Chapter 19: Who Annihilated My Brood
Tella, if not for his white-snow epidermis, reminded me much of myself as a child...Naive and waiting for the next thing to be tossed my way to rid myself of the constant and mind-numbing boredom. I could admit that even with all the summit flare--It still brought me that same sense of all-encompassing pang of tedium. "Tella, would you like to hear a story?"
He seemed confused, either at why I still chose to let my country still look as if it was ruled by proxy...Or possibly the true reason I freed him from his duties here. "Don't you need to get down there?" Tella flicked his eyes down towards the many astutely dressed men and women, nearly flinching from dodged recognition of his view. "It's simple...You see the Svet tyrant--He has not been able to retract his 'menacing' stare from our lofty position."
Even without looking, I could feel the cold vision from the Ice golem of a man burrowing into my psyche like a hammered nail. His Atlantian lackey surely would be using the fact that I have superseded my father's place in their once-cowed nation of oil and gold during their next election cycle, Pathetic...There was no moral in how they mocked my fatherland's rules of authority while he cuddled himself with his nation's parent monarchy's most vile king to date.
"I don't like how they look at us...Like they're--" Tella caught himself raising his voice a little too loud for his own ease, eyes cringing at the sound of his own voice echoing down the vaulted walls of the glass semi-dome. "They have been conned by years of forced caste systems and embargo into wholeheartedly believing they are better than us--Hating us for our melanated skin tones and 'Lack of civility'...I wonder how civil they will be when I crush their cities and sack their fortification."
Though I gripped the smooth railings for intensity, I did not care for civility nor any goal I had stated to anyone till this point. Tella would be privy to not only a putrid hook of trauma in my buried memories but also become my sole confidant in knowing what truly lurked beyond the surface of mortality. "I ask you again, do you want to hear a story?"
"Y-yes, it's not what happened to Dennis again, right? I don't do good with gore..." He flinched slightly, making himself smaller while silencing himself for what I had to say...
The flickering torchlight cast macabre shadows dancing across the ravaged throne room. I stood amidst the visceral carnage in a fit of catatonic dread, chest heaving, as tendrils of choking smoke wormed into my tiny lungs. My booted feet sloshed through pools of still-warm crimson juices, the once-sumptuous tapestries smoldering into ash around me in a blazing halo of searing blue flames.
Disbelieving red eyes raked over the broken forms strewn carelessly - palace guards with sightless eyes frozen in rictuses of pure agony, their ornate viper-scaled armor cleft and carcasses left like Blood-eagled sacrifices to the devil. Loyal retainers and maids I'd known since childhood, throats rudely yawning from severed jugulars with no one left to even give witness.
It was the contorted statuette nailed to the bloodied throne itself that unraveled the final cables of my virginal sanity. "M-mother..." The anguished rasp barely carried over the crackle of the encroaching inferno that whipped my eyes shut with each current sent my way. I staggered forward, boots squelching the innards around me until I stood mere inches from the grotesque mirror image of my once-living mother.
My bitter mother, the graceful Marna Vasca--regally garbed in mauve ceremonial robes now tattered and soaked through with her life's essence. Four jagged obsidian blades pinned her decapitated body to the ancient throne, her proud head slumped and lolling at an unnatural angle from her jeweled wrist.
I had never seen such absolute horror in my life, even with all the public executions and torture of rebels that had taken place mere inches from my face in an attempt to harden me for rule. "No..." The hoarse denial ripped from my throat like a feral animal. "No! Mom?" My hands scrabbled at her mutilated form, grasping, shaking, pleading for any sign of life to reanimate her broken husk with some sort of love-bond mysticism.
Her glazed vacancy was implacable, the body rapidly cooling between my shaking fingers. With a guttural cry of denial, I wrenched myself away, boots skidding through congealing scarlet pools as frantic desperation drove me onward in a fit of manic stumbling through flesh and viscera. If Mother had fallen to the masked assassins lurking in every shadow, then Father and Kash would have met the same brutal fate. I had to alert the palace of what I had seen before anyone else was taken from me.
I shoved my way through the ravaged antechambers, heart thundering like war drums in my ears. Shrieks of pure terror echoed ahead and my steps faltered, tiny boots stifling to a halt.
The doors to the royal quarters stood ajar, the heavy Titinium-laced Cactiwood scorched and spiderwebbed with sizzling cracks. Near the entrance, no less than eight of the palace's elite Guard lay in mangled, unmoving heaps of broken misery. Their pristine ceremonial gold armor was sundered and slicked crimson, expressions of their final moments twisted into horrific grimaces much like the others I had stumbled upon.
They had fought...and died...protecting those beyond. My breath hitched in a ragged gasp as I drank in the monstrous scene. There, splayed mere feet beyond the valiant guards' broken bodies...lay the elegant, once-regal form of my dear aunt.
