Elpis

by Aaron McGowan

  And I did nothing.

  I did nothing.

  I did nothing!

  Hour after hour passed, and Terico cursed himself for lacking the power to do anything. Terico’s entire world was destroyed, and he failed to do absolutely anything about it.

  My parents are dead. Turan is captured... and will probably die. Suran is missing... but is probably dead.

  Terico knew that each of these thoughts should have been enough to move him to tears. But he didn’t want tears. He wanted to be moved to action. He wanted to do something about this.

  He cursed himself until his whole body trembled.

  “Delkol! Delkol! Delkol!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. Though utterly exhausted, Terico willed himself to push aside the corpse draped across him and stood up. He nearly fell back down from lightheadedness, and it took a few seconds for his blackened vision to clear.

  The entire village is destroyed. Perhaps everyone I know is dead.

  I will avenge you all. Father. Mother. Turan. Suran. I will make things right.

  Terico bent down and wearily picked up the jagged sword he earned from the man he killed. It was frigid in his bloody hands, but it filled him with energy.

  With a will to hew down Delkol and every single one of his followers.

  I swear... I will kill you, Delkol. I will kill you, and I will destroy your Brotherhood.

  And I will relish every single second of it.

  2

  First Steps on a Bloody Path

  Terico dug into the soft, moist earth with the only intact shovel he could find. It was stained black and smelled of burnt wood, but it held strong as Terico forced more dirt aside for another mass grave. He had already created one outside the cathedral, where he lay his mother and father, along with everyone else Delkol and his Brotherhood had killed. Terico also finished a large grave at the other end of the central square, and then another one near the homes just outside the west side of town. There were still bodies to bury near the school and shops to the south, as well as the corpses scattered amongst the surrounding farmlands.

  Terico had searched the entire village for any other survivors. Checked for a pulse. Watched for movement. Shook the bodies to get any kind of reaction at all. The Shire Brothers and their followers had done a thorough job, often stabbing each victim multiple times to ensure a quick, complete death. The sight of a town guard stabbed five times reminded Terico of his father’s advice against the pitcher plant monster. If your goal is to kill something, you have to take measures to ensure it’s truly dead. Something Delkol’s followers understood all too well.

  The sun was beginning to set, but there were still many people to bury. There was nobody else to do it—as far as he could tell, Terico was Edellerston’s only survivor. There were a few people Terico knew that he hadn’t found yet, but there were also a number of bodies that were burnt beyond recognition.

  One body Terico hadn’t found though was Suran’s. He had checked every square centimeter of the school and the area around Suran’s house, but there was no sign of her or her brother Lanek. On one hand it made Terico hopeful—perhaps Suran escaped somehow amidst the calamity. On the other hand, it was just as likely she and her brother were captured by the Brotherhood, just as Turan had been.

  A fate worse than death, Terico imagined, especially when considering the nature of Augurc’s experiments.

  With each push of his shovel, Terico thought of the people he buried, and the time he spent with each of them. He shoveled dirt atop of Suran’s parents, and thought of the elvish flatbread they often shared with him. He could almost smell its sweet yet burning spices, despite the overwhelming stench of death and smoke around him.

  Beside their bodies were the corpses of a farmer couple and their children. Terico remembered showing the parents some of Father’s potions, and explaining how the concoctions would help with some of that year’s struggling crops. He also recalled playing rope games with the children from time to time—boys aged twelve, ten, and four, and girls aged fourteen and seven. Each of them were stabbed by the sword, though the older girl was stabbed twice and beheaded. There was a meat cleaver near where she lay, so Terico assumed she had tried defending her younger siblings as best she could.

  Terico poured more dirt atop the bodies, moving on to those of the three patients at the clinic Mother was working to help save. The elderly man and young woman were both burnt to death, their bodies barely recognizable. They were too ill to escape from their beds as the building filled with smoke and flames. Terico had found the four-year-old boy outside the clinic, lying beside the body of the nurse who tended the patients. Both she and the boy were stabbed to death—the nurse had apparently tried to save whoever she could.

