Although the recent wars had taken their tolls on the villages, where the first houses caught fire the streets were flooded with peasants armed with staves and pitchforks. They were surprised to see that their attackers were even worse equipped than they were.
Shouts could be heard. The battle had begun.
Blood colored the grass and cobblestone. Bodies, torn asunder and cut, fell into mud and muck with loud splashes. Shouts and screams filled the air. Those desperate to save their lives attempted to hide in their houses, only to be found seconds later and gutted along with the rest of their families. Wheezing and gurgling followed the desperate please of mothers trying to save their children. All that they were granted was a slow death as they watched their young be killed before their eyes.
On his way to the town hall, Ash noticed a bench and decided to sit the battle out. He wasn’t interested in killing. He didn’t enjoy spilling blood, torching people, and plunging his staff into flesh. Racker told him that he would, but he just couldn’t seem to figure out how. So, he’d sit there and wait for... something.
A couple of his men ran past him, simple blades in one hand, and decapitated heads in the other. Bulging, bloodshot eyes stared at Ash in utter horror. A swollen, blue tongue dangled out of the toothless mouth in a mute scream.
“Seems I’m doing it right,” he thought to himself.
The king demanded they become the worst nightmare of their enemies. They had to become so notorious that the mere mention of their name would make people pack up their homes and leave to hide somewhere where no one could find them.
Something warm and smelling of copper splattered his cheek as he calmly walked through the crowd. He didn’t bother wiping the blood off as it made his cheek feel warmer. Aside from the occasional drop sliding down his neck and tickling him, it didn’t bother him.
Sometimes, the boldest of the villagers would attack him only to immediately fall back dead with a hole in their abdomen. Ash, face an emotionless mask, didn’t miss his target even though he wasn’t looking. He was almost at the bench when a woman blocked his path. Clad in a sundress and an apron, she held a kitchen knife in her trembling hands, shielding a little girl with her body. Six-year-old, maybe seven... He wasn’t sure.
“May I pass?” he asked calmly.
His men would kill them anyway, so he saw no point in bothering himself with getting rid of the two. His staff was already covered with soot and he’d hate to have to clean it more than necessary. It was a long and boring process.
“Die!” the woman screamed.
Both she and the girl were pierced with the staff before she could even swing the knife. The corpses fell to their knees first, then to their side. There was almost no blood. The temperature of the fire was too high.
Pulling the staff out of their abdomens, Ash let out a frustrated sigh. He could hear Racker burst out laughing as he burned down the town hall and... and the bench he had been meaning to sit on. Seeing no other place to rest, he sat on the woman’s corpse. He felt tired after a whole day of marching.
Leaning his head on his hand, Ash watched as the village burned and blood flowed like a river, both that of his men and of the villagers. The latter stood no chance; however, sheers numbers were sometimes more important than skill.
“Racker!” he barked.
“Yes, general?!” Racker asked, turning around. He was dragging a woman by her hair. She was screaming and kicking, scratching his hand with her nails but couldn’t break free. Ash still didn’t understand what was it about women that made his men lose themselves. What was so good about them?
“Wake me up when you’re done,” he said and closed his eyes.
Screams, groans, the clanging of steel, the crackling of the fire... these sounds had been his lullaby for quite some time now.
***
“General!” someone shouted.
Startled, Ash opened his eyes and jumped to his feet. Rays of new dawn were breaking through the thick layer of snowflakes. His men had gathered around him, Racker at their head.
Ash yawned and stretched, looking around. Corpses lay strewn everywhere; blackened ruins of the houses and crimson rivers tarnished the whiteness of the snow. The assault was finally over. They had won.
A muffled cry came from somewhere behind him. Turning around, Ash froze, perplexed. Surrounded by soldiers was a group of about thirty tied-up women. They were all beaten and bruised, bloodied clothes tattered, and hair ripped out of carefully tied buns and braids. It was an ugly sight.
“What’s going on there?” he asked, pointing at the group with his staff.
“Loot.” Racker smiled a predatory grin. “If we get bored with them, we’ll kill them.”
“We’re running out of food, Racker...”
“We lost a lot of people, almost three hundred...”
“You know a lot of Words, how about you learn what ‘economy’ means, hm?”
“Ah, but general,” Racker replied with a smile and winked. “We thought of you, too, don’t you worry.”
Racker whistled sharply. The soldiers parted and someone pushed forth a young woman. Her clothes were intact and relatively clean. She seemed all right, save for her bruised lip. No older than fifteen, she radiated youthful beauty. Her pale skin was slightly red from the frost, and her eyes, framed by lush hair, glared at him.
“We’ve saved the best for you!” someone laughed. Others joined him, nudging each other, and cracking jokes. The girl tried to break free from her bonds but to no avail. Hatred in her glare only grew.
“Racker,” Ash whispered.
“What?” he asked, beckoning the solider to bring the girl closer. “If you don’t like her, you can pick any other. But that’d be rude to the boys. They wanted to touch your gift so badly, but they restrained themselves because they respect you.”
Ash looked at him.
“Come on! Everyone knows that the prettiest woman goes to the leader.”
