Andrei

How to handle Father Keller was a discussion between myself and the Commander. The man was a Partisan and one of Amalia’s faithful, and I insisted his body be returned to Palisade intact. Reider suggested we take certain precautionary measures first. We recalled the deceased woman who somehow made it out of her own grave, and was found decapitated in her potato garden. We remembered what it took to kill the Givers we’d faced so far, and we wondered what exactly the book passage meant when it implied they lived two lives.

For a long, drawn moment, we stood side by side in the guest room, staring at the deceased priest as if expecting him to wake up and jump out at us.

Nothing happened.

There was also the matter of finding Sinclair. She’d escaped through the window before I could stop her, and with speed like hers, she could be long gone.

Before leaving the room, I prepared myself for the gruesome reality in the corridor, but when I stepped outside, the only evidence of a beheading was the blood on the walls. Where our assailant and his head had fallen, there were only two piles of ashes.

As I knelt to inspect the strange remains, I paused at the sickening splat from the room behind me, followed by a hollow thud when Father Keller’s head hit the floor.

The Commander stepped out of the room, and his shoulders seemed to deflate beneath the weight of his armour. The light in his eyes was gone, but his voice was steady. “Until we know better, I’m not taking any chances,” he said. Then after a moment, he pointed to the ashes at our feet. “That’s really fucking weird.”

I turned to my companion and frowned.

“Is this always how it is for you?”

“Yeah, now really isn't the best time to start questioning me, Strauss. I know you’re upset, and I understand it better than you think I do, but we need to find Rhian.”

It could have been a projection of his own guilt, or it could have been because we weren't especially close yet, but Michael Reider misunderstood. I disagreed with his choice, but it was a choice—one he had to make whether or not I liked it, whether or not he liked it, and without knowing for certain what was actually best.

I wasn’t questioning. I was sympathizing, and for the first time understanding the weight of his responsibility. I’d correct him one day later.

Before we could make our way down, the proprietor of the Bountiful Blessing bolted up the stairs with a face full of fury. A bruise was already forming on the side of his head where Reider’s fist connected earlier that night.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done? They'll kill us all!”

The enraged man leaped for the Commander. It was a bold maneuver, and it was a bold maneuver resulting in another impromptu nap.

Ursula waited at the bottom of the stairs, and this time, she wasn’t laughing.

“Is it over?” she asked. “Are they gone?”

They? I wondered.

“We’re doing everything we can,” Reider said. “But for now, you shouldn’t come upstairs, and you probably don’t want to be here when your husband wakes up. Is there somewhere you can go?”

Ursula nodded. “The tiny woman, is she safe?”

“Actually, we’re not sure. She escaped out the window. Did you see anything?”

“Commander,” I said.

“Not now, Strauss.”

“But Commander, I—”

“Rhian has no real offense against those things. We need to—”

“Amalia’s grace, Reider! Would you shut up and listen?”

Around us, the flames in their sconces flickered in tandem with my frustration, casting ragged shadows across the walls until they extinguished altogether. The Commander did shut up and listen, and the proprietress departed in a fit of hysterical tears.

Unfortunate, but it was nothing new.

“Sinclair,” I said. “I know where she may have gone.”

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For each time it burned, the house from Istok’s infamous legend rose again.

The locals would agree each subsequent construction was never as grand as the last, never as warm or welcoming. And as we approached, more than three and a half centuries after it was first built, it seemed to me the house existed only to exist.

“Are you sure about this?” Reider asked.

“No, but if we connect the dots—the Vonsinfonie cavern where I found the book, the old schoolhouse where you found that Giver who seemed to be stuck in a bizarre time loop, this place—each with a tragic history or an ancient legend attached.”

“We could break it down,” Michael remarked, referring to the front door. “Otherwise, there's the window. But I won’t fit in my armour,” the Commander said. “You might have to squeeze through and let me in from the other side.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I suggested we look for another way inside before vandalizing the door or engaging in any complicated acrobatics, but we found no other way, and after circling the property and wrapping back around to where we first started, the front door creaked open.

Sinclair peeked her head out. “Professional tip; start with checking if the door's even locked.”

How about that? It had been a long day.

As soon as we stepped inside the old house, we spotted four men tied to four chairs in the kitchen. Each of them was elderly, each of them had mustaches, and each had taken fatal wounds to the base of their skulls.

The floor, Sinclair’s fingers, and her dagger were all covered in blood.

“Didn’t I say something about old man decoys? It was completely bloody mental, but here we are. Also, I’m now entirely convinced we’re actually in hell.”

“Okay, Rhian, I know we’re all under a lot of stress.” The Commander paused, as if needing a moment to absorb the ghastly scene. "But what exactly were you thinking?”

This struck me harder than expected, twisting my insides into knots as I rushed to her defense. “After the choice you made at the inn, Commander, are you really in a position to question hers?”