  It was all in vain. Everyone’s best efforts... none of it led to anything.

  And I... I didn’t even try. I just lay there, helpless. Unable to do a single thing.

  What was it all these people died for?

  Terico finished covering the mass grave, burying forty-eight more citizens of the little town. He planted the shovel into the ground and leaned against its pole. His entire body ached, sore and in agony. He was in no condition to bury the corpses of an entire village.

  The mist of Edellerston was heavy around him. A thick blanket keeping the stench of death tight around him. Constricting him. Tightening his throat. Making him gag. Drenching him in sweat.

  Blood dripped from his wounds, burning with an intensified vigor. Scratching at his wet and dirty skin. His clothes were splattered with blood and grime, but Terico didn’t care to wash it off. What was there to care about? He had nothing. His parents were gone. His best friend was gone. His only love was gone. The entire village was gone. The only world he had ever known was gone. He felt he could just drop his shovel and lie down next to it. Never quench his parched, rough throat. Never fill his sore, famished stomach. Just let himself die. Just let it all end. Just forget everything that happened. Just pretend it was all a dream. Just force all the pain out of his heart forever.

  No, Terico thought. There is something more I can do... Much more I can do. Turan’s still out there. And Suran might be, too. And Father would kill me if I just let myself die.

  Terico shut his eyes, pushing out tears from each of them. He could see his Father and Mother dying just a few meters in front of him. They did everything they could to stop Delkol, but he was far too strong. That man didn’t need to kill them. He didn’t need to kill anyone. He could have searched for whatever it was he was looking for without killing everyone.

  Yet he did. And nothing would change that now. Delkol and all but about fifteen of his Brotherhood lived while essentially all of Edellerston was little more than a black, smoke-stained blotch on the earth.

  Terico pushed himself to a point south of the village, where he had gathered all the bodies he could find in that area. There were still two more mass graves to dig, and then about fifty more scattered bodies in the surrounding farmlands to bring together.

  Just past the schoolhouse, Terico began digging the grave that would house all of his classmates and teachers, along with a number of shopkeepers and villagers who happened to be in the area at the time of the ambush. He focused on the task at hand, concentrating as hard as he could on the act of pounding the blade of the shovel into the dirt. If he thought about all his friends and all the things he did with them—all the things they talked about, all the games they played, all the tests they took together—he wouldn’t be able to keep digging. He needed to bury them all. Bury away all the people he spent his time with. Bury his past. Bury his childhood. Let it all suffocate beneath a meter of unforgiving earth.

  He became so focused on the task that he just kept on digging. The sky turned from a deep red to a pitch black, and still he kept on digging. Farther north, farther east, and deeper—farther and father toward the heart of the earth.

  Terico’s shovel slammed against something hard. He assumed it was a rock and pounded the blade
a little to the right. Again he hit something hard. There was something buried there.

  He worked his shovel along the side of what turned out to be a brick wall. It went nearly to the top of the ground, where Terico dug to seek an entry to this underground chamber. Delkol had said he was searching for something called an Elpis—perhaps he hadn’t found it, and it was hidden here? Terico had no idea what it was and what his father may have known about it, but if it was the reason behind the massacre, Terico was going to seek it out.

  Sweating and bleeding and nearly collapsing from exhaustion, Terico kept digging across the top of the structure until he located a small square doorway. It reached the top of the ground, hidden with a small fake bush that acted as the handle. Terico dropped his shovel and pulled on the bush, lifting up a thick, heavy wooden door similar to those used for cellars, though much smaller.

  Terico looked in and found a thin stone stairway that went nearly straight down. Several meters below, Terico could see faint traces of candlelight.

  “Who’s there?” cried out an old, echoing voice.

  There was somebody down there. Terico didn’t recognize the voice, but it may have been a villager who managed to hide from the Brotherhood.

  “It’s Terico. Terico Obisious.”

  “Obisious?” replied the stranger. “Just a second. I’ll come on up.”