"Aunti Bala..." The name escaped my lips in a whisper, drained of all inflection save disbelieving anguish. Like a sleepwalker caught in a waking nightmare, I drifted to her side and crumpled gracelessly to my knees; Though not my actual mother, she had raised me well into my elementary years, to this day I still have never truly gotten over the loss...
My hand trembled as I reached out to caress her serene, bloodless features that were almost left purposefully untouched. Unlike the others, there were no outward marks marring her beautiful face. No...it was the unnatural limpness of her limbs, the utter stillness where there should have been the gentle rise and fall of breath.
I gathered her limp hand in mine with gentle appreciation, savoring the last lingering warmth and caressing her long, delicate fingers that had held me so tight mere hours ago. On the third knuckle shone the single ornate ring--the final relic of her nobility to the Vascan line that brought her so far away from her homeland.
A marriage severed forevermore by the brutality of this night, not just my own father's loss of his wife...I couldn't bring her to call her anything more than the one who birthed me in the wake of my caretaker's lackluster exit from mortality
My throat threatened to close entirely, choked by the burgeoning tidal wave of loss and despair crashing over me...There was still one member of the royal family unaccounted for in this unfolding horror and I still could not hear any sounds of allied soldiers fighting back whatever had caused this wretched carnage.
"Kash...Father!" I rasped their names like a desperate echo of a phantom. The thought of my beautiful, headstrong little sister suffering the same savage butchery lent me unreasoning panic--I had let a small heretically charged prayer to even the native lizard gods Doutros slip from my lips in an attempt to save her from the hell before me.
Staggering back to my feet, I lurched down the arterial hallways in search of any sign of life - any hope that she yet lingered, spared from this charnel banquet of assassination. At last, I reached the carved black doors of Kash's private chambers and exploded through them with wild, frenzied energy that left no room for the fear I felt gripping my chest.
The lavishly appointed bedchamber stretched ahead, rich furnishings overturned and strewn in the unmistakable aftermath of violence that made the pink patterns look almost sinister. The room's ability to hide the red hues of blood forced my eyes in every direction. huddled in the far corner, face streaked with tears and spattered gore...was Kash herself.
A squeaking noise that couldn't be said for a singular word escaped from the tightened coil that had become my esophagus. The tension lanced from my shoulders in hot relief and I staggered forward. But her flinching recoil and the naked terror gouged into her expression brought me up short, breath catching violently in my throat.
There, cradled to her chest like a silent accusation, was the broken, marred but breathing visage of her own sickly mother. The woman who married my father most recently now stared sightlessly at nothing, her mouth a sputtering mess of broken teeth and spittle. The only utterance she was able to get across was a simple phrase of our stupid Old Vasco religious dogma: "Dhira claim the damned."
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Numbly, I dropped to one knee, reaching out a shaking blood-covered hand to touch her forehead in an attempt to check her for wounds beneath her matted dreadlocks. "Kash...what happened!? What did you see?!" She flinched again at my voice, shuddering convulsively while clutching the shriveled lady of the court to her chest.
When at last she met my stare, tormented accusation burned through the naked anguish reflected within her rounded red eyes. "You..." she uttered in a voice scoured of all inflection. Visions blank, dead...and utterly damned in a way no child should know. "You killed them. You murdered everyone..."
The whisper lashed me with the frigid, serrated bite of an assassin's blade sliding between my heart's ventricles. What hysteria gripped her!? I scrambled closer as she shrank away, nearly hugging herself into the corner as she dropped even her once-shielded mother with fear seared in her face.
"Kash, you are talking insanity? How could I..." My words trailed away, morbid realization dawning as her tormented gaze bored into me with implacable accusation. Slowly, I followed the path of her despairing stare to my own hands - and the wavy, razor-sharp dagger gripped tightly in my fist.
At some point during this waking nightmare, I had drawn the ceremonial obsidian blade from its sheath at my belt. The same cruel length of volcanic glass that had pinned my mother to her grisly throne throned in my own bloodied fist. With a hoarse, animalistic keenness, I flung the hateful weapon aside, watching it clatter and ricochet across the flagstones with dull, defeated horror.
Kash's bloodcurdling shriek pierced the blood-tinged miasma shrouding us, echoing endlessly down the shredded tapestry of my ruined sanity. I lurched towards her wildly, hands outstretched in wordless placation, but she skittered across the floor in a frenzy - crab-walking backward until her shoulders impacted the cold stone wall with a bone-jarring thud that sent visible waves of pain through her.
