“Ventos. Ventos. Ventos!” Osias cried out wearily.
His followers reciprocated his grievance. The other Jentyses and even the reclusive Urotyses that he has yet to see in battle ordered the march. Thousands of men exhausted from battle trampled upon rough earth towards their target.
The roaring orders were yelled out so many times that Osias didn’t even need to ask another to figure out what ‘ventos’ meant.
Looking around the thousands of glittering spearpoints under the sunlight that broke through the haze of war and men, Osias recalled how they’d got here…
All the Ordinaries that Osias could see, including those from other companies, scavenged the corpse-ridden plains for equipment and spoils they could pocket and donn. It was something necessary before the corpses rotted it seemed as Osias noticed the cruel gleam in each of their eyes.
It only reminded Osias of each of their origins. Perhaps war makes thieves of many honest folk.
Osias joined them, but nothing fitted him better than the seamless black-scaled armor he was given. Though he did claim the great sword of an enemy of the First Ordeal he slew. It was an impressive weapon… something Osias had rarely come upon even back in the Red Sky’s Great Mountain.
A weapon imbued with special properties.
A Path Finder with the ability to create such a thing was precious, and even the Red Sky only possessed a handful able to forge weapons like this. However… it was likely because they almost always emerged from those of the Second Ordeal because of how prominent Blood Mend was seen from the First Ordeal.
… Resting a hand on the well-made hilt of this great sword, Osias recalled himself adding his essence to the sword, and suddenly the seemingly First Ordeal weapon became immensely heavy, even for him. But it still had room to take more essence, though, any more and it would be too unwieldy for his strength.
Laughing giddily, Osias collected himself before his men thought he was turning crazed just as they did.
But then he noticed that the vanguard of the march slowed their steps and Osias’s face turned grim. Noticing Osias’s change, the rest of his men steeled themselves. Useless prattle and chatter stopped as this change slowly spread from the front of the army to the very rear.
Osias rushed ahead to a higher rising of the ground, just enough to peer over the few hundred men that separated from where he was and whatever the men at the forefront slowed for.
And in the next moment, Osias realized… it was a small fortified city. High stone walls encased a desolate city situated beside a lake too murky to replenish and fuel the soldiers.
But Osias only scoffed as he realized what was going to happen. And before he could even finish the thought, the vanguard quickened their pace towards the city.
‘Pillaging…’ Osias noted, glancing over his followers — they too felt the allure.
The weary army looked onward as though they discovered the very heavens themselves. Like paradise has descended to save them from misery.
And as they all rushed ahead… Osias joined them without another thought.
The men marched with newfound fervor as word spread. They spoke many foreign words at the sight of the small city, all of which Osias knew not the meaning of, but they all were spoken with a grim tone.
‘Is this how those of the band felt? Before they raided and plundered?’
Osias’s company was placed a little before the vanguard, probably because of his measly worth as an Ordinary being a Jentys, but he didn’t mind. Ahead was the single company led by another Jentys with an ability to improve their sight in a way. Although Osias did find it a little odd that no Urutys or anyone stronger led the army and instead cooly brought the rear, Osias had no pull nor ability to ask why.
Sighing to himself, Osias lifted his gaze and threaded through the many Ordinaries that flooded into the main gate of the city. They climbed over another pressing forward against the useless orders and cries of the Jentys. Perhaps they were warning them if it was laced with traps, that a detachment manned the buildings within. If the food and valuables left behind weren’t real.
‘Avarice… was it?’
Like flies covering a rotted carcass… they swarmed everything left to be scoured and taken from.
With a mere blink, he found himself alone and atop a high watchtower as he oversaw the desolate city as thousands of men pulled apart even the very stones that made the walls. Given time they’ll uproot even the homes in search of spoils. Osias simply found the highest point away from all of it and waited for the next march toward the true target.
A few stragglers remained, and from the distant wails of the forgotten in the corners of the city, Osias already knew of their fate.
Such was the nature of retreat… not all could. From here, Osias couldn’t see, but he assumed it was those who couldn’t leave in time despite the army of the Golden Hawk advancing to delay the Red Feathers.
Elders. Orphans. Children. Those unable to march even if their lives depended on it.
And even those who have the heart to stay beside such people.
More distant cries sounded, but as faint as they were, they were especially loud compared to the gleeful laughs and cackles of his fellow bannermen taking what they could find.
Osias leaned against a dusty wall continuing to watch over the city as he thought to himself of something different, washing away other thoughts.
‘Somewhere… somewhere in this vast land is the one I need to find. How many years will it take?’
At first, he thought that he would behead some warrior on the first battlefield and return. Yet… not once has he felt the familiar pull. Not from the enemy nor his side.
It was a slight suspicion, something he concluded as he walked by the great encampment — that the one he needed to kill wasn’t donning the same Red Feather.
At least not in this army.
