She sat alone near the fire, warming up her aching hands and fingers. Taking care of Naira’s wounds was much harder and took a lot longer than she expected - as Harian said, the arrowheads were indeed coated by some vile filth that quickly infected Naira’s wounds. Dark thoughts crept up Auria’s mind, and she kept thinking about why such a large number of refugees went for the Citadel, and if they were indeed just refugees or perhaps something entirely else…

She noticed that people around the camp kept averting their gazes, trying too hard to not look at her. She felt like an outcast, yet she wasn’t entirely sure why.

“May I?” Suranihr’s voice broke her web of thoughts, and she nodded. “Sit. Just try to be less obvious by not looking at my face.”

“Auria I…” he sighed and stopped for a moment, but finally he sat down heavily, tired and aching. “I’m sorry. Does it hurt?”

“Does what hurt?” She asked, confused. “I’m tired, and I feel ravenous hunger eating me from inside. The arm wishes for me to feed it, and honestly I need to focus a lot of my will to not devour you where you sit.” Looking at his raised eyebrows, she realized that she did not answer what he was actually asking. “What is going on? Why won’t anybody look at me?”

“You… You don’t know. You don’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

***

Auria fell, her face buried in the bloody mud. Screams of agony filled the air all around Suranihr as he looked around the carnage caused by the fallen medic. “What the fuck…” He muttered to himself.

“Couldn’t say it in better words.” Harian spat blood on the ground, keeping his eyes focused on mutilated corpses around. “They are cut through, clean cuts, cauterized. Have you seen something like this ever before?”

Suranihr nodded. “Once. I’ve seen such wounds when we’ve captured a slaver ship from Ladrurg… They used to cut fingers, ears, noses, whatever came under their blades… They heated up the blades in fire, and cut off body parts with them, so that the slaves wouldn't bleed out.”

“Disgusting.” Harian muttered. He turned around. “Oh fuck, Naira!” He shouted as he ran towards the kneeling mechanic. She was still atop the chariot, clenching her long rifle in one hand, tugging on the arrow sticking out from her belly with the other. “Suranihr, help Auria.” Harian commanded as he ran towards the mechanic.

As he walked towards her, Auria rose from the mud, wiping away the bloody mud from her face with sleeves of her robe. She looked at Suranihr, and he winced.

Left half of her face was crossed with a network of black veins trailing from her neck up to her left eye, darkening it to a color of anthracite. She held his gaze, unmoving, unflinching. Something primal hid there, something wild and dark. He moved closer to her slowly. “Auria, are you..”

She made four quick steps back, pressing her back against the carriage. “Don’t touch me!” She screamed in a child-like voice. “Leave me be!” She switched her gaze towards Harian, standing between him and Naira. “Leave her!” Turning her head towards kneeling Naira, she screamed. “Mom, what do they want? What have they done to you? Mom!”

Naira coughed and bloody droplets spat from her mouth. “Auria…” She wheezed.

“Leave us!” Auria screamed.

“She’s dying, Auria.” Harian said calmly. “Let me pass to help her.”

Two citadel carriages came, whistling of steam engines accompanying the hoofbeats. Three citadel guards jumped down and hurried towards the group.

“NO!” Auria screamed. “Leave us alone! We haven’t done anything to you!” She screamed, tears trailing from her eyes.

“Calm down, Auria. We want to help you.” Suranihr made another slow step towards her, and something primal awakened in Auria. She screamed, fury and rage in her voice present as much as fear and panic, her projector spread towards him. “MOVE AWAY!” She screamed, and Suranihr felt a wave of nausea pass through him. “ROT!” She screamed as her projector shone with bright light.

Suranihr fell to his knees, sudden weakness overpowering his muscles and joints. As quickly as it brightened up, the projector faded away and Auria lost consciousness again. With her fallen on the ground, Suranihr’s weakness was gone and he hurried towards her.

***

“I attacked you?” Auria asked, frightened. “How? Why? What..”

“Doesn’t matter. Although, Harian advised me to ask you for a healing, to… remove anything that you put into me. Honestly, I feel like vomiting my guts out.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“I did… Fuck. Fuck!.” She muttered. “I need to feed the projector. I… I have no idea what I put into you. Where are we? Is there a village or a town nearby? Some place where we could find someone…”

“Everything around us is abandoned. That’s where the refugees came from.” Suranihr said calmly. “I’m not dying, not yet, and after your care, Naira will survive. There is still enough time.”

“I’m so sorry, Suranihr. I… I don’t…”

“Maybe it runs in your family.” Suranihr tried to enlighten the mood. “First Iarvahr almost killed me, now you did… something. I wonder what your child will do to me in time.”

“No worries there.” Auria muttered. “Still, we need to hurry. Where is Harian? Did I attack him too?”