"Stay away from me, demon!" she half-screamed, half-sobbed, hands clawing at the unyielding barrier trapping her in this abattoir with the devil himself. "You've slaughtered them all...even Mother! What fresh hell spawned you, what blackened pit vomited forth this butchering abomination that wears my brother's face?!" Even at the age of 8 years, she was so amazingly eloquent in speech...Even when falsely accusing me of what she had witnessed.
Each hysteric accusation landed like the repeated blows of a brass-knuckled fist, driving the air from my lungs in agonized wheezes. I reeled back, hands clenching in my short curly hair, teeth gritting against the madness coiling in the shattered shards of my mind as the madness somehow seemed to infect my mind.
Of course...of course, she would think this. What other conclusion could be drawn from the absolute nightmare surrounding us, from the blood painting my flesh in thick crimson streaks? It was not me, I now know with my own cursed mark that this was not even most likely done by a being that was not purely even human...
Someone had used their connection with the outer realm to dish out fury upon everyone--That is but my father, Kash, I, and her now broken mother. Much like the bombings of the Old Guard and my father, my life has been so easily toyed with by those who dance just between the veil of worlds. I only realized years and years later with my own power how easily this decimation actually was.
I finally finished relaying the horrid memory that had been plaguing me to exhaustion to Tella, I hadn't noticed to mute shock that had bled way to silent sobbing that took hold over his entire form. "W-why did you tell me that?" He was barely able to articulate anything past the tears and snot. "Because Tella...I want you to know what the people down there are capable of." The news forced him to fall back in a display of his weak level of bravery in the face of our now-shared enemies.
"And I want to make you understand why they should all," The black glove that covered the Goddess's jagged circular brand fell to the floor, my assumption was true in that somehow being in proximity to the Svet king's own scarring of the cosmos had made my own sigil become energized somehow. "Fear and quiver before me, I will rule the continent Izmar--and the Goddess of the dunes Du'esh, will grant my titanium will anything my heart desires..." I slammed my fist with enough force to leave a small dent in the grey metal of the handrails, the sky darkened within moments of the impact.
The assembly began to look around in amazement at the perceived flashstorm that rained small droplets of hot rain down on all who were in attendance. Fawi cupped his hands over his eyes without pausing his speech, a reaction that was exactly as I suspected...Unlike the near-pissing episode Tella was making me party to, he was calm and composed--Same as the Svetlan and Atlantia leaders' stoic reaction.
Unexpectedly though, when my regard fell onto my own cabinet Aiko was furiously glaring toward me as if she knew I was the source. I had kept the information secret and buried it with the genocide of the Sandhounds--Unless she could read my mind, this was one of my first signs that the woman I loved both knew me and this world's secrets much more than she led on.
The lying hyena! Her pushing and near tears on the plane back home...Her uncompromising exacting of my edict that if she had already known something made the murder of those merchants for nothing more than my own mad grasp at secrecy..."You see that woman down there, the general next to that ugly bald man?" My voice was venomous in nature, forcing a quick answer from the slightly composing Tella.
"Yes..." I brought myself close to him, my eyes boring into his with wild abandon of our differing status. "She is a Basilisk in the wonderous flesh of a fine freckled angel," I drew back as the clouds parted once more, the power of the sky was much easier to control when my own emotions were tamped down...Learning these things would take time but if I could keep training its potency without obliteration like before, I would stand alone as the ruler of anything I claimed.
The sky darkened further as I focused my expanding will, channeling the cosmic verve granted by the Goddess Du'esh's reformation of my once weak body. Clouds billowed and thickened overhead, blotting out the sun until the entire glass semi-dome was bathed in an ominous twilight that made it nearly impossible to see.
I flexed my branded hand, feeling the tingle of cosmic potency surge through my veins. A rumble of thunder rolled across the heavens, making Tella jump from his skin. "W-what are you doing?" he stammered, pink eyes widening as cyan static electricity crackled in the atmosphere around us.
"Exhibiting to you a mere morsel of what I'm capable of," I replied, my voice eerily calm amidst the building vortex. "The souls of those slaughtered that night call out for vengeance. And the Goddess answers..."
With that, I clenched my fist. A torrent of water exploded from the churning ebony clouds, pounding against the reinforced glass in a hefty tropical deluge. Forks of piercing lightning danced across the darkened ceiling, casting the entire venue in blinding flashes of electric brilliance that refracted in all directions from the glass's touch.
The assembled dignitaries and world leaders below gasped and cried out, shielding themselves as the sudden downpour soaked their finery. Beneath us, the Svet tyrant's helmeted pate glistened, his eyes narrowing suspiciously in our direction. Good...let him wonder at the source of this whirled fury. Tella flinched with every resonant boom of thunder, shrinking back against the railing. "Make it stop!" he pleaded over the roaring deluge hammering all around us. "P-please make it stop!"
