Jesse fumbled around in the dark and narrow passage through the heavy walls of the prison. The moisture and the smell of decomposing algae was overpowering, even with his blouse over his nose. He gripped his dagger tightly and was very careful of where his feet were, in the hope of not falling and losing his precious weapon. Vagraad and he had trouble keeping up with Leo, who rushed ahead of them, the air around her cold and still. Jesse’s braid caressed his left cheek, and once again, he wondered how things had come to this in between them. He could barely recognize the young woman he had found a week and a half ago behind the inn, clothes dirty and brandishing her dagger at him. He tried to go back and forth and could not find any reason. Leo halted, her cloaked form outlined by the light of torches. She looked left and right before engaging herself in the corridor in front of her.
“Which way now?” she whispered.
“He said the break room should be up on the right. So maybe on the left?” he answered.
Leo’s face was incredibly still, no emotions seeped through it. She took a right, following the corridor until another junction appeared. Jesse thought he would explode with stress before he and Vagraad could ever find Cecilia. He tried to steer the group according to his recollection of what the old men had told him almost every night for the past 13 human years, hoping their recollection was accurate. As they walked through the windowless corridors of Ravenwood, Jesse couldn’t help but notice how thick the air was with the faint smell of blood and mold. From time to time, they would pass a door, all of them had little windows on them. Every time he or Vagraad checked them, he hoped they would see Cecilia or at least proof that she had been there, but they didn’t find any. After one more junction, Jesse dared to ask the question that was burning his lips.
“Why are you like this?”
Leo stopped dead in her tracks. “What?” she hissed, sounding more like a warning than a question.
“Why are you suddenly so cold?”
“Are you actually asking me this right now?” she snapped at him, turning around, her dagger in hand, dangerously turned towards Jesse.
“Well-”
“I’m here to avenge my family. I saw that man kill my sisters and possibly my father-” The sound of boots echoing through the corridor interrupted her. She pushed past Vagraad, daggers in her eyes, took Jesse by the shirt and dragged him to a narrower corridor empty of people. She pushed Jesse against the wall. Even with their height difference, Leo being a head smaller than Jesse, she was still quite intimidating to him. Even more after she smelled the liquor emanating off of him. “If you fuck it up for me like you did at Karme, I won’t fucking forgive you.” she whispered.
“When did you get like that?” he muttered to himself.
“Funny you’re saying that as if you knew me. Before this whole shitshow started, I talked to you once when I was 10.” Jesse thought she was over, but the words kept spilling out of her mouth. “And you know what? I was fucking right the first day we met, you two are fucking nutcases. Trying to get someone out of the most protected prison of Dobrin, for someone who doesn’t even deserve it, with no skill, is worse than I fucking thought.”
“Take it back.” Jesse whispered coldly.
“Je-”
“You are so fucking deep in your denial, you can’t even see who she is.” Jesse, without a word, pushed Leo against the wall, surely with more force than he had wished. He looked deep into her eyes, his anger close to breaking the surface. “She’s not an altruist, she’s desperate for redemption. She’s used you like she did with every other child before you. You’re a tool to her.” Leo spat out.
Jesse didn’t feel his fist hit the wall, nor did he see how it had cracked the stones without leaving a mark on his knuckles. “I will get you to the break room near the Director’s building, but I will not accompany you there. I’ll tell you how to get there and that’s it.”
He walked away from Leo, a calm rage filling his body. After this, they barely talked to each other as Jesse now led them through the bowels of Ravenwood. After more twists and turns, and hiding from guards and soldiers, they finally arrived at a junction where the stones were lit by a sliver of the sun’s rays of the day. Leo recognized the better lit corner of what could be a break room full of people laughing and chatting with one another, while Vagraad recognized the type of hallway that typically led to cells on the other side.
“This is where we part.” she solemnly said.
“I hope you get him,” said Jesse.
She only stared at him in return. With a trembling hand on her ornate dagger, she cautiously walked over to the breakroom. The door flung open, a drunk soldier was holding another one, even more drunk than the first, and both stopped right in front of Leo.
“Oh my saint, isn’t that the guy we were searching for earlier?” slurred the drunkest one.
“They’re here!” yelled the least drunk. “Call the lords!”
