Chapter 12: Black Eyes XII

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[CORBIN VILLAGE - Village Center]

The aftermath was a solemn affair.

Villagers mourned openly in the streets as they carted the bodies onto the pile. The cheerful, sleepy mountain village that Cain had discovered less than a week ago, the one that managed to bounce back from the Rasp fifteen years ago, now had to heal all over again from another generational tragedy.

With healing came pain. With healing came grief.

Cain worked diligently to help wrap and transport the bodies. For every familiar face that he saw, there were a few more unfamiliar ones. He didn’t mind doing work. It helped him to get his mind off things, and the less the survivors had to interact with the corpses of their friends and family, the better.

A pair of striking red eyes watched him work from the sidelines, gently carrying another wrapped body to its rightful place. Muse wished she could help, but her injury was not a light one.

Webby had at first insisted on bedrest, but she couldn’t stay still. He ended up capitulating to her walking around with a worried squeak.

She thought of her mission. She had sent off a sealed note with a messenger who had rode off to inform Merdasa of what had happened. Both the Iron Bars and the Black Lamps would be notified.

In the end, there had been around fifty villagers confirmed deceased, a sixth of the population. A few more were missing, but not many had hopes of finding them alive.

Most of those who could fight had died like heroes. Reymond and two more were the only ones left of the hunters. Jaime would have to take up the brunt of the work once he got back.

Bron, thankfully, had survived, but he too was now the only remaining member of the nightwatch, and had yet to regain consciousness. Miss Corbin had not left his side since the events of that night.

He stayed at Bron’s for only a single day after the attack, and at dinner the two of them attempted to make small talk a few times before noticing neither of their hearts were in it. After that, he stopped going back.

A home was a place for sleep and food. Cain needed neither.

Reymond was helping with the cleanup, which was a testament to both the man’s mental and physical resilience. He had bounced back immediately despite the loss of his right arm, and was now trying to help ease the pain of others.

When a child that had looked up to him asked about his archery, he laughed and ruffled the boy’s hair.

“Guess Bron had better wake up and teach me swordsmanship, then!”

Cain could not bear to look at him, not yet. Their last interaction was when Rey bent his head to him, and asked him to take his bow. Cain had accepted it after a bout of pleading, but the heaviness of the weapon still sat uneasily on his back.

He thought sometimes at night about what might’ve happened had he joined up with the rest of the militia and confronted the bandits together, but always blew it out of his mind with cleanup and training.

Down that path lay madness.

It seemed he wasn’t the only one, as Jaime had returned and worked with triple the fervour of any other. The spearman, who had been a jovial one before, now hardly smiled. He could not forgive himself for not being here in the village’s moment of need.

Jord’s full participation in the attack was extracted from one of the remaining bandits who had been taken alive, and was made public. A virtual kill-on-sight order.

Jord’s father took his own life upon the revelation, and his mother left the village immediately to go live with relatives in the city. Her departure was a solemn and lonely one. Lifelong friends turned their backs to her. There was no sympathy for them, not yet. The pain was too raw.

Cain shook his head. He needed to keep moving.

But there were none left. All the wrapped corpses had already been transported to their destination.

A giant wooden tower had been built at the village center. Wrapped corpses were set into slots. At the bottom of it all was a heap of combustible material. Mourners wept as they all congregated here, where the tragedy had begun and the most vicious deeds had taken place.

“Hey! Come here.”

That was Muse, sitting on a nearby bench. She beckoned to him, one arm carrying a bag of baked goods. He walked over - there was nothing else to do, so he might as well.

“Have one!” she said, taking one of the buns in her bag and shoving it in his mouth.

It was warm, but wasn’t it a little disrespectful?

Cain looked around, and noticed that she wasn’t the only one to have a bag of the stuff. Quite a few villagers carried the same, and were quietly eating.

“Funeral buns,” Muse explained. “It’s a northern Goethia tradition, apparently. I’m not from around here either.”

Cain sat down, and started to chew.

He couldn’t taste anything

“Sweet, isn’t it?” asked Muse. “I think it's a bit too sweet for me.”

“...I’ll take your word for it.”

That night, after they had fought off the bandits, he did not have the energy to pretend anymore. He had answered all of Muse’s questions when she was getting bandaged up by Webby.

There was no point in hiding anything. She had seen McDougal cut through him, and she had seen how he had been physically completely fine after it. How did you explain that away?