Aiko's fiery curly head whipped up towards us, her gaze locking on to mine amidst the chaos in another prolonged challenge of my poker face. A spike of energy seemed to arc between us, even cutting through the summoned tempest. She knew...Somehow, she knew far too much for a simple survivor of the bombings; What secrets did her mind hide about my new world of the gods?
With a subtle uncurling of my fingers, I allowed the raging storm to dissipate as swiftly as it had arisen. The downpour eased, the bellowing tumult of thunderheads fading to a low reverberating grumble. Rivulets of water streamed down the glass walls and across the slick floor at our feet.
Tella sagged in relief, gulping down ragged breaths as I brushed aside a sodden dreadlock from my brow. I turned a level look on the stunned assembly below, letting my gaze linger meaningfully on the Svet king without blinking. "That was just an insignificant fraction of what is to come," I stated with an almost silent expression. "Imagine if I truly wished to unleash the Goddess's fury upon this earth..."
With a menacing smile, I spun on my heel and exited the dome's elevated area to mix myself back in with the masses, leaving a terrified Tella and a wake of stunned onlookers behind. Let them ponder the consequences of challenging a demigod. Down on the dais, Fawi hastily mopped his brow with a monogrammed handkerchief before stepping back up to the rain-spattered podium.
He tapped the microphone, amplifying his voice over the murmurs of the bewildered assembly. "Esteemed guests, leaders, dignitaries..." Fawi paused, clearly flustered by the bizarre meteorological event. "I must apologize profusely for the unfortunate...circumstances that have interrupted our proceedings here today."
His eyes cut briefly in my direction before continuing in a measured tone. "Clearly there are forces at work beyond our understanding or control. In light of this, and with safety being paramount, I have no choice but to suspend the voting on Izmar's different nations' proposed independence indefinitely until we can ensure such...disturbances...will not reoccur."
A wave of mixed tongues and complaints came from the disturbed mid-day events. Fawi held up his hands for silence, his wrinkled jaw tightening. "I understand the frustrations, but we cannot proceed while threats of any kind, natural or otherwise, loom over us. This congress will be postponed until the security situation can be reevaluated and certified as stable by all parties." Shooting a final inscrutable look my way, Fawi stepped down from the podium to confer with his aides.
I turned back towards the exit, gesturing for Tella to follow. The wide-eyed young man scampered along obediently, still visibly shaken. As I strode down the corridor, I saw Aiko, Aygu, and Yana rushing towards me, their expressions ranging from fury to confusion. Trailing behind was Fawi himself, his brow creased with obvious consternation...Kyler had slinked off as always.
"What would--" Aiko was the first to reach me, grabbing my arm as her eyes bored into mine with a blazing intensity. "Your Highness..." Aiko's voice took on a blade-tipped tone. "Are you alright?" Her question seemed more pointed at my actions rather than any perceived danger I could have been in.
Before I could respond, Aygu and Yana arrived, both of them looking equally perturbed. "Such unusual weather--I find it strange when the Coalition spends so much time and money on their controlled weather out here." Yana posed, her regal tones doing little to mask the concern etched on her slim features. "Are you feeling any better after you made yet another spectacle prowling the upper deck?"
I allowed her a short smile that made her only give me back a withered nod that showed her sustained concern, Yana truly still didn't trust me but it stood that she may be the only one not conspiring against me. Aygu merely grunted, his permanent scowl somehow even more pronounced than usual as he kicked the hanging flaps of his desert attire.
Fawi took the opportunity to interject while regaining his breath from the trek over with the others. "Huck, I must insist you explain yourself immediately. The impacts of this..." he searched for the words to accuse me without giving way to the fact he knew of my mark's significance, "...this display could be catastrophic for your nation, not to mention the region's stability."
I opened my mouth to respond, but Tella chose that moment to edge forward, eyes still wide from witnessing my tempestuous powers firsthand.
"He doesn't need to listen to you," Tella stammered, drawing the startled looks of the entire group. "H-he is crazier than Lord Garan!" Tella spouted a name that I mentally pocketed for later use...Whoever this Garan was, he was powerful enough to not need any appearance at the summit. "That may or may not be valid," I found myself steepling my hands across my chest, my re-gloved hands so perfectly creased within their targeted location over my breathing lattice.
"Unless this Lord Garan would like to discuss the matter with me, Tella no longer belongs to the Coalition...As a Buritian he must return home to with us--His people." A profound speechlessness fell over the corridor as five sets of incredulous eyes turned towards the paled form cowering at my side. Fawi was the first to regain his powers of speech.
"You...you wish to take Tella from Lord Garan's service?" The prime minister's brow furrowed deeply. "But he has been bound to that household since birth! This is highly unorthodox, even for someone of your standing." I leveled an even look at the small cluster, letting the weight of my gaze linger on each of them in turn before responding...
ENd