Cecilia watched the men surrounding her as the bumpy road shook her around. Shackles, which barely allowed her to move close to the bars, held her wrists. She had felt helpless before but this time it felt different. Something in her had changed, she had felt it in her bones that morning and she could not help but hope it was what she had always waited for. Part of her thought she didn’t deserve her sweet release. Although she had tried to absolve herself of her crimes, she could never deserve it. Who would forgive her anyway? She had betrayed her friends, their families and generations to come. Even her own found children. She had betrayed Jesse and Vagraad centuries before their births. Her watchful gaze washed over the small troop of soldiers that followed her cage. A pain took her heart as she fully took in the soldier’s ages. They all looked young, so much younger than they should have. Barely any had beards and all of their armors looked too big on them.
“Captain, could we stop for the night?” asked one of the royal soldiers, who was riding a gray horse.
The silver soldier looked at him with disgust and superiority, as if asking for a break had offended him and his entire family. “Dmitri? Mount on Mario’s horse and let him have your place.” his words came out slimy with venom.
As the two soldiers exchanged their places, Cecilia observed the Lord who was in charge of these soldiers a little closer. His dark ginger beard contrasted heavily with his blond hair. He looked to be around fifty years old and looked like he had battled many times before. Something constantly knitted his eyebrows in a hard and authoritative look, his eyes were colder than the ice in the Frozen Grounds up north, and he held himself with a nobility only royalty or high nobles were capable of expressing so effortlessly. He eerily resembled a man she hadn’t seen in 30 years: he was young and arrogant and was born as heir to the throne. Throughout her long centuries, Cecilia had never seen someone climb up the ranks so fast. He had entered the Saintly Order as a mere servant and after a few years had become one of its most important faces, gaining more and more power through his friends and other members of the Order. One day, after Jesse had escaped her vigilance, she pushed through her fear and walked up to the palace. She searched for the Emperor and strongly advised him to name his adopted brother as successor. She was relieved when she heard the official news, yet she couldn’t get rid of the stone that weighed down her stomach. She had forgotten about its existence lately, but at the sight of him at the front door it had appeared again. She had always thought they were rumors, but the scars on his face and the state of his armor testified about what his father had done with him. He had been stuck in his own heaven for decades.
The soldiers and her rode until daybreak and finally made a stop. A soldier, the one Cecilia remembered as being named Mario, gave her a small hard bread and a cup of water. He didn’t look to be much older than Vagraad, his blue eyes echoing in hers. Her gaze made him retreat rapidly and go back to his mates to eat. Cecilia raised her hands slightly to grab the food, but the chains were too short, so she resorted to catching it with her feet. A roar of laughter came out of the young soldiers. She brushed it off; it wasn’t the first time it happened to her after all. She had fallen more than once and had always risen afterward, this time couldn’t be any different, right?
“Is this pathetic thing what they left of Saint Corvus?” mocked the Lord.
Cecilia fired up at the sound of her deadname and stood up close up the bars, her hands stuck behind because of the length of the chains. “My name is Cecilia, even your father could respect that.”
A shadow went through the Lord’s face, making him go from mocking to angry in a split second, “I have no lesson to take from a coward.”
“Because you’re such a big boy, hun, Adam?” she taunted, a laugh in her voice and a spark in her eyes.
He came up to her face, hitting the bars of her cage with his armored arm, making a noise that definitely should’ve deafened her and yet she didn’t flinch. He looked into her eyes, the fiery pits of hell burning behind his pupils, and a mocking and mischievous look in hers. He calmed down and let go of a deep sigh before retreating to where he was. Cecilia sat back down and munched on her bread. After their meal, the soldiers went back up their horses and rode for another day before stopping again for the night. This time, Adam came to feed Cecilia while the others were asleep. She mistrustingly took the bread and the water from his hands. To her surprise, the bread was soft enough to be eaten without having to soften it in her water.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Who?”
“My niece, I know you didn’t kill her and I need to know where she is.”
Cecilia squinted; she knew this man couldn’t ever have the well-being of anyone in his heart, much less so Leo’s. She had seen a girl still too shaken by the events that led her to her inn to talk about it even a little, but she saw the look in her eyes when she had tried to connect with her by talking about the palace. It was a look she knew all too well. The one that meant this girl would do anything to kill the one who did this to her, even if it meant losing herself on the way.