From his strange constitution, to the state of his memories. He left nothing out. Even his suspicions that he came here from a different world, and how his own eyes were unfamiliar to him. The status window too. Everything just came tumbling out of him. It was as if he had been fed some kind of truth serum, but the real truth was just that he was too tired.

Too tired to pretend.

“You’re a really empathetic guy, you know that?”

Cain looked at her in confusion.

“Not many people would risk their lives to fight for folks they knew less than a week,” she explained.

“You did the same,” he accused.

“Yeah, but I’m a knight,” argued Muse. “That’s kind of the job description.”

“I don’t think job descriptions come into it when life and death are on the line,” answered Cain bluntly. “If everybody acted that way, we... We wouldn’t be dealing with something like this.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

They stared at the pyre. The village elder stepped forward, holding a lit torch in hand. The man had lost a lot of weight in only a few days. Soon, flames licked the wooden tower, rising higher and higher as smoked billowed into the atmosphere.

Cain watched the fire consume the opening where Tanner slept. He had wrapped and brought the man into place himself, as he had no living family save a daughter who had long ago moved out of Corbin Village.

That slot over there was Sarina’s. The one next to her was Abigail’s.

He asked Muse something in a soft voice.

“Is there a prayer for the dead here? To one of... the Divinities?”

Muse nodded.

“...There are two Divinities with death as their domain,” explained Muse gently. “We want Sommeilia in this case. Hers is the domain of the departing soul.”

Cain watched Muse put her hands together in a prayer. He copied the motion.

“To Sommeilia of the Blessed End, 10th of 27,” she started.

Cain closed his eyes.

“Give these souls a peaceful sleep; to your arms their souls to keep. Freed from breath and life’s command; wondrous dreams without demand. From light chaotic, still dark extends; grant your children their blessed ends. Omsa.”

“Omsa,” agreed Cain.

Despite the flames, his body still felt cold. A chill had lingered since the night of the attack. He waited until the fire died, before getting up and continuing with his business.

There was still something he had to do.

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[CORBIN FOREST]

Jord shivered as he huddled against the tree trunk. It was spring, but no matter what he did the chill wouldn’t leave his bones. In the days since he had gotten next to no sleep. An hour or two a night, until he was woken up by sounds in the forest that he could swear were men coming to hunt him down.

He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t--

No, that was fine.

That was fine!

He was a survivor. Did he not go to the city and get a job there before? Granted it was with his mother’s connections, but still. He did it once, he could do it again!

If that didn’t work out, he’d go to one of the other provinces and join another bandit gang there. He’d be able to escape that one too, if they didn’t treat him right. None of those fools would be as sly as McDougal.

Jord still didn’t know the results of what had happened that night. He had booked it as fast as he could once the leader started chasing down that black-eyed demon. He cowered near the west gate and managed to escape somehow once the magical mud walls had dispersed.

Either McDougal was alive, or McDougal was dead. Neither mattered, as long as he couldn’t be found! The boss had stuffed the tracker down his throat, and now that a few days had passed he was sure it had left his system.

That’s what he thought, anyway, until he heard footsteps and turned to see the black-eyed demon in front of him. In his hand was a sword. It looked familiar.

Cain said nothing, and gave Jord no time to make his excuses.

With one step he was in range, and with another he had run Jord through with his own blade. The thin man reacted with shock before going limp.

Cain stepped backward, and watched as the corpse slumped over.

Cain had met Jord, the first person he had seen in this world, at swordpoint. Now, they said their goodbyes the same way.

It had not been his revenge to take, mused Cain. But Bron was still unconscious and Rey didn’t have the confidence to take Jord in a fight with his own swordsmanship. Jaime felt he didn’t deserve it.

Cain rather felt the archer gave the traitor too much credit.

[EXP - 574/600]

He had earned 500 EXP for McDougal. Now he earned 50 EXP for Jord.

The same amount as the other common bandits he killed in the raid. Because that’s exactly what he was.

They had taken inventory of the bandits’ belongings after the raid, when everybody who was alive had been seen to by Webby and others somewhat skilled in medical know-how.

They awarded him the crimson war axe and hailed him as a hero, but he had been loath to use it. Maybe he was being silly, but the blood and viscera on it had all been from either the innocent villagers, or his friends that had died attempting to defend their home.

