Chapter 3: Witch Hunt
“Grandpa, it’s time! Mom and dad are sleeping; I want to hear another more about the seraphs!”
“Oh? What would you like to know?”
“Hmmmm, I understood every person in the great city either died or disappeared, and this diminished seraphs numbers, but what about the seraphs living in other villages or in seclusion?”
“Sigh, they had it even worse than the people in Labyrinthian”
“How?”
“When most of the population disappeared from the great city, the emperor thought they had run away with precious treasures, hiding in the shadows, plotting against him.
Knowing it would take a lot of time to eradicate them with the army, the empire put a bounty on the seraphs, 1 silver if you killed one and 1 gold if you were to find out the location of the escapee from Labyrinthian and their treasures.
You should know that in old time, with just one silver, you could eat for 50 days and one gold was 1 thousand silvers; just imagine the people reaction knowing that killing their neighbour would make them rich.
The reaction of course was violence, families that had been friendly for dozens of years started to slaughter each other’s.
Seraphs dying this way, killed in their homes with a knife in the chest were the lucky ones, the unlucky were tortured.
Soon the seraphs living in the villages were all dead or being tortured for greed, but humans weren’t satisfied, they started adventuring in the woods, looking for the refugees, but all they could find were secluded people trying to live peacefully with the nature.
In 3 months even the woods were empty, seraphs corpses could form mountains if piled and yet not a single clue about the refugees was found.
At this moment, the emperor got even angrier and formed a new branch of the army, the inquisitors, their task? Go to everywhere to find clues about Labyrinthian’s survivors.
In reality, inquisitors had a second task, find dissidents and eliminate them before they could incite a rebellion.
When an inquisitor arrived to a village everybody would be at his service, he would interrogate everyone, look everywhere, if even a rock was out of place or someone tried to argue, he would order total extermination.
In a few months, countless villages had met the fury of the inquisitors; the inquisitors had gotten drunk on their powers, some of them on their arrival would often ask to interrogate the prettiest girls in the village alone for few days, and refusal would mean death.
It is said that some of the inquisitors were so bloody that they even became demons.
Well, for tonight that’s all, I originally wanted to tell you about the great dungeon but that will have to wait a little more.”
“Okay gramps… Good night.”
“Good night you too.”
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“Strange, even if I can’t see them, I can feel everyone alive in the gem.”
That’s another gift I’ll explain later, for now, the most important thing is to run away, not even a Nephilim can defeat an entire army by himself, well if you had more time you could, but this is not the case.
“How!? they can do nothing against me, I’ll demonstrate you how I’ll pierce trough and kill them all, they will pay for bullying my city!”
Elpis blood thirst was at a new sky high after seeing the market plaza, he wanted revenge and he wanted it now.
Do you want to waste your family lives? Fine by me.
“What do you mean?”
Do you think you are immortal? No, it’s just that someone else is paying the price in your stead, if someone cut you, you don’t get hurt, but someone in the ark will get cut, don’t worry after a while they will heal; However, if someone dies in there, there is no going back or healing, they die.
Hearing those words Elpis felt like a boulder being placed on his shoulders, what he felt was the weight of responsibility, if the spirit of the tablet hadn’t warned him, who knows how many people in the ark would have suffered.
He also felt even more enraged, not being able to take revenge when he could was a heavy blow to his sense of justice.
“For now let’s get out of here.”
Then he looked to the part of the city were the general probably was, and made a promise in his heart “enjoy the victory till you can, one day I’ll be the one to spill your blood.”
And ran away from the city.
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This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Elpis had gotten out of the city being extra careful not being seen or if seen, not leaving any witness alive.
He didn’t want to leave any trace behind him, especially because he was going to a village near the city to rest a little and decide what to do,if someone stalked him to the village it would be dangerous to the innocent villagers.
To be extra careful he wanted to wait a week in the forest waiting for the empire army to leave, but unfortunately he was blocked in there for over two weeks before the empire left the city in ruins, after razing everything they could, they set fire to everything they couldn’t bring with them.
The sight of his city burning caused the young Elpis to feel a great amount of pain in his heart.
But the two weeks, were no waste of time, he had talked a lot with the spirit of the tablet and had given him a name, Sot;
From Sot he had learned what kind of power he could use,just by thinking he could move objects with a force of about 100 kg.
All of his senses were enhanced, he could hear the footsteps of little bugs at dozen meter of distance and his eyesight could be compared to a binocular.
His overall physical abilities were just a little lower than an arch demon, but his speed was indeed superior, after all arch demons were giant beasts while he was tiny.
However, this was nothing, his favourite and most powerful ability was the power of creation, if he concentrated on thinking about an object, he could create it; however this had his cost, after creating a tree he was already exhausted.
He could also create living things, but the energy required was several times greater.
Finally, after 2 weeks he abandoned the forest and went to the nearest village, the time it took him to walk there was only 6 hours and when he arrived, it was already noon.
From afar, he had seen something different from his memories about the village; He used to go there almost every week with his friends to drink and meet some girls, he prefered not to do that in Labyrinthian because everyone saw him as the son of the first archangel, and he did not want to shame his father’s name.
What he saw from afar was a pole with a rope with something hanging from it. The closer he got the better he could see, when he was about 10 kilometres, he could finally see clearly that what was hanging from the pole was a person.
And not just an ordinary person, it was a seraph, his blood dirty green hair were lazily hanging down covering his facial features, but he could understood from the physique it was a woman.
He felt his blood boil again, not only my city! Now even the villages! I swear, you all are going to taste my wraith!
When he arrived to the village, he was actually startled, seeing the hanged woman he thought the imperials had attacked the village, but the village seemed fine, some people were walking on the streets and they didn’t seem like survivors of an attack.
In fact, they even seemed to be somewhat happy. The Contrast from the rubicund happy face from a man and the hanging woman was too much different and naturally surprised him.
He approached the fat man resting against a covered wagon.
“Sorry to disturb you, but I’ve been away for a month, why is there a hanged woman?”
The smile disappeared from the fat man's face; he seemed somewhat annoyed by the question.
“The empire destroyed Labyrinthian and put a bounty on every Seraph, killing a seraph will earn you a silver, one gold if you make them tell you about the escaped seraphs from the city. That seraph hanged there was an escapee from the city, a few men saw her entering the tavern and thinking they could earn something, kidnapped and tortured her, when she refused to talk after 2 days they hanged her and went to collect the reward.”
After hearing the reason that brought death to the woman he was speechless, it wasn’t the empire that did this, sure, the empire had put on a bounty, but it was a man residing in the village that took her life.
Someone that a day before was trusted the next day killed her.
At this point, his hatred for the empire rubbed off on the village in front of him that permitted all of this.
“You saw all of this and did nothing to stop those men?”
He asked with a cold voice, what he was feeling inside couldn't be seen nor on his face nor from his voice.
“What could I do? It’s not like I care that much about a seraph to risk my life, see, in the wagon behind me I have more than 10 seraphs, ready to be sent to the empire for interrogation. This serpah hunt has opened a new market, and i, Rubedo will gain a lot from it”
Saying this he took the cloth covering the wagon, what he revealed was an iron cage with 10 figure inside.
They were all covered in blood, their hands and feet were bonded with chains and shackles, on their neck collars with a red stone.
Altought they were very dirty, Elpis immediately recognized them as seraphs, seeing his people reduced to that state, he couldn’t hold his anger anymore and his anger exploded.