A lone man, cloaked in white, calmly walked through the crisp pines of Karasuthra forest. Seeming to almost glow as the sun reflected off his pale face and white hair, the normally-quiet forest around him stirred. With each step, nearby trees grew greener. Where his bare feet touched the ground, life sprang forth unbidden, each footprint an entire ecosystem. Even the ants he crushed underfoot seemed to only grow stronger from the impact, rushing back into their duties with renewed vigor. Birds took flight from their trees, not to flee, but to circle overhead in joyful song, preaching the wonders of the man’s bountiful, flowing energy. An entourage of land-bound fauna followed him, basking in his power. A single forest rodent broke from the pack, approaching him to lovingly nuzzle his leg.
With a swift and practiced motion, he kicked it– hard– into a nearby tree. A tiny snap could be heard as its bones cracked from the impact, and it fell to the forest floor with a soft thump. Despite this, the small animal got up immediately, seemingly uninjured, and scurried off with even more energy than before. The man huffed disapprovingly.
“Ugh! Trees keep getting in the way!” he groaned to no one in particular. “I’m never going to break my distance record at this rate!”
The sudden and unexpected display of violence failed to startle the other animals as much as he’d hoped. Unfortunate. He’d need to leave them be, he supposed. It would take too long to torture them each individually, and killing them was of course out of the question, no matter how much he wished he could. Besides, even if he did get rid of them, he’d just pick up more along the way.
The man named Aelius was a veritable one-man migration; his uncontrollable healing field was so instinctively pleasant for animals he’d occasionally lead a particular one across the continent. The ecological devastation left in his wake when he accidentally brought invasive species was almost amusing enough to be worth it, had animals not been so incessantly smelly and annoying.
Less than a half hour’s walk from his intended destination, Aelius felt a distinct chomp at his power that signified someone died within the range of his healing field. Well, they didn’t die per se– as long as he was around, death was impossible. But something was preventing his powers from healing the wound directly, forcing his energy to maintain a comatose state of limbo on the body.
At nearly any other location, Aelius would have probably just continued on his merry way, eventually moving far enough from the body for nature to claim them proper. To his dismay, however, there actually lived a few people nearby that he didn’t hate. It was probably worth checking out. Aelius strutted over to where the power was being consumed from.
“Haha, wow.” He laughed, standing over the body of a girl no older than eight. A dagger parted her blond bangs, its hilt buried far enough into her forehead for the blade to pin her skull to the tree behind her.
Aelius let out a low whistle as he crouched down to inspect the body. Marvelous work, really. He had to respect that kind of precision brutality. He gave the child’s face a heavy smack with the back of his hand, to no response. Not even his powers could bring the kid’s brain to a usable state with that much metal lodged in the middle of it, he supposed, although she’d probably heal up right as rain if he took it out.
Aelius, of course, had no intention of actually doing that. Children were noisy, dirty, and hopelessly stupid creatures. Though admittedly, this one looked rather familiar. Her round face, ruby-colored eyes, and blonde hair definitely meant she was an Aletheian. And, if his memory served him correctly, she was the daughter of the man he had traveled all this way to see.
Aelius uttered such a colorful set of curses that it may have been fortunate the young girl was unconscious.
There was no believable reality in which that man’s daughter was dead while he was still alive. Okay, yes, she technically wasn’t dead– but it was just a complete fluke of luck that Aelius happened to be nearby when her attacker nailed her adorable little face to a tree. Whoever that attacker was likely left before Aelius got close enough to be seen, under the entirely reasonable assumption that impaling a child’s brain would cause them to die. The fact that this assailant could even get close enough to the kid to attack them pretty much guaranteed that her father had been dealt with beforehand. You could not pass something like this under his nose.
That rather nettled. Aelius almost liked that guy.
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With his plans for the day ruined, Aelius pondered what to do with the comatose sack of meat before him. He probably could, and should, just leave and be done with it. Without his power forcefully keeping the girl’s magical aura in place she would die immediately and painlessly. Frankly, though, that sounded like absolutely no fun at all. Even if she was a snotty brat, she was still a snotty brat related to one of the only tolerable people in existence; there were few enough of those around for her to be worth a second chance. But if he kept her alive… what would he do with her?