The metallic sounds of the soldiers’ armor clinking together and the bell resonating throughout the walls lit a fire under their feet. The group ran down the corridor that was full of cells to the fully lit junction at the end. Jesse had some trouble not tripping on the uneven floor, but Vagraad fell flat on their stomach in a yelp of surprise and pain. Jesse turned around, his heart beating hard in his chest as he saw the soldiers at the end of the hallway, running after them, and Vagraad vomiting what Jesse could only assume they had tried to hold back for a moment now. He ran toward Vagraad, helped them up while their body convulsed to let out more of the content of their stomach, forgetting their ax on the ground. He propped the young hlêg’s left arm on his shoulder, trying to run with them. Jesse’s head shot back up toward Leo when he heard a metal door closing. Leo stood behind a metal gate, keys in her hands, and the unconscious body of a soldier behind her.
“What are you doing?”
“I told you to not get in my way.”
He tried to search her face for any signs of deception or regret, no matter how small, but there wasn’t any. She stared them down coldly before she turned around and ran away; the hood of her cloak fell down, revealing her black tight curly hair no longer in braids and free of the ribbons that had decorated it. Jesse muttered her name as Vagraad’s vomiting sounds and the soldiers’ yells seemed far away from him. He barely felt his face hitting the ground when one soldier tackled him. His mismatched eyes were still stuck on the space where she once stood. The young demon finally came back to himself when he was forced to tear his eyes away from the gate. He had been taken by the arms, each by a soldier, so did Vagraad, who was standing next to him.
“Attention!”
Suddenly, all soldiers stood still against the wall, or attempted for the ones who were drunk, in a neat line. Those holding Vagraad and Jesse stood straight and tightened their grip on them. The sounds of boots this time brought a man dressed differently from the guards, yet still wearing the green uniform. He was tall and plump, his brown hair seemed to have been windswept to one side, and his eyes looked darker than night itself as he stood in the dimly lit corridor. A smirk appeared on his thin, chapped lips as he saw Jesse.
“Well, well, well, look who we have here.” his booming voice sang. “Isn’t it the Saint’s children, looking for a way to save their mama?” he mocked.
Some guards laughed, but he silenced them with a glance. The man approached slowly, hands behind his back and head held high.
“Where is she?!” yelled Vagraad.
The man nodded toward one of his soldiers. He advanced and, in a swift motion, punched Vagraad in the jaw, earning a yelp of surprise for the young hlêg.
“I see the big man you are doesn’t want to dirty his little white hands.” mustered Jesse through his fear. The man snapped his head toward him, squinted, and took Jesse’s braid between his fingers. Jesse gathered all the saliva he could muster and spat in the man’s face with a devilish grin on his face. “Sorry, must’ve been the sea.”
The man took a white piece of fabric out of his top pocket and slowly wiped away the spit from his face.
“Don’t bother getting them clothes. Put this one in my private room and put the fish in isolation. Let’s see if it still wants to yell after that.”
Jesse’s eyes went wide open. He screamed out to Vagraad as the soldiers dragged them in different directions, but nothing could set them free from their tight grasp, not the wiggling or the kicks. Jesse could hear Vagraad’s throat give out as they screamed louder and louder until a soldier knocked them out. Jesse was dragged to a small room with the same kinds of door they had seen on their way to the break room. They attached his wrists to the chain hanging off from the wall, keeping his arms raised above his head and barely loose enough for him to not get pain in his shoulders too quickly. The soldiers who had brought him here waited patiently by the door. Jesse’s heart was about to jump out of his chest, he was scared, terrified even, but if it meant Vagraad wouldn’t be in his place, it was worth it. After a few seconds, the man from earlier entered the room, a pouch in his hands and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He put it down delicately on the table next to him and took out some instruments, which he lined up perfectly.
“I do not like to be disrespected in front of my soldiers, even less so by creatures like you.” said the man, wrapping a thin and spiked chain around his hand. He approached Jesse and quickly struck him in the jaw three times, leaving the demon’s face numb and bloody. Jesse spat out some blood on the stone floor, his head hanging low, still a bit stunned by the blows. “You know, I expected you to make more noise than-”
“Go on, hit me harder, I like it.” defiance seeped out through his pain.
The man stood there, stunned; no prisoner had ever talked to him like this. Jesse lifted his head toward the man, his eyes glinting with the light of someone who had nothing to lose. The man squinted again and turned around to his tools. For a second, Jesse regretted his words as he saw the man turn back around with a pointy metal rod. The man didn’t say a word as he walked over to a torch and put the rod in the flame. He left it there until it turned glowing red and walked over to him, putting his face close to his.
“If you want to be my punching bag, so be it.” he whispered, a mix of frustration and glee lacing his voice.