He had put it away, but they had found another object of interest on McDougal. A small red compass that pointed in only one direction, but it wasn’t north.

They had later discovered what it was from the captured bandits, as well as the full story of how the Red Riders had acquired Jord’s help in breaching the gates. It was the radar to the tracker, the one that left his body after two days.

And the fool had still been in the general area.

If Jord had escaped down the mountain - maybe taken to one of the many little hamlets in the province, or even lay low in Merdasa - it would’ve been far harder to track him down. But he didn’t. Because he was scared to move forward, even if he knew there was no way to move back.

Unable to move a step in any direction, he died the way he lived.

A coward.

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[CORBIN VILLAGE - Village Center]

Midnight.

There were no more active members of the nightwatch, and so Cain had volunteered. Despite the fact that he had been here for less than two weeks, not a single soul doubted his trustworthiness anymore.

A few people were assigned to the east and west gates. He alone was given the task of defending the center of the village, from the main gate to the village center to the entrance of the Corbin Estate. He was making his rounds in silence, carrying the nightwatch’s horn, Jord’s sword, and Rey’s bow and quiver.

Cain supposed he must’ve looked a little over equipped to be a mere village guard.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?”

A teasing voice.

It was Muse. She had with her another bag of food, it seemed. Webby was on her shoulder, finally free from the medical hall they had set up. It seemed that the little spider could finally shed the doctor’s labcoat, at least for a little while.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” responded Cain.

Webby evidently agreed with this, and gave him a little fistbump with a short stubby leg while looking sharply at his mistress and patient. Muse very blatantly avoided making eye contact with her familiar.

She grabbed a seat on the same bench they had sat on this afternoon, and once again motioned for him to join her. Cain did so, although why he did not know.

“The young miss baked this for us,” said Muse, pulling the object out of the bag. It was a large meat pie, with enough portions to go around. “Half for you and half for me. Let’s tuck in before it gets cold!”

She grinned, holding out plates and utensils she had nabbed from one of the nearby homes.

“You can have the whole thing,” said Cain. “I already told you, my body doesn’t need to--”

There was a serious expression on Muse’s face that he had not seen since the night of the attack. She wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“Eat it. This isn’t for your body. This is for you.”

Cain had no response to that.

He bit into the pie. It tasted delicious.

Comfort. A warm, gentle spring breeze.

He was safe now.

And then the dam broke.

The memories of the last few weeks.

The confusion. The fear. For his own safety, and others. The terror of not knowing what was happening with his own body.

The sights and sounds of the raid. Blood on the floor. The pile of bodies - the blood on his hands - Rey’s arm - Bron’s limp corpse - the psychotic face of the man in red Muse’s body as she was sent flying with a sickening crack into the tree the axe falling it was going to kill him it was going to cut him in two HE WAS DEAD--

Cain sobbed loudly, the sound slightly muffled by the piece of pie in his mouth. Muse rubbed his shoulder sympathetically as Webby hopped onto his other shoulder and caressed his face.

Muse knew. She remembered her own first bandit hunt after joining the Iron Bars, and how she had woken up sweating for the next few nights after that. How the first kill she made marked a watershed moment in her life.

She had been ready then, trained and prepared after her time in the Academy.

The man in front of her was not a warrior at heart. A fighter, maybe, but not a warrior. She knew this after having spent just a little time with him. He was willing to kill, but every time he was forced to take a life a wound would mark his soul.

Cain’s shoulders heaved heavily, then slowly stopped. Muse didn’t move her hand away. He continued to chew on the piece of pie, before swallowing and letting the warmth fall into his belly.

Finally, the chill left his body.

It was replaced by the warmth of spring.

A couple more shuddering breaths. He raised his arm to wipe his eyes.

Oh, Webby had spun a handkerchief for him.

“Thanks, little guy,” Cain said.

He accepted the gift, wiped his eyes, and blew his nose loudly. He hoped that Webby’s silk was washable and reusable, the material was really nice and he really didn’t want to waste it.

“Can I... sleep here? Just for a little bit,” he asked, timidly, after he had cleaned himself up.

Muse nodded, giving him a big smile.

“Heck yeah!”

He put the bow, quiver, sword and horn down, freeing himself from their burdens for a moment.

And so, for the first time since he had arrived in this world, Cain Thompson closed his black eyes, leaned back and simply rested.