Keiser watched in silence as the belongings and flowers were consud by the fire, the smoke curling upward into the darkening sky. His gaze shifted to Lenko, who was kneeling close to the flas, lips moving faintly in prayer as he cast a handful of small blossoms into the blaze.
After a mont, Keiser lowered himself beside him. He picked up one of the fragile flower, studying its pale petals between his fingers before casting it into the fire as well.
He felt Lenko’s eyes flick toward him, curious perhaps, but he ignored the glance, keeping his focus on the flas. The fire crackled and hissed, devouring all that they could offer in exchange of the dead.
Keiser’s thoughts lingered on the weight of it all... the people, the innocent, even the livestock... sacrificed without rcy. Every spark, every curling ember was a reminder of what had been lost, and of how cheaply life had been traded in this place.
Keiser’s thoughts drifted as he watched the fire.
He wondered how differently things might have unfolded if it had only been Muzio and Lenko... if he hadn’t been Muzio, carrying with the instincts and burdens of the knight he once was.
What would have beco of these people then?
He tried to recall the ti when he was still ’Sir Keiser’, yet nothing in his mory of that life stood out as particularly strange about Hinnom. Perhaps, in that version of events, the princess had managed to take control and resolve the crisis more cleanly. Or perhaps everything had simply unraveled down another path... whether for better or worse, he could not tell.
What he did rember clearly was seeing Yona during the Gambit. She had stood stiffly beside the First Prince, a doll dressed in silk, moving only when it concerned her betrothed or when conflict forced her hand. Yet the strength she had shown then paled against the power she had displayed fighting beside him today.
It unsettled him.
If his calculations were right, he was at most a months before the events of the Gambit. And yet, the princess standing at his side now felt sharper, stronger... far more capable than the noble figure he had once witnessed in the trials.
But all of that was just thought.
In the end, people die, animals die... every living thing reaches its end sowhere, sohow.
Keiser flinched as Lenko’s bandaged fist tapped against his shoulder... his still-raw, stinging shoulder. In truth, his whole body felt as though it were barely stitched together, aching and trembling with every movent. It wasn’t quite falling apart, but it wasn’t far from it either.
Still, Keiser was no stranger to pain, he had lived with it, trained through it, survived it.
What was new was Muzio’s body itself... fragile, overtaxed, already pushed far beyond its limits. And yet, with Keiser’s will driving it, sohow it endured, staggering forward where it should have collapsed.
"You’d better pay respect," Lenko muttered, his voice thick, weighted with a grief he tried to disguise. "Especially Sir McKenzy. He was your horse..."
Keiser’s gaze darkened.
He hadn’t considered it in full at the ti. He had only thought of breaking the warded gate, forcing it open. He believed the livestock would follow him through, that the runes guiding them would be enough to keep them safe.
But fear and instinct had torn those hopes apart. The mont they broke free, the animals scattered, blind with terror.
All except one.
McKenzy had stayed by his side, steady and unyielding. The horse had shielded the princess, even reared against the beasts.
Loyal to the end. Too loyal.
That devotion had been his downfall.
Much like himself.
He closed his eyes and clasped his hands in prayer.
As Keiser, he had never once prayed over the corpses of beasts, nor even for the comrades he had buried on the battlefield. He had always stood in silence, watching others grieve, letting respect be asured by presence alone.
Yet here, with this fire consuming flowers, belongings, and mories, he found himself bowing his head... not for strangers, not for villagers... but for the loyalty of a single horse that Muzio had called his own.
It was the least he could give to the horse. A prayer for a loyalty that had burned brighter than reason, and cost him everything.
By the ti the embers thinned and the gathering dispersed, dusk had already crept upon them.
It was ti to leave.
The forest no longer carried the sa protection it once had.
With Muzio’s ward gone, the beasts road freely once more, drifting back to the paths they had once tread. When the ward still stood, they had wandered unnaturally, slipping into places they never should have been.
But now, the balance had shifted again... the beasts would return to where they belonged. So the path was uncertain now, unpredictable, every step carrying the chance of danger.
And so, the people too must retreat to where they should be.
But they would have to be cautious. No one wanted a repeat of that desperate chase through the trees, hunted from the shadows all the way to the gate.
It was no surprise, then, that they found Diego waiting at the entrance of the underground settlent. He stood with a handful of rcenaries, clearly tasked with escorting them back to safety.
The people who erged behind the funeral, eyed the n warily.
Their gazes lingered with bitterness and suspicion, as though they could still see in these rcenaries the shadows of the ones who had once driven them toward death. Yet the fear was different now... thinner, less consuming.
The poisonous words of the old mage, the one who had spun tales of curses and twisted survival into betrayal, were gone. With his death, they are freed from that grip, the people seed able to think for themselves again.
It was always easier to believe in cruelty when soone else whispered that it was necessity, when a story was woven so tightly around your ears that you could not hear the cries on the other side.
But when that voice was silenced... when the veil was torn... what was left was the undeniable sight of suffering. Neighbors, strangers, even children... all of them broken by choices that had once seed justifiable.
Now the villagers looked, really looked, and saw the weight of what had been done. A week of distance had softened the haze of fear.
And perhaps, too, the rcenaries themselves understood. They were seasoned n, after all... n who knew well the nature of desperation, of poisoned judgnt, of how easy it was for survival to rot into cruelty.
It was a start.
With any luck, he would not return months from now only to witness again what he once had as Keiser...
Hinnom, the last line of defense, lying in ruins.
Reviews
All reviews (0)