by A. D. Wills
“So it seems...” Angren rolled his eyes. “Besides, I should relish the opportunity to see a Borean for myself. But I do find it curious to see one in a place like this. Could it be that you're living vicariously through these people's plight, trying to save them all, since you were obviously unable to do anything for a single one of your own?”
“Keep us out of your mouth.” Zasha flung Angren's sword away in a rage, and swung down to cleave him clean in two, only to be stifled again.
“If I can take your elegant icy eyes to Workal, he would surely be able to smooth things over with Lord Judocus if he presented them as offerings. After all, you are a rare commodity. Not to mention, I'll be helping finish the good work of our Lord Divines."
“I said to shut your mouth!” Zasha kept swinging her sword wildly at Angren, unhinged, holding nothing back, but he parried her away every time. “I'm going to kill you, and then your pathetic master when he crawls out of his hole.”
“What wishful thinking,” Angren replied with a smarmy smirk, kneed Zasha in the gut, and slashed at her right arm—cutting her clean, outclassing her the moment he saw fit.
Angren took his turn to attack now, swiftly darting his blade around, whistling in the wind.
Zasha struggled defending in desperation, rendered to one arm, while the other dangled limp and bloodied at her side.
Angren noticed her losing balance, stuck his leg out, tripped Zasha down to her knees, and stomped his foot on her face, pushing her over without much resistance.
Zasha dragged her sword back up to her side in an effort to pull herself back up to her feet, when she saw Angren focusing on a straggling group of captives on their way to Chryssa.
Angren glanced over at Zasha catching her breath, shaky to get to her feet, with a sickening smile, further goading her into an incensed rage.
“No...I'm the one you're fighting!” Zasha shouted out through paralyzing pain.
“You all could have stayed here, and continued to have purpose added to your pathetic lives,” Angren with his twisted logic preached to the panicked villagers tripping up over themselves, helpless on the ground at Angren's feet. “Did you really think it was going to be so easy? Ask yourselves if it's worth dying for, being free for but a few fleeting moments. Ask yourselves what the point of all of this really was.”
Angren grinned down, and ran his sword slowly along the faces of the cowering captives shaking beneath his gaze, playing with his food, when his sword suddenly fell from his grasp onto the ground. He couldn't so much as twitch his fingers around. His entire body frozen in place, only able to move his eyes around to spot Zasha in the farthest reaches of his peripherals.
“I told you...I'm going to kill you and your piece of shit master...” Zasha coughed up a spurt of blood. She had no other choice, she had to use the runes, but every moment she held him still with her will, it drained every bit of her being. It felt as if her entire body was being ripped out from inside her—torn to shreds, with a swirling sickness she did everything she could to hold down.
“You're wasting your energy,” Angren winced. “When you're forced to let me free, I'd guess you'll have nearly been sapped entirely.”
Zasha knew he was right. She was standing and moving on pure instinct as the runes burned into her body. "I don't care what it takes, or how much pain I have to put my body through. It's nothing compared to what the divines did to us. I'll gladly endure it all if it means killing every one of you...”
Angren noticed he was now able to twitch around a tiny bit, figuring Zasha's bind on him was slowly loosening with every passing moment. But in those same moments, the captives took their chance to flee.
“So you'll sacrifice everything for a bunch of worthless fodder?” Angren hated taking any kind of defeat, regardless if it still meant killing Zasha.
Angren waited a little longer and finally felt Zasha's grip on him slip altogether. The moment he broke free, he slashed at Zasha wildly, now obsessed with getting at least one valuable head to bring to Workal with all of the captives freed. It was only him, and Zasha, with the few remaining guards having retreated.
Zasha deflected some of his attacks on blind instinct, but it wasn't enough, Angren managed to slash her left leg open, and she collapsed with her sword falling at her side. She couldn't even stand anymore.
“I thought I asked you a question." An incensed Angren smacked Zasha her across her tired face. “Are you so willing to sacrifice yourself for some slaves?!”
Zasha didn't answer. Her vision blurred and body battered, she was barely hanging on.
Angren swung down to execute Zasha, but she held onto his wrist with her one working hand—shaky, and weak, but she refused to let go. She couldn't even muster the strength in her limp neck to look anywhere but down at the ground pooling with her own blood.
Angren's eager eyes widened, pushing down close to Zasha's face, when her runes glowed once more.
“Trying to freeze me still again? I doubt you'll be able to hold me for longer than a few seconds this time anyway."
When she should have been cowering in fear, and sapped of her strength and will, Zasha let out a weak grin through a grimace of pain and anguish.
“Finally accepted your death, have we?” Angren took great pleasure in seeing a defeated Zasha, when his body twitched, and seized up, before dropping to his knees.
Zasha coughed up more blood, and her body now barely had any feeling within it at all from head to toe. She collapsed, face first, and only had enough strength to turn her head to watch Angren. “It was worth it...killing you...like this,” Zasha muttered, and watched as Angren turned his own sword into his chest, impaling himself to his own death.
Even on the brink of death, she couldn't be told to wipe the broken weary smile etched into her worn face.