Jesse barely had the time to swallow his saliva before the man pressed the red-hot rod to his side. The pain made him scream and squirm, his body straightened, his head flew backwards, hitting the wall. Jesse didn’t register the pain resonating through his skull, the smell of his burning flesh brought up a panic he hadn’t felt in years. His scream doubled and died down as the man took the rod away, leaving his skin raw and open. Jesse’s head fell forward in a limp motion. His eyes were wide open and lost in the nothingness between him and the floor, his mind was blank. The man continued his treatment for what felt like an eternity, using more and more tools on the young demon, who could swear his vocal cords would break any moment now. The man stopped after an hour or two, his breath was scant and a smile rested on his lips. Jesse’s head hung low once again, his body coursing with so much pain he didn’t know where it came from anymore. The man took him by the hair and tilted his head backward.
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
“Now, don’t let me down like this. It was thrilling.” he jubilated. A metallic knock echoed through the room. “What is it? Can’t you hear I’m working?”
“Sir, Judge Harper has arrived. Him and Lord Uzelac are waiting for you at the tribunal.”
“Always there to bother me when I’m having fun.” he grumbled. “Tell them I’ll be here any minute.” he answered to the man beyond the door.
He walked away from Jesse, took a rag from the table and cleaned the blood off of his hands with it. He took his tools one by one and carefully cleaned them before putting them back in his bag.
“I would love to spend more time with you, but there’s an execution scheduled for tonight. And I need to be there for the preparations.” he said as he pulled his sleeves back down to his wrists and put his coat back on.
“Get him sorted.” he ordered the two soldiers in the room.
After that, the world seemed to have lost all its light to Jesse. He didn’t react when he was dragged to a special room and his hands and feet were chained together once again. He didn’t react when he watched the braid Leo had made that night fall to the ground and lay there on the moist stones that made up the floor. He didn’t react when he was thrown into a cell and they attached the chain linking his wrist together high on the wall. For a moment he didn’t move, and the pain was over powering. He had resigned to his fate, being stuck in a cell and never seeing Cecilia’s long red hair or hear her voice ever again. He would probably be stuck there until the morning and have to hear the ax fall down on the stump and the thud of her head on the ground, or hear the noose tighten violently around her neck as her body fell down the hole in the gallows.
“Jesse?”
The young demon jolted awake. The clicking sound of chains against the stone of the cell followed the low croaking voice that had called out to him.
“Is that you Jesse?”
He couldn’t help but fear the sound coming from the darkened corner of the cell. The only spot the light from the torches outside could not reach.
“Sleeping Beauty?” Jesse’s heart jumped in his chest. He painfully lifted his head toward the sound. “Oh, sweetheart, what did they do to you?”
A tear rolled down Jesse’s face. The soft voice that had put him to sleep and reassured him all his life was finally back.
“Why did you come here?” she asked. “Why would you ever do that?”
“Because you’re family.” he sobbed, his voice cracking. “We don’t abandon family.”
“Jesse-”
“Leo abandoned us.” he took a deep breath. “She left us to the soldiers instead of helping us.”
“She must know then.” she muttered to herself.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, my sweet summer child…” she paused. “You still don’t understand, do you?”
Jesse could feel the tears coming back up in his eyes and his throat close up. His eyes had finally accustomed to the darkness and he could finally see who he was talking to: she was a ghost of herself, her face was bloody and bruised, she wore a gray and dirty dress, and they had crudely cut her hair to a few inches off of her scalp. Her baby blue eyes looked at Jesse with the sweetest glance a mother could muster.
“I am the Crow.”
A deep feeling of horror bloomed in his stomach, one he had always refused to ever listen to or believe it even existed. His vision blurred as tears flooded his face, reducing Cecilia’s presence to a mere stain of scarlet red in his vision. The young demon hung his head low as he took it in. For a moment, all was silent. Cecilia hung in it, waiting for any sign from him. Until a slight chuckle came out of him as Leo’s words came back to him. During her 50 years with him, she had never heard him make such a noise, his chuckles were usually light and brought happiness to her heart, but this one only brought her worry and dread.
“Do you have any idea what we risked to get here? What I am risking?” Jesse lifted his head back up, his earrings dangling and catching the light from the torches in the hallway, a twisted smile on his face. “I was kidnapped twice, caught by soldiers, tortured, Leo almost died, I got betrayed by Darya and Leo, and all you say is ‘why would you ever come here’?” the pain in his mismatched eyes echoed the one Elephtheria had the day she betrayed the then young goddess. “You raised me! I loved you with my entire being! I risked my life and Vagraad’s for you!” his voice cracked, overflowed by the tears and the knot forming in his throat. “Is that why none of the other kids ever reached us?! Did they all understand you were just using us for your stupid redemption?!”
