The messenger led the way to the tribunal, walking in front of Cythraul and Rupert. A crimson war tent stood out above all nearby shelter, rising high into the sky.
It was surrounded by other, much smaller tents, that made up the strategic quarter of the encampment. Muddy tracks branched each tent, merging into the central pathway that led to the entrance of the crimson war tent.
Men and women, dressed in leather buff coats with linen shirts underneath, lined up to enter inside. Guards armed with pikes, and suited in breast and back plate, searched them before giving entry. Wet mud stained their leather riding boots.
Cythraul impatiently pushed through the queue to the entrance of the tent, leaving the messenger behind. He was followed closely behind by Rupert. The guards stepped backwards, giving them entry to the tent, then returned to their task.
As Cythraul entered, he was hit by a blast of noise. He watched men and women clamour in outrage, cursing a lone figure in the middle of the room.
The tribunal judges were stationed before the figure in huge oak chairs. They shouted at the crowd, trying to silence them, though they were unable to calm it. Those who were given entry into the tribunal were decorated with various ranked insignias, and they stood around in a circle with furious looks on their faces.
“Silence!” Cythraul demanded, a stern look on his face.
The crowd was quelled. Rupert led the way forwards and they stood before the judges, though they faced towards the accused. She was a middle-aged woman, and her face was gnarled like a toadstool. Various diseases had afflicted her throughout her life.
Cythraul looked down upon her with disdain. “What has she been charged with?” He asked.
“Of the four suspected traits labelled by Lord Rupert: she has been delirious for the last 24 hours; suspiciously used Malevolency; and finally, she deserted camp for the nearby village.” A judge responded.
Cythraul nodded. “Has anyone investigated her accommodation for the body?”
“Yes. But we didn’t find anything. Though, we left it intact for your investigations, my Lord.” The judge replied.
“I’ll inspect it.” Rupert said. “Men, follow me. Bring some tools as well.” Rupert left the tent, followed by a new entourage.
“And what is your defence for these charges?” Cythraul questioned the woman.
“I am innocent, my Lord,” The woman responded, blustering. “I have been stricken by a series of ailments of the mind… I’ve had them for a long time, but they’re harmless. Just last night, I was stricken by one of these episodes and I accidentally used Malevolency. No Lord, it wasn’t my intentions… I and those who live near me thought nothing of it because they know. However, when I heard the list from the informant, I was already of two charges. I had to leave, I mustn’t stay… no, my Lord, so I ran.”
Cythraul frowned. “What ailment of the mind do you speak of?”
The woman cringed. “It’s nothing serious my Lord, like… like the judge said, it’s just mild deliriousness.”
Cythraul looked at the judges for confirmation, they shook their head in disagreement.
“Don’t lie to me, wretch!” Cythraul yelled. “You would be best to tell the truth, your life is on the line.”
She relented, shrinking backwards. “Like I said, it’s nothing serious. I only hear voices, voices from God. He rarely ever talks to me. Nothing serious…”
Cythraul turned away from her, towards the judges, and prompted them to intervene.
“The reports made from her neighbours corroborate this, though she isn’t telling the full truth. They claim that she acted differently from her usual episodes. They said, ‘it was as if she attempted to continue her day to day life, yet she was as distant and removed as you, Lord Aristocrats, are.’”
“So, a peasant playing the aristocrat…” The crowd jeered furiously at the woman. The divide between peasant and aristocrat was not to be breached. Cythraul rubbed his chin contemplatively.
“But that isn’t on trial,” he turned back to the woman. ‘Though the episode being different is what is significant.’
“What did you do in yesterday’s episode? Your neighbours say you acted differently.”
“I didn’t act differently; they’re falsely accusing me! Do they have proof of their claims? I marched until noon, then stayed in my tent until night. I did not move from it even then, so how could they know what I did?” The woman shrieked indignantly.
“She’s lying. Her neighbours say they heard movement coming to and from her tent. Furthermore, a merchant said she purchased some goods from her; though she refuses to say what she bought.” A judge refuted her claims.
