Alone with Anwen, with Stefan only able to silently observe his surroundings, Gareth decided to ask a question of utmost importance to his daughter.
“Do you hate me, Anwen?” he said as he stood a few feet away, unable to make eye contact with her. He felt guilt that he’d kept his identity from her a secret for so long but revealing it earlier when she was too young to understand made little sense.
“I- I don’t care…” she muttered as she sat on the closest stack of hay to Stefan, briskly kicking her feet.
“You don’t care?” Gareth asked.
“I don’t care. I don’t care if you’re an alien, or a human, or a demon, or a monster, or a ghost… none of that matters to me. That’s just a silly question to ask.”
“Why do you say that?” Gareth asked.
“It’s not like you to be having so many questions,” she rolled her eyes. “Well, I say that because… you’re Gareth. You’re just Gareth to me, okay? Not a single thing will change that. Full Angel or half Angel… none of that even makes sense to me.”
“I’m sorry,” Gareth sighed. “I kept it from you for so long. You at least deserved to know, before—
“And you deserve to know that you’re Gareth,” Anwen said, a slight smile spreading over her face. “Nothing more, nothing less. I don’t want to hear you saying you’re anything else.”
She doesn’t care that I’m the Angel Slayer… or the Red Devil.
“R-Right.” Gareth said, pretending to clear his throat in order to hide an incoming smile.
At that moment, at least one set of heavy footsteps approached the barn. Anwen got to her feet, expecting the Anbieter to return.
Instead, two Black Shield soldiers had come, the two of them beelining straight for Stefan’s gurney.
“Sorry for the intrusion,” one of them said. “We were ordered to bring Stefan with us. Anwen, you can tag along if you’d like, but the stuff you’re going to see… it isn’t pretty.”
“If the Anbieter’s making Stefan go, then I’ll go too.” Anwen said, her desire for him to not leave her sight in such a vulnerable state becoming apparent.
As the soldier pushed Stefan out with Anwen trailing just behind, Gareth had attempted to follow but was stopped by the other soldier.
“The boss doesn’t want you to come,” the soldier said. “Sorry.”
“Hah, you’re still following him even after he’s shown his face to you?” Gareth scoffed, but otherwise complying.
“We’ll deal with that when we return to the base.” he shrugged, before joining back up with his fellow soldiers.
Anwen took a glance at Stefan’s eyes. She hadn’t noticed it earlier, but they were almost bloodshot.
He barely got the chance to get rest last night. He’s so tired, and now…
Anwen had an idea of what she was about to witness. The fact that she’d been brought to listen to the truth from Gareth and the Anbieter was only part of why the trip to Derban had been made. The soldier’s comments to her hinted at that. She deduced that it had something to do with Stefan’s family. Perhaps the soldiers really did find out what had happened to them, and it was not going to be easy to see.
“This way,” the once-again masked Anbieter said as he waited about 20 yards in front of the mass grave. “We don’t need you two to see all of that.”
Anwen couldn’t see it, but she could definitely smell it. It was the stench of rotting flesh, the toxic odor of death which had begun to hang in the air.
A single soldier stood guard under what was once a shelter for storing stacked-up wooden logs. Behind him on the ground was a shape hidden under a white sheet. Anwen knew it had to be a person—a dead body.
The guard moved aside for the Anbieter to crouch beside the body. Anwen was suddenly overcome by the urge to turn around as the leader held a corner of the sheet, like some primal instinct had beckoned her to look away, one that she didn’t fight.
“Stefan, lad,” the Anbieter said in a stern but soft voice. “I’m going to say this once, and only once. I can’t say whether Gareth knew this or not, but your mother is no more. She lies right here.”
The Anbieter pulled the sheet away, and before him, Kallista’s body was revealed. Her arms rested at her sides, laying supine. She was clad in the brown, long-sleeved bodice and black, ankle length skirt Stefan had last seen her wearing. She wore a single red leather shoe which she must’ve put on hastily once she saw the Light Pillars touching down, and an apron covered the front of her body.
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She hadn’t even finished cooking when she rushed outside. No, she had still been waiting for Joakim and Stefan to come back with the firewood.
It was that fact, not the incomplete state of her body, which prompted the stream of hot tears to fall down Stefan’s face. He was unable to scream, to beat the ground with his fists in anger, to curse the world for taking his guardian, his teacher, the beloved woman in his life from him and keeping that away from him.
Anwen had heard what the Anbieter said and saw Stefan crying. She didn’t have to see the body to understand what was happening. Without looking into his pained eyes, she rested a hand on his chest, hoping to offer a sliver of the comfort he had given her not too long before.
-
“Run, Stefan!” Ruben Holt cried as he pushed the young boy towards the forest that surrounded Derban. A very brief sensation of relief took the man over, glad that at least the younger Laine boy had been able to secure a way to escape the unexpected appearance of the enemy.
Just then, a body fell to its side in his periphery. Before he could register that it was Joakim, who had been pushed aside by his mother, a gunshot rang through the air, prompting Ruben to whip his head in the direction it came from.