“Zasha! Hey Zasha!” Caden stormed down from the walkway after watching their fight, seeing Zasha lying lifelessly on the ground beside an impaled Angren. There was so much blood, he couldn't tell whose was whose when he rushed to slide in next to her. “You did it, hey Zasha, open your eyes, I know you're alive, come on.” Caden frantically tapped her face.
Zasha's eyes barely squinted open, and looked as if it were one last action before giving way to eternal rest.
“Come on, I'm taking you back, you're not dying here, don't give up on us.” Caden didn't have anything to seal Zasha's wounds, so he carried her over as fast as he could to Chryssa.
The quarry was emptied out of the captives once kept there, and the steam blew out from the tunnel in a hollow haunting whistle across the barren crater. Now only the bodies of Angren and his guards with their abandoned weapons strewn about remained in keeping Workal company, alone and defeated.
“Those worthless fools.” Workal squeezed his fists, and threw another fit in his hut—smashing everything inside he could get his hands on. “How could they lose to a bunch of weaklings barely armed? And where the fuck are the others above? Did they dare turn tail and abandon me as well?! I'll make sure to have every single one of their heads, I swear it. I'll kill them all and make them pay for abandoning me.”
Left without any options, everything he once had now gone, Workal stared with a furious nervous gaze toward the dungeon's entrance.
“'If I get Judocus that damn relic, I'm sure to have bought myself another chance with him. Those rats can return to their miserable poor lives for now. But no one gets away with crossing me, Once I get him his precious relic, I'll be back to take this place back."
While Workal thought no one would see him, Caden and the others spotted him hoggishly running toward where they suspected to be the dungeon entrance.
“That bastard Workal finally showed himself." Grumli pointed out while he was tending to the injured with Chryssa, giving basic help where needed.
“...So everyone's going to pay except him?” Chryssa muttered in contained rage. Despite freeing everyone, the one most responsible for their suffering was scurrying off before their eyes
.
“Why? Let's go and get him!” Caden stood up to his feet in front of everyone, trying to rally them, but they all remained silent, and tired.
Everyone wanted to, but no one was in the shape to go running off for Workal, especially not into an unknown dungeon where they knew many of their fellow townsfolk had died entering.
“We can't,” Chryssa painfully uttered. “We can't risk anyone's lives, not anymore. I have my parents, and everyone else here. We won, Caden.”
“Then I'll go and take him out. I don't care what's in there. I'll make sure he can't come back here ever again.”
“You can't!” Chryssa shouted, annoyed with Caden's optimism. “What makes you think you can get in and out like that so easily? And what makes you think you can even fight him on your own? You can't just say these things like they're easy. We might have won here, but don't throw that away, please.”
“There's no telling if I don't give it a try. And besides, you didn't think we could do all of this, did you?” Caden grinned with unwavering confidence. “I'm not letting him get away. I'm going after him, and I'm gonna be the one to come out of there. I'm not asking for anyone's permission either. One of the perks of not being a hero, right?"
Caden flashed his same smile he always did, making sure to free Chryssa of any guilt, as he bolted away down the walkway after Workal without saying anything else. Not a shred of hesitation or fear, only determination.
Chapter 26: Caden
For as long as everyone raided the quarry, Snillrik, Sappo and the villagers were doing their part above in the streets. The villagers ambushed the approaching guards one after another—pulling them into the alleyways, but they were beginning to wear thin now. It was taking everything they had to restrain the guards they had captured, but wouldn't be able to keep this up. They just didn't have enough people, or supplies.
Until now, everything was been going according to Snillrik's plan, but they never accounted for the guards to keep coming like this. Snillrik assumed the guards would have fled by now to get help, only to find the quarry itself to be lost.
The guards had no idea what was going on in the quarry, so they were still willed on by the fear of being killed by Workal, should they flee.
“What do we do, Snillrik?” Sappo observed the guards closing in on him and Snillrik now.
Snillrik remained silent, and tried thinking of a solution, but nothing came to mind right away. No matter how many they tried running through, nothing was remotely viable—not without everyone's help from below, but they were struggling plenty themselves.
The guards began to close in, and pinch down from both ends of each alleyway, and easily overwhelmed the villagers, freeing the restrained without any trouble at all. One by one, the guards tied up the villagers they found in the alleys, and dragged them all out into the middle of the streets for Snillrik and Sappo to see up above, as if they were trophies on display.
“We have to help them...” Snillrik's eyes darted around, readied and went to fire the device, but nothing happened. “What is it? Why won't it fire?”
Snillrik frantically patted down every inch of the device—barely able to focus at all and think straight. They couldn't find anything wrong with it though. Everything seemed fine on the surface.
“Not firing anything at us now, huh? What happened?” One of the guards shouted from down below.
"Why won't you work? There has to be an explanation for this.” Snillrik smashed the device out of frustration. “Achi, please try and find what's wrong. We don't have any time to waste.”
Achi nodded and chirped, and maneuvered his boneless body around the device as quickly as he could, checking in and out of every crevice throughout.
“Tell you what, if the rest of you come out and give up, we might just let you slave away in the quarry instead of killing you,” another taunted, and the rest of the guards laughed at the villagers' expense. “We're just going to find the rest of you rats soon enough anyway.”
