Everyone was dead
No, not everyone. Not yet...
There was the sound of a soft wheez, like that of a dying beast, so low that it was almost inaudible.
There, in the middle of this devastation layed the half remaining body of Alariv, eyes silently peering up at the sky covered in mist.
Everyone one was dead. The Ascended members, body torn apart, Kafri, the young awakened with his headless body, left broken like a doll under the shade of a tree. Noone was spared except him.
The plan... The plan had failed horribly...
Alariv chest heaved up and down slowly, air escaping his lungs from the place where the lower part of his body should have been. In the part where it should've been, there was now only a liquid mess, dark and slow-moving.
Right, the plan, what was it?
a weak breath escaped his lips, it sounded wet and clumped.
Just half a meter away from him was the Corrupted Devil that had caused this devastation. It loomed above the dying figure of Alariv, as if silently witnessing his pitiful end. It looked strange, like flowing liquid, red like a burnt rose, rippling and moving without any definite shape. Countless indescribable ghostly faces seemed to appear on it surface, looking like paintings of ink, stuck in a silent scream.
The Devil did not move, just watching.
The plan... The plan was to use Kafri's aspect ability to restrain the strange monster in place, allowing Alariv himself to descend into combat with it in order to adapt his body against whatever ability the devil possesed. The other ascendeds were supposed to make sure that Alariv came out from his first encounter alive, if not unscathed. After that, they could continuously harrass the Devil over a long periods of time as it either tried to find a way towards Casamir or away from it.
It had worked at first, until it didn't.
The first to fall was Kafri. It happened too fast for anyone to even notice. A dark, human figure seemed to have risen from the darkness behind him and crushed the boy's head with a single clap.
Everything fell apart after that. The Devil escaped from Alariv's grasp like sand in a fist. It was extremely smart, waiting for the precise moment when the most damage could be done. Most of his men died in the first charge, melting like wax as soon as their bodies were enveloped by the Devil's strange constitution. Soon, Alariv too found himself in this state, all alone.
He was not afraid of death, as it was the nature of his duty. Not many who had a job like him lived to see themselves die of old age. He had always expected himself to die in battle, and the fear had probably melted away a long time away.
But he still feared something, he feared pain. He would have wished he had died quick, but the world seemed to have disagreed. At this moment, he was in a sea of pain.
A low moan escaped him, and he could just see, from the corner of his vision, the body of the abomination rippling, as if reacting to his sound.
His mind began to wander, thinking of the still young Eldrin. He feared what the future held for him, and how the others would treat him now that he was about to die. He didn't fear that Eldrin would be killed by someone, the crown would protect him as long as he received the love of the people.
He thought of Ashoka, and the strained smile that always seemed to be plastered over that boy's face. He wondered if he was even aware of how obvious it looked. He still wondered why he had decided to poision him, the answer still eluding him.
He had guessed who had poisioned him soon after they had hurried away from the temporary camp and when the symptoms still showed no signs of weakening. At first, his heart had been filled with rage towards Ashoka, but soon, it melted away. Who knew what reasons he had? Perhaps it was Gaius or Oswald who had forced him into this betrayal, or perhaps it was a much more grander reason that he couldn't yet fathom. In the end, none of it mattered, and he didn't want to die hating someone he had adored once.
The Corrupted Devil still hadn't moved to kill him off. It just remained there, motionlessly, as if giving him the time to think about his life and the choices he had made before his ultimate demise. It was as if it were a priest, watching as the sinner below it repented for his crime in quiet agony.
Alariv's mind began to drift, his vision turning dark at the corners. In what seemed like the end, a face appeared in his mind one last time. It was the face of his wife.
He remembered her lovely face, the gentle smile and the last words she had spoken to him before he departed for this expedition.
Ah...
He regretted not having spent one more day with her.
I dont want to die yet...
Tears began to flow slowly, welling up in his eyes and falling done his face. He tried to speak, as if to utter a name one last time
"Ar-ah...Ri..."
Erinia...
I want to...
The tears continue to flow, but the eyes remained motionless. The pupils dilated, and his eyes slowly lost their luster, becoming lifeless.
***
[You have slain an Ascended Beast, Alariv—]
He was in the middle of a sentence when the voice of the spell whispered into his ears.
He didn't remember what sentence. Something about documentation, about cross-referenced property records. Something correct and useful and relevant. His mouth was open, and the words had been forming, and then the golden text of the Spell appeared in his peripheral vision and he—
Stopped.
[—Alariv—]
The hall continued. Someone was speaking. He thought it might be him, but he wasn't sure. It was as if he had suddenly lost a connection with the world around him, becoming a prisoner in his own mind.
The voice of the Spell continued;
[You have received a Memory, Memory of Lie]
The guilt was not sharp, that was the worst of it. It wasn't the clean thing he could have braced against, the blade he could have named and bled from and eventually cauterized. It was a hollow ache — slow, dull, enormous, the kind that settles into the cavity of the chest and simply lives there, patient and boundless, filling the space where other feelings used to be.
He had known. He had stood in Alariv's kitchen with shaking hands and a vial of white poison, and he had known that the Prince's ability would fail against it, and he had known that the Corrupted Devil in the wilderness would do the rest, and he had known that Alariv was going to die either way so it was only — it was only —
It was murder. Plain... And simple... Just how could he deny such a simple truth?
The thought alone sent an involuntary jolt through his entire being, rattling him. This single line of runes from the spell seemed to cut more deeply into his conscience than anything he had done or experienced since entering the Nightmare. Perhaps, the only thing that could compare was the time he had been agonized by the need to end Eldrin's life in order to end the Nightmare. But that was different. Atleast there, he had found a sliver of hope, a plan to finish the trail without having to kill him.
