I did not wait for a single man. I made my way up to the sixth floor and watched the wave of people crashing against the walls, hell in their eyes. Years of maddened anger in their eyes. The lashings hot and red across their bodies, the lashes scarred and old across their bodies. Groups of people slamming themselves onto the gates. I raised my hood and took a rag on my chin up to my mouth. It felt natural again. It felt like me. The comfort of my armor, the feel of it snug on my body. The way it creased and bent as I ran through the halls.

Maybe it was a bit too big, maybe I was a little smaller.

  I went out to a small platform on the outskirts of the prison. Once for archers, for watchers by the shore. Now they were dead and hung over the guard rail. It wasn’t as if the prison was any better. Fires broke out of windows. One of the light houses was exploding out the top, whale oil igniting in a ball of fire. Men in flames pushed and screaming down the light house. I looked up, all around me. An indent in the rocks. I stuck my fingers through and felt the grip.

  Old new times.

  I climbed.

  No one stopped me, how could they? Wardens still alive were too focused at the roof. On the choke points. Setting up their defenses. There was nothing left to do but try and save themselves. Climbing up the walls, I saw several other prisoners trying the same thing. Perhaps inspired, perhaps desperate. And below them, down below you could see the splatters of blood where men fell. It didn’t matter anymore. You give a man a taste of freedom and he wants more than just that, more than the open door or the ship out. He wants blood. He wants all things deprived, glutton of degeneracy.

  Through the walls, in the cracks, in little windows into the quarters I saw it all. The shadows of figures. Groups of them huddled over others. Not killing. Hurting. Taking. Sodomizers crazed in the eyes. Others taking the eyes out of wardens, gouging them. Another window. A fletching stuck in the neck of a man, the archer playing with it. Turning it in the still hot, still bleeding, still living captain.

  Don’t pity them. Don’t hate me either. It was the nature of war. It was the nature of man, any flood destroys in excess. There are no controlled wars. No controlled sieges. There are only men who understand the scope of violence and those that don’t. I knew exactly what would happen with those doors open. It was a prison. A keep-away for nameless horrors. Frankenstein’s monster, here in cobblestone. The abominations morphed beyond recognition through their stay. Monsters made further into the mold.

  I arrived at the nine, fingers hanging firm on the edge of the top. I took a deep breath and listened, no foot steps. It wasn’t the main cobble platform, rather a side house grown out like a tumor. A few archers were above, scrambling, shooting out. I climbed below them, the wood stabilizers creaking as I climbed up towards a slot where the arrows were being shot from. Up and around, I came to the top of the archery hub. The holes in the floor where prisoners were kept somewhere beyond. More rooms. More pillars. Bridges being cut.

  I stepped down. Soft landing. One of the archers turned anyway. So I gutted him. The others heard his scream and turned. A total of five archers in the cabin. Only the last one quick enough to grab his side sword. He had it raised above his head when I plunged my blade through his neck.

  The roof was large, being a platform for all of Shrieker’s Veil. And the gap center - dead man’s walk - was boarded up. Stairways lead up. Some from the outside, some from the inside.

  Levers stood by the gap. The cages were up above, stiff in their place. I ran towards it. There must have been a group of five. All of them scrambling and taking separate orders. The sun against my back, light in their faces. I cut the first one down and pushed his body towards the lever. It snapped open. The cages dropped. One of the five rushed to the cog, rushed to the lever trying to stop one or the other. He pulled and pulled. Another tried spinning the gear and raising some of the chains.

  I cut the other two down as fast as the first.

  I came to the boy trying to fix the dropped cages. There were prisoners already on the chains, fingers in the gaps climbing them up towards the hole. I grabbed the boy. Lifted him and slammed him face down through the boards. He fell through. His body hit several ladders and steps before he fell into the abyss. Not screaming once after the initial blow, perhaps to mortified or shocked or simply dead to say much more.

  With a blow, I bent the hammer into jamming. It locked and all the gears near my side of the platform dropped down. There were several others, all guarded or manned. Some men were beginning to try and circle me, carrying their weapons as they wrapped around. The boards collapsed in front of us, the holes exposing themselves for the prisoners to make their way up. So it was a torn battalion. Half prone to prodding the prisoners as they climbed, half going towards me to try to put the blade through me.

  “You have no idea.” I said. “I am General Virgil. Leader of the fourteenth.”

  They did not listen. A group of ten charged with sword and round shield. Below me feet a loose chain dragged across the floor, I picked it up and swung it. I hit a man across the face, the blood squirted out his eyes. He grabbed himself and fell to the floor. I threw the chain - this time a beam. It wrapped around and I jumped, traversing a great deal of dead man’s walk before coming to the other end of the ninth floor. The chain jump stopped at the wall, where I climbed back up to the rim and to the top. The men chased me. Prisoners made their way up. Some fell, two others replaced them. The guards were dragged and chucked down. The top was being flooded. With no escape.

  I cut my way through the rim. I cut my way through the top halls, through the showers. All the way back to the key in the hole.

  Where I’d hidden it, somewhere beyond a patched hole. I found it. The ring, the keys. My way into the light houses.

It was time to talk to Hannibal. I had five prisoners behind me.