“How do I know you’re not the one who wants to kill her?”
Adam sighed, “If the Counsel thinks she’s dead, she has all chances of surviving. I might have been an arrogant and violent man when you first met me but I’ve changed. I wouldn’t kill my niece no matter the amount of hate I have for her father. Or you.”
Cecilia observed the man’s face for a few seconds, “That bread doesn’t excuse the deadnaming Adam. Hating me doesn’t mean you can’t respect me as a living being.”
His face bored a hardened expression before he changed to an annoyed expression with a sigh, “Fine. I’m sorry Cecilia.” he said as if it had deeply hurt him.
“Thank you, that wasn’t so hard now was it?”
The man grunted before walking away. Cecilia laid down on the cage’s floor and tried to sleep; she rolled into a ball as she tried to keep the cold air from freezing her in her sleep. What she had felt in her very bones that early morning had shaken her to her core. At first she was the happiest woman on earth but then they came to arrest her. She remembered the expression of pure desperation on Vagraad’s face; it broke her heart to hear them bust their vocal cords and try to fight off the soldier while they were cuffing her and caging her. Tears threatened to roll down her face, but she couldn’t cry, not now. For her sake and all the children she had taken in. She had loved all the children and teenagers she had ever taken under her wing, trying to at least give some hope back in this wretched world. Her mind wandered around her memories. She came across the night she found a baby hidden in a bundle of linen in front of a back door. Its purple skin and the little tail wrapped around its torso, its sleeping face marked with worry. Cecilia had taken the forbidden child inside quickly before any soldiers could see her. The linen had a red diary tucked in the folds in which someone seemed to have written the last few years of their life. She thought back to the few years after this moment. She had been full of uncertainty about how to take care of a baby, the stress it had brought her, but also the moments she could never forget, full of a warm and fuzzy feeling of calm and happiness she had never felt deserving of. After a few minutes, Cecilia fell asleep as she felt a shadow go over one side of her cage, stay there for a while and then walk back to where it came from. She would have reacted to it if she hadn’t been falling into a deep sleep already.
Cecilia shot awake, water drenching her blood-red hair and her clothes. She stood up quickly but fell promptly on her butt, hurting her lower back with a groan of pain. She stayed put as the laugh of the soldiers washed over her drenched form. Her wet hair clung to her face, her killing gaze fixed on the wooden floor of her cage, unsure if her rage was against those soldiers’ humiliation or her for falling asleep in the first place. She stayed in this position for a good part of the day, her mind completely blank and feeling like her body was empty. That night, Mario came up to her cage with a piece of bread and a cup of water.
“I-”, he started before she looked up at him, “I’m sorry about the bucket.” he mumbled.
“Depends, did you throw it, had the idea, or did you laugh at me?” she replied.
“N-neither.” he mumbled again.
“Then you have nothing to be sorry about. Don’t pity me, it’ll bring you nothing.” she commented as she took the bread and water from his hands.
As she started eating and drinking the young soldier stared at her.
“What?” Cecilia snapped.
“A-are you really the-?”
“Haven’t been for a while.”
He gawked at her for a few more seconds, making her incredibly uncomfortable.
“Do you have more questions?” she raised an eyebrow at him.
“I-I should go.” he stuttered.
Mario walked back to his sleeping bag. She looked at the boy that must have been only 17 years old, not older. His staring reminded her of the first child she had rescued, her look full of admiration, the first one she had felt proud about in centuries. Cecilia had burned the evening in her mind. She had found a child sun elf from the far-eastern kingdom of Sheyja, being used and battered as a part of a sick game. She had beheaded every man and woman in that manor before taking the child under her cloak and taking her to her inn. She had beautiful black hair and brown slanted eyes that reflected as gold in the slightest light of a candle. She had grown up to be a powerful and confident young woman. Sadly, after a fight over why Cecilia wouldn’t teach her how to fight she stormed off, taking her few belongings, never seeing or hearing about the other ever since. Cecilia had always regretted the way they had parted their ways but she wouldn’t change her stance on teaching how to fight. Her heart clenched at the memory as she ate the rest of her bread and gulped down the water. For yet another night she slept on the hard wooden floor of her cage, feeling the shackles digging into the skin of her wrists and her back hurting from the lack of support. She woke up with the rumble of the cage as they dragged it along the rocky dirt road. Something seemed strange to Cecilia as she looked at the road and the scenery. She knew the road to Ravenwood by heart at that point: it had multiple towns installed across it, the closest being a village she had forgotten the name of, being only a day’s travel away from Outer-Alvoort. It had been a few days now, but they had seen no towns or villages.
