At some point, power becomes its own master. You cast aside your own ideals and beliefs in favor of expediency and tell yourself it was all necessary.
How utterly foolish.
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The stars and moon shone bright in the night sky, illuminating the rooftops on which my feet glided on.
The wind passed through my unkempt hair and ragged clothing until I came upon my destination.
The higher section of the town.
Unlike the slums, there were lit lanterns on the well built empty streets which were more than a good enough reason to stay on the rooftops.
Almost there. I thought to myself as I spotted the nobles' mansions not far away from me.
With a few more rooftops behind me and a small wall, I managed to get into the mansion’s garden.
I stopped the flow of Sul inside my body and made my way silently into the mansion, picking a small lock at the back entrance. I finally entered the mansion.
The dark halls were extravagantly decorated, red carpets and well done paintings. A single piece of furniture could feed a poor family for a month, a golden instrument could do even more than that.
But mere theft and fencing was not my purpose.
The sound of feet and the sight of light drew my attention.
I quickly made my way into one of the doors, picked the lock in three small breaths, and silently made my way in.
I concentrated on the warm bulb of power in my abdomen as I made my way in, ready to deal with anyone awake, but the dark room was apparently empty.
The kitchen. I realized as I slowly fumbled around in the darkness, making sure I didn’t make any noise at all.
After a dozen seconds, the light and footsteps faded, and I made my way out of the kitchen.
I roomed across the ground floor of the mansion, finding no doors leading to a cellar or a basement, Until I found the staircases and made my way up.
Where are they kept?
I went from room to room, bringing my ears close to the doors, looking through the keyholes, until I found a door with an empty chair beside it. The only room that will need a guard duty is the noble’s room. The only room that might have a clue on where I should go next.
I should be quick, before the guard returns.
When the door didn’t simply open by the handle, I picked the lock, made my way in silently and closed the door behind me.
Small strands of moonlight streamed out through a closed window unto the couple sleeping in their bed, the noble and his wife.
I looked around the room, quietly opening drawers, searching through the cabinet and the parchment filled desk.
But even after quickly looking through everything I didn’t find anything akin to a key or a journal that would indicate about the slave’s whereabouts.
I grimaced and made my way out of the room, until I heard the sound of bed sheets moving.
I snapped my head in the bed’s direction and concentrated on my Sul.
The wife looked at me, her eyes wide open, her neck and naked body, lit by the small strands of moonlight, was purple in places, bruised.
She was clearly a slave, just like I once was.
I clenched my teeth and stared into her unwavering eyes. I took one finger and brought it to my mouth, gesturing to her to be quiet.
The woman did not react in any way, instead she remained frozen, her eyes looking at me.
I turned to look at the sleeping noble and steeled my mind. I can’t leave her here, I can't run away from this.
I slowly drew a crude knife out of my ragged clothing, and made my way to the bed.
The woman did not take her eyes off of me as I brought the knife close to the noble's neck and stopped right before it touched his skin.
My hand trembled for a moment, and I realized that I had been holding my breath since the moment the woman spotted me.
He wouldn’t care about me, If he wakes up I’m dead, he would rather have me die in a dark cell than ever even be near me. I thought to myself, but feeling my jittery hands I still couldn’t help but slowly draw my knife away from him.
Until the woman laid a hand on my own. She looked into my eyes, and made me freeze.
There was no fear, no sadness, only burning intensity.
She firmly took my knife holding hand in her own, brought it to the man’s neck, and pushed.
Blood sprouted out of his neck.
He started to trash wildly on the bed, his eyes open wide in shock and fear. The woman gave my hand another push and the knife had slit his throat completely.
At the same time I faintly heard footsteps outside the closed door.
The guard! My head snapped to the closed door which had a small glimmer of light through its crack, and from it to the closed glass window.
As I was about to get up from the bed and jump through the window, the woman grabbed my arm tightly, anchoring me to the bloody bed.
