PART IX: Death Follows
"What will you name her, Your Highness?" Varya asked with eyes red and swollen from crying.
"I read in a book somewhere that the ancient language of Stella had a word for hope, which was..." Before Nex could finish, Varya answered back with a slight smile.
"Amal."
"Yes, that is right, Varya. I did not expect you to be learned about ancient Stella language."
"My family lived there... we were from the western nobles before they were banished for conspiring with the empire about ten years ago," she said, letting out a small chuckle, remembering the massive wheat fields her family used to govern over.
"You are fallen nobles," Actaeon said firmly.
"No, we are just fallen now. We have no nobility left in us... nor do we fit in with the commoners here."
"I guess we have that in common then, Varya. We both have fallen so far we don't recognize our past selves... Damn it, I used to be so naive I thought if I lived in silence there would come a day where my father would protect and hug me... a day my family might embrace me and accept me and now... here I am forcing people to die for me while I hide because of my siblings' actions that led me here... But at least I have met this little one and she gave me hope."
"Hope for what?" Varya asked curiously.
"To show her a different world from the one I saw... a reason to change it in the first place so children like her can grow up to build and advance a world better than the one we lived in." Tears formed in his eyes.
"And what if you fail to do so?"
"Then at least I would have laid down the steps for her and children her age to build a better one. At least they would learn earlier than I did that they need to change this corrupt empire."
Varya stood up as Nex was leaning on the bed of Amal, gripping his finger with her tiny hand as she slept, and hugged him from behind, resting her head against his back as she started crying yet again.
"One day I hope we will live in the world you have built together, young Nex."
As time went by, Nex found himself sleeping on his knees and his head resting on Amal's small bed. He awakened from his sleep with the voice he heard multiple times before:
"Run. He is coming, my prince."
"Run."
"While you still can."
Shivers went down Nex's spine as he awoke from the echoes of the voice in his head. He turned left and right and saw no one but Varya asleep with a piece of wood and a knife in her hand as she was carving something into the piece of the wood.
It took a second to collect himself from the voice he knew not to ignore, but he wanted to see what Varya had made... for he felt a connection with her he hadn't felt in a long time.
"I wonder what she made," Nex asked himself as he looked at the piece of wood that sat in her hand as she slept on the chair... the piece of wood had a rope tied to it through a hole and had a name written on it. He could not make out the name yet until he stood next to Varya, then he saw it... Amal. It was a necklace for the child to carry its name.
He picked it up from her hand slowly without waking her up and tied it around little Amal's wrist gently—not too tight to hurt but not too loose to drop off.
"Varya," he called out gently, trying to wake her up so she would sleep more comfortably on the bed, but she did not wake. "Varya," he called out again, and before he reached out to touch her, he heard a bone-chilling scream.
"AAAAAAAAAAGH." It was the voice of a woman from the village. The scream cut through the night air like a blade. Varya jolted awake instantly, the knife still clutched in her hand. Nex's legs went weak, his heart pounding, and he immediately scooped up the now-crying infant before rushing to check outside with Varya.
Only to see smoke rising from the direction of the Chief's house and everything on the east side of the village.
He saw a woman running with her clothes torn apart and blood running down her head, leaving footsteps of blood behind her.
Nex understood that she was the source of the scream. As she ran past Varya's house, she let out another scream identical to the first. Nex tried to ask her, "What is going on?"
But she paid him no mind as she kept running west, leaving behind a trail of blood. As Nex was about to yell it again louder, Varya's hand covered his mouth and she dragged him back into the house.
"Shush, my prince, listen to me."
"What are you doing, Varya?"
"SHUSH, NEX, LISTEN... I have seen this before. Andras's men are here. There's a hole in the floor below that carpet in the corner. You and I are going to escape through that hole and move under the house."
"You built your houses above ground—why?" Nex asked, then he realized without needing an answer it was for this very moment. Everyone in the village had modified their houses, and Actaeon was helping them do it when he first entered the village.
"Okay, let us move. For now we will head west, try to make it away from the village until Actaeon and Tazan return with victory." Nex turned away, heading to the hole Varya pointed at. As Varya's expression grew darker with pity, fear, and sadness, just before reaching out to the carpet, Nex froze.
"The whole plan depended on them taking Andras's soldiers by surprise, and now that Andras's squad is here, there is no way to win... That is, if they haven't lost already. Maybe the whole reason they chose to attack the village now is because they already fought and won against the Death Company."
"We don't have time, Nex. You need to save yourself... and Amal." Varya knocked Nex back into reality from his thoughts with those words.
"And you... I will save you as well, for you might be my last remaining friend who I made or brought into this village." Nex answered back with a small joke.