“Where are you taking me?” shouted Cecilia to Adam.
Adma Uzelac got closer to her cage with his horse and went right next to her cage, “Ravenwood.” he sighed, “That time away from us really got to you…”
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“Can you tell me how many towns and villages there are on the road to Ravenwood, then?”
“Three: Yellowseed, Karme, and Salnas.”
“Then why haven’t we seen any of them in the last three days?”
“Well, it’s because-”
Adam stopped talking, then he quickly shouted at the guards to stop, which they all did abruptly. Adam dismounted his horse, briskly opened the door of the cage, and went up to her face.
“You’re the Saint,” his voice betrayed his rather courageous exterior. “Would you know if a fae had trapped us?”
“Are you scared of them?” she mocked him.
“Of course not.” he scoffed and walked out of the cage.
“If a minor user had done it, I would know.”
Adam stopped, he glanced around at his soldiers, all were confused, a low murmur ran through them. For a second, he was almost ashamed of having such inexperienced people on his team. He knew that if they ever came to fight, he was sure he would be the last one standing in a few minutes. Adam turned back to Cecilia, her eyes seemed to scan his soldiers for something, taking in every detail from every one of them.
“Him.” she nodded towards a young and frail man in the back.
“Andjei!” shouted Adam.
The young man came up to them, running like a child in his father’s armor, he looked to be barely older than Vagraad.
“Yes, sir!” he saluted, out of breath.
Cecilia’s eyes were scanning him again, “Tell me young boy, have you met a beautiful girl lately?”, she asked, “Might have even spent the night with her?”
“Well,”, the boy’s cheeks became red with the thought of it, “I did.”
The other soldiers cheered behind him.
“Could you strip down for me, please ?”
Andjei’s cheeks became even redder if it was even possible. Adam squinted at Cecilia while the soldiers whistled and cheered even louder. She had that hard look on her face, a serious one despising the cheering that made Andjei shy.
“Come on boy, I just want to see your back.”
Andjei looked up at Adam, unsure, and took his armor and his shirt off after his captain nodded at him to follow what Cecilia had asked him to do.
“Adam, I need you to free my hands, please.”
A flash of surprise appeared on Adam’s face before he sighed, took a key that was hanging on his belt, and freed only one of Cecilia’s hands.
“Turn around. You two, hold him.” she ordered as she pointed at two other soldiers.
“What?” asked Andjei, who had felt his heart fall into his stomach at the realization that things weren’t as cheery as he thought they were.
The Saint applied her hand to the center of Andjei’s back and looked closer as he wiggled around and tried to reason with her. She pushed and pressed on his skin to find any signs of a sigil, searching for the tiniest faint of discoloration on it. After a few minutes, she lifted her head, one of her hands not moving from a spot in the middle of his shoulder blades.
“Do you have any torches?” asked Cecilia to the surrounding soldiers, a hard look on her face. One of them took one out of the bags his horse was wearing on its rump. “Light it up for me please,” asked Cecilia. The soldier nodded and lit it up, worry in his eyes. “Brace yourself Andjei.”
Cecilia approached the flame to the spot where she had found the sigil. Andjei arched backward to get away from the flame, but he couldn’t. The flame seared his skin and he screamed like a madman as he begged Cecilia to stop, tears forming in his eyes as his war mates held him up, fear on their faces as they smelled their friend’s skin burn. Adam’s heart almost went heavy with the painful screams of his soldier. They would feel like family to him if it wasn’t for their inexperience and cowardice. He stayed stoic and watched while so many of his soldiers preferred to turn their gazes away from the scene. After around a minute, Andjei stopped screaming and started sobbing. His legs couldn’t hold him up anymore.
“It was an illusionary sigil made by an eastern witch, they made it to blend in with the skin and stay there for a while. They directed the illusion towards everyone’s mind within a 30 feet radius so that they never know they are heading the wrong way.” she declared, barely shaken by Andjei’s limp body.