“That’s not the problem!” Ash hissed. “What am I supposed to do? Kill her on my own?”
Racker choked. If he could’ve rolled his eyes any further back, he was sure that he would’ve been able to see into his own skull.
“What do you mean you don’t know what to do? Use her!”
“Use... her?”
“Well, yes... Use her,” he whispered, wiggling his eyebrows and shaking his hips.
Ash looked at him in confusion. He had seen those motions before, but he had no clue what Racker was on about.
“Rape her,” he whispered at last.
“...so, kill her?” Ash said, lifting his staff, but Racker stopped him.
“Were you hit on the head as a child?”
“Not that I know.”
Racker was silent for a moment.
“Have you ever been with a woman?” he finally asked.
“I’ve talked to them before, yes.”
“Did you ever sleep with a woman?”
“Sleep? In the same bed?”
“Yes?”
“Why would’ve I done that?”
Racker stepped back and covered his face with his hands, trying to contain his laughter. Ash scratched the top of his head, not understanding what was being asked of him.
“Seems to me that they taught you to shit in the palace,” Racker muttered. “Time for a new lesson, general. One about how to become a real man.”
“Is this really necessary? I’m tired.” Ash didn’t like learning. Never did and never would.
Racker gave him a stern look.
“All right, all right... What should I do?”
The girl hissed, threatening to bite off something if he so much as dared undo his belt buckle. The full threat was, luckily for Ash, drowned in the laughter of the soldiers.
“You use what only a man has got on her,” Racker said, barely able to contain his laughter.
“Scum!” Ash shouted, realizing what was going on. “Who has got the most tongues?!”
Five minutes la
ter, seven men were standing in front of him. Each had five bloodied tongues attached to their straps. Ash wagered that there were about the maximum one could get; there was three and a half thousand of them against a handful of villagers after all.
“The woman is all yours,” he said.
The men looked at each other and smiled, licking their lips.
“But if you’re not back in time for the departure, I won’t hesitate to blow your heads off!”
“Yes, sir!”
“No! No!” the girl screamed. “Please! Please, don’t!”
But her pleas fell on deaf ears.
Grabbing her by the arms, the soldiers dragged her to one of the few houses that remained standing. The silence that fell was soon disturbed by her cries and screams. Ash looked at the sky, wondering just what was it that Racker wanted to teach him.
But he’d leave that for later. Right now, he had to focus on the next step of his plan.
“Scum! Our enemies litter the ground! Take their heads and place them on our banners! Let everyone know that we’re a force to be reckoned with!”
Even the flags of the Legion were made of wood and rags. They truly had nothing other than that what nature had given them.
Turning his gaze toward the sky, Ash ignored the sounds of bodies being decapitated, Racker cracking jokes, women screaming, and his men laughing.
Snowflakes danced in the air, whirling around his head and hands.
Ash had always admired the snowfall.
The young man liked everything that was beautiful.
Chapter 23
9th of Zund, 322 A.D., Kingdom of Arabist
I t thundered. Ash waved the memory away and yanked the doors open. They didn’t budge. Cursing, he pushed them instead of pulling and entered the dark hall. Somewhere in the back of it was a woman, her face obscured by shadows. Not even the occasional flash of lightning revealed anything more than the helm of her lush dress.
“You’ve found me.”
“So, I have.”Ash nodded.
“Any questions?”
“Not really. I’ve figured it out.”
“Really now?”
Chuckling, she rose from her chair and took a step forward. Heels clicking on the marble floor, she emerged from the darkness. Another flash of lightning revealed the face of the marquis’s younger sister.
“You realized it when you slept with me, didn’t you?”
“You poor thing...” He smirked. “You don’t know, do you? You, just like everyone else, are nothing but a doll in this little play.”
The young woman snarled, baring her fangs. Ash’s face immediately lost its childlike innocence and became an emotionless mask. The poor woman didn’t know that before her stood one of the most notorious mages on the entire Continent. Then again, trapped in this cursed place, how could she have known?
“I asked you a question, boy,” she growled.
“A moment,” Ash said and took a look at the note he had written on his hand. “Yes.”
“Bastard!” she screamed; her voice devoid of anything human. “You’re all the same! Men! My brother, the traitor, he was the same! But he... Thank the Gods that he came! He showed me the truth! He gave me strength! He gave me power!”
Her features changed as she spoke. Her skin cracked, flooding the floor with blood. Her dress burst at the seams, her spine twisted, and her face, stretching and morphing, turned into a snarling snout full of sharp teeth.
Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance. Lightning flashed, and rain drummed against the windows, beating to some unknown melody.
A monster stood in front of Ash. Tul was wrong, it looked nothing like a bear, more like a cross between a human and a beast. Eight feet tall, with powerful paws adorned with claws the size of a saber, and foam dripping from its snarling maw. Red eyes shone with madness and bloodlust.
Howling, the werewolf lunged at the mage, covering the distance of twenty feet in one fell swoop. Ash took the blow with his staff, but the beast didn’t so much as growl when its fur caught flame. Just licked its paws, putting the fire out. There was too much rage in it. Too much sorcery.