  “You keep watch. You make sure no one cuts this bridge.” I said. “I’m going for him, you understand?”

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  They smiled. “We understand.”

  “When it’s done. Seize the boats, intercept the food supply voyagers.”

  “Oh. Don’t worry about the prison, you just worry about Hannibal.”

An uneasiness to his words. Something cruel and malignant in the tone, a sadist excited for the whip. I couldn’t tell, but I could trust that they wanted Hannibal dead as much as me. And trust that they knew he was too much for them.

  So I walked. Keys in my hand. The threads snapping and pained with noise as I went through the bridge towards the lighthouse on its small island in the ocean. I made it across. A surprise, to be honest, I wasn’t even sure why I took the risk. I looked back and saw them or rather the figures of the convicts, little dark smudges against a prison half on fire. The flames spewing out the top and sides, the smell from the smoke still palpable even in the distance. I put the key inside but found something strange. I did not need it to open the door. The door handle turned and I was allowed in, key still in the socket. I went in and up the steps. The gallery at the stairway looking back to me as I grabbed the rail and inched up the steps. Whale-fat lanterns every few steps. No one kept with the light above and as such I had an understanding that we were alone. Everything seemed strange today. My trusting of the strangers, my rise up the steps and towards Hannibal, Hannibal’s own allowance of the happenings.

  I stopped at a door at the top. The spiral continuing to the light itself. However the main room being here on this level, close to the top. I grabbed the knob and it turned with ease, the door came open. Hannibal faced me, sat on a chair with the sword in next to him. The table pushed to the side near book shelves. The furnace fire behind him, the little grates spat ash. Paintings with their haunted gazes looked up to me - his own father and mother and brother. I walked through the door frame but only took a few steps. No one hid. Not on the walls, not behind the door. We were alone.

  “You’re not very good at your job.” I said.

He had a drink next to his couch, he shook himself deeper into the sofa and took a sip.

  “Me?” He said. “If it were up to me, you would have died a long time ago. It was not up to me, as you can realize.”

  “Vincent?”

  He smiled and shook his head up and down.

  “Strange who helps you, isn’t it?” I sighed and grabbed a chair to the side. I took it and sat leaned towards Hannibal.

  “Virgil Darko. General, made his namesake in the Kavarian wars.” He said. “Fire-starter. You live up to your name.”

  “It’s just a name.”

  “Do you expect me to beg you back into your cell? You should have drawn your blade by now.”

  “I want to talk. Your death is certain.” I said.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do.” I sat straight. “You know it too.”

  “You live your whole life by a set of rules. And you do it because you think it’ll be easier - divorce thought, divorce the pain. Wake up at six. No drinking. Training at twelve. Academics at two. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.” He said. “Deal with the business men, deal with the bankers, deal with the people.”

  “Why’d you kill your father?”

  He paused. The drink to his lips for a moment. He closed his eyes and drank.

  “He was beating my mother. Would have done her to death. So I broke the rule: and usurped my father.”

  “And you ended up here.” I said. “And your brother took over and in his disgrace-”

  “Went to war with Xanthus. With you, believing that the taking of dirt could salvage our crest.” Hannibal said. “How did my brother die?”

  “Fighting. How else?”

  “That’s what they say. But no one says the details. I only know you killed him.”

  “We trapped him into a cave. He went insane. Started eating his men.” I said. “Then I put him down.”

  He looked to me with narrowed eyes. The drink tipped over high, down his gullet. He threw the cup and took his claymore. The smell of incense, of wood in the air. A warm light from the candles and lanterns. Hannibal stood. I stood.

  He unsheathed his claymore and set it on his shoulder, one arm slumped. A look of fatality in his eyes, a man staring at what would happen. What can only happen. I’d seen that face before. I’ve seen it betrayed, too. Though that wouldn’t happen today. Remember the shores, remember how to kill. Virgil. Space your legs squarely, shoulders raised and ready. Parry hand out, blade in. Aim for the heart. Apparitions of past, lessons from the silver years. Strange how happy memories came to me at the worst of times. Strange how my hate died long before we even fought. I couldn’t say I felt much of anything towards Hannibal, other than his being a wall. But for him -

  This is what your life leads you to. So smile or scream.

  Spirit of Sylas compelling I took out my short sword. Three knives with my other hand, in the gaps between my fingers. I kept the blade out at an angle, single handed. I took steps. We both inched forward. I threw the blades at him. He blade with the blunt. I came at the horizontal. He met me and our faces kept lock as I pushed at him and him to me, his body taller. Stronger. I let go of the sword. Circled. Grabbed his sword hand. In a flip, pushed him down below me. I kept his arm locked and he wormed.

  “Fight with honor. Coward!” He said.

  I kept him still. I inched towards a blade. He kept pulling on his arm, and I kept pulling down. The blade in my hand. I slashed once at his shoulder. Missed, only a shallow cut. He put his hand in front of himself. I kept swinging, better with each mark. Cutting and cutting and stabbing and stabbing at his heart.

  He died long before I stopped. I didn’t realize it until out of fatigue I kept the blade raised. He was stiff, hand at his heart, the cuts bleeding out onto the floor.

  “Died like a dog. Both of you.” I spat, the sweat down my face in long streaks.. “Of what use were your rules and honor.”