Nex and Varya went into the hole as they headed west under the houses. As they moved away, they heard the voices of children, elderly, and women yelling in anguish and pain—some begging for death, others weeping for their loved ones—as their voices were cut off with the sound of steel and bones shattering.
In front of Nex and Varya were three families also heading west, barely able to stay on their feet, slowly shifting between crouching and lying fully on their stomachs depending on the height of the path.
The first family ahead—with a mother and her two young children—tried to go up to their grandmother's house to help her come down the hole with them and run away. Yet moments after coming up the hole, a loud bang was heard as the hole was covered. The screams of the mother were heard by the children listening from beneath the house: a boy six years old and a girl nine. The boy was about to cry as the girl covered his mouth with her hand, just as the mother's screams were cut short. Soon after, a loud thud was heard from on top of the children as blood started dripping down on their heads. They looked up and their eyes met their mother's head, dropped on the floor, gazing down on them with wide open eyes as her body was carried away by the soldiers.
The second family helped the children look away as the elder man with his young son each covered the eyes of a child and started pushing them in front of them.
The last family ahead of them was one woman with no family. She was afraid, trying to save herself, and the elder men with the children up front were going too slow for her. So she dragged the elder by his feet and crawled over him and the children to go first. No one dared make a sound. Even when the elder's bones were almost breaking from her crawling over him, he kept quiet and protected the children.
Nex and Varya caught up to the elder and helped him while the two families behind them followed in pursuit, all moving towards the light at the end of the path, hoping for safety. They kept crawling and making their way for almost an hour through the houses until they reached the end of the path. The lady who had pushed through the elder and kids ran out first, and they lost sight of her.
Before the elder and the kids reached the end—when it was just in sight—a head rolled in front of the hole. It was the lady's. Then they froze, and soon after, a soldier knelt down and looked down the hole before letting out a laugh from his helmet. Then he used a small prototype of a siege engine from the Kingdom of Wu—a long steel barrel big enough to fill the hole, with a head that looked like a red dragon, the symbol of the royal blood of Wu. As he ignited it, it launched a wave of red fire, burning the elder and the three children until the screaming stopped.
Nex's face felt the heat as the smell of burnt flesh filled the tunnel along with the echos of the children and elder screaming.
His laughter could be heard all over the place. As Nex and Varya were crawling next to each other, they looked above to the hole above them and decided to take their chance above.
Nex opened the hole and stepped out first with a sword gifted to him by Oryin himself. As he stepped out, he found a couple lying down on the bed. The husband had died, split into pieces—his torso, his limbs, then his head were all carefully placed inside the body of his wife, which had been opened up with knives big enough to fit her husband's limbs and head inside of her. A piece of art... exactly like Chief Oryin had said.
Nex threw up and helped Varya up after covering the couple with a blanket.
Varya and Nex walked closely next to the window. After observing for a short while, they saw no one in front. Then they heard screams from the hole beneath them as the soldiers started breaking the wooden floors and killing the families that were behind them.
"We have to make a run for it across—we need to get to that house, Nex," Varya whispered. Nex nodded, and then they opened the door and started running. There was no one outside but one guy from the far east of the road carrying the head of the woman Nex had seen screaming and running earlier. He spotted them and yelled, "CATCH THEM!"
Nex held Varya's hand and ran across, his heart pounding and his body growing more and more tired by the second.
As they closed in on the house, the door was kicked open and a soldier with a fully closed helmet kicked the door open from the inside. Blood dripped down his blade and from his mouth as it ran down his neck from his helmet, his breaths growing louder and louder. Nex and Varya froze in the open as the soldiers behind them started closing the distance slowly and carefully.
The soldier in front of them opened his helmet to reveal an old man in his seventies, blood running from his mouth, his armor heavy and his shield dropped behind him in the house.
"Go. I will buy you some time," he said as he groaned.
"Thank you," Varya mumbled as she ran inside with Nex to see the bodies of three soldiers—one of them had a halberd and two of them swords, all of them killed with an experienced blade.
They made their way inside, then through the window and out the other side, and ran towards the north where the Chief's house was still burning.
On their way there were fewer soldiers around and more of just the aftermath of them having passed by there—art pieces left and right with heads rolling, some limbs thrown on roofs, and some burnt to death while others begged for death while having their legs cut off or just their hands.
All of which Varya and Nex had to walk through and witness until they reached the burning house of the Chief, hoping to make their way past the hill and closer to the Death Company.
The closer they got to the Chief's house, the quieter the screaming became and the louder the laughter became. Specifically, Nex could make out one very particular laugh that sounded like a pig oinking coming from the front of the Chief's house.
"What about the Chief?" Varya asked as they were making their way to the left side of the house between the tree lines and bushes to make it to the top of the hill.