Cythraul shook his head.
“What Malevolency did you use?” Cythraul diverged topics.
“It was nothing much, my lord. I wanted to let off a small spark to light a candle. A flare would be too difficult to control with my current ailment. But I accidentally used too much Malevolency. I created a fireball which may have alerted people, but I ended the spell quickly though. No harm was done.”
“What did you need a light for?” Cythraul asked.
“The winter nights get dark early. I needed the light to knit some clothes for myself, to survive the cold nights.” Cythraul looked towards the judges again. The candles on their table lit his stern expression.
“Her neighbours reported that a bright flash came from her tent around the time when you and Lord Rupert were part way through investigating the carriage. Though they were not sure what happened after that.” A second judge responded.
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Cythraul nodded. He ignored the woman and directly asked the judges, “How did you capture her?”
“A group of women saw her running through the camp. They informed an officer who deployed their soldiers to capture her. She was part way to the nearby village when she was caught. They say she was initially delirious, talking to something, an entity maybe, ignoring their questions.” The judge responded.
“Alright, I’ve heard enough. From witness accounts, she is guilty. However, before sentencing her, I want evidence of the body. I require flawless proof before convicting anyone today. I need to execute the right person.” Cythraul announced. He motioned to the guards who incarcerated her.
The woman was dragged away kicking and screaming. She tried to bite down on the arms of the guards, but they slapped her face in defence. Her body fell limp, unconscious. She was to be temporarily locked away.
As Cythraul watched the woman get dragged away, he heard shrieks and screams erupt behind him. As he turned around to look through the crowd, he couldn’t find anyone screaming. He frowned. The screams continued, though they slowly morphed into shouts of anger.
“We wait until Rupert returns for the conviction.” Cythraul announced. He pushed through the crowd, finding a seat at a table in the outskirts of the tent, patiently waiting for Rupert’s return.
———
Outside, the sun continued its escape from the black clouds. It neared noon, yet it was still frigid outside. The people within the camp wore additional layers, except those inside the war tents who enjoyed the insulated warmth.
Rupert was devoid of his armour today and he wore a black woollen coat with the House Honnen insignia on it. He stood outside the woman’s tent, watching the workers dig up the muddy floor. So far, they had yet to find the corpse.
He walked inside, investigating the work that they had done. About a foot deep of dirt had been removed, and there were still no signs of the ground being disturbed for a makeshift grave.
He walked past the workers towards her bags and looked through her belongings, touching each item as he moved them about. It predominantly contained clothes and essentials that a person would need to survive.
However, there were also a few non-essential items such as a bracelet, which looked to be her Channeler’s weapon; a few rocks, which Rupert assumed she thought were expensive; and some shoddy pottery.
He turned to leave the tent, but before he left, he was aware of something not quite right. Rupert smelt it before he saw it. The smell was malodorous, the smell of rotten flesh being burnt. Only he reacted, the other workers continued the same as before.
He looked down towards the overturned ground. Jet black ash lined the floor rather than the mud that was previously there. The workers dug into the ash and moved it into small piles.
However, the ash fell and preternaturally recovered its position like a tidal flow. The men tirelessly worked to uncover the dead body, yet they were being manipulated by an illusion into failure. What they thought they had achieved had been the work of an illusion.
Rupert gasped. “I think we’re trapped in an illusion!”
None of the workers responded. They continued working, doing the same exact movements.
“Damnation!” Rupert cursed. He was now separated from the workers within the illusion’s realm.
He walked to the entrance of the tent, picked up a shovel and dug at the ash. He dug a hole deep into the black ash until he was met with solid resistance beneath.
Rupert dropped the shovel and dug with his hands until he uncovered something white. It eventually took the shape of a hand that was fully extended upwards, like a human that had drowned in the ink coloured, ash sea.
