The man was covered in red blotches. He thrashed around in his bed as if he were on fire. There was not a single hair left on his pink and emaciated body. The poor soul seemed more dead than alive. “They call it the Red Plague,” the Doctor said, wiping the lens of his beaked plague mask with a dark stained cloth.
“How is it different from the last one?” Evalina asked with trepidation. She found the lenses on her own plague mask were beginning to mist. The suffering and the deceased were becoming grey blurs. Is this what Pax sees every time she looks down on us?
“It appears to be more contagious than the last,” he said with icy indifference. “It is a most tenacious and fiery thing, but we have managed to keep it contained within the Shards well enough.”
Evalina looked down at the man, who didn’t appear to be human anymore. She cast her view over the other suffering civilians across rows of hospital beds. Men, women, young and old, all brandishing red blotches. All hairless. Many of them were moaning in delirious pain whilst others coughed until they would retch. It made her skin shiver. “We are working on the cure,” the Plague Doctor said with an eerily calm professionalism. “But with Lady Aubrey deceased, it has slowed down production somewhat.”
Well, work on it faster, Dullard. She resisted the urge to utter the words aloud. She was just a lowly priestess and not some highborn lady. “I have brought supplies of food,” she instead offered. “There is also Nightbliss to ease the pain-”
“Isn’t that illegal?” the Plague Doctor asked.
“Not for the sick and suffering,” she informed him dishonestly. “New legalisation. Recently passed by the King himself.”
The Doctor studied her intently through his misty circular lenses. He rubbed the black beak of his mask as if it was his actual nose. “It will certainly suffice better than your prayers.”
Evalina Doucet remained there for some hours, giving words of comfort to the ailing that were still bound enough to reality to understand her words. She and her fellow priestesses wheeled in supplies, medicines, elixirs, Nightbliss (the latter of which was more discreetly distributed than the rest) and sat and prayed by each sufferer’s bedside. Those that were cognisant enough would talk to her. One was a blacksmith with leathery skin which had since become blotched and purpled. He had lost his wife and daughter to the previous great plague years back. Now the red one would be taking him. Evalina then visited the bedside of a young girl no older than twelve. Her mother had already passed due to an illness she did not have the privilege to identify. Doctors in the Shards were scarce and charged too high for treatment that the average peasant could afford. Now the girl was battling the Red Plague and had no mother to hold her hand. No one to comfort and support her as death leered near. The girl’s story caused Evalina to weep. She had to excuse herself to go outside. It was a dark and desperate day. She was relieved when she saw the cloudy sky dim and immerse itself into dusk’s embrace.
Evalina returned to the chapel alone as the other sisters had altruistically decided to spend the rest of the night tending to the sick and ailing.
She had adored them all for making such a noble choice, yet she could not stay herself, and deep down, she did not wish to. She had her own patient to tend to, regardless.
Night had fallen when she opened the chapel doors to find the Assassin frantically pacing under the watchful eyes of Pax. Broken moonlight through the windows was shining on him, yet it did not seem to settle him. His long, dark hair was sweaty and unkempt. His chest was bare, exposing all the blood-stained bandages she had wrapped him in. He seemed restless and perpetually agitated. “Have you been resting as I requested?” she asked as she approached.
He stopped pacing and seemed immediately calmed by the sight of her. “I’ve been trying,” he said with a resigned smile. He always appeared to sleep during the day and stay up the whole night. Evalina had wondered if the Assassin had always been this nocturnal before he had been poisoned. “With all due respect and appreciation for what you have done for me,” he said, clearly distressed, “I can’t properly rest knowing the danger the Royalists are in.”
“Rumours on the street and in the papers suggest that they are all safe inside the palace following Reynard Woodard’s death,” she reassured him. “Now let me see your stitches.”
The nameless man rolled his eyes and let out a sigh, yet he did as he was bid. She sat him down on one of the benches and inspected each thread. The stitches in his arm had become loosened, and the wound was slowly gaping again. Evalina heard him grunt as she pulled out the threads and delicately reassembled them. “You have a lot of surgical skills for a priestess,” the man said, breaking the silence.
Evalina smiled at his astuteness. “I wasn’t always one.”
“Were you a medic?” He did not wait for her to answer before then asking, “Which war? The Jade Rebellion?”
“The third Jade Rebellion, I’ll have you know,” she said teasingly. She found herself shocked at her own smile. Evalina could not remember the last time she had smiled. “How old do you think I am?”
“I assumed it was the third,” he lightly chuckled. It had been the first time she had heard him laugh. It was a profoundly human and sincere laugh. “I told you about my history the first night you took me in. Are you ever going to tell me about yours?”
