Garde Castle Underground Prison
The Tusk tribesman scread, clutching his eyes at Sevha’s surprise attack.
Eshu imdiately swept the man’s legs out from under him, sending him crashing to the floor. He drew the guard’s own sword and drove it down.
“I’ll help—!”
When Eshu looked toward Sevha, the now one-eyed Tusk lay on the floor with a broken neck.
Sevha dusted off his hands, took the man's sword, and walked to the cell door.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Eshu nodded, blood dripping from his face. Blood from Sevha’s beating.
He watched a drop, then spoke to Sevha’s back.
“Was our conversation just now nothing more than a trick to lure the guards?”
Sevha stopped but didn’t turn, his expression hidden as he answered.
“My brother… he was a kind fool, as ugly as he was good. He never asked anything of . But still, he was my brother. My only family…”
Sevha smiled, thinking of him. It was a strange curve of the lips, born of the sorrow of rembering, but also of the joy the mory alone could bring.
He finished his thought without losing the smile.
“So I decided to beco the worthless younger brother who does what his brother never asked him to.”
With that, Sevha left the cell. Eshu, unable to grasp the aning of those words, simply mulled them over as he followed.
Outside, a long corridor of cells stretched before them.
Sevha and Eshu peered into different cells, and as soon as they looked inside, the sa expression crossed both their faces: a grimace of pure disgust.
“What have they done?”
Inside the cells were lumps of flesh. Flesh so broken, crushed, and twisted that the word “corpse” no longer applied.
They beat them to death… with even hits, Sevha realized.
At a glance, it looked like a mindless slaughter. But a closer look revealed the blows had been distributed with a sickening uniformity over each entire body.
Why kill soone with such ticulous effort?
While Sevha tried to comprehend the labor that had gone into making the masses of flesh in the cells, Eshu continued to check the others.
He found more of the sa: the fruits of the Tusk Tribe's bloody work.
“Eshu. Do you recognize any faces?”
“What faces are left to recognize?”
“…From the scraps of clothing, it looks like commoners from Garde and n from our knightly order.”
“Filthy beasts! I’ll kill them all!”
Unable to bear the sight of his dead comrades, Eshu raged and stord toward the stairs leading up.
Sevha glanced at him and said flatly, “I hear heavy footsteps from the top of the stairs. Heavier than a man’s. A lot of them. You’ll die if you go up there.”
“It’s my fault the knights ended up like this. I have to take responsibility.”
“Take responsibility by dying? If you’re so righteous, why did you just stand by and watch the Count’s thugs run wild in Rasseu?”
Eshu froze.
“At a glance, you seem like a knight. But when I look closer, I have no idea what part of you is knightly at all.”
“I—I am a knight. You only say that because you don’t know what a knight is, Young Master.”
“And what is a knight?”
“In the Knight Kingdom of Jershu, a knight is one who serves according to his oath. I, and the other knights, swore an oath to the Marquis.”
“What oath?”
“To follow his will.”
Hearing what Eshu and the Blanc Knights had sworn, Sevha recalled a recent encounter with the Marquis.
“My grandfather had a mont of clarity a while ago.”
“Truly?”
“Yes. And he said sothing that’s useless to you now.”
“Young Master!”
Sevha ignored him and felt for a draft in the dungeon. He went into one of the cells, jamd his sword into a crack in the wall, and pulled.
A section of the wall crumbled away, revealing a hidden passage.
“Let’s go.”
Sevha entered the tunnel. Eshu followed, and after they had walked a short way, they saw a ladder leading to a wooden panel in the ceiling.
Sevha climbed up and pushed the panel aside. They erged into a storeroom.
When Sevha opened the door a crack, he heard it.
Thump… thump… thump…
The sound of at being beaten, and a song in a language Sevha did not know. The sounds ca from every room down the corridor. Blood seeped from beneath every door, slowly staining the hallway red.
A torture chamber… like the ones in the temples.
The mont Sevha made the comparison, all sound stopped.
Screech.
Every door opened at once.
Scrape…
From every room, Tusk tribesn erged, each holding a club and dragging a sack. Blood trickled from the sacks, which twitched and heaved, betraying that sothing was still alive inside.
But the Tusk paid them no mind, disappearing into the darkness at the end of the hall.
Once the corridor fell silent, Sevha scanned their surroundings and pointed to a room.
“We can’t plan an escape if we don’t know the situation. In here.”
He entered the room he had indicated.
It had once been a noble’s bedchamber, but that was a term for a ti long past. Now, it was a torture chamber, spattered with blood and piled high with evenly beaten bodies.
And in the middle of one pile, a man was drawing shallow breaths.
Eshu rushed to his side. “Young Master, this man is one of the Blanc Knights…!”
When Eshu turned to Sevha, he found him already standing beside him.
“Bretol.”
Eshu was inwardly surprised that Sevha knew the knight's na, but this was no ti for shock.
He quickly checked on Bretol.
“B-Bretol…”
Bretol was so thoroughly broken it was hard to tell him apart from the surrounding corpses. The only difference was his bloodshot eyes, where every vessel had burst. They darted about ceaselessly, gripped by terror.
“Bretol, can you hear ?”
As Eshu spoke, Bretol’s crimson eyes fixed on him. Then, tears of blood welled up, and his ruined mouth gaped open.
“Ah…!”
Sensing Bretol was about to scream, Sevha clapped a hand over his mouth.
Bretol gagged, his shattered body twitching as bloody tears stread down his face.
Just then, footsteps sounded from outside the door.
Sevha quickly scanned the room. Bed, corpses, vanity, corpses, wardrobe, corpses.
“Eshu. Get Bretol into the wardrobe. Keep his mouth covered.”