Cecilia extinguished the torch and gave it back to the soldier who had given it to her. She looked at Andjei, now barely conscious, and sat down while a medic came up to heal the burn that covered the upper half of his back. His blood covered most of it, soaking and staining his pants. If her mind had been to it, she would have shed a tear for the young man, but all she could think about was the sigil. Everyone had a different way of writing sigils, like how complex or simple a handwriting can be. She had seen this one before and she couldn’t help but let the anger build up. She had waited for so long for an end to her life. The Gods themselves had denied it for a thousand years, and now that she finally could, that old witch wanted to prevent her from having it. Cecilia tried to change her train of thoughts, thinking of how if Dobrin’s army hadn’t gotten their grubby hands on Andjei he would have never had to feel this pain, but again, it all came back to her wrong doings. She chased her thoughts away with a look towards Adam, who was putting back the shackle on her wrist. He looked up at her, jubilating at the action. He closed the cage’s door and locked it, shooting her a last look full of mockery.
“Put him on a horse, let's resume our road towards Ravenwood!”, he shouted at his men who shouted “Yes Sir!” with all of what their lungs were capable of.
Adam mounted his horse. For the rest of the road that day, his mind was screaming at him to kill Cecilia on the spot. He entertained the thought, but he knew his reputation would take a hit if he couldn’t bring Cecilia to Ravenwood. He was in charge of the Army of Dobrin, him, the great Lord Uzelac, his name would only shine brighter if he was the one to bring the Saint to trial and get his rightful revenge on his niece’s death.
Once the night had fallen, they stopped and slept in a small clearing to watch the stars and know if they were truly heading the right way. That night, Mario came back to offer some food to Cecilia, this time there was meat hidden in the bread and the water was in a slightly bigger cup.
“Thank you, for, you know..”, he stumbled on his thoughts, “getting that thing off of Andjei.”
“Is he feeling better?” she asked, munching on her bread.
“He’ll live, he just has to sleep it off.” answered Mario, visibly shaken.
Cecilia nodded and refrained from correcting him. Mario stayed there for a few awkward seconds before he forcefully coughed and walked away to go to sleep. When Cecilia tried to sleep another shadow walked in front of her cage, and once again, she thought nothing of it. She fell asleep soon after, the smell of Andjei’s burning flesh taking over her mind. For a moment her dream was filled with funeral pyres and burning stakes, cries and screams coming off of it like a thick and nauseating smoke. She found the mumbles and sounds from her dream very loud for a second. In a state of half-consciousness, Cecilia opened her eyes, seeing a spectral form floating by the soldiers. She thought nothing of it, even thinking of falling back to sleep despite the muffled whines.
“Mario?” asked a tired voice.
A heavy silence replaced the other man’s reply.
“We’re under attack!” he shouted.
Cecilia opened her eyes wide, sitting up in a matter of seconds. Time stopped as she tried to take in the scene in front of her. Not one but four Nattmaras were sucking the life force out of multiple soldiers. Cecilia had only heard of these creatures before but had never seen one despite her long life. They were long, skinny women with white skin that contrasted with their long black hair and nails. Their nightgowns and hair looked as if they were eerily floating in the air, restless. The sounds of the alarm bells and the yells of terror from the soldiers felt distant from Cecilia as she helplessly watched these young men get killed by different creatures. She saw giant wolves, Nattmaras, and Undeads, creatures who in all her years of life she had never seen cooperate, attacking the soldiers and screeching into the night sky.
“Cecilia!”
She shot her head towards the door of her cage. Adam was there, out of breath and sweaty, loose blouse and pants on, an ax in his hands and a sword at his hip. He hit the lock, making it fly to the ground with a thud. He held up his ax towards Cecilia, making it drop on her chains and severing them in one clean cut. Adam grabbed by the arm and dragged her out of the cage. He put his face up to hers, his eyes looking as if they would pop out of his face with anger.
“What have you done?!” he shouted.
Cecilia took a second before understanding what Adam was implying. “I lost my powers years ago, Adam!”, she yelled back. “Someone else is controlling these creatures!”
“Then-”, Adam pushed Cecilia aside to slash the arm of a Nattmara that was trying to get to him, still holding her arm “Who?!”
“How the fuck would I know?!”