Evalina dexterously threaded the needle through the skin. The wound no longer smelled like it had done so foully when she had extracted the venom. “You haven’t told me everything,” she pointed out. “I still don’t even know your name.” She looked down at the spiralling scars across his fingers. “What happened with your hands when you were fighting the Gargoyle’s men?” she asked. “And when you were arguing with that hooded archer… it’s,” she struggled to think of the word to best describe it. “Haunting” is the word she settled with after a while.
“I know it is,” he acknowledged.
“Does it hurt when it happens?”
“It’s agony,” he said.
She pulled at the thread and the Assassin let out a small and whispered hiss. “The Archer, the others in your clan, can they all do what you did?” she asked curiously.
He was reticent at first but eventually answered as he watched the shards of moonlight slowly crawl across the stone floor. “They can, but with me, I reacted to the power more… aggressively than the rest of them did.”
After finishing the stitching, she slowly uncovered the bandages around his torso to see how they had fared. There did not seem to be any infections or scars that would never heal, unlike his hands… “Your hands,” she then felt compelled to inquire. “The Archer had the same scars.”
“It’s how we get the ability,” he said, avoiding eye contact with her. “When you’ve proven yourself to the Night Fangs, you go through a ritual of sorts.”
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“They burnt your hands?” she asked, unable to stop herself from interrupting. Her eyes turned vast and huge in horror.
“Not in the conventional sense,” he said, appearing uncertain about how to best explain it. He flexed his scarred fingers and held them up to her. They were deep red sprawls of lightning, spiralling around his fingers and streaking across the backs and palms of each hand. “Back in Arkovia, there’s this pool. A small pool that contains lightning within it.” His face contorted into a frown. “They believe it’s the godly blood of these ancient beasts that ostensibly lived centuries ago. These tigers that could breathe lightning. When a novice has proved themself a true Night Fang, they must undergo the final trial of strength and immerse their hands into the water. If they are strong enough, they’ll survive and come out with what they believe to be the power of the gods.”
Evalina noted how derisively the man spoke. “And what do you believe that pool is?”
“Contaminated water.”
She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow under her mauve hood. “For a mystical assassin, you certainly have an extremely limited imagination. You believe what you have is a disease?”
“Sometimes it is.” There was a slight tremble in his words. “Perhaps it’s more of an infection. You saw what happened. With me, the power can get out of hand.” He shuffled uncomfortably on the bench. “That’s why I have the suit,” he said, strangely bitter. “They think of me as some sort of champion because of what happens when I lose control of…” He stopped himself. “It’s your turn now,” he said, looking up from his disfigured hands.
Evalina let out a reluctant sigh and dipped her mucky hands in a nearby basin.
The water felt cold and soothing as the blood from her fingers detached and twirled under the water. She could hear City Watch bells ringing outside the chapel and fading away like a siren’s song. “I was a field medic in the third rebellion, as you deduced. I lacked the combat skills or the constitution to be a shield-maiden, but my brother was a watchman who had been drafted by King Sigismund to fight the Crimsonarions. I wanted to be close to him and feel useful.”
“Did he survive?”
She meekly shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” he said remorsefully.
Evalina had finished drying her hands and was gazing high at the misshapen moon through the stained-glass window. “Losing him wasn’t the worst part of that war. He died early when he took an arrow in the eye. It wasn’t even a Crimsonarion who did it. Just some deserter. I, on the other hand, had to see the war to its fruition. I did not need to see the horrors on the battlefield. They were brought to me on stretchers. Soldiers pleading for their mothers with lost limbs. Squires that had barely entered their fifteenth year with arrows in their legs. I would be the one to tell them that they could never walk again. It became progressively disturbing from there, especially when we marched further south, to the villages under Jade rule that had been raided and pillaged by the empire. That was when I started tending to innocent civilians and villagers. The ones that survived, that is.”
Evalina found herself struggling to revisit the memories. She started to grow guilty of imploring the Assassin to divulge so much of his past. It was not a pleasant feeling to do so. “Battlefields are lawless places. It brings out the worst in men. An animalistic side. There was this one girl, a miller’s daughter. Her parents had been slain by Crimsonarion centurions. She had a brother who had been crippled since birth. After ransacking their home, the centurions decided to be ‘merciful’ and hold them as slaves to be sold back in Crimsonaria. Her brother could not keep up with the legion when travelling the Midland roads. Eventually, the centurions grew tired of his, what they called ‘hindrance’ and gave the miller’s daughter a choice; leave her little brother to die in the woods or end his suffering here and there. They called it generosity when they offered her a knife to do the deed.”
The Assassin gritted his teeth and gulped. “What choice did she make?” he forced himself to ask.