Suranihr shook his head, and finally raised his eyes towards Auria. He looked at her once beautiful face, now scarred and twisted with a web of black veins, her dark eye piercing through his skin, staring right into his soul. He shuddered. “In the morning, Auria. We all need to rest.”

“But…”

“In the morning, Auria.”

***

She did not sleep, fear eating her from the inside. She kept thinking about what happened, what might have happened, and what will happen once she loses control again. Maybe I already lost control, maybe something more happened which they did not tell me…

As soon as the first sun rays shone through the thick canopy of leaves above their head, Auria went to wake Harian up. Realizing that he wasn’t sleeping, she handed him a cup of freshly brewed tea. “I’m sorry, soldier. I guess that I have fallen deep in your eyes.”

“I’ve seen worse, Auria. Nothing to apologize for, not yet.” He took the cup and sipped eagerly. “Do you need something from me?.”

Auria nodded, and after a mere minutes, they both sat atop two carriage horses, following the road south.

“Towns and villages are deserted. We need to find something else. A farmstead, perhaps, or some hermit in the woods.” Harian said as they looked down from a small hill, surveying the land ahead.

“I won’t kill an innocent.”

Harian laughed. “That crowd that tried to burn you like a witch, that crowd that tried to tear me and Suranihr apart, that crowd that pierced Naira, they were the innocents. Civilians, refugees.” He turned his hard face towards Auria. “No Glaerian is innocent. They keep their heads low, bowing to their cunt of a merciful god, prayer on their lips, torch in their hands. To ‘burn the witch’ is a rather common practice in these fucking lands.” He spat on the gorund. “Pick whomever you want. Kill them all, I couldn’t care less.”

“You really hate them that much?”

Harian nodded. “I’ve spent much of my life in this land. I could count decent Glaerians that I’ve met on the hand of a three-fingered butcher. And even they sucked the balls of their benevolent cunt of a god.”

“Do you want to speak about it?” She asked, calmly. He shook his head. “I’m not allowed to.” As they looked round, Harian sniffed. “Smoke. Follow me.” He ordered her, and she obeyed, hurrying the horse behind him. The smoke trail led them to a forest and before they entered, Harian stopped his horse.

“Wait for me here, I’ll scout ahead. If anyone comes, feed upon him. Protect yourself. Here.” He handed a revolving pistol to her, but she shook her head. “I have my own means.” She said to him, and Harian just shrugged. “I’m inclined to believe that. Now wait here.”

As she waited, she kept thinking, nervously looking around herself. What happened to him in the past that he hates Glaeria so much? Even after all that she’s been through, after she saw the cruelty in famished eyes of Antigan people during the pandemic, even after she saw the mercilessness of Kryotans in their war against the whispers, she never could have imagined to hate a whole land of people so much as Harian did…

Although…

Cowering in the corner of the room, hugging the mutilated corpse of a malformed human, piss stinging in her fresh wounds…

She shivered, barely comprehensible dream-memory flaring up in her mind. Golden clad dragons… She thought to herself.

It has been almost half an hour, and she started to think about following Harian into the woods, when muffled sobs caught her attention. Harian was returning through the woods dragging a bound and gagged man on a leash behind him. The man wore heavy purple robes embroidered with golden and silver thread. His head was covered in short brown hair and his bright blue eyes shone with tears that ran down his cheeks right into the rope gag he was silenced with.

“Kill him.” Harian muttered. Auria noticed that he was covered in a lot of blood, looking more like a demon than human. “Kill him, eat him, do whatever the fuck you want with him. But I beg you, make him suffer. Make him feel it all.”

“Who is that?” Auria asked.

“A rapist. A murderer. A slaver. An enemy.” Harian was breathing heavily, apparently straining himself by keeping his blade sheathed and not buried inside of the man’s body.

“How do you know that?” Auria asked, curious. She had to admit, she was only half interested in the answer. Hearing that the man was a rapist and a murderer was almost enough to lose all the control and to let the projector feed itself.

Harian looked at her, hellfire in his eyes, images in his mind...

An image of a boy with spread legs, lying on his belly, his hands and legs bound by the rope to wooden posts in the ground, his back blooded from whip lashes…

An image of kneeling soldiers, praying with a priest in front of them, blessing them with the pain of an innocent as a sacrifice to deliver them all from their sins…

An image of children, huddled together in a wooden cage, filthy, barely covered by torn, mold covered rags, their fingernails broken and bloodied from scratching into something hard, their wrists and ankles bruised from tightly knotted rope…

“Kill him, or I will do it myself.”

Auria jumped down from the horse, and stood in front of the man. He was shivering, crying, wet-stain spreading from his groin. “Do you feel like you deserve to die?” She asked the man, and to her surprise, he nodded vigorously. “Thank you. It will make this a lot easier.” She said as she impaled him.