Cecilia took the sword on his hip out of its sheath and pushed him aside before slashing through an Undead’s neck. She looked at the sword for a second, the feeling of it in her hand was all too familiar, as if she was holding the hand of a long lost friend. Without wasting another second, she leaped and ran towards danger to save the young soldiers. Adam followed her in battle in a groan of frustration. As they slashed at Nattmaras and decapitated Undeads under the light of the campfires and the stars, she couldn’t help but try to look for Mario and Andjei. As her eyes searched for them, something hit her side and she violently fell to the ground, the dead leaves from the forest floor immediately tangling in her red hair. She had fallen on her back and with her face turned to the side and time seemed to stop as she saw with horror Mario’s mangled face. His usual blush had been replaced by gashing wounds from which his bloody teeth and gums were showing and his baby blue eyes looked like glass beads, lost in the nothingness. Cecilia’s heart went silent and so did the battlefield around her as her eyes stayed glued to Mario’s face. She whipped her head towards the creature that was pinning her down, finally ripping her eyes off of the corpse. Her attention now focused on the giant gray wolf that looked back at her with its brown beads, mouth contorted into an awful grin, with a mix of spit and blood hanging from its corners. Cecilia fumbled to find the sword that had fallen next to her and gripped it tight, her eyes still on the snarling giant wolf. Fueled with anger, she planted it into the wolf’s stomach before dragging it upwards toward its head, letting his bowels fall on her legs and torso in a warm and bloody mess as the creature howled in pain. The wolf fell sideways, entrails spilling out onto Cecilia before she stood back up.
Adam had never taken those who had feared the name of the Human Saint seriously, but now he did too and even came to regret the way he had mocked these people. She was standing there, battling any creature that was coming at her in screams of repressed anger, clothes full of blood and chunks of guts, her blue eyes glowing with a cold and unwelcoming light, steam floating around her which came from the insides she was covered in, and campfires lit behind her. To Adam, she looked like a goddess of war and death. The one that soldiers like him would pray to before going to battle, to guide them and help them slay their enemies. Cecilia walked towards him, wiping some blood off of her brow, her chest moving with her deep breaths, yells, and screams of distress and terror echoing around both of them. She seemed to look right at him as she readied her sword to throw it like it was a spear.
“Duck!” she shouted.
The sword went flying past Adam’s left ear before planting itself in something and then a tree. A screech emerged from behind him. He turned around to see a Nattmara pinned to a tree by its stomach as Cecilia took his ax from his hand and brutally decapitated the creature in one swing. Its body fell into a pile of ashes at the foot of the tree, only leaving the sword planted in the trunk. She took the sword back and gave it to Adam.
“I believe you fight much better with this.”
She didn’t wait for him to react before she took his ax and ran towards the danger, yelling and slashing and decapitating more creatures one by one, failing to save soldiers from being killed more than once, fueling her anger. Adam followed right after her. After almost an hour, Adam was exhausted, covered in blood, bruises, and cuts, while Cecilia seemed to still be running on that fire she had in her soul. Once they had killed every creature, they searched for the survivors. None was left but them. In a denser part of the forest, they heard a weird noise that could have been coming out of a human. Cecilia rushed towards it, swinging her ax to cut the branches in her path as the morning sun began its shy hello until she found the source of the noise. A Nattmara was sitting on a soldier’s lap, sucking his soul out of him while he was trying to call for help. Cecilia decapitated the creature in one swing, causing the creature to turn immediately into ashes and the soldier to fall limply on the forest floor. Even with his mummified face, Cecilia could recognize Andjei. His eyes had turned white and glassy, his skin stretched on his skull. For the first time in the entire night, a tear rolled down her cheek, chasing away the blood on its way to her chin. Adam arrived behind her, standing tall, his sword by his side and his clothes full of blood and dirt, and only the Gods knew what else. Even though he only saw her from the back, he knew she was crying. A cloud of disgust sprouted from his heart and covered his face. Cecilia couldn’t have cared any less if Adam had seen her tears. Her sadness had hit her as only a tsunami could in these couple of seconds where her adrenaline had retired from her veins. She tore her eyes off of Andjei’s body and forced herself to think again of the witch who had caused so many deaths, human and creatures alike, to take away what Cecilia had eagerly awaited all those years, and her anger soon replaced her tears and sadness.