There were two more armies of the same banner and an unknown amount from the Golden Hawk Bannerman. But as long as Osias’s own side continues to press forth, he’ll be sure to find them.
Sighing to himself, he began climbing down from the watchtower he darkly laughed to himself.
He can only hope that what Mance said was true and that no matter how many years pass in this place… that his true body will not age so much.
After all, he had back experiences waking up in a new, yet old body.
…Osias was given a few nods from the unfamiliar soldiers, likely from other companies as he trampled through the roads he oversaw earlier. He remembered much of the elaborate layout, and he headed towards the other side their army entered from.
As he walked, more soldiers came bustling out of ravaged homes and small buildings. Overturn carts and broken entries littered his sight. The cackles of them were especially loud down here and greed tainted their beaming faces. It was amusing how much they could smile after fighting for days endlessly… or perhaps it was because of it that they could smile like that.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
From the corner of his eye, he heard a group of his fellow raiders pull an old man by his long hoary air. They dragged him roughly across the stone streets outside what Osias assumed was his home. Tattered brown rags for clothes only covered the old man’s bottom half, his wrinkled skin practically outlined his ribs. As if the old senior couldn’t bring themselves to take and steal over what was left behind in his city for the few days before the Red Feather banners approached.
“Khamar! Kham—”
A wet cut sounded and flesh hit the stone in the distance, but similar scenes riddled his sight and senses, so much so that he didn’t know if it was the old man.
“Hmph… so ‘khamar’ means please?” He spoke to himself in Vorin… away from the ears of his bannerman.
Raspy cries and high piercing pleas sounded as Osias continued to wade through the carnage of the desires left on the street.
Was it something flowery in this? Osias recalled the grins that spread throughout the soldiers outside as they approached the city walls.
Something like paradise for one and hell for another?
He silently laughed to himself for trying to think of something poetic… what was he? One of those story vendors in those entertainment troupes he saw?
He was someone who helped these men survive and thrive like this.
In the next moment, Osias brushed sides against the road that led to the city center. Yet it was already more ruinous than the other roads and buildings than any other… in the short time they’d entered the city it was torn asunder. Perhaps the soldiers wanted to make an example of such a precious place to the lost inhabitants of this city, a source to direct their anger while the others drowned in avarice.
Osias hesitated, he wanted to reach the other end of the city wall sooner, but his curiosity wrestled against his duty. Even if the other soldiers ran through and ravaged it all over, he wanted to know what once decorated this city's center. In the end, Osias decided to explore the desecrated yard.
Stone-paved paths led and wove around once glimmering cerulean waters — though it did seem some decided to let their waste spill in and tainted it. Osias stepped atop the patches of trampled grassland and inspected the many beds of uprooted flowers scattered all over in a mess of squashed stems and torn petals.
It seemed that everything of beauty… of value was stripped of what made it so. Was beauty something so frowned upon for men to spoil it?
Before the desecrated fountain and paths leading to the absolute center, stone statues loomed the once beautiful yard. The forgotten deities of this desolate city brandished their broken spears at the sky as Osias sauntered past their feet. Giant stone kings looked down on him from their broken thrones, their faces chipped and stained, even their names lost in the mists of time … and the Red Feather’s arrival.
“Wow…” He murmured as his eyes traced downwards.
Lithe young maidens danced on stone plinths of these once majestic carvings, draped scarcely only in flowers. They looked to be once the dancing and playing daughters of the larger statues from how the scattered limbs of stone and beaming heads looked. Osias could imagine that his fellow bannermen seeing these beautiful carvings of stone only invigorated the seething lechery that welled below these tortured men. Perhaps that’s why they hurried out of this city center once they found only stone women.
Monsters stood in the paths right outside of these fair stone maidens. From scaled behemoths to many-headed and many-limbed furred beasts… All of which were beasts he could not name nor recognize even if they weren’t shattered and destroyed — protectors who failed their duties it seemed as Osias clutched the thin stone arm of one of the beaming stone maidens with a sigh.
‘Bastards overturned everything… Stone guardians couldn’t protect them.’
Continuing deeper into the yard, Osias found a… shrine of stone. An odd sight he surmised as he studied the dozens of pillars that circled the stone center. The large towering pillars enclosed it so tightly that Osias could only think that if it was made with steel then it’ll look more like a cage.
‘Or perhaps rotted wood and branches…’ He wistfully thought, rubbing his wrists.
A person couldn’t fit in the gaps between the pillars, but as expected, it too was turned into ruins. Climbing over a toppled pillar, Osias came towards the center. He shuffled over the wrecked and risen stones that once were laid beautifully he assumed.
As he did so, he raised an eyebrow and blinked, only finding a single raised altar of sorts made from a different stone than the others, a pure white of fresh snow streaked with lines of night black. It looked to be carved intricately with such a grace to detail Osias couldn’t understand the purpose.