"I can't risk your life and mine for his, and more importantly I will never risk Amal's life... we should keep moving," Nex replied.
The winds carried a scream from the Chief's house: "IN THE DEPTHS OF HELL I SHALL WAIT FOR YOU, ANDRAS, YOU MURDEROUS BASTARD!" It was Oryin's voice. "YOU SHALL DIE SOON AND JOIN ME AND YOUR PIG OF A FATHER!" His breath grew louder and his helplessness was very clear in his voice.
"Please, we have to help him, Nex... he... He is my father. We have to help," Varya said with weeping whispers.
"Take her and head to the hill. I will bring him to you if I can... I promise you that," Nex said firmly.
Nex unsheathed his sword and made his way between the houses and the soldiers' gazes until he made it to the last bush line between him and Oryin, and Andras and his men.
All this time since hearing the name Andras and his actions, Nex had thought of him as a behemoth—a man strong enough to back his actions, a man big enough to not care about stepping on innocent lives. And yet when he saw him, as tall as Chief Oryin's wheelchair and almost as fat as a pig, while his double chin leaked through his chainmail armor while laughing like one as well—snorting, oinking almost—while laughing at the Chief's state... He had ordered his hands to be cut off and him to be kept alive with medicine.
"What have they done to you, Chief? You deserved an honorable death, not... not this," Nex thought to himself as he clenched his fists, looking at a passed-out Oryin while Andras spat on him and turned around to leave.
"Inform me when he wakes up! I have lots planned for this one!" Andras let out a revolting sound that was barely recognizable as laughter—a wet, snorting wheeze that shook his bloated frame, spittle flying from his lips as he doubled over with cruel delight. Andras ordered his men to keep him alive and use the least amount of painkillers and medicine possible.
After a couple of hours, the soldiers who were treating Oryin with medicine left and kept only one guard to keep a lookout for him.
"He has no legs and now no arms—one guard is enough," said the soldier in command of the medicine group, and left a young man to guard him.
After a while of waiting, Nex did not see a chance to safely rescue Oryin without putting himself in harm's way. Even if he did, the only way out of the village was north towards the Death Company and the imperial palace Vaelthrone, and anything that would slow him or Varya down would get them killed immediately, for Andras and his soldiers had horses meanwhile they would have to escape on foot.
It made no sense to rescue him, and yet despite that, he had to try for the sake of Varya—for his promise.
Finally, a moment came where the guard had to take a leak near Nex in the bushes—a perfect moment. All Nex had to do was stab him, and yet when he held his blade... it started again—the trembling.
"Damn it, why? Please not now. I need to save him," Nex desperately tried to straighten up his sword hand by holding it with his other hand firmly, yet to no effect.
So he came up with another solution. As his sword dropped from his hand, it made a noise the guard heard and turned toward. As he walked closer to inspect it with his blade in hand, he was grabbed by the neck from behind and choked until the guard passed out. Nex had used the sword to lure him closer and finish him without making a sound.
Then he made his way to Oryin, and upon seeing his face, he could not believe it. His face was swollen, his eyes shades of blue and black while his nose was broken and teeth were kicked in. Everything was dripping blood as his arms were cut from his shoulders, still bleeding slowly.
"What have they done to you, Oryin?" Nex asked aloud.
"Nex, is that you, my boy? WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? GO, TAKE VARYA AND LEAVE WITH THE CHILD... But before you go, I ask you to rid me of this torture... I beg you, end my suffering. I have suffered for too long," Oryin tried to speak all of this out, but some words were unable to be spoken due to his injuries. Yet Nex knew what Oryin wanted.
He drew his blade one last time... and there it was again—the trembling. Again unable to take a life. For some reason, this time he knew it was the right thing to do, and yet he still could not do it. The blade dropped, making a heavy sound as Nex started crying for his helplessness. He had arms and legs, yet he was as helpless as Oryin.
"I am so sorry, Oryin. I cannot do it... I can't kill," Nex cried with every word he let out.
"Sigh... It is not your fault, Nex. It is this unfair world that put us here that is at fault," Oryin replied weakly. "I change my request, Nex. Don't mercy kill me... but promise me... promise me you will destroy this world... and whether you choose to build a new one or leave it destroyed, I trust your judgment. But destroy it nonetheless."
"I promise, Oryin. I will bring death and destruction to the world we both knew," Nex said, putting his head against Oryin's and closing his eyes. Then he walked away from him to the top of the hill where Varya and Amal were waiting for his return.
As he made his way out, he saw Oryin lunge out of his chair and crawl pathetically towards his house, looking for freedom in a burning death. Slowly but surely, he reached it as Nex watched from afar, hearing the screams he could have prevented... If only he was strong enough to kill, he could have saved the Chief from one of the most painful deaths known to men.