  Terico stepped back and watched as a small man in a dusty green tunic walked up the staircase. He had dark green eyes, small ears, and straight chestnut hair. The man was probably in his late fifties, and it took a few moments for Terico to figure out who he was. Though Terico didn’t know the man’s name, he recognized him as one of the pub’s most frequent visitors. In fact, Terico couldn’t think of a time he ever saw this man outside of the pub.

  “Evening,” the man said. He took a long look around himself, pausing at each of the burnt-down buildings, and then staring a good minute at the pile of corpses Terico was about to bury. “Though certainly not a good evening. But glad to see someone else survived all this... Are there any others?”

  “No, it’s only us, as far as I can tell,” Terico said. “But you hid down there when the Brotherhood attacked?”

  “Yes,” the man said. “I didn’t know who was attacking, but the second I heard a commotion, I ran to my secret lair.”

  Terico frowned. Even if this man was pretty old, he didn’t like the idea of a coward being one of the town’s few survivors.

  Not that I’m one to talk, Terico thought. But it was still suspicious that this man—of all people—would escape such a thorough extermination so easily.

  “Why would you have an underground chamber?” he asked the man. “Don’t tell me it’s just for a secret stash of alcohol.”

  The man shrugged. “Well, partly. But don’t get the wrong idea, boy. I’ve lived a long, eventful life, and have gained a lot of enemies along the way. When you get this age, you get tired of the danger. It’s good for someone like me to have a place to fall back to and hide away in for a while. It’s the only way I’ve been able to stick around here for so long... Not that it means anything now, though.”

  Terico wouldn’t have pinned this man as having lived a dangerous life, but he imagined it could help explain the man’s constant presence in the pub. Drowning away his hard memories.

  “The name’s Jujor, by the way,” the man said. “I don’t think we’ve met, but you probably know me as the resident poet.”

  Terico only knew him as the resident drunk, to be honest, but he knew better than to say this aloud. “I’m Terico. I was a student at that school.” He pointed at what little was left of the building.

  “The Brotherhood did this then...” Jujor said in a low voice. “The Shire Kingdom has become too powerful. I doubt our country’s leaders will be able to deal with this quickly, though. The Fiefs Kingdom has enough to deal with already.”

  “Something has to be done,” Terico said. “The king can’t just let this slide. The entire village was destroyed!” It was difficult to speak with any energy, but Terico couldn’t stand the thought of his country doing nothing about this.

  “This is just a little town,” Jujor said. “Very out-of-the-way. It’s best that the Fiefs Kingdom continue building up its army. War in the Fiefs heartland is inevitable—it’s just a matter of when Delkol will make his move.”

  “He’s already made his move,” Terico said. “He was here himself. He killed my parents by his own blade... I can’t just let him go free. There has to be retribution for this.”

  Jujor looked to the ground a few moments, clearly shaken up. When he looked back up, he folded his arms and tilted his head to the side a bit. “And you think you’re the one to bring him down, I take it.” His voice was soft, nearly a whisper.

  “I will kill him,” Terico said. “Any way I can. I will kill him.”

  “Would that be enough?” Jujor asked. “What would killing Delkol do for you, Terico?”

  Terico flung an arm back to point toward the pile of corpses, the vast majority of them belonging to children younger than him. “Their blood cries for atonement! That man... That monster can not live with the blood of our entire village on his hands!” He could see Delkol’s smirking, amused face, as clearly as if he were standing right in front of Terico now.

  “You may not believe me,” Jujor said, “but I understand some of the suffering you’re going through, Terico. I doubt killing Delkol would relieve you of any of that pain.”

  “I don’t care about that!” Terico yelled. “If I suffer for the rest of my life, so be it. But I can’t just do nothing. I have to... I need to kill him. How can I move on with my life, knowing that Delkol still lives?”

  Jujor flattened his mouth a bit and just stared at Terico a few moments. “Okay. I see how it is... And to be honest, I’d like to do something about this as well.”