Ash twisted and shoved the beast aside. It fell on all fours, claws glittering with gold.
“It must be getting ready to use some spell,” Ash thought as he raised his staff. “First Form: Incarnation!”
Seven fiery petals burst out of the wood and hid underneath the werewolf’s fur. The smell of burnt flesh and hair filled the air, but the beast didn’t seem to feel pain. The spell was too weak to wound it but had Ash used anything stronger he would’ve probably made the castle collapse, burying everyone who was in it.
The werewolf leaped at him with a howl and scratched his left arm, turning the sleeve red. Whatever skill it had used, it managed to only scratch him as he got away.
Ash realized that if he continued to play cat and mouse, he might get killed. He had no other choice but to kill the werewolf before he became its next meal.
As if it heard his thoughts, the beast turned to him and leaped once again. However, this time, Ash counter attacked. The strike was so strong that it threw the werewolf away with a broken jaw and a couple of teeth missing. It crashed into the wall, breaking the masonry, and disappeared under the debris.
Ash stood still with his staff raised. His eyes and skin were red, and veins the color of magma. The Third Form was Unity, one that only skilled mages could use. In this form, fire filled every cell of the cultivator’s body with its power. With it, one could pierce a steel shield with the slightest of hits.
But Ash, a Master, was capable of far more than that.
Kicking off and leaving a dent in the floor, Ash jumped so high that he reached the domed ceiling of the hall.
“First Form: Incarnation!” he yelled as he plummeted down like a stone.
The beast stuck out its golden claws. It could cut stone like it was paper with them, the mage and his stick stood no chance against its strength.
Crimson collided with gold.
“Impossible!” the beast’s eyes said as flames turned its claws into molten ash, burning through the marble beneath.
The fight was over.
It was brief and simple, but that was how it should’ve been. A foolish girl using borrowed power couldn’t compete with a talented mage.
Ash let go of the fire. His eyes were azure again and skin sun-kissed. The fire also faded away, leaving behind the sound of bells ringing somewhere in the distance. The curse had been broken. It, like the stained-glass window in the shards of which the morphing girl lay, shattered into million pieces. Only mages could hear its cries as it was exiled to the depths from which it had come.
“Two... Forms... Impossible...” The girl coughed as she assumed her human form. “Who... are you?”
“Your murderer.”
He sat next to her and, lifting her head, placed it in his lap. Tears rolled down the young girl’s face, staining his pants. With trembling hands, she tried to cover her wound and stop the bleeding despite knowing that her attempts were in vain. “He tricked me,” she sobbed. “I’m going to die... All because of him...”
“No,” Ash said. “You will die because you were a fool and because there’s evil in your heart. You’ll die because you chose to.”
Light flashed for the last time in the girl’s eyes.
“Damn you,” she croaked, breathing her last breath.
Her hands dropped to her sides. Empty eyes stared into nothingness. Ash put his hand on her face, pulled down her eyelids, and got up. He walked away without looking back, knowing that he did what had to be done.
“Such is fate,” he thought, placing his hand on the aching left side of his chest.
Morning of the same day
“So, it was the sister’s fault,” Blackbeard mused.
The group was going in the direction of Zadastra, a town bordering the Forest of Shadows, the last hotbed of civilization, beyond which only the most dangerous and vile creatures roame
d.
“I don’t get it,” Lari said. “She loved her brother so much... I was sure that the mother was the culprit...”
“You’re all blind,” Mary said, patting her horse. “Her father didn’t care about her. Her mother ignored her. Her brother was her only family... And then this baroness came and captured everyone’s attention. Jealousy combined with the sweet nothings that the stranger she had mentioned to Ash whispered to her... It’s strange that we hadn’t noticed it sooner.”
“Though, I don’t get why she kept kidnapping people... And why always in pairs...”
“Yeah, that’ll remain a mystery it seems...”
“Oh, oh, I know! I know!”
No one was surprised to see Ash waving his hand enthusiastically as if he was a student trying to catch his teacher’s attention. Mary gave him a stern look but nodded.
“Everything has its reasons,” Ash muttered. “People are not born werewolves; they become werewolves on a full moon. Thanks to spells, the castle was under the influence of the full moon every night.”
“Explain to me then why there were so many corpses in the castle,” Mary said.
“There were a lot of werewolves in the castle.” Ash winked.
“What do you mean?”
“The food was mixed with poison that turned every guest at night into a werewolf. People would lose their humanity during the period when they were in the guise of a werewolf. In addition, no one knew that they, too, had turned into a monster. They thought that everyone else was a monster. Having met each other, people in the guise of werewolves began to fight and then killed each other. That’s corpses always came in pairs.”
“So that’s why the victims had such deep wounds. What happened to the Ternits then?”
Ash shrugged. “Simple, the young marquise was supposed to kill everyone who wore the coat of arms of the detachment. She carried them to the cellar, where they died. In the same place, she hid for those twelve hours, during which she was in the guise of a werewolf.”
“When you changed your toast,” Mary muttered. “She shuddered. She remembered everything that had come before.”
Ash. The Legends of the Nameless World. Progression Gamelit Story Page 13