“Young Master, you…”
“Shut up and get in.”
Eshu took Bretol and slipped inside the wardrobe. Sevha hid himself within the pile of bodies where Bretol had been.
An instant later, a Tusk tribesman entered the room. He stood before the heap of corpses, his face contorting with ecstasy as he gazed upon the evidence of his devotion.
Then, he began to sing.
He’s like a man bewitched.
Songs began to echo from the other rooms.
From within the pile of corpses, Sevha gauged the volu and rhythm of the song.
Then, as the singing grew louder and faster, he burst from the pile and threw himself onto the Tusk’s back.
As the tribesman fell, Sevha wrapped an arm around his throat and squeezed.
The Tusk gagged for a mont before the life faded from his eyes.
Sevha shoved the body into the pile of corpses. Just as he finished, the sound of flesh being beaten started up again from the other rooms.
“Eshu,” Sevha called.
Eshu erged from the wardrobe with Bretol.
The mont Bretol saw the corpses, he began to mutter like a broken clockwork doll.
“It hurts, it hurts, don’t hit , it hurts, don’t hit anymore, kill , just kill .”
“Calm yourself, Bretol.”
“It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! It hurts! It hurts!”
“Bre… Young Master, we have to treat him.”
A broken body. Broken words. A broken soul. Sevha considered all that needed nding and pushed aside an undeniable thought.
He buried it deep and said, “Bretol.”
“It hurts! It hurts! Just kill ! Kill !”
“Bretol! Where were you before you were brought to this room?”
At Sevha’s forceful tone, Bretol’s fit stopped. His blood-red eyes looked out the window, his gaze fixed on the watchtower.
From this angle, it was difficult to see clearly, but in the castle courtyard below, the Tusk Tribe was gathered, doing sothing.
“Eshu. We’re going to the watchtower. The other prisoners will be there. And dicine.”
“Understood.”
As Eshu helped Bretol to move, the man tried to scream again.
Sevha covered his mouth once more and asked Eshu, “If he makes noise out there, they’ll know we’ve escaped. Can you keep him quiet?”
Eshu nodded and t Bretol’s eyes. “Look at . Look. And rember what we swore on the day we received our honors from the Marquis.”
“I, I, I…”
“Why? Can’t rember? Then rember the day we beca a pack of pathetic orphans.”
As Eshu spoke in a familiar tone, Bretol’s trembling slowly subsided.
“There were so many coffins, but our fathers’ bodies weren’t in any of them. Our mothers told us not to cry, that we were the sons of knights, but we did nothing but weep.”
He must have rembered that day clearly to speak with such certainty.
“And the Marquis ca to us and said, ‘I took your fathers from you, so I will be your father.’”
He must have felt such joy from those words to recall them now with a smile.
“Yes. On the day we lost our fathers, the Marquis, who had lost his own son… he said that with a smile. He didn't weep for us, he just said it. That’s why. Because we were grateful for that kindness, we made our vow.”
Eshu spoke his oath, the oath of the Blanc Knights.
“I will follow your will… Father’s will.”
As Eshu recited the oath, Bretol spoke in a dying, but calr, voice.
“That’s right… And the Marquis said, ‘In the end, you are still my children.’”
Sevha watched them silently, then said, “Let’s go.”
Sevha’s party moved along the corridor and ca upon a bizarre sight.
The hell is that?
On a moonlit terrace, one Tusk tribesman pulled a person from a sack—alive, but beaten to a pulp.
Then another Tusk, draped in a wolf’s hide and holding a staff made from a skull, danced before him. He sprinkled an unknown liquid onto the mangled person.
A shaman?
The mont the liquid touched him, the broken man scread. But the shaman kept sprinkling.
Once the man was soaked, another Tusk dragged him away toward the castle courtyard.
As soon as the shaman was alone, Sevha crossed the distance in three silent steps and buried his sword in the man’s back. He then threw the body over the terrace railing.
After checking that the corpse had landed safely in the bushes below, Sevha looked at the liquid spilled on the floor.
Oil?
Just as Sevha grasped the nature of the ritual, Bretol began to convulse again.
“Young Master,” Eshu urged.
“Let’s hurry.”
Before Bretol could have a full-blown fit, they hurried to the end of the corridor. The door there opened into the watchtower’s guard barracks, where suits of armor were strewn about.
“There are a lot of them upstairs.”
Sevha and Eshu climbed the stairs and arrived in the captain’s room. Knights were tied up inside. Four Tusk tribesn stood guard over them.
Three warriors, one shaman.
Sevha exchanged a look with Eshu. They rushed in at the sa ti, driving their swords into the bellies of two Tusk warriors.
Sevha shouted to the bound knights, “Tackle them and cover their mouths!”
The captive knights threw themselves at the other two Tusks, slamming their bodies into them and pressing the guards’ faces into their own chests to muffle any sound.
One of the Tusk warriors stabbed the knight holding him and shoved him away. The next thing he saw was Sevha’s sword coming down.
After striking the Tusk down, Sevha imdiately looked for the shaman. He was crawling toward the terrace, having already killed one of the knights with a dagger.
Sevha was on him in an instant, his hands closing around the shaman’s throat.
The shaman glared at Sevha with eyes full of hatred and said sothing.
Sevha couldn’t understand the words, but he knew the intent. A curse.
Sevha’s response was simple. “What are you babbling about, fool?”
He snapped the shaman’s neck without a shred of pity.
Silence fell.
“Eshu. Untie the knights. Knights, find dicine.”
Eshu and the knights moved quickly.
Soon, they returned with whatever they could find. For Bretol, whose entire body was broken, the dicine they brought was bandages and liquor.
Just bandages and liquor.
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