The child shook with anger.
Balled fists were pressed to his sides, as if trying to contain something in his stomach that couldn’t be held back. He was dirty, tears streaking through the grime and ash stuck to his face, tunic hanging limply from his narrow shoulders and sticking to patches of blood around his midriff.
Markas needed only a moment to observe the boy kneeling before him to understand that there was no chance of peace this day. How many such sights had he seen over the last two years? Dozens at least, and it was only getting worse.
He raised his head to survey the burned buildings surrounding them both and saw no answers in the destruction; simply more work. Smoke rose in lazy swirls towards the blue sky above, and the juxtaposition of the grey and black village to that wonderful sky made his heart ache all over again.
The crackling of the flames had long since vanished, their work done. The village he stood in was utterly destroyed, down to the last man, woman and child – all but one. Markas’s gaze returned to the boy trembling on the mud-slick ground, trampled by numerous boots and hooves such that the sturdy wooden planks demarcating the central square were barely visible.
The boy took a heavy breath, and the remaining embers hidden within buildings winked out in an instant. Young lungs inflated far beyond their capacity before an explosive sob racked his bony back and the fires leapt and danced again, where before there had only been smouldering remains.
He nodded in understanding and crouched opposite the young boy. He met red-rimmed eyes, drooping with exhaustion but sharpened by desperation and desire nonetheless. In that gaze, Marcus saw only devastation. A world on fire, scorched plains where once had stood proud forests. Rubble replacing cities, violence taking the place of peace.
He spoke for the first time that morning, and though the ash tasted thick on his tongue, his voice was smooth and calming.
“It won’t get easier to control.”
The boy choked back another sob, clamping his fists into his sides again, and a plume of smoke curled from the burned husk of the central tree around which this village was built. Those burning eyes that had stared hopelessly and defiantly into his only moments before were now squeezed tightly shut.
Marcus continued to speak, tone soft and slow. “It’s not your fault that they came here, and there’s no excuse for their crimes. But it won’t get easier. This pain you feel now…it will be a constant companion.”
The boy looked up again, a vein standing out harsh against his neck, writhing like a serpent as he struggled with the power threatening to burst from him. His voice was a gasping growl, more dog than human in that moment.
“Who did this? Why!?”
Marcus cocked his head to the side, considering. He hummed to himself for a moment before replying. “It does not matter. There are no good reasons that could justify this.
“Nevertheless, it is not my secret to keep, and so I will share with you what I know. I would like you to answer a question of mine first though.” He waited, holding that desperate gaze for a few moments before the boy jerked his head in response.
“I know who did this, and I will administer the justice they are due. You may join me if you like, boy, but I ask you to consider what you wan-“
He was cut off by a strangled yell.
“Vengeance!”
The outburst caused the boy to hunch over on himself, curling around his stomach as if to shield it from the world. The fires began to lick at the blackened buildings around them with renewed vigour.
A few more gasps before the boy spoke again, “I want vengeance. I want them to pay for what they did here.” Fresh tears fell from his red-rimmed eyes, tracking familiar paths down his too-young face.
Marcus steeled his heart, wrapping his mind in a protective shell of ice before he replied, voice calm as ever. “Do you want to see them pay, or do you simply want it done?”
Confusion marred his little face, and he flung an arm out towards the old warrior in anger as he yelled. “Speak plainly, old man! I want them dead, every single one of them, and-“
It was Marcus’s turn to cut him off this time, and although he spoke with the same volume as before, his calm voice still cut across the desperate yelling of the boy like a whip through smoke. “And do you need to be the one who delivers that justice?”
The tears were sizzling on the boy’s cheeks now, and the flames were dancing higher and higher with every moment. “They’re still in there.”
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A bony arm pointed towards a large home, roof partially collapsed and skeletal beams clawing towards the sky, blackened and chipped by the fire’s wrath. “Da and Jules.” The arm moved to point towards a smithy that stood gutted nearby, “Ma and little Janey.”
Fresh tears fell towards the floor as he hunched over again, hissing as they hit the bubbling mud below. The tree in the centre of the square crackled and split as a deep orange glow roared within the trunk. “Miss Tameira used to bake in there, but she’s dead too. They took her goats though – they were too valuable to leave to burn with the rest.”
The boy’s voice shook throughout, but it cracked again at that last statement, and Marcus felt the icy wall he kept in place around his thoughts crack alongside it.
“I shall carry out your justice; they will die before the year is done. Each and every one of them.”
He drew a thick-bladed knife from his belt and slid it into the earth between them, hilt facing the sky. He nicked his palm against the edge and squeezed the cut before holding it towards the boy. The blood began to bubble and sizzle, heat emanating from the boy in waves and causing the blood on Markas’s proffered palm to boil. He brought it back to his own face, smearing it across his cheek, over his nose and down one side of his neck.