The erratic breathing coming for Jesse filled the room while Cecilia couldn’t do anything but sit there and take in the blows.
“Have you ever even loved me?” his voice cracked one last time.
“Don’t you dare question my love for you! I raised you and protected you, I love you with all of what my soul is capable of.”
“Yeah? And how much is that?” Jesse’s words were a knife in her heart. “You murdered millions, forced them to flee their sacred lands and retreat from the world. You destroyed everything they had ever cared about. You didn’t care about love then, why would you ever do it now?”
“I was young,” she mumbled. “The world was much more different and-”
“Do you really think it excuses all the abject things you’ve done?!”
“Of course I don’t!” she yelled, her heart breaking. “I’ve had an entire millennium to think about what I have done. Don’t you think their ghosts haunt me every night?! Don’t you think I grew and saw the horror I had created?! What their lies fed into?!” she took a deep breath to calm herself. “I spent every day, for a hundred years, trying to kill myself. Do you know what it feels like to want to die so much and not being able to? I know what I have done, and I know nothing I can do can bring my victims back to life. I don’t want a redemption, I know I don't deserve one. I just want to die. And until that day comes, I’ll try to bring some of the goodness I took from this world.”
Jesse couldn’t talk. Cecilia’s monologue had taken him aback. He lowered his head to focus. His mind was torn: on one hand, he wanted to scream at her some more and take all of his pain out on her, but on the other, he saw the woman she really was, one that knew all too well she deserved nothing but what was coming for her.
“You’re my child, whether you like it or not.” she took a deep breath in. “And I love you.”
The sound of boots echoed throughout the corridor, and a soldier came up to the door, his keys in hands. “It’s time,” he announced as he opened the door.
Cecilia gave a bittersweet look to Jesse, who could feel tears rolling down his cheeks. The soldier came into the cell and took Cecilia’s chains off of those that kept her arms up to the wall. A second soldier came and did the same to a confused Jesse.
“What is happening?” she asked, her heart racing in her chest, giving quick glances at the soldiers.
“Judge Harper and our Lords want your two kids up there with you. Guess the colleagues weren’t enough of an audience.” the soldier dryly chuckled.
Jesse would have thrown up because of the stress if his body hadn’t felt so void of strength. The grip the soldier had on his upper arm was hurting him, but so did his bruises and cut up face, and his whole abdomen. He painfully followed behind Cecilia, his brain trying hard to process her lack of hair length. After a few twists and turns, they finally made it to the inner court of Ravenwood: the place was circular, the walls peppered with torches who lit up the darkness with their soft yellow lights. In the middle of it was a podium covered with a roof, a man stood on it, wearing a black hood, the ax in his hand ready and sharpened with expert hands. Heavy clouds obscured the starry night, and the cold early winter wind blew lightly, making the torches’ flames dance. On the side of the podium was another one, this time with banisters made of what looked to be much fancier wood, admittedly higher, which could only contain one person.
“Cecilia!” shouted a cracked voice from the other side of the courtyard.
Jesse turned his head and was relieved to see an intact Vagraad, held by one soldier in front of the highest podium. Soon enough, Cecilia and Jesse were placed next to them. In a glance, Cecilia calmed down the young hlêg, a little smile visiting her lips. From the back of the courtyard came out the same man who had imprisoned Vagraad and Jesse, and a man with blue eyes, blond hair, and a dark ginger beard. The young demon recognized that man as being the one who arrested Cecilia the week before. As the third and final man walked in, Jesse could feel a cold sweat run down his spine, this same walk pattern had been haunting his dreams for the last 1O human years.
“Attention! Court is in session.”
A pair of eyes as dark as night were fixing him. His mind screamed at him to run away, to throw himself into the sea and attempt to swim even though he knew he never learned how to, yet, his body froze, his mind absorbed by the pair of black eyes and every movement of their owner, expecting something more, a word or a gesture that would let him think anything bad would happen to him.
“Josiah?” asked the man with blond hair.
“Excuse-me, Adam, it’s rare that I see how one of my former toys lived on, given they are still alive, of course. I knew you were special the very first time I saw you. Thank you for giving me and my friends such joy for two entire months.” a disgusting smile drew itself on Harper’s lips. “I remember covering Cecilia’s mark with my own, this was more satisfying than anything I had done before.”