Just as I did before, she gestured to me to be silent. For a moment my entire body screamed at me to run. Years of knowing dangerous situations and knowing how to escape from them were silenced by one thing.
Her eyes. Intense, wrathful, fearful. Her silence begged and screamed at me to not do anything.
And so I froze.
A minute passed and the guard did not enter.
She leaned forward to my side, until our faces were close to the touch. The smell of sweat and musk permeated my nose.
“Can you get me out of here?” She whispered into my ear to which I shivered slightly and absentmindedly nodded.
She gave me a small thin smile and waited.
I blinked and made myself focus. I couldn’t help but look down at the noble’s corpse, but, before I could see his glassy eyes, I closed my eyes and took a deep silent breath.
Remember why you are here. I told myself and focused on my Sul, feeling the hot bulb of power helped me focus and calm my shaking hands.
“Where are the other slaves?” I whispered back.
The woman’s eyes widened for a moment, she looked between the corpse and me. “What other slaves? We need to get out of here as soon as possible.”
I bit my inner cheek as I heard her.
There were other slaves, I knew there were. I had been skulking around the streets for the last months, I had seen orphans and slaves stuck inside barrels transported into the mansion in the dead of night, and I had also seen what was left of them thrown into the slums. I knew that there were more than one.
With the noble dead. They will be as good as corpses if left behind.
“I know that there are others, I’m not leaving without them.” I didn’t look away from her, I couldn’t run away, I had to fight back, somehow, to show them that I and all of the rest are not toy rats for their own amusement.
We stared at each other, neither blinking, neither looking away.
“Fine.” She seethed. She reached down to the noble’s corpse, grasped at a bloody string, and pulled it up, revealing a key lit by the moonlight. “Kill the guard, then I’ll show you where they are and leave.”
My eyes focused on the bloody key and on the woman. I took a moment to process the fact that she knew that there were others and yet chose not to talk about them only to get stuck with her instructions.
Kill the guard?
The guard who knew, the guard who let the slaves be taken, the guard who let his master have his fun with them and this woman.
“No.”
Before the woman could talk I spoke. “I will get out of the window and reenter the mansion. I’ll create a distraction that will make the guard move, and then you’ll get out.”
Her mouth was open in a gap.
Before she could even nood, I made my way to the window, silently opened it up and climbed down.
As I reached the ground I could see my bloody hands and rags in the pale moonlight. My stomach turned upside down as the image of the noble thrashing around on the bed, his neck torn by my own hands, flashed through my mind.
He was the first person I had ever directly killed.
I had a couple of scuffles with other orphans, but never to the point of killing each other.
We all knew that it was never worth it.
I focused on my Sul and breathed. He deserved it, I need to distract the guard, find the others, and get out of here.
After reentering the mansion and going up the stairs, I managed to create a sound in one of the far hallways and distract the guard long enough for the dressed woman to come out.
Following her guide, we made our way through the dark mansion towards the other slaves.
We stopped in the kitchen, where the woman took a box of matches. From there we made our way into a darkened library.
The woman took a specific book out, revealing a keyhole behind it. She glanced over at me. “The hidden door is very loud, could you take the guard out if he comes?”
I gulped at her question and she frowned.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“Why are you even trying to do this if you can’t even take out one guard, are you an absolute moron?!” She hissed at me, her hands grabbing my shoulders so tightly that it hurt.
“What did you think would happen? That you would just come here, save everyone and everything will be okay?!” Her voice, although quiet, slowly became hysterical. She pushed me away to a spot in which the moonlight shone through the windows,
My feet started to feel jittery, I couldn’t keep looking at her and so I looked at my feet. “I-I just…” Her words sank deep into my mind.
I didn’t want to run away from this.
I couldn’t help but not look at her, but after a minute of silence I slowly looked up at her.
Although she was standing at a dark part of the library, I could see her standing still as a statue, her mouth once more agape.