“So do I swear, in the presence of the World-Tree’s representative.” The boy stared with wide eyes, glancing quickly to the burned corpse of the tree in the centre of the square then back to the old man crouched before him.
“But my question for you, boy, is whether you want to be there when justice is dealt.”
The boy made to speak and then hesitated, looking back to the tree again before seeming to truly see his surroundings for the first time. He hurriedly tried to tamp down on the fire burning in his core, scrunching his face and sucking in a deep breath.
The snakes of fire that had been wending their way towards him through the mud disappeared, the roaring walls of flame all around falling to mere questing tendrils once more. The mud stopped its bubbling, and the boy rocked back and forth with the strain.
“It won’t get easier, not ever” Markas reiterated.
Despite his eyes remaining clamped shut through the pain, the boy raised his face to look directly at the old warrior. “Why?”
The pain carried within that achingly young voice was a gut punch to the old man, but he once more armoured his heart in ice.
“You are seeded. The World Tree chose you, and it gave you what you wanted most, what you needed most. It doesn’t care for consequences, and it doesn’t care for you. Only your goal. You needed to control the fires, so it gave you the power. You are burning up, boy; I can feel the flames inside you. That passion, that need for vengeance, has combined with the seed to drive changes within that you cannot hope to control.”
“How do I make it stop?” The desperate confusion in that plea nearly shattered the cold defence he had wrapped around his mind and heart, but Marcus had seen such tragedies before, and knew he would witness many more before his work was done.
And so he steeled himself once more and answered in a calming tone, betraying nothing of his grief, “There is no stopping this, only your death will end the struggle.”
Red-rimmed eyes blinked open to view the world, and Marcus once more saw a future of fire and rubble.
“Then I’ll let it loose! I’ll find them and we’ll burn together!”
Markas slowly nodded, ignoring the smoke beginning to curl from his beard. “It’s no less than they deserve, but many will be caught in the middle. How many homes will burn for your vengeance before you smoke out the last rat?”
They boy continued to rock back and forth, curled around his stomach. Marcus could see his words burrowing into his mind, influencing his thoughts, and he knew then that he would convince him. Afterall, the boy was not trying to keep his core safe from the world. He was curled s desperately around his stomach to shield the world from the flame within.
“Let me shoulder this burden. You have heard my oath. I am Al’Sazine – we do not take such vows lightly.”
Again, the boy’s eyes widened, the flame dimming momentarily as the name forced to the forefront memories of bedtime stories and happier times. Markas could pinpoint the exact moment that the boy remembered his parents and sisters were dead, and as the flames returned, he felt the heat around him for the first time.
“I came too late to save your village. I cannot reverse the sands of time to give you the life you want, or any life worth living. But I can give you peace.”
He reached out a hand to the boy’s shoulder, feeling the skin on his palm blister as the boy’s home-spun tunic burned away in the flames surrounding them both.
“Pass to me the burden of vengeance and join your family in the embrace of the Great Tree with the knowledge that justice will be done. Let go of your anger and accept peace into your heart one last time.”
The boy let out a choking sob and fell towards him. Quicker than thought, Marcus moved to hold the child to his chest, feeling his shaking shoulders slowly subside.
Surrounded by flames, he watched the word burn as a young boy cried.
Uncounted breaths passed before he received a shaky nod from the young child, after which followed a sharp exhale and the flames abruptly vanished, leaving Markas kneeling in the remains of a ruined village under a bright blue sky, with a limp body in his arms.
He lowered the corpse carefully to the floor, retrieving his broad-bladed knife from its back, and pressed his lips to the mud-slick floor, murmuring a prayer before rising to his feet. A shovel appeared in his hands a moment later, and he got to work.
He dug the dead tree up from the square, pulling it out by the roots. Moving from house to house, he collected the bodies before piling them into the expanded hole where the tree had once rested. There was nobody alive to ask what possession each would enter the Emerald Glade with, so Markas withdrew a large bone from his storage ring, crushing it with a single swing of his shovel before placing a single sliver of bone on the chest of each corpse where they lay looking up to the sky.
He covered them with earth from outside the village, and then, with reverence, he withdrew a small seed and placed it atop of the mound of earth. He tamped it down, covering the seed in a thin layer of soil before observing the now empty square. Sun shone brightly down, illuminating the patch of fresh earth, and Marcus straightened from his half-crouch.
Only once his shovel was returned to his storage ring and his hands were brushed clean did he remove the defensive shield of ice around his thoughts.
An old man wept, and his tears fell on freshly turned earth. They would help nourish new life in the coming weeks, but that thought did little to stem his grief at the world.
Such was the curse of his order, after all; to arrive ever too late.