“Gregory Keller was already dead, Strauss. These men were—”

“There wasn’t a bleeding thing left of what these men were.” Sinclair sneered. “Whatever Those Things did to their minds, these men were nothing but a bunch of meat puppets in the end. I did what had to be done, and there’s nothing about it that has me giddy with goddess-be-damned excitement. Now, if you’ll both excuse me, I’m going back upstairs.”

Setting our differences aside for the moment, we followed Sinclair to the second floor. If not for the sake of our camaraderie, but because of the crying.

Huddled in the corner of the smallest room, the boy’s eyes were black around the sockets and devoid of life. I recognized him immediately as one of Oskari’s villagers. Ivan—the blind woman’s nephew, and the son of the deceased woman found decapitated in her garden.

He would be going home to his sister, his mother, his father—all dead.

“He’s in better shape than the ones downstairs.” Sinclair offered the child a sip of water from her canteen, and when he complied, she said “See? The others wouldn’t listen.”

The Commander sighed. “Rhian, stay with the boy, and Strauss, come with me.”

Following the Commander down the hall, we opened the door to the larger of the two bedrooms. The room was empty except for an oil painting of a brunette and small child. The golden plaque riveted to the base of the mahogany frame read: Isabella & Lidia.

“Why doesn’t anybody ever look up?” said a voice from above.

When we looked up, we faced a crooked-toothed Amali hanging from the rafter.

Most certainly not the woman from the portrait, the Giver avoided the Commander’s first lethal swing. She was fast. Faster than the last, and even faster than Sinclair.

Sinclair. I spotted her then, peering through a crack in the wall between the rooms.

Reider swung again, and the Giver laughed and laughed. The Commander attempted a third swing, and Intrepidity was knocked clean from his hand.

The woman dropped from the ceiling, clobbering my unarmed companion.

I rushed forward and grabbed the weapon from the floor.

I’d almost forgotten what it was like to hold a sword. All those years later, it was much the same as I remembered—cold and impersonal. But, I recalled an instinct. When our assailant lunged at me, I raised the sword in a defensive stance. Turning the weapon horizontally, I gripped the blade, closed my eyes, and prayed for accuracy. The Giver’s feral cries were cut short when her neck met Intrepidity’s sharp edge.

Unfortunately, the force behind the creature’s lunge hadn’t been enough to slice through the spine. Seeing this, the Commander picked himself off the ground, and with one deliberate body-check, shoved our enemy the rest of the way through the blade.

From the other room, Sinclair cheered.

As for me? I emptied the minimal contents of my stomach on the floor, and we were all equally relieved I hadn't eaten the stew.

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We set fire to the legendary home with four dead bodies inside, and like thousands before, we gathered outside on the lawn and watched it burn.

Dramatic, but we all agreed the locals would be more comfortable with that over anything else we'd struggle to explain.

Needless to say, we canceled our trip to Leberecht, and we spent the night at the Bountiful Blessing. While the Commander watched over Ivan, Sinclair and I scrubbed the floors and walls for Ursula, as well as prepared Father Keller’s remains for travel.

The next morning, the Commander took the reins with the body wrapped in a canvas tarp at his side, and Sinclair chose to run alongside the horses. I cared for Ivan in the wagon, and as time went on, his vitals and his mental state diminished. I’d seen the same symptoms before. I’d buried several villagers who’d succumbed to them: dehydration, disorientation, and debilitating night terrors to name a few. Ivan had contracted the Waste, and if I had to guess, he was in its final stages.

Few victims of the Waste ultimately survived. Of those who did, some lived the rest of their lives in varying degrees of agony. Others became violent or went catatonic as their minds decayed. Ivan’s young aunt Rose had already lost so many to the devastating illness.

I dreaded our return to Oskari.

My nerves were shot, and my anxiety diminished only after taking a sip from Sinclair’s flask when she promised not to tell. Once we arrived at camp, my first order of business was to bathe. The river was cold, but it served the shock that brought me back to reality. My limbs no longer seemed illusory, and my heart rate steadied. By the time I adjusted to the temperature of the water, the world was no longer moving in slow motion.

When I opened my eyes, Sinclair was approaching.

“How’s your hand?”

“It’ll heal. Gripping a broadsword by the blade was a rather foolish thing to do.”

“You had to think fast.” Sinclair shrugged. “You still have all your body parts and That Thing lost her most important one. Just don’t let it get to your head.”

“Of course not, Sinclair. I wouldn’t even know what to do with a self-esteem.”

Rhian Sinclair rarely laughed, and when she did, it was more closely related to a snicker. I thoroughly enjoyed all three seconds of it.

“Are you coming in?” I asked.

“Not a bloody chance. It’s freezing.”

Commander Reider approached the river next.

Stark naked, he dropped his clothes on the nearby rocks and sauntered past Sinclair. Better yet—almost past Sinclair. Without skipping a beat, he scooped the Strachan with a single arm and walked her, fully-clothed, into the river.

“No offense, Rhian, but you smell.”

Any dissension that may have been still lingering between us was quickly forgotten in that moment. In the morning, we continued the rest of the way to Oskari.

We may not have been well rested, but at least we were clean.