Jesse stared at the judge before his eyes slowly fell down to Josiah’s hands. Thick leather gloves. The same ones his nightmares were plagued with. His voice resonated in his brain, slithering into his thoughts, delivering a slew of forgotten memories from the confines of himself. The smell of his flesh burning was only the beginning. He remembered how each of his scars had been done to him, how his body wasn’t his anymore. His mind had turned off into a mush, obeying only to stay alive long enough for someone to save him. He remembered the long sleepless nights and days, the prayers he had done for someone, anyone to come and save him. Until they one day decided he was too weak to keep playing with. They had broken him one last time and thrown him in the streets, figuring he would die there, with no one to recall his existence.
“You did what?” she mumbled, shocked. “You marked my son?!” she screamed at him. “I should’ve slashed your throat just like I did with the others!”
“Now, Now, Saint, it doesn’t do to threaten the judge. You already have some damning evidence against you.” he taunted her. He cleared his throat and continued, “Cecilia Corvus Numen, after long deliberation, for the murder of Princess Leana Halflingberg, third daughter of our beloved Emperor Charles Halflingberg, I sentenced you to death by decapitation.” he proclaimed, the sentence echoing through the courtyard.
“No! What deliberation? What about witnesses?! You asked no one anything!” screamed Vagraad.
“I have.” he answered. “Lord Adam Uzelac, brother of our Emperor himself, identified the body of Princess Leana in the chimney fire of the Night Elf Inn a few minutes before the arrest.”
“What?!” they screamed. “You can’t do that! He’s lying!”
Harper watched Vagraad with delight in his hawk-like eyes and a smirk on his lips. Jesse was silent and as still as stone. Cecilia said nothing about her sentencing or about Adam’s testimony, she was frozen in place, horror replaced the shock when she took in the scene. That old hag was right, it would happen and nothing she would do to avoid it would work, not even putting a sigil on her son. Jesse watched Cecilia being brought effortlessly to the scaffold, he prayed for her to move, to attack or even run away, for her to do anything but accept her death. Vagraad’s yells were only painting the background of the scene that unrolled before his eyes. Cecilia, his Cecilia, his mother, climbed up the stairs to the stump. She kneeled down behind it, a smile on her lips and the same soft look she would give to the lost kids she cared for. With a last look toward Jesse and Vagraad, she gently laid her head on the stump, tears rolling down her cheeks to fall on the dead wood. The executioner lifted his great ax high in the starless sky and let it fall with all its weight on her neck. One clean cut. The world before his eyes blurred. Even Vagraad’s scream and the dull sound of Cecilia’s scarlet head falling on the stone floor and rolling to his feet couldn’t pierce the veil covering this reality. The faint sounds of Harper’s voice came to his ears, but he couldn’t keep the information for more than a second. His eyes were stuck on the ball of blood-red hair on the ground. He only came back to reality when the young hlêg screamed his name and begged for his help.
“As accomplices of Cecilia Corvus Numen, you both, Vagraad Fishermann and Jesse Numen, are hereby sentenced to death by decapitation.”
“What?” weakly mumbled Jesse.
“No! Jesse, you can’t let them! Please!”
“Vagraad? Vagraad!”
Finally, Jesse was out of it, his mind fully resting on his sibling, panic now taking full control of him as he tried to fight the soldier holding him. He broke free but his legs couldn’t support him anymore, he fell hard on the stone flooring of the courtyard. The soldier that was holding him brought him to his knees as he screamed Vagraad’s name as they were forcefully brought to the scaffold and tied down to it. Jesse screamed and screamed, again and again, trying desperately to move, finding himself praying to any god out there to intervene and save his sibling by any means possible. With a last call out to each other, the great ax fell down heavily and Vagraad’s head rolled down to join Cecilia’s in a mass of blue and red hair. Jesse’s voice died in his throat. Nothing. There was nothing in him as the soldier took his foot off of his back. There was nothing as Harper stepped down from his podium and walked over to him. There was nothing as he lifted Jesse’s head with his gloved hand.
“I missed seeing your broken eyes, my pet.”
Everything came back to him in a crashing wave; anger, pain, and grief flooded his body. His saliva tasted like blood and a headache took him in a second. Harper’s eyes grew wide and a look of horror smeared itself on his face as he desperately ran away. The soldiers unsheathed their swords and stood guard around Harper while Adam and the director shouted orders at their men.