Eh, questions for later. He was vaguely curious what happened, and may as well investigate that first. Maybe some other Aletheians were alive? They’d raise their leader’s kid without too much persuasion.
Having made up his mind, Aelius gripped the back of the young girl’s head, unceremoniously yanked her free of the tree, and slung her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He left the dagger firmly planted through her skull– no sense waking the brat up. What was her name, again? Sherry? Sharla? Naw, wait. He thought of a better name.
Holding her waist with one arm and letting the rest of her comatose body dangle unsupported, Aelius carried Shishkabob off in the direction of her village. After about a twenty minute walk, the forest cleared up and revealed the humble clan village of Aletheia.
At least, what was left of it, which amounted to basically nothing. The village’s fifty-some houses were naught but a smoldering ruin, flames still licking out the remains of everything that once was. Charred corpses littered the area, filling Aelius’ nostrils with the nostalgic scent of burnt flesh. His power passed over them like it would a rock, indifferent to the no-longer living bodies. He plodded his way into the burning village, as much as an excuse to discourage his unwanted animal retinue as it was to investigate. A lone doe brave enough to follow him quickly had a large splinter of flaming wood kicked in her direction, which, much to Aelius’ satisfaction, ended up setting her on fire. The deer bolted in the opposite direction, away from the only source of energy that might have otherwise kept her alive.
His mood drastically improved, Aelius continued through the village with a spring in his step, quickly coming across the ruins of Shishkabob’s family house. A quick sweep of the burning rubble found no bones or other bodies, however, so he continued on.
It was clearly looking like this was no simple act of arson. Though many bodies burned, the majority of them seemed to have been slain by weapons, and a very significant number of them were not Alethians. Heavy splint mail covered these bodies, all matching– this was undoubtedly a coordinated attack by some singular organization or army. Curious. As far as Aelius was aware, the Alethians didn’t have any real enemies. The clan made most of their living by hunting monsters like vrocthízo for the benefit of other villages, and had famously taken down threats that would have otherwise wiped out life in the entire area. They kept to themselves and kept their little plot of land safe from harm, working as reputable mercenaries. No kingdom owned this part of the continent and no kingdom particularly wanted it. Only the chondricthians were liable to try and conquer beast-ridden territory for no actual benefit, and these attackers were too far inland and had nowhere near enough arms to be mistaken for those brutes.
Fortunately for Aelius, he didn’t really care about the answers to any of these questions. He was just looking for a single corpse, and he soon found it. A huge, circular pile of bodies lay in a clearing on the east end of town, opposite the forest. Well over fifty dead soldiers surrounded two very special cadavers: the young girl’s mother and father. Her mother was an enormous mountain of a woman, still gripping a massive, bloodied club the size of a tree trunk in her stiff right hand. The dead soldiers around her were crushed and mangled, their armor worthless in the face of overwhelming strength. The girl’s much smaller father– the closest man Aelius ever had to a friend– lay next to her. His two smaller swords had made countless precision removals of vital areas in the once-living bodies around him, swiftly and elegantly bringing about their demise. Aelius’s magic flowed over them, yet did nothing but invigorate the many microscopic organisms already set about decomposing the massacre. Everyone here was well and truly dead, a fact Aelius had hardly needed to confirm considering the two enormous holes in the chest cavity of both parents. While they fought their way through several dozen men, it would seem some massive force plowed clean through them. Whatever it was cauterized the wounds it inflicted, but dying of blood loss was the least of a person’s worries when their heart, both lungs, and the upper half of their stomach were completely obliterated.
“Neat!” Aelius exclaimed. He was exceptionally tempted to pluck the dagger out of Shishkabob’s noggin to find out how she’d react to the gruesome scene, but regretfully concluded it would be far too difficult to get the dagger back into her brain afterwards. The girl had inherited her mother’s absurd strength, and while Aelius could call upon his full might as the Titan of Life to subdue her if need be, he really wasn’t in the mood to brawl with an enraged ankle-biter.
He could just enjoy the schadenfreude and ditch her here afterwards, he supposed, but on the way over he remembered a few people he could probably strong-arm into raising this kid. And if Shishkabob turned out to be half as interesting as her dear departed daddy when she got older, well… that was well worth hauling her across a mountain range or two.