ancient, beaten down gate with a surging black energy that felt like a void ready to suck him in.
The carriage prison was opened, two men held him up, them dragged him down as his knees scrapped against stone and twings on the ground. They smiled. Cruel laughter echoing through the woods as his body was pushed through it and plummet down.