He pulled at it, attempting to uncover the corpse that was buried within. The hand snapped away from the arm, it was brittle. The bone arm recoiled and pulled away deep into the ashy sea.
Rupert put the hand in a pocket and tried to dig after the corpse. It disappeared, lost to the ash sea for eternity.
He stood, finally taking in the tent for the first time since escaping part of the illusion. It was similar to the tent of before, yet the atmosphere was haunting. The ash that he moved curled like a whirlpool and filled the hole he had made.
Rupert picked up a handful of ash, letting some fall away to the ground below. After a moment, he realised something, then put the ash to his nose. The malodorous smell was magnified. It smelt like a burnt corpse.
“Ah. Cythraul was wrong, there wasn’t a corpse to find. It was burnt, and the ash was its remains…” Rupert contemplated. “Then what was the skeleton I uncovered…”
He touched the pocket where he put the hand. It was now empty.
“What the hell!” Rupert yelled. “Where did it go?”
Rupert panicked and looked around frantically. The hand was nowhere in sight. Eventually, he calmed himself down.
“Right, it must’ve been part of the illusion.”
He walked over to the woman’s belongings and picked up one of her pieces of pottery and used it as an urn. He collected some of the black ash within it as evidence that the woman had disposed of the corpse.
Rupert turned around and moved towards the belongings again. He made certain he wasn’t leaving anything behind. The bracelet caught his attention as it had undergone a stark change.
Initially, it was worn and rusted. Its gem was of low quality as was the metal that made it. Now, however, it was a brilliant and pristine piece of jewellery. It was made from a top-quality metal and the gem… Despite it being cracked, it was a lustrous black crystal that Rupert assumed was an onyx.
He touched the bracelet again, however, the edges of Rupert’s vision cracked like glass, fragmenting inwards towards the centre. It shattered.
Rupert expected to wake to the real world, yet his vision faded into blacks and greys that made his sight dance unsteadily. He heard the sound of pages being flipped that added to the disorientation. Finally, it settled, and he was in another illusion.
In the distance, Rupert could see a distorted building. However, its opulence could not be disguised. A gaseous, black horror loomed above with thousands of individual strings attached from its body into the building. It gently swayed, but the power from its movements created a hurricane that sent Rupert flying into the air.
The wind carried him gently and he descended. A black fire stood before him which burned and roiled. He walked to it, but as he got close, it exploded into a molten mess that shot into the sky. The shockwave catapulted him into the middle of a city. He now saw that he had previously stood on the rugged precipice of a volcano.
In the city around him, a boy among many men stood frozen in place, mid fight, with malicious looks on their faces. Blood had crusted on their clothes, staining them against the greys and blacks of the illusion. It was a barbaric scene, stopped and painted in time.
Rupert watched in shock, but it didn’t last long. Spiders burrowed from the ground and devoured the whole scene; from the edges of his vision to the centre.
A new image was shaped from the bodies of the spiders. A young boy, insignificantly small, stood before a bridge that led to a floating land mass. It held a colossal tree which, with a single twitch, exposed its malice. The tree was made of spiders, and they menacingly glared at the boy from afar, blood lust in their eyes.
The spiders twitched once more, and they turned back into the tree. Rupert watched as the tree collapsed, and a cloud of dust covered his vision. When he could see once more, he saw the tree grow into bookshelves, which expanded endlessly into the void.
A stilled image of a girl creeping on top of the bookshelves, hiding from men and women who stalked below through the labyrinth of a library. In the distance, an eye watched from the void, spying on the young girl above and the group below.
An earthquake struck, and books dropped from the shelves and pages flew out masking Rupert’s vision. When the pages fell away, a final image stood. Two boys and a girl petrified in stone in a cavern, lost to time.
The cave crumbled. Rocks broke away from the crevices, falling onto the petrified statues and Rupert. Everything faded into darkness.
Rupert awoke once again, this time to the real world. He looked anew at the surroundings, remembering the urn containing the corpses ashes. It was next to him. Rupert broke free from the illusions.