Chapter 30 Need To See It.
The relief that Isaac felt when he arrived at the location of the young girl’s scream was palpable. There were not very many reasons for a young girl to be screaming into the night in terror.
The sight that Isaac arrived to see was anything but pleasant but it could have been much, much, worse. A pair of guards were beating on a boy that couldn’t have been older than ten. A girl who looked only a year or so older had been tossed to the side, out of the way of the guard’s boots and shins, and was struggling to get back on her feet. All in all, broken bones and bruises could be healed. What Isaac and Lenna had feared was happening could not have been.
Isaac pulled a throwing spike out of his Inventory and jammed it into the back of the first guard’s knee. As the guard was falling, Isaac punctured his arm and dented his breastplate with two more strikes. The guards in Sapphirestone wore breastplates and open faced helmets over gambesons but that was it as far as armor was concerned. Isaac’s spikes were sharp and his strikes were precise and powerful so the cloth armor-like padding did little to stop his obliteration of the guard’s bicep. Isaac turned and kicked the side of the second guard’s knee as hard as he could. The sickening crunch of bone was unmistakable and his cleats tore skin and fabric alike. Both guards went down in yells of pain and surprise.
Isaac removed the shadows from in front of his eyes and appeared as a pure black apparition in the dimly lit alleyway. There was only a singular lantern casting light and the new moon night sky did little to help. He looked down at the pair of guards who stared up at him in horror and pain. The first guard was gushing blood all over the alleyway and the second guard looked like the pain from his shattered knee had his consciousness in a vice. “Speak.” Isaac ordered the guards with the full intensity of the man imperious and superior enough to claim to be the Lord of Darkness itself.
“W-What are you?” The first guard demanded while he tried to stop the bleeding. The second guard was awake but hardly conscious.
“Darkness.” Isaac replied simply with the same deep and gravelly voice that he had used to intimidate dozens before.
Lenna arrived and planted a boot in the man’s shoulder while Shamesh cancelled the Invisibility that he had cast on her. “Were you ordered to do this?” She interrogated the guard.
“N-n-” The guard seemed to realize something upon staring up into the clear lenses of Lenna’s helmet. The woman’s eyes held not a threat but a promise of a swift execution. “-Y-yes.” He changed his answer unconvincingly. “It was on orders. We were told to teach the little thieves a lesson.”
“That’s a lie!” The girl screamed at him while clutching her brother in her arms. “That’s a lie!”
“Whose orders?” Lenna demanded and ignited in a blaze of orange flames.
“The C-uh-J-uh-T-Topaz.” The guard finally settled on a name.
Lenna sighed. “I see no reason to let them live.” She told Isaac and looked up to meet her mate’s gaze. “Simple filth.” She spat. “If they survive, the children will be at risk of retaliation.”
“I’ll handle them.” Isaac told her and reached down to grab both of the men. The first guard struggled and screamed but the second immediately lost consciousness from the forced movement of Isaac beginning to drag them away from the children. “Silence.” Isaac ordered the shadow that he himself cast over the first guard. The shadows immediately began smothering the first guard while Isaac drug the pair away. The first guard punched Isaac as hard as he could but on contact with Isaac’s shadowcloak his hand ignited in death flames and was burned away the entire way up to his elbow. The little girl watched the first guard’s silent screams in horror as the men that had assaulted her and her brother were drug off into the night, never to be seen or heard from again.
Lenna slowly reached up and took off her helmet. Her silver hair looked like the white ash in the bottom of a fire. Her skin was like the burning charcoal and her eyes were like the fire spirit keeping a traveler company on a lonely night. She took a step towards the girl and her brother and knelt down to be closer to their level. The girl had instinctively brought her brother closer to her chest and leaned away from Lenna’s gentle approach.
“I am not going to hurt you.” Lenna told her. “I can heal your brother.”
Stolen novel; please report.
The girl hesitated for a long moment as her gaze shifted from Lenna to her unconscious brother and back again. “Who are you?” The girl questioned. “And what was that monster?”
At the first question, Lenna’s gaze softened even more and a slight but warm smile started to form on her face. The second question caused an instinctual scowl to flash across her features, before the knowledge of the ignorance of the children, and their status as such, forcefully returned her more gentle demeanor. “That was not a monster. That is my mate. He is much kinder than he looks, or believes, which is why he took the guards away before he killed them. Death is something that little ones like you should be acquainted with as little as possible.” She told the girl. “I am known as the Lady of Hellfire.” Lenna explained and let her aura flames fade away which plunged the alleyway into almost total darkness. The lantern was luckily close to them so the girl could still see half of Lenna’s face clearly. “But I am also a servant of Lua.”
The girl looked up but could only see a black circle where the moon should’ve been. “The moon?” The girl asked her.
