“They’re innocent,” Gareth concluded after asking each girl what they knew about Hugo and his ambitions. “Victims who were caught up in the mess. I appreciate your intuition, Anwen.”
Anwen fiddled with her fingers, trying to hide the fact that her father’s attempt at complimenting her made her feel warm inside.
“He was going to save us…” one of the seated young women sniffled. “He was going to save all of us, how could this have happened?”
“This man, you mean?” Gareth said, pointing at the still-senseless man who lay with his arms and legs tied together at his feet. The warrior waved a hand over the man’s body, and for a brief moment, his skin glowed purple before disappearing. “He couldn’t even save himself. Look at him… it was hopeless. He could’ve tried, but at the end of the day, he wanted all of you under his control.”
The girl could do nothing but sob upon hearing this bitter truth, whether she truly believed it or was trying not to.
“What did you do to him with your hand?” Anwen asked, in an effort to shift her attention away from the pained girl.
“I invoked a Reserve barrier that will keep him paralyzed for a week while I figure out what to do with him.”
“I would suggest taking him to the Anbieter for questioning. Perhaps he knows more about the Angels’ secrets than he seems.” Vi suggested.
“Wait… you can just make barriers from thin air?” Anwen said with curiosity.
“That’s impossible, but in essence, it isn’t very different from what I did back at the mountain with the false Light Pillar. I converted some of my Reserve into a semi-physical form by emitting it from my body. Think of it as sweating, but with Utrium energy instead of salt and water.” Gareth explained.
“I recommend we search this village for anything that connects this man to the Angels,” Vi suggested once again. “It is abnormal for a singular Terran man to be so connected to the idea of vanquishing them. The Anbieter would be very much willing to examine a situation such as this.”
“Let’s start looking,” Gareth agreed. “Anwen, watch over the girls and make sure none of them make any sudden moves.”
“Okay.” Anwen concurred without dispute. Gareth and Vi parted for one of the dozen or so buildings, beginning a search which would take them less than an hour total.
Anwen sat down and leaned against an outer wall of the one-bedroom house in which she was briefly held captive in. She tried her best not to look at the faces of any of the girls that sat before her, but weeping and whining coming from some of them was impossible not to notice. Anwen realized that their tears were not for their uncertain future after Hugo’s capture---but for Hugo himself.
What did that man promise them? What did they have to give in exchange?
However, other girls were completely silent, seemingly having accepted their fates as becoming lost, unguided souls once again. It would be back to square one for them. One of them was Iris.
Anwen took a glance at her defeated eyes, but the cult member quickly looked away to avoid the embarrassment.
“There’s no point in trying to hide, Iris,” Anwen said. “You sided with that freak of a man.”
Iris’ lips trembled as the girl fought with herself on whether to remain silent or admit what she knew was true.
“Spit it out, Iris. I can’t know for sure that what he told you and I… and everyone else is true. Yet you said yes, you experienced something no girl should have to… and you lured me, and God knows how many other girls into facing it themselves. All for what? An empty promise?”
“He told me… it would take some time…” Iris said as her body shook. “That all I had to do was be patient… and that everything that I wanted would come to me. I agreed to lure you and any other girls so that you too could get what you wanted.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“What did he have to prove it?” Anwen asked. “Besides speaking to you in a beautiful manner?”
“He told you that your being is made of three parts, didn’t he?” Iris asked.
“He did,” Anwen confirmed. “But those are just words. He might’ve shown you his own twisted view of love… which isn’t even love let alone paternal love… but how did he show you that he would defeat the Angels once and for all when he could not even protect himself against me?”
“He said that there are three parts to every person, but not everyone would have all three parts. To him, he was missing one, and I was missing one as well. But we each had something. What I had was dormant Reserve energy, as he called it. And in the act of extracting it from me… he also gave me what I lacked.”
He’s trying to collect Reserve… to make himself stronger? What did he give her?
“What was it that you lacked?” Anwen asked.
An anxious smile spread across Iris’ face. She had an answer to give Anwen right away.
“Love. He told you that too, right?”