It was not a guarantee. It was barely even a plan. It had to do with a strange utilisation of his innate ability and the convergence effect. It was a crack in the architecture of an otherwise ironclad system, and Ashoka had no certainty that he could widen it enough to crawl through. But it was something — a possibility that didn't require his hands to be permanently stained — and in this Nightmare where every other path led through a child's body, that slim and uncertain something was the only thing that had allowed him to keep moving forward without feeling like he had already become the monster the spell might one day make him.
The thing was that at least there, a strange solace had come eventually. Here, he wasn't sure it would.
The trial continued like a dream half-remembered. He spoke when he was supposed to speak. The words came out correct; the lawyer potion was apparently better at maintaining professional function than he was. The thought alone made him let out an involuntary laugh.
He watched himself from somewhere slightly above and behind, watched his mouth form arguments, watched the crowd's faces shift and settle, watched as Oswald grew smaller without moving an inch.
At one point, he looked up at the great chandelier hanging from the ceiling and thought about the stars he had seen from the window of the soldiers' ward. How they had looked like scattered sand, how his father, standing beside him, had compared them to the eyes of the dead watching over the living, and then laughed at his own morbidity, and ruffled Ashoka's hair as if he were a child.
He hadn't gone to see him off.
Guilt was a poison, the most insidious and potent poison in the world, more potent than poison any abomination could ever create. Not because it killed fast or painfully, no. It was because you cannot reject guilt, ever, you can't say it wasn't your fault, because you know the entire story, and the part that you played in it.
He thought: I should have gone to see him off.
He thought: it wouldn't have changed anything.
He thought: it would have changed something.
The verdict arrived, and he heard it the way you hear things underwater.
Eldrin's voice, carrying the peculiar weight of the authority, settled over the hall like a hand pressing flat on a drumhead. Ashoka was almost certain that the he was using the ability of a Mentor of Disorder.
"Prince Oswald." He had not used 'uncle' as Ashoka noticed. "The evidence presented before this court has been found credible and substantive. The crimes committed; the illegal seizure of property, the corruption of public officials. these are not the actions of a man who serves this kingdom."
There was a pause as the hall remained absolutely motionless.
"By my authority, I hereby order the seizure of all property held under the name of Prince Oswald — his estates, his holdings, his collected assets — to be returned to the crown and distributed according to the needs of those he wronged. Furthermore, he is henceforth prohibited from holding, acquiring, or being named in the ownership of any property within the borders of Casamir."
The crowd — the crowd that had stood in silence for the better part of an hour, that had held its breath through testimony and documentation and the appearance of a broken man with a swollen face — the crowd broke.
People were cheering. Someone near the back was sobbing. Bremis Hoult, the old farmer, stood with his hat over his heart, his mouth working without sound.
Ashoka stood in the center of it, and looked at the floor.
Around him, the people of Casamir cheered for justice. For a young king who had not looked away. For the strange, quiet boy in common clothes who had stood in front of a prince and spoken names into the silence until the silence answered back.
And Ashoka, who had won, who had done everything right, who had built the case and set the trap and poisoned the water and earned every shred of this victory —
Ashoka looked at the ground with hollow eyes and said nothing at all, but after a moment, something changed within those dark eyes. The hollowness disappeared, replaced by a scalding fury as he stared at the runes of the spell. His jaw tightened.
Right, he had recieved a Memory, but also a different type of memory, a memory that he would never forget.
Memory: [Memory of Lie].
Memory Rank: Ascended.
Memory Type: Charm.
Memory Description: [A man once showed a demon love and the kindest of smile. The demon smiled back in the truest, most honest of smile, and gave the man the sweet nectar of lies. The knife of betrayal came from a hundred miles away, and this is a memory of that lie.]
***
Back in the devastated battlefield, everything remained still and motionless, as if the world was holding its breath.
After a moment, the strange silence was broken by waves that seemed to ripple faintly across the body of the abomination. These ripples soon turned stronger and violent, and before long, it's entire body seemed to be undergoing a violent change. The Devil who's size was once comparable to a large hut, started to shrink discernibly, as if trying to obtain a definite shape. Before long, it adopt the vague silhouette of a man made entirely of dark blood.
It remained in that form for a full minute, then, as if disgruntle, it abandoned the shape entirely. After a pause, it moved closer to the body of the dead Ascended.
In the next second, under the dim illumination of the dancing fire, the shadow of the deceased Ascended rose from the ground. It turned and started to move in a particular direction, moving towards the direction east of the city of Casamir.
The Corrupted Devil rippled and began to follow the strange shadow.
Far away, inside a cave located almost 150 or so miles away from the eastern wing of the border wall , Prince Gaius sat motionlessly under the illumination of a crackling bonfire. All around him, the bodies of his men were sprawled around haphazardly, all motionless.
They were not dead, of course, only put to sleep by Gaius using his aspect ability. If things went as planned, they would remain asleep under the safety of this cave and his Awakened ability's concealment for the next 24 hours.
Looking at the silently rolling mist outside the cave's entrance, a characteristic of the outer wilderness, Gaius let out a heavy sigh.
With that, he picked up a still burning piece of wood from the bonfire and moved it closer to his face. There was a hesitant pause as his eyes shook, hands beginning to tremble noticeably.
Looking at his still trembling hand, Gaius gritted his teeth.
No, I am not this weak.
He had put too much on stake for this plan, sacrificed too much. Too much to be held back by the simple fear of pain. Slowly, the trembling stopped, and the hand moved.
The flame touched skin. For one suspended second, there was nothing — just the smell of it.
Then the cave filled with sound.