“Mum!” Joakim cried as he saw his mother hit the ground, but before he could spit out another word, his face was pushed into the snow-covered ground by a boot-clad foot on his head.
“You scum! Leave the kid alone, he’s got nothing to do with this!” Ruben cried.
“Oh well,” a Titanian said with clear intention to mock. “I suppose you have no problem with us having a little fun with you?”
Ruben found himself landing against the ground a second later, groaning as his ribs felt the impact. A Titanian arm caught a hold of one of his arms, pulling back until a pop was heard, arousing a pained scream from the former Free Army fighter.
“Major,” a Titanian First Lieutenant said to a long-haired male Angel. “Is this child the Asset we’re looking for?”
Maedoc Antelius looked at Joakim, who struggled with a fearful yelp which was stifled by the snow pressed against his face. The Major rolled his eyes before pulling out a handheld device from a utility belt tied around his waist. He held it over the boy’s body, until it beeped rapidly, and the light sensor blinked red.
“Nope, it isn’t,” Maedoc said monotonously. “This one doesn’t have Karesti blood.”
“So the other one who ran into the forest…” First Lieutenant Reynders deduced. “Shall we pursue?”
As Maedoc cycled through the options in his head, a blinding light appeared in the sky, perhaps a league away from the site of the village. Its light-red color instead of the typical yellow-gold that Light Pillars used by the Titanian military was a cause for alarm for the young military unit.
“An unsanctioned Light Pillar?” Reynders asked.
“It could be a Mars factionist, trying to thwart our mission.” Maedoc deduced.
The General warned me of this. With Mars being so autonomous, it’s hard for the military to keep track of their activities.
“Alright, change of plans,” Maedoc announced promptly. The door of a nearby house creaked open, and the head of an elder Derbanite peaked through.
“My, my… what’s all this commotion?” the old man asked. Before he could fully step outside to see what was going on, Reynders whipped her laser pistol out and aimed at his head. The man was dead not even a second later.
“Kill everyone in the village and dump them into a single grave,” Maedoc instructed, not even blinking an eye at his first lieutenant’s act. “Load the man and the child into a craft, alive.”
“Yes, sir!” the soldiers acknowledged.
“The Free Army still lives! You’ve done nothing!” Ruben cried as he was forced off the ground by two soldiers. Joakim only wailed as he watched his still-breathing mother quietly laying face-first on the ground while another couple of soldiers stood him up. While the rest of soldiers systematically and swiftly began a nearly silent massacre, Maedoc approached Kallista’s incapacitated form and crouched next to her.
“In order for my father’s head to remain on his shoulders,” he said, remembering the reason he had joined the military in the first place—to fund his ailing father’s medical treatment. “I must take yours. Forgive me.”
Blood and spinal fluid leaked out of the corners of Kallista’s mouth; her eyes set in unwavering fury.
This must’ve been why Emperor Halsten was so interested in her… her resolve has not faltered one bit even when she can’t move and is aware that she’ll be dead in a moment.
He withdrew a glowing, purple knife, its blade a half-foot long. Like a singular slab of butter, her skin, muscles and spine were sliced through. With her head in the major’s gloved hands, the defender of Terra had been silenced forever.
15 minutes later, the sounds of trotting hooves closed in on the village. The mounted rider climbed off of his steed just before the boundary of the settlement.
“Stay here, Esperance.” Gareth said, directing the clever but aging horse to remain hidden in the forest.
Holding a pendant in his hand which beeped the closer he got to the village, his mind raced with a flurry of thoughts. Did he have to lie to Anwen that he was going on a trading excursion? Was Esperance spooked by the entire Light Pillar traveling experience? Why had it taken Kallista Laine fifteen years after their last encounter to finally send out a distress signal?
From his vantage point behind a large boulder just behind the treeline, he observed that the village was barren. No signs of villagers, travelers or merchants like most other villages. Of course, Kallista would’ve never attracted great attention to her quiet, humble village by revealing her hometown—she was always concerned for the wellbeing of her fellow inhabitants. But a lot of people had been there recently, he could tell. That was only more of a reason to enter.
His pendant brought him straight to the source of the distress signal, a similar-looking accessory, sitting in a patch of red snow in the village square. That wasn’t the only place where blood was visible. It was on the doors, the storage sheds. It was on the broken glass on the ground and on scattered articles of discarded clothing.
“I was… too late.”
Fifteen years prior, he’d promised to take care of Kallista after he helped her return to her village from Titan. Now, all he could see was the quick-com device he’d given her, which he’d disguised as a piece of jewelry, laying in what had to be her blood. He picked up the paired object and squeezed it in his palm.
“I’ve failed you, Ms. Laine. I wasn’t quick enough.”
A tear escaped one of his eyes, but blinked the ones that followed it away.
Then, he felt it.
A slight murmur in his heartbeat, one that only occurred when he was near those who shared his bloodline.
“The younger son lives.” he said quietly.