57.

They buried Vicente the next day. Under a hot sun they laid him and the others killed in the rampage atop of pyres. Wood and other flammable items had been stacked up and now everyone was waiting. Santiago stood off to the side, shoulder to shoulder with his family as those who had lost someone walked up and spoke a few words.

Dale had been a funny guy. Quick to laugh and slow to anger and had liked nothing more than bouncing his grandkids on his knee. He had been killed trying to stop the murderers.

Maria had been walking with her girlfriend and they had startled Abraham’s group who had cut her down before she could say a word. She had died and left a grieving partner and a shattered sister and mother.

Coy was coming back from looking for his missing daughter. He had grabbed at one of the attackers when the alarm sounded and had died for his efforts.

On and on it went, the people left broken by Abraham’s betrayal speaking out of their missing family. Others had died before of course, but that had been for survival. Fighting against monsters, steel against fangs and claws and ravenous gullets.

Greed and envy had stolen these people’s worlds and now they tried to pick up the broken pieces. Santi had seen and lived this before. How could one pick up the broken pieces and put them back when some of the pieces no longer existed? It left you different, missing and yearning for a time when you were whole.

Santiago witnessed it all. The tears, sorrow, anger, grief, disbelief, and thousand and one other feelings. [Air Current] stirred the hot air and brought whispers of conversations to his sensitive ears. Nothing alarming, few if any blamed him for Abraham’s actions. In general they raged against the now dead man and his clique.

Santiago was going to have the others spread word quietly that there were others who worshiped a foreign entity who had tempted Abraham and had him betray his people. Even if he fell to Duncan in their next meeting, he couldn’t allow the community to be swayed by the promises of easy power.

The morning shifted to afternoon and finally it was their turn. Bianca went first and she managed to say two words before she cracked like precious china. Her sobs swallowed her words as her grief swelled and broke free of the dams she had erected. They let her have a moment and when it was apparent she couldn’t say anything Cameron went and wrapped his arms around her and herded her away and back to the family.

Yessenia strode forward next and stood with an iron back in front of the community and spoke in a trembling voice that wavered on the precipice of tears. The emotion was so thick that her voice was hardly more than a croak, but Santi used his spell to spread her words.

“My father was a good man, a kind man. He loved cooking and his kids and we could never tell which one came first.” There was a soft chuckle through the crowd at that, a breaking of the tension as others slowly relaxed.

“He was taken from us. It was too early and he should still be here. He tried to stop them from taking me. He tried so hard…I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger,” her emotions overwhelmed her and she huddled in on herself as she walked over to them. Bianca surged out of Cameron’s arms and wrapped her up in a hug so fierce that Santi feared Yessenia would break.

Mom strode forward with measured grace. Each step a finality, a stoppage as she strode closer and closer to the mass funeral pyre. She turned slow as a glacier and looked at them all, emotionless and blank. She blinked slowly and spoke softly, only Santi’s spell letting her words travel further than a few feet.

“Vicente and I have been together since we were children. We raised children, we should have grown old together. Instead I have to watch him leave me. Leave us. He was a strong man, it takes a strong man to be kind. To care for others before themselves. It was weak men who killed him. May they burn for all eternity,” rage rasped in Mom’s voice with her last sentence as she walked back to them.

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After the first few days since they reunited Mom had seemed to slink back into herself. She was awake and moving and spoke with the girls, but the energetic and strong willed woman she had been before the integration had disappeared. The scars on her face and the haunted look in her eyes had been clear signs of the trauma she had endured.

Mom stood with a straight back next to the family and both of the girls grasped her hands on either side of her and they stood there together as Santi walked up to his shroud wrapped father.

This hadn’t been planned, him speaking last. It just was what had happened. Half the settlement had attended the funerals, filling the field they had cleared and made ready for the burning.