But then as he walked closer, he found something that made his blood run backward. The altar… wasn’t chipped, shattered, or broken. It looked to be untouched and unsullied by the graces of his fellow Red Feathers. He felt like a fool for realizing it only now despite walking atop upturned stone and earth by his bannermen.
‘Did they not bother? Why…?’
He blinked and in the next moment he found himself overwhelmed and enraptured to touch it — his finger already headed for the stone structure.
‘Wha–’
Then the hairs of his arm rose just before he touched it and jerked his hand back and a wicked memory drew and stirred in his mind.
He breathed raggedly and his face turned flushed. Desperates gasps left his mouth and he tumbled down to his knee. His hand that once almost touched the altar reared back and grasped his armored chest as he then staggered onto the ground. But nothing could calm his mind as he tried to collect himself and recall the buried memory.
Osias fought it, clenching his fists until his nails bit into his palms, the sharp sting a fleeting anchor to his waning resolve. His vision blurred, blood rushed to his head, and the world around him seemed to darken, leaving only the altar and its insidious pull.
‘I—I have to!’ He thought and suddenly slammed his head against the rigid and overturned stone.
This metal clang repeated over and over until the memory surfaced.
Splatters of his crimson blood followed each wet thud, even staining the altar.
“Kira—” Another hit sounded through his words.
“Pull—” More blood tainted the stones as he formed his thoughts between blows.
“F-First Ordea—” He realized, driving off the overwhelming sense of restlessness.
“Relic!” He yelled.
A relentless urge gnawed at him, the sensation of being on the precipice of something both terrifying and glorious. It was a restless hunger that clawed at his insides, demanding satisfaction, screaming for release. He felt as though he was teetering on the edge of an abyss, the relic within reach, yet just out of grasp, mocking him with its proximity.
Yet… why? Why did it feel dangerous?
It was nothing more than an intricate stone altar, raised into a flat wide surface that faced the sky.
His eyes strained and he tried to find why it seemed so treacherous. How did none of the other bannerman leave alive?
It must be special to him and him alone.
But it was just… stone. Even while he was fighting against this enticement of Blood Reave, he couldn’t find both what made—
Osias stopped moving and scanned with his eyes… then delved into his blood connection.
Blood connection… was hard to describe. Like a different sense that was always present, and difficult to train and apply. Most Ordinary blood-born like himself could barely take blood from the ends of blades. But that was the limit of his connection and control aside from naturally being more aware of his blood flow and using that to improve his essence control.
Outside of his body was something entirely different, and difficult to grasp. As though he was trying to trace a drop of water as it traveled through sand.
But this time, the overwhelming allure of what he needed to grasp was beckoning for him. He clawed at it, attempting to impose all of his will into taking it with Blood Reave as it inched closer and closer.
He strained himself and his breathing turned increasingly ragged. He brought out his hand as though the only thing that could placate his desire was before his fingertips.
Before this endless precipice rendered him into an animal.
Suddenly… from below the altar’s unsullied base where the attempts of soldiers desiring to break off the precious-looking object from where it stood, an ominous presence crawled from some crevice Osias couldn’t find earlier.
Its head was crowned with a pair of vivid, blood-red antennae that curled menacingly like twisted horns, jutting from its brow with an unsettling grace. The crimson hue of its head was vibrant, as if it had been seeped in fresh blood. The color stood in stark contrast to its inky black body, a darkness so deep it seemed to absorb the light around it.
‘A… centipede?’
The centipede’s body was segmented, each segment armored with an ancient looking chitinous plate that reflected the dim light in sickly shades of oily black and green. As it moved, the segments rippled, revealing rows of thin, spindly legs that bristled with coarse hairs. The legs, countless and relentless, moved in a nightmarish wave, carrying the creature with a disturbing fluidity across the altar's length.
Osias wanted to move, to turn away from the crimson abomination before him, but his body refused to obey. He was rooted to the spot, paralyzed by a deep fear and allure. The very thing that is the source of his fear is the same as what could satisfy his Blood Reave.
And as each of its swarms of legs approached, Osias was pressed lower and lower as though he was to prostrate himself before it.
Just as it came an arm's length away, the centipede’s beady, soulless eyes latched onto Osias, and in that moment, he braced himself for what felt like an inevitable doom.
In a blur, the centipede’s crimson-tipped mandibles lashed out, sinking into the flesh of his forearm with a force that made Osias’s entire body jerk.
And in the next moment, his sight faltered as well as his strength. His vision continued to darken, the once-vivid colors of the world now faded and grey. The pain, so intense at first, began to dull, replaced by a creeping numbness that spread from the site of the bite, consuming him from the inside out. He could feel himself slipping, the world around him growing colder, quieter, until all that remained was the distant, echoing beat of his slowing heart.
And in that final moment, as the last vestiges of life slipped from his grasp, the image of the crimson-tipped mandibles and the inky black body of the centipede was seared into his fading mind, a haunting reminder of the horror that had brought him to this end.
Then, there was nothing — only the cold embrace of darkness and the silence that followed.