“You are just a kid.” She said softly
I clenched my teeth but said nothing.
“You are just… Why? Why are you here? Why are you doing…” She looked down at my hands, my bloody hands. “Any of this?”
I remembered my first time seeing the noble’s men throw away bodies in the slums. I remembered how brittle and scarred their corpses were, how their eyes were still open after death.
Glassy and distant.
“...I saw them throw the dead bodies in the slums” My voice was eerily quiet to my ears and I clenched my hands. “I’m not going to run away from any of this, anymore. I’m sick of this… Feeling. They can’t keep doing this. They can’t keep using us like toys, like rats.”
We both stood in silence staring at each other until the woman started to scratch her hair. “You are still a fucking idiot.” Her voice turned hard. “I don’t care about you, if you want to die so badly go ahead.”
She passed by me and let the match box fall on my feet. moonlight shone on her thin see through nightgown and unraveled her countless bruises, some were deep purple, while others were slightly green or blue.
Without any words she stepped outside the library into the darkness of the mansion.
I looked at the door of the library, at the darkness that swallowed her.
She chose to run away.
For a moment I wanted to yell at her to come back, to tell her that she couldn’t keep running away forever, that there is nothing left to do but fight.
But I knew better.
I mentally reached out to my Sul and focused.
After inserting the key and unlooking the mechanism, The bookcase moved by an inch indicating that it was untethered to the ground.
Pushing the bookcase outwards created a rather loud creaking sound making me wince internally.
The words of the woman came to my mind. Are you an absolute moron?!
In hindsight I could have made a bigger distraction out of the mansion to grab the guard’s attention. “Shit.” I cursed under my breath, but I didn’t have time to stand idly.
Right at the beginning of the dark downwards hidden passage was an unlit lantern. I lit it up with the matchbox and quickly made my way down.
Besides my lantern, the entire passage was dark, nothing could be seen. The air was dense, filled with a familiar foul smell.
Step after step I made my way down until I came upon a cramped cell, filled with a dozen people and children. They all winced at the light, their eyes blinking, some put their shaking hands in front of their eyes.
My heart sank and I remembered my time being in a dark cell.
“Everything is alright, I’m here to get you all out, but we will need to be quick.” I said swiftly. While the passage key didn’t work on the cell’s door, I was able to pick it easily in a minute.
The glum faces of women, men, and children greeted me, their eyes shining from the lantern’s light.
The orphans knew me, not from my face, not because of the fact that we saw each other in the past.
It was from the smell.
The grime.
The look in the eyes.
One orphan to another.
The adult males and females looked wild and confused, as if out of their element, they stared longer at my bloody hands, some eyes were fixed upon them with a slight frown, some, with a slight glee.
They must have been in some sort of debt to the noble, or maybe they were falsely accused of something. I thought to myself as we all quickly made our way up the passage wordlessly.
As we all reached the library, my heart sank into my stomach at the sight before me and my mind turned cold.
The guard had just entered as soon as we all came out.
Are you an absolute moron?!
The guard’s face, lit by his own lantern, was furious. his fingertips were bloody and his gaze landed on my bloody hands.
He wordlessly took out a revolver pistol and aimed at me.
Before he shot, I concentrated on my Sul and swiftly rolled away.
Screams broke out from the slaves as they rushed their way to the guard. five swift shots rang out, and I could see some of the slaves, even the children fall to the ground.
I was about to charge him but stopped.
The guard threw his pistol to the side, and with an unchanged furious expression he drew Sul from himself. He started to move faster, his fists landing their marks on the slaves, breaking, shattering, tearing.
Like the inquisitor had done in the past.
The windows seemed so much clearer, the exit from the library door seemed so much lighter. I was about to flee until my sight catched the eyes of one of the dead children.
Sul infused my hands and legs. I threw myself at the preoccupied guard into the ground and started to smash my hands on his face, screaming, without any rhythm, without taking a breath.