“Sappo please, you need to help the others from the alleys escape,” Snillrik said in a worried voice. They knew as well as anyone it was desperate, and unfair. “I know it is a lot to ask—more than I feel right asking any one person, but if you can somehow help the others who haven't been found yet, that might buy enough time for me to figure out what is wrong.”
“I-I'll try,” Sappo gulped and agreed, but in truth, he didn't know inside if he truly agreed to it or if they were just empty words.
Sappo lumbered his way down from the rooftop, and into the streets, panicked, and without any idea what he was even supposed to do. But it was either leave everyone to die on their own, or figure something—anything out to help.
“What if they find me when I try to free the others? There's no way I can defend them on my own. I've never fought before,” Sappo mumbled looking down, completely distracted talking to himself as he made his way toward the guards.
“Oh, one of you decided to surrender after all?” One of the guards noticed Sappo's silhouette just ahead of them, approaching from the other end of the moonlit street.
Sappo's head shot up, having not realized he was in sight of the guards already. Sappo stood there in silence, looking ahead at the villagers who looked back—desperately and silently willing Sappo to help them with teary eyes. But they could see the same fear in Sappo. Their only chance, quivering before them, a nervous mess.
“So, are you going to tell us where the rest are, or what? Why not be a good boy and do that for us, It'll make everything nice and easy,” The guard belittled a vulnerable Sappo, and the others followed along cackling. “Or, are you going to try and do something about us?”
Sappo couldn't bring himself to say anything, or even so much as move his body another inch. He locked up and froze in place—embarrassed he only stood there and watched.
“I don't think it can,” another guard spoke up. “It looks like it's about to piss itself just standing there.”
One of the guards laughed at how pathetic he thought Sappo looked, and approached one of the tied up villagers. The guard grabbed their hair, and threw them down, grinding in his dirty boot on the villager's face—scraping the other cheek against the street.
“Come on then...do something, they're just begging you to after all,” the guard taunted.
Sappo was too humiliated to bring himself to look at the villagers who wondered why he wouldn't do anything—why he wouldn't even speak up in defiance. All he did was stand there frozen, sinking deeper into mental isolation, until Sappo didn't even notice the guards and villagers in front of him anymore. He was so swamped in his own fear and doubt, it was as if nothing else existed.
Why am I even here? I knew I was right, I've been dead weight this whole time after all. Everyone else has done their part except me. I can't even move and help them. I can't even do that much...Snillrik was just being nice before. Nothing's changed with me... Sappo thought, standing alone in a pitch dark space within his inner self, that so eagerly sought to swallow him whole.
Sappo thought back to all the times he wasn't able to stand up for himself, just as he was unable to now. How his father and everyone else in Ursinbarrow saw him as a pathetic excuse of an Ursine, mocking him each and every day. Telling him what a disgrace he is—what a pointless dream he had. He never had one person on his side, or so much as anyone who acknowledged him as being worth their time. But then he pictured meeting Caden, Snillrik, Zasha, and Chryssa, and a small bit of warmth tickled the back of Sappo's neck.
I don't want to let everyone down. I want to keep going with them no matter what. Tears streamed down Sappo's face in streams amid his semi-conscious stupor. I don't know how, or if I can, but I just want to keep going no matter what. Even if it's only for a little while longer. I want to stay with my friends as long as I can.
Something triggered inside of Sappo that helped him take a step forward—a shaky one at that, but the first one. Every step after that began to feel natural, and his fear suppressed wi
thin him. For the first time, he reacted on instinct, rather than listening to his pleading dragging doubts that were all but silent now.
The guards were already turned around, tying up the villagers. They couldn't be bothered with Sappo anymore.
“We're running out of rope to tie these bastards up you know,” one of the guards complained.
“Then kill some of them and make some room, why're you complaining to me?”
The guard went to slash down, and cull their numbers, when he was swatted away like nothing more than a fly, his body sent flying into a nearby home that splattered into a heap of rubble.
All of the other guards whipped their heads around to see what happened, and saw a rabid, possessed looking Sappo.
Sappo lurched over the villagers he saved. Standing at least another couple feet taller, and his thick fur standing on end all over his enlarged body, as if his muscles suddenly expanded. He didn't free the villagers in front of him, and instead he mindlessly lumbered toward the guards with blackened eyes that seemed to be looking right through them.
“So you finally decided to do something by getting us with our backs turned?” A guard sneered.
Sappo interrupted the guard with a deafening roar, but he was stabbed in the back by a wave of spears.
All of the guards focused their attention on Sappo now that he was giving them a fight, and closed in all around him.
“Put this beast out of its misery!”
Sappo wildly swung his arms around, swatting away some who attacked him, but they just kept coming. One after another, the guards drove their spears deep into Sappo's thick hide—twisting them to widen his already deep wounds that coated and soaked his fur. Sappo looked more angry than in pain, and out of frustration, he threw his arms down to shatter the spears shafts impaled all over his body, as if they were just a nuisance to him.
Grabbing the ends of the spears a couple of guards still held, Sappo swung them into a nearby home—smashing them both as he did to their comrades before.