Nex watched Andras throw a fit of rage and kill the young guard as he saw Oryin's dead corpse.
"I swear by my name granted to me by my father, Aurelion, Last of his name, as I shall destroy this empire, I will find you, Andras, and burn you alive with my own two hands," Nex added as he wiped his tears from his eyes and made his way to the hill. Taking his last few steps—weary, tired, and with tears running down his cheeks—he was ready to be comforted by Varya, only to find her detained by the soldiers who were holding Amal as well.
They had tied up Varya by her feet and hands and were planning on killing Amal in front of her, then her, but once they saw Nex, the three soldiers' plans changed.
"We should have him do a theater play for us with her body like we did to that kid years ago," a skinny soldier said, his sharp Wu accent coming through, not bothered to hide it.
Nex stepped forward, then laid down his blade as it was useless, and surrendered. "I just want to be with her for a last moment. Please let me be with my younger sister." The three started laughing as they stood up, towering over Nex and Amal in their hands. The biggest one of them laid her on the ground next to Varya. "Choose which one you will save, and I give you my word we wont harm her."
Nex stood up and walked forward, nearing the edge of the hill as the other two stood behind the big guy. Nex ran at him and tried to shove him with his shoulder to push him over the edge, but the guy did not budge and instead kicked Nex away in his chest, breaking two of his ribs.
"I gave you a choice as mercy, and you tried to kill me? How ungrateful."
Nex was not able to breathe, his breaths unstable from the pain growing in his ribcage.
"Please, just let them go and do whatever you want to me. Please, I beg of you," Varya pleaded while crying.
"We will do whatever we want to you, him, and the child... That is the power Andras granted us—the power to rule over the weak—and you are the weak. We will do whatever we want with you." As Nex was turning and tossing on the ground, catching his breath, his hood went down, revealing his imperial white hair which the three recognized immediately.
"He's a prince... We should kill him. I have never killed a prince before," said the skinny one as he looked at the young prince with murder in his eyes.
"Kill him? Why should we? I have never had a prince before—we should rape him," added the second one with lust in his eyes.
"What do you think we should do, boss?" asked the skinny one to the biggest one of the three. He was wearing armor, hiding who he was and what features he had.
He turned around, holding his huge glaive in his hands, and swung it behind him with all his power, claiming the heads of both of them.
The blood scattered on the infant and Varya on the ground. Then he removed his armor to reveal a tall man with a grey beard, short grey hair, and mustache. His eyes were turquoise—the same ones known to be found in the old north nobility and royalty.
"What is a prince doing here so far in the south?" he said, revealing his real voice. Where his previous one was high-pitched, hiding his age and how truly massive he was—almost as tall as Tazan but a bit smaller in size—now his voice was raspy and hard.
He sat down on the bodies of the two soldiers and pulled out a cigarette and smoked it.
"I... I can... I can't breathe," Nex said between deep breaths, still unable to stabilize his breathing.
The knight carried him up with one hand and put him on his feet, then ripped away his clothes, opening an airflow for his chest.
"Now answer me," the old grey knight asked firmly.
Nex took a second to regain his breath before answering.
"I was headed to Stella on the advice of Sao Loras, the general of the western front."
"You know young Sao?" he asked, then laughed a bit and answered himself. "Of course, you must be the death prince or whatever it was."
"That is close to what they call me sometimes, yes. And what about you, ser? Who are you and what are you doing here?"
"I am one of the High Knights... The Grey Knight Gustave, and I was here to look into a web that linked the kingdom of Wu into Andras's squad. It runs deeper than this guy with the accent... and deeper than the siege engines as well."
Before Nex could ask him about anything else, loud flickers of torches and loud yelling started.
"A search party for any survivors," the Grey Knight added.
"You should leave with the child and the woman."
Nex quickly untied Varya before turning back and wiping the blood off Amal's face with his sleeves.
When Nex took the rag out of Varya's mouth she did not have to ask. Nex's gaze and his tears lingering on his cheeks and eyes told her the fate of her father's fate.
"Did he suffer?" She asked with her lips trembling.
Nex did not answer... He could not lie not even to comfort her... He could not even look her in the eyes.
"At least the suffering ended now... He rests." She said with a shaky voice holding back her tears.
Nex stood silent for a couple seconds before looking to change the subject.
"You weren't really going to kill us, were you, ser?" Nex asked with a nervous tone.
"I would have done anything to complete my mission... anything but cause the murder of imperial blood."
Nex locked eyes with Varya, then helped her stand up and headed north with her to the cave where he wanted to find his friends.