After a minute, I was breathing heavily, and the guard who protected his face after the first two punches, threw me off him into the ground.
He got up and gave me a kick to my chest, throwing me into one of the library’s bookcase.
Books fell down on me, my sight was spinning, and a throbbing pain ran in my chest.
As the guard was coming to my side, one of the remaining slaves, managed to cut him in the thigh with what seemed to be a makeshift shank.
The guard grunted, he lifted his leg and smashed it down on the slave’s neck, snapping it. He gave me one look and turned to deal with the other remaining slaves.
In my disoriented state, a couple of books kept sliding from the shelf. One of them hit me in the head and flopped open right in front of me, depicting what seemed to be a way of choking an enemy.
By the time I managed to get a hold of myself, the guard was already towering over me, behind him were the bloody remains of slaves, unmoving, unbreathing, unblinking.
“You were the one who killed the lord, weren’t you?” He asked, his voice gruff.
I tried to stand up, to concentrate on my Sul and move it to my arms and legs. But the guard gave me a simple kick to the head destroying my focus, he himself even stopped using Sul.
“Do you worthless piece of shit…” He stopped to kick me in the stomach leaving me breathless. “Even know…” He aimed his next kick at my groin and I curled into a ball. “Into what sort of shit. You. Got. Me. Into?!” He shouted, kicking me between words, His voice vibrating in the library.
In response I groaned and wheezed, my sight slowly turned black, to which he continued to hit me.
He was about to kick me in the head again, when he yelped and threw a blind fist behind him.
The sound of metal clattering the ground sounded out.
“You! You whore!”
I could faintly hear a woman yelp and something smash to the ground. “Oh, the lord must have enjoyed making you into his plaything every night.”
The sound of struggling continued, along with the sound of someone choking.
Although my mind had grown heavier, and my body felt like led, I managed to open my eyes wide enough to see.
The woman who I first saw at the noble’s room.
She came back.
She came to fight back.
The guard was atop her, and his hands were around her neck as she frantically clawed at him.
He lifted her head and smashed her on the floor, again and again. At one point, she turned to look at me, tears coming out of her bloody eyes, her face turning purple, until her bloodshot eyes grew distant and glassy.
The image of Mother laying down on the snow flashed through my mind.
My body hurt, but my mind cleared.
I ordered my Sul to flow through my legs and arms and so it did.
I made my body get up, and it got up.
I was by his side before he knew it, I could feel him draw on his Sul, but he was too slow. My hands were already around his neck, holding him in a choke hold.
He trashed around, his hands were at first coordinated, and he managed to draw on his Sul, but I had more of it than him. five years of waiting and meditating, cowering and hiding, came down on his neck.
His hands turned frantic, clawing, trying to reach my eyes. I bit any of his fingers that came close, with only one dark thought in mind.
Die.
The bloody, fingerless hands flopped down, and his neck sounded out a little snap.
His eyes turned glassy.
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The library remained quiet and eerie.
I looked around myself, at the piles of bloody bodies, everyone died with their eyes open.
My fault.
The feeling of pain slowly returned to me and I kneeled on the bloody ground. My stomach whirled and I puked. Before I knew it tears started to flood my eyes, my burning throat started to feel as if something heavy was stuck in it.
I tried to concentrate on the warm bulb in my stomach, to calm myself, but I couldn’t. I almost started to cry when I heard footsteps. My mind dropped into a cold emotionless state and my body moved on its own. I pulled the rags over my head and with my remaining Sul jumped out of the window.
Only when I was right outside the mansion, I heard an ear piercing scream from the giant mansion.
I ran away as fast as I could, into the slums.
When I finally reached my hideout, I slumped down. I felt empty and stared into the air. until sleep took me.
At night, Mother visited me as had been doing almost every night. She cursed and screamed and clawed, her eye sockets were empty and bloody. ‘Your fault’ she kept screaming.