“I didn’t know your friends or family who are up here with my Dad. I’m sorry I don’t know them, having heard your stories of them, I wish I had taken the time to get to know them. We have buried people before. Too many people. This new world we live in is brutal and unrelenting.” Santi took a minute and sniffed quickly as his own feeling rumbled through his chest.

“Dad was kind. He was funny. He was so much that I can’t say it all. The world is darker without him, I know that. It’s darker without all of these people up here. We are a community now, in a way that hasn’t been seen since the medieval times. Our success is our survival, our numbers, our strength. I grieve for my Father and I grieve for those who died trying to stop his killers and save my sister. Let them always be remembered.” Santi trailed off as he realized he didn’t want to keep talking. He had planned a speech, a way of hinting at the upcoming wars, of banding together, but he was tired.

Santi hurried to his Mom and she opened her arms and he folded himself into her loving embrace as the two of them held each other for a few moments. Each of his sisters in turn hugged him and he reveled in that for a moment. His father was gone, but they were here. His sisters and mom and friends who were family. They were still here and he couldn’t collapse, not now, not ever again.

“Bianca, want to do it?” Santi asked, nodding at the pyre. Bianca froze and turned like a statue to look at the mass of dry wood and linen wrapped bodies. She nodded slowly and walked toward the pyre. She pulled out a little pocket knife and used a new skill she had acquired. A spark of flame leapt from the blade and landed on the wood and began to burrow. Flame ate away wood and then the wood burst into a conflagration, the oil they had poured in the heart of the flames licking upward.

Yesi shook as mana twisted around her. The little grimoire he had earned had given them another gift. A spell of remembrance. Yessenia had spent all night and some of this morning working it out, laying out the spell ingredients and arranging the pyre correctly.

As flames licked around the bodies, Santi watched as the bodies were absorbed by the flame. They didn’t burn and turn to ash, but rather dissipated into the inferno as it roared. The raw emotion of the grieving, of the happy memories and righteous anger, of love and sadness, it all mingled together and was consumed by that purifying flame.

Wood cracked and broke to charcoal, sliding away into ashen heaps at a rate that was supernatural. The red-orange flames shifted, lightening, paling until they were near invisible as they burned. The heavy air lightened as the spell worked and Yesi swayed on her feet, face paling as she was slowly drained.

If a wizard had done this off the cuff it would have taken monstrous amounts of power to accomplish it. A peak Acolyte level wizard if not a low level Disciple. With the spell forms written out in materials, wood, salt, oil, and a few small treasures and fueled by the emotions of a grieving community, it was just at the edge of her ability to complete.

Santi felt a tingle of pride as his sister held firm and watched as the pyre burned down to nothing. Mounded ash sank into the earth and thick green grass sprang up, flowers flowing fast and heady and a sense of acceptance and love washed over the entire crowd.

The dead were gone, their spirits whisked off to wherever it was that spirits went. But the memories and the emotions from the living for the deceased were present. They formed the basis of this glade that was growing more and more lush with every passing second.

When the spell was finished settling, one could walk through here and feel the solemn grace of a graveyard while still seeing the joy of life lived. Santi had seen a few of them with different levels of success.

Some glades had grown so thick with remembrances that they had become almost physical. Memories forming as one walked, taking up powerful moments that the living had remembered while the spell was active.

Others had been twisted by hatred and rage. Their memories of life and love consumed by the rage that they had been taken, the sorrow of living while the others lay silent and cold. Nightmares that had broken strong minds, emotions overwhelming and causing curses to form in a constant cycle.

This one was good. The small talk of happy memories had lightened the mood enough that they shouldn’t have to worry about curses forming. Likely the opposite. This could become a powerful ward for those who were cursed or fueled by curses.

“In a day or two the field will settle,” Santi whispered into Yessenia’s ear. She nodded to him and he slid an arm around her shoulder and started to lead her and everyone else away. The entire procession broke down around him, everyone going home to take a day or two for themselves. Santi didn’t have the luxury. He’d get his family settled and then he had work to do.