  Terico hadn’t thought of what Jujor may have lost. Did he have family and friends who died as well?

  “Delkol has taken away my one last respite of relief,” Jujor said. He stared solemnly toward one of the burned-down shops. “That was easily the best pub I ever had the chance of drinking in.”

  Terico shut his eyes and felt the side of his forehead pulse with dismay. “Are you serious? Don’t tell me the reason you moved here was so you could waste your days away at some pub.”

  Jujor cast a serious glare at Terico. “Don’t belittle ale before you’ve had some yourself, boy. It works wonders for the heart.”

  Terico had tried a drink on a couple occasions in the past, and gagged on the putrid stuff each time. But perhaps if he grew old and bitter, his taste buds would be worn away enough to handle it just as well as Jujor.

  Terico didn’t intend to drive himself to ruin, however. There was still some sliver of hope for him, as long as he managed to bring Delkol down. If Terico could have his revenge, there was a world of possibilities for his future. He could find Turan and Suran, and he could live a normal life again, continuing his studies of alchemy and the Nexi arts. Perhaps Edellerston could even be rebuilt. These were all distant thoughts, but the first step Terico needed to take was clear.

  Delkol had to fall.

  “I don’t care for your reasoning,” Terico said, “but if you want Delkol brought down, you can help me. If you have any idea where he may have gone, please let me know.” Though Jujor didn’t seem like a reliable man on the surface, it was clear there was more to him in his past. No ordinary drunkard would have an underground hideaway like this.

  “Tell me everything you know about what happened here,” Jujor said.

  Terico started at the beginning, telling how he was headed to school with Turan. How they encountered the Brotherhood, including Augurc Shire. That the school and other buildings were already burning, and Terico had gone to search for Suran. How Augurc captured Turan and escaped with him. And then how Terico searched for his parents and eventually arrived at the cathedral, where the town guards were fighting off other Brotherhood membe
rs.

  “In the cathedral, I found Delkol just before he killed my parents,” Terico said. “Delkol demanded something from my father, but he refused to give it up. Father said doing so would lead to thousands of people dying... But after Delkol killed my parents, he went on to murder everyone else taking refuge in the cathedral. I wasn’t able to move at the time, and Delkol didn’t notice me during his massacre. I was under some corpses he flung through the air.” Terico felt ashamed to admit his inability to stop Delkol, but he had to accept his failure if he was going to move forward with this.

  Jujor listened to the story without interruption. He scratched his chin a couple times and nodded. “Did you hear anything else Delkol may have said?”

  Terico remembered a bit of Delkol’s conversation with one of the masked Brotherhood fighters. “He wanted to find something called the Elpis. Probably what he and my father were referring to beforehand.”

  “Ah, the Elpis stone,” Jujor said.

  “What is it?” Terico asked.

  Jujor turned back to walk down the stairs, and motioned for Terico to follow him. There was a candle lit down below, so Terico was able to watch his footing as he walked down the steep staircase.

  The room at the end of the stairway was very small, containing nothing more than a tiny bed and a tall bookcase full of liquor. The drinks were of many different colors, resting in glass bottles of all shapes and sizes. Terico looked a bit closer and noticed some food wrapped up between some of the bottles, as well as a number of old, weathered tomes wrapped in leather binding. The books weren’t covered in dust, so Jujor was still making use of them, it appeared. Jujor pulled out some of the books and started flipping through their pages, presumably searching for information on the Elpis stone.

  Terico sat on Jujor’s bed and waited patiently for what seemed to be nearly a half hour. He hated to just sit there, but he felt it too difficult to head back up the stairs and return to shoveling. It was taking every ounce of his energy just to keep from falling asleep, but Jujor wouldn’t let him help look through the books. The titles were partly scratched off from years of use, but Terico could make out some of them. The Six Elements of Alchemy. The Pillars of Solilos and Other Ancient Legends. The Unicorn’s Scroll of Sayings (Abridged). There was nothing for Terico to do though but wait and wonder.