“Only the bright side of it. My lady is gathering her strength to push the darkness back again, so while she is busy, I will help you.” Lenna explained and slowly reached out to rest her hand on the girl’s arm. With a gentle pulse of healing magic Lenna could feel the girl’s injuries. There were a lot of bruises and old injuries that hadn’t healed correctly. Malnutrition was obvious but Lenna’s healing could do nothing about that.
“What?” The girl questioned and was about to recoil away when she felt her bruises start to hurt and ache less and less. “How?” She questioned Lenna again with wide eyes.
“You poor thing.” Lenna spoke and brushed some of the girl’s dirty hair out of her face. “No one has ever healed you before.” She sighed. “If you move around too much, you might feel dizzy for a little while, it’ll pass in a few minutes.” She explained and then lowered her hand to rest on the girl’s brother’s shoulder. With her first pulse of healing magic she felt the lethality of the boy’s injuries. He was actively dying from punctured organs. Some of his ribs had turned into shrapnel inside of his body and Lenna immediately realized that her magic alone would not be enough. “Lay him down.” She ordered the girl curtly.
The suddenness of the change of tone and the direct order made the girl start to move before she even realized it. “Wh-why?” She asked Lenna before her brother was even flat on his back.
“I need him to lay flat, hold onto his hand but that is all.” Lenna told the girl who finally shifted out from under her brother and did as she was told. Lenna reached into her Bottomless Bag and pulled out a healing potion. The girl’s eyes went wide at the small glass vial that cost more than a normal person’s month’s pay. It was worth more than she would ever be able to pay back, not without selling herself that is.
“I-I can’t p-” The girl began but was cut off.
“Lua would be ashamed of me, if I didn’t give it to you, for simply being a child in need.” Lenna told her and dumped the vial into the boy’s mouth. He unconsciously gulped it down and the healing from it immediately started putting his insides back together. Lenna also used as much of her power as she dared to help the process along but there was only so much of her power that she could pump into the boy without cooking his brain in his head. By the time Lenna had finished, Isaac was by her side. He had left his shadows in the dark and was now kneeling next to her, clearly visible.
The girl hadn’t even noticed Isaac until he broke the tense silence. “There is a church of Halya on the other side of town. They should be able to do the rest.” Isaac told Lenna.
“He’s healed, more or less.” Lenna replied. “It didn’t take very much of my power but that might have been too much.” She explained and reached into her Bottomless Bag to withdraw the Ocean in a Bottle. She gently poured some of the water out onto the boy’s head. The water would help cool him down in the short term but she needed to make sure that it wouldn’t cause him to freeze in the long term. The night was cold and it was clear that the children’s tattered rags were not enough for the hardly above freezing temperature.
A few moments after Lenna had returned the empty vial and the Ocean in a Bottle to the bag, the boy started to shift and stir. “Cloud!” The girl exclaimed and hugged her brother as his eyes fluttered open.
“Star?” He questioned her blearily. “What happened?”
“They saved us.” She sobbed into his chest. “They saved us.”
Isaac turned to Lenna. “Star and Cloud? There is no way that these children haven’t always been orphans.” He told her. “This is worse than Safeharbor. At least there are working orphanages there.”
Lenna nodded in agreement and looked down at the siblings. “Children, is there an orphanage in this city?” She asked them.
“A what?” Star questioned and looked up at her without letting go of her brother.
“A place where children without families can go to find food and shelter.” Lenna explained.
“There’s one.” Star replied. “It’s always full so we can’t sleep there. They give us food sometimes.”
Lenna nodded in understanding. “Where is it?” She questioned her.
“On the other side.” Star said and pointed towards the nicer side of town. “The guards chase us away whenever we go over there. It’s dangerous.”
Lenna nodded again but this time with a frown. She turned to Isaac. “We need to do something about this.” She told him. “Children should not be afraid of guards, nor should they go hungry, nor should they be forced to weather the cold in rags.”
Isaac nodded in agreement. “I agree. They are much too young and small to properly fend for themselves.” He replied.
“W-we can fend for ourselves.” Cloud said defensively but with a slightly trembling voice as his head continued to clear from the high fever Lenna had given him.
“Yes, you can, but not very well.” Isaac told him directly. “If you were doing it properly, you wouldn’t be actively starving to death.” The boy gulped under Isaac’s pitiless gaze. Isaac didn’t truly pity them but he was angry that those in power had allowed their state to continue. It was just another one of the many things that Duke Sasston had to answer for. But for now, that could wait.
“Take us to where you’ve been staying.” Lenna told Star. “Are there other children with you?”
Star shook her head. “Not anymore.” She replied simply. It was so matter of fact that it took Lenna a moment to realize what the girl had meant. Every other child that had been with them had died, they were the last two.
Lenna’s heart broke from those two simple words and she had to look away while she stood. She took a moment to blink back tears before she put her helmet back on. She turned around again and held a hand out to the children. “If you think you can walk, then take me to where you’ve been staying.” She told them. “I need to see it.”