The next day I awoke with the feeling of acid in my mouth and heart in my throat. I numbly ate on some leftover stolen food that I had and made sure to cleanse myself using some water from a stolen water bucket.
I numbly made my way through the streets and before I knew it, I had reached a corner near the manion’s entrance.
I looked around me with wide eyes, realizing where I was and what kind of danger it could bring upon me. But before I could turn around and leave, I heard voices of a crowd.
They were all gathered at the Mansion’s gate, some had paper and pen in hands, others were standing near a standing small wooden box, a camera, taking pictures of the mansion.
“Does the police have nothing to say about the massacre?” One of the reporters yelled and the line of officers who guarded the gate.
Silence and hardened gazes were their answer.
Some of the reporters came and asked normal civilians walking around about what they knew, or what was known to them about the noble.
“Unfortunately I don’t know much about sir Radzic, except for the fact that he was a usual customer in my fine clothing shop.” I could faintly hear one of the civilians answer, as he gestured to his shop, especially to its title. “What I do know is that at midnight I awoke hearing a scream that sent a chill down my spine.”
Some reporters left, while one kept asking him various questions.
I mentally blocked their conversation and kept numbly looking at the crowd, until the shop owner’s voice caught my attention.
“Though I must admit, it was strange that he constantly kept buying female nightgowns for the last…” The shop owner looked up and closed his eyes, only to flick his fingers and open them. “Three years! Even though he has. Had. No wife, perhaps a mistress? mayhaps he had a few!” The owner seemed caught in his revelation while the reporter scribbled frantically.
The sight of the woman from last night came to mind, when she was dressed. In the darkness of the mansion, I could barely see or care about her appearance, but at the faint moment of moonlight, I remembered her nightgown, her fancy looking nightgown.
And it all clicked in my mind. I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists.
Three years, three years of constant buying, three years of… How long did she suffer? Was she the only one?
Without noticing, almost on instinct, I smashed my fist into a nearby stone wall. The fist, unenhanced by Sul, connected and I had to force myself not to scream from pain.
I focused on my Sul and breathed, In and out.
After calming myself I decided to turn back into the slums, away from the jaws for evil and corruption. But the reporter’s voice drew me yet again.
“What do you think about the various rummors about hidden slave trade and practice among the noble circles in Itesa? Do you think that sir Radzic was a part of the circle?”
The shop owner’s face screwed up. “Propesturas.” He grumbled. “Sir Radzic is.” The shop owner tightly closed his eyes and sighed. “Was, a contributor to the church, without him and many of the other nobles the church couldn’t focus its main force in this region on reclaiming Dresa.”
The man continued to ramble about how he lost his aunt in the demon horde that took down Dresa, alongside praising the other notable nobles on how they support the church, so that it could focus on what's truly ‘important’.
The eternal fight against the darkness.
The only demons that exist are these nobles. I thought to myself as I stayed at the corner looking at the gathering crowd.
Only when I spotted a white robe and a mask, an inquisitor. I made sure to scatter off. It was bad enough that I had even stayed that long, if someone with a bit of suspicion was to see me, a half dirty young man on the upper side of town near such a site. It might cause suspicion.
purposeless and haunted by what happened the night before. I roamed through the streets of the city. I walked through crowds, stole small purses, and snatched a few small pieces of food.
Small enough to not be noticed.
But I didn’t do anything besides that. Time moved on and I remained in place, frozen.
Until another body was thrown in the slums, and after it another, and another. Their eyes were always open, always blaming, always cursing me, for what I have done, for what I haven’t done.
And before I knew it, the stars and moon shone bright in the night sky, illuminating the rooftops on which my feet glided on.
The wind passed through my unkempt hair and ragged clothing until I came upon my destination.
A bigger mansion, filled with more guards, somewhere inside there was a person that wanted me dead, if he even knew that I existed beneath his foot. There were people who were like me, that couldn’t fight. There was evil waiting to be cleansed.
There was purpose.