“Thank God you’re okay,” I said, the relief I felt causing me to thank a God that did not exist on Ferrum. “What happened?”
Merrick spoke first. “We were being chased by a knight dressed in red when Mom put us here and told us to be very quiet.”
“We heard Walter and Melissa screaming,” Miriam said, crying. “Are they okay?”
I was about to say something, but Beltane spoke first. “You two need to get out of the manor, quickly. Melissa is asleep over there,” Beltane pointed back in the direction we came. “Wake her up, and she’ll bring you to the front entrance. You’ll run into Walter; don’t try to wake him up. Wait at the entrance until I or your Dad come back, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Merrick said, his expression resolute even though tears were still streaming down his face. In that moment, the hero he would one day become shone through.
As the two children ran back the way Beltane and I came, Beltane asked, “Just to make sure, there’s no route for the knight to circle back around to the front entrance without first running into us, right?”
“Past here is the master bedroom,” I said. “This is the only hallway that leads there.”
At that moment, we reached the entrance to the master bedroom. The ceiling had partially collapsed where the door to the bedroom had previously been, and the route into the bedroom was completely blocked by rubble.
A deep sense of foreboding entered my body. Some part of my brain told me that I wouldn’t like what I was going to see inside of that room. My breathing became unsteady as I looked at that pile of rubble.
“Is there any way out through the master bedroom?” Beltane asked.
“N-no,” I said, the fear causing my breathing to falter. “The only way out is through that door and a second-floor window.”
“We need to get in there,” Beltane said through gritted teeth. “You blast it open; I’ll cover you.”
With Beltane and the zombies standing in front of me, I pointed my wand at the pile of rubble. Steadying myself for whatever I’d find inside of that room, I poured my mana into the [Catapult] spell. My wand glowed silver for a moment, and the rubble exploded inward with a loud crash.
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After a few seconds, the dust cleared, revealing that my spell had opened a large hole in the rubble. We could now pass through the door into the bedroom.
“ᛄᛣ (aka)!” Beltane shouted this simple command to his zombies, and they ran into the room without hesitation. They disappeared from our view and into the bedroom. My teeth started chattering, and I started wheezing as several seconds passed without any sound.
“Countess Tabitha?” Beltane said with his back to the wall next to the large open hole. “Are you in there?”
There was no response.
“Follow me,” Beltane mouthed to me without making any sound. He held up three fingers and started slowly counting down. The moment the final finger touched his thumb, Beltane charged forward into the room at full speed. The rune on his hand glowed an eerie red color, and some of the blood around his thumb started to writhe unnaturally.
I followed a half-step behind Beltane with motes of Hellfire in both of my palms. The two of us charged into the bedroom, prepared to face the Red Knight.
Inside of the bedroom, we found nothing but silence and inactivity. I almost ran into one of the zombies that had come to a complete stop a few meters into the bedroom. Peering around the large form of the dead orc, I witnessed a scene of desolation.
Cold air blew in through a shattered window, causing askew sheets to flutter lightly in the wind. A heavy mahogany dresser had been cut completely in half by some superhuman force. The bed had been destroyed by a single powerful strike, causing bird feathers to cover much of the floor. Deep gouges had been cut into the wall, telling the tale of a struggle.
There, at the far end of the room, laid my mother’s dead body. A broken shortsword rested near her hand, and dark red blood poured from a bone-deep wound she had taken at the wrist. Her only other wound was a small puncture right to the sternum. Blood poured heavily from this chest wound, and I knew what had happened even before [Triage] told me.
Injury: Deep cut to the right wrist. Deep puncture to the chest. Patient’s heart and lungs were bisected. Lungs and heart shut down 405 seconds ago. Soul left the body 345 seconds ago.
Six minutes. She had been dead for just six minutes. If I had been just a little faster, if my body was slightly less useless, then I might have been able to save her.
I fell to my knees as my mother’s blood further stained my clothes. I thought I was so damn smart. I thought I could beat fate by just changing a few factors in my life. All I had to do was become a priest and make a few decisions that the original Thale wouldn’t make, and everything would be different. How could I be so stupid?
Ever since the start, I had been no different from the original Thale. In the original timeline, Armond must have left Walter with Tabitha anyway because Eadric was already dead. I should have known, but the chaos of the event blinded me to the truth.
I should have known that there would be more at play than just a few orcs. Count Armond himself would be more than enough to defeat an orcish incursion. Tabitha could only have been killed by a much greater force unforeseen by Armond or the original Thale.
Tears began to fall down my cheeks. In that instance, I realized something. In this version of Ferrum, that was the first time that Thale Feldrast had ever cried.