“As in, the part of me that was missing was love? No, he didn’t say that to me. But he did say he’d give me love. But that’s not all there is to it, isn’t it?” Anwen wondered.
“A place to call home, people to call family, somewhere I could feel welcomed. I never had any of those. He gave me all of them… and to make sure that I would never forget it, he gave me a physical reminder.”
“That is?” Anwen asked.
Iris’s bound hands rested themselves over her stomach, and Anwen noticed for the first time how much it bulged and stuck out of her otherwise average figure. The realization sunk in, and Anwen slapped a hand over her mouth in horror.
“It was six months ago when he found me after I had run away from my home,” Iris said, her voice now having a much more neutral tone compared to the passion it had just moments before. “I’m not the oldest, but he found me the earliest. He trusted me enough to look for more girls to recruit, to grow our numbers… I had no choice, really. I thought that the quicker I found more girls, the faster he would get us to salvation. But now…”
She looked down at the unconscious, paralyzed form of her unborn child’s father, and rivers of tears came rushing down her eyes.
“…you’re going to kill him, aren’t you? Then we won’t get our salvation… and who will care for us and our babies? I’m only 15…”
Only a year older than me…
Anwen struggled to say her next words. Iris might have been the reason she had nearly been forced into Hugo’s cult, an accessory to the preying of young and innocent souls to take advantage of. But it wasn’t her fault. And because of Gareth’s intervention, it seemed that Iris’ and the other girls’ dreams had come shattering down.
“I…” Anwen began. “I know of a real group that is actually fighting for peace on Earth. And I know it doesn’t sell empty promises, because I’ve seen it for myself. Everyone in it fights for our future. Everyone’s future, actually. Yours and your child’s included.”
“The perfect world you so desire,” a man’s voice said as he stood before Iris. “Does not exist…”
“Gareth, you’re back.” Anwen said aloud, but more so to herself than to him.
“You ran away from a cold world… you’ll only return to a cold world,” he continued. “Look around you… that veil of light that Hugo offered you was always thin, and it’s already fading away. If you choose to take up the sword, you’ll only be thrown out into darkness. All of you… go home. The salvation Hugo offered to you was a half-truth at best.”
“Sir…” Iris sniffled as Gareth started to untie her bindings. “We have no homes to return to. What are we supposed to do?”
“You have no home?” Gareth asked. “Make one for yourself, then.”
“Gareth, why would you say that?” Anwen cried. “W-We can’t just leave them all here! Can’t we… can’t we at least take them to Marius?”
Gareth sighed and turned to Vi who stood behind him, and wordlessly asked them to allow it.
“I have no issue with it,” Vi answered, holding a leatherbound tome in their hands. “But they will not join the Black Shield. They present too much of a liability for us.”
A smile returned to Anwen’s face, grateful to Gareth for not totally neglecting the lost girls.
“Let’s get going,” he simply said. “I estimate a six days’ journey on foot from here to Marius. I don’t want that getting any—
A sharp, stabbing pain in his chest suddenly caused the man to fall to his knees. He grasped the shirt fabric over the top of his upper torso as his face made a strained expression.
“Gareth!” Anwen cried, running over to her father with worry written over her eyes. She put one hand on his shoulder and another over his stomach. “What’s wrong, are you okay?”
“Y-Yes,” he said, his eyes meeting his daughter’s face. “I set up some Reserve-activated traps in Marius while we left… they’ve been set off… don’t worry about me, I’m fine.”
The hulking man took a few long breaths before he got back onto his feet. Vi undid the rest of the girls’ bindings as Gareth began to walk down over the stone bridge, using its railing to support him. He hadn’t noticed where it had ended, and nearly took a tumble when he had crossed it. Anwen rushed in and caught him, immediately noticing that the left side of his body was weaker than the right. She put one arm around his waist and used her other hand to hold his wrist as his left arm fell over her shoulders.
The father and daughter’s eyes locked for a few fleeting moments, and although Gareth didn’t speak a word, Anwen didn’t need to hear him to see the countenance of appreciation in his eyes.