“She never told me, and I never asked. I stitched her up, much like I had to do with you, and sent her on her way. I don’t think even she knew where to go from there. She had no family or home left.”
“I thought seeing and hearing such things would have made you lose faith in religion?” the Assassin asked pensively.
Under Evalina’s hood, a thin smile emerged. “On the contrary, it’s how I found it.” She placed a hand on his bare and bruised shoulder. His skin felt warm despite how cold it was. “You must know this, Assassin. When you see what the world really is, when you see the worst in humanity and how low the dark cave can go, you need something to believe in. Otherwise, all you have is despair.”
“Weren’t the Crimsonarions invading because of Emperor Traxus’ own twisted beliefs?” the Assassin pointed out.
“You’re cynical,” she said curtly. “But not incorrect. Yet aren’t you doing the same? Are you protecting the Royalists and the King because you want to… or because your clan told you to do so?”
He looked away and back down at his scarred hands again. “It’s a mutual understanding,” he said. “The Night Fangs owe King Sigismund a debt and I know that if the Inferno have their way, they’ll bring chaos to the streets if that helps to get what they want.” He turned back to her with a deeply troubled countenance. “I’m just trying to stop my home from burning to the ground, Evalina. And right now, I’m failing.”
She softly lifted his chin. “Because of you, the Gargoyle is no longer terrorising this borough. The Thieves Guild hasn’t troubled this chapel since you intervened, and you managed to achieve these things without taking a single life-”
“I killed back at the New Jade City Library, Evalina,” he admitted candidly. “The Empress ordered me to kill Inferno assassins, and I did. The man who killed the Viscount was getting away. I had no choice.”
“And look where that has left you,” she reproached, gesturing at his bandaged and cut-up body. “It’s held you back. All you did was anger him and now you’re too weak to keep fighting.”
The Assassin nodded, almost frantically, holding back some intense disagreements. He stood from the bench. “What are you trying to tell me, Evalina?” he asked indignantly. “You said I did the right thing to go after the Gargoyle and the Thieves Guild-”
“I’m saying that while I won’t always approve of you going out into the night and beating on mobsters, at least you show some mercy about it.” Her words were stern. She hoped some of them would get through to him. “But when you start killing, even if the people that you’re ending are threatening the city, then you’re no better than that masked psychopath who poisoned the Viscount.”
“There’s no other way to stop him, Evalina,” he stubbornly objected. “The Inferno have half of the City Watch in their pockets! Even if this were a fairy tale and I brought them to an honest trial, King Sigismund would only have them executed, regardless.”
“But you don’t have to be an executioner,” she implored, standing from the bench, and grabbing his arms. They looked as frail as wool but felt as strong as stone. “You can be something more than just a life-taker.”
The Assassin retracted his gaze and stood away from her where shattered moonlight shined on him. He appeared forlorn. She believed she had just struck some important chord. Perhaps one that struck too closely. “If you’ll excuse me, Priestess, I must return to my guest chamber.” He walked away in silence.
Evalina sat alone. The Pax statue’s bronze face was angry and demonic. She always looked that way, yet Evalina felt as if she knew something. The Goddess was peering into her soul, unfolding every secreted feeling and inner turmoil, every memory, every mistake she had and was about to make, and she disapproved greatly. The reflected moonlight on the floor crawled away from her, as if frightened.
She ignored herself and tended to the bedchambers in the priestess’ hall, preparing their beds and meals for their return. She cleaned the main hall of the chapel and cleared as much dust as she could reach from the Pax statue, as if to appease her. The ladder shook precariously as she dusted the statue’s head and its many faces. The angered eyes that she swiped dirt from did not seem to forgive her. Her mind turned back to the Red Plague, those hairless and warty victims writhing around their beds in burning pain. It made her skin crawl.
The moon was waning through the glass window when some strange force compelled her to visit the Assassin in his bedchamber. She did not find him asleep. He was sitting on the side of the bed, appearing to be in either deep contemplation or despair. “Forgive me, Evalina,” he said, noticing her presence without even looking towards the doorway. He stood and breathed out a solemn sigh. “I’ve thought long and hard about what you said, but I just don’t believe I can come back from this. I am beyond saving.”
And so am I. She allowed her want to take over and wrapped her arms around him. It was like kissing a statue at first as he remained motionless, but it was not long before he unfroze and placed his hands around her hips. When they jumped on the bed, he grunted in pain. When she asked if he was well enough to continue, he quickly dismissed the discomfort and they continued undressing each other. When their lovemaking had reached its peak, she heard him weep in the dark. She rolled off the top of him and asked what was wrong.
“Hideo,” he whispered with a sob.
“What was that?”
“My name is Hideo.”