Ostracized (The Ostracized Saga Book 1)

by Olivia Majors

  The lead feeling returns to my hand. Heavy. Pulsing. Angry.

  This was wrong. This was butchery. This was the devil’s work.

  The black cave in my head opens its doors, releasing a flood of light. No! I don’t want to see. I try to force the light back. Push it from the forefront of my thoughts like I pushed those rocks into the side of the mountain. It doesn’t work. The light envelopes me.

  Flashes!

  I open my eyes, and I am face-to-face with Axle! I step back, startled. He doesn’t acknowledge my presence. He looks straight through me. He has left the dilapidated home behind him and a grove of thick, vine-covered trees surround him on all sides. He uses the tip of his Illathonian blade to cut the vines gently from his path. The ground is well-worn and still carries the imprints of a great mass of people.

  “Shade?” he calls.

  Axle reaches the end of the spindly trees and halts at the edge of a deep crater hollowed out in the middle of the clearing he’s entered. His skin turns a pasty white and he backs away from the gaping hole.

  The smell reaches my nose. Decaying flesh. Mud. Rotting wood.

  It smells like the creek within the Burnt Forest. I don’t even have to look to see what lies within the crater, but I do anyway. Piled high in unceremonious stacks lie the bodies of Brunt’s villagers. An open burial.

  “I knew you were going to come here .” Shade’s voice breaks the uncanny silence. He appears from the trees like a phantom and halts next to Axle. He stares into the crater too. “You’re a shitty liar.”

  “I . . . I had to . . .” Axle finally turns his eyes from the devastation. His lips tremble.

  “Had to what? Had to make yourself remember?”

  Axle puts a hand over his eyes. “Please, Shade. Not now.”

  Shade’s brow furrows. “You did forget! You did, didn’t you? You forgot to hate them. You forgot to despise them with every breath in your body because you got used to Agron’s blessed silence and prosperity. You forgot to remember what they did to your home – to your parents!”

  “I never forgot!” Axle screams. He spins around and nearly loses his footing. Dirt crumbles down into the gaping hole. “I remembered everything! I still remember everything!”

  “Then why come here? Why make yourself look at this carnage? This barbaric savagery?” Shade gestures at the bones filling the chasm. “I’ll tell you why. It’s because you weren’t sure why you started carrying that ‘shadow-killer’ on your back.” He points at the Illathonian blade.

  I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be watching this.

  “You were lucky, don’t you know, Axle?” Shade says. “There was nothing left of my family to bury.”

  “Shade . . . what happened to us was wrong . . .”

  “It was more than wrong!” Shade snaps.

  “And,” Axle continues, “we righted those wrongs.”

  Shade shakes his head wildly. “No. We didn’t even come close. Not yet anyway.”

  Axle’s eyes flash fire. I have rarely seen him so angry. “You would spent the rest of your gods-damned life hunting them. That’s not what you want in life. I know it isn’t! Go after what you want! What you want, Shade! Hear me? Chase it. Grab it. Hold onto it. It is a shame to waste your life hunting them when they are not worth it.”

  “You can’t understand, Axle. You’ve never understood. They didn’t do the things to you that they did to me.”

  “Shade . . .”

  He holds up a hand and halts Axle mid-sentence. “They never dragged you from your cell at night and shoved you into a corner full of pronged spears until you were bleeding from a thousand holes. They never unlocked your cell and woke you up with bludgeoning fists because you wouldn’t succumb to them. They never pulled you from the slave ranks into a dark room and dug their knives into your back because they thought it would be fun to hear my screams. To see what emblems they could make on my back with their blades. To see if my blood really did run red.” His lips are quivering and the mask is gone. My chest hurts from the pain of holding back my tears. There is nothing behind that mask. Nothing but an empty void of emotionless memories. “So don’t talk to me about what I want, Axle. All I have wanted since that day is to make them suffer the way they made me suffer. Make them scream. Make them bleed. Make them feel pain.”

  “They did those things to break you,” Axle admonishes. “Because they knew you were the strongest.”

  “And they’ll regret it,” Shade growls.

  I want to fall. I want to curl up on the ground. I want to scream and cry until there isn’t any breath left in me.

  Axle falters. “Shade, I . . .

  Shade strips off his vest and turns his back to his friend. The scars – red, raised, zigzagged pieces of skin – snake along his flesh. “This is what they do, Axle! And they enjoy it!”

  Axle turns his eyes away and stares at the crater. He tries to turn his eyes from that too and stares at the forest. A single skeleton hangs, suspended, from one of the branches. There is nowhere to turn. Nowhere to run. The shadows are everywhere. Axle shuts his eyes, but I have done the same thing too many times to believe he doesn’t see the nightmares swimming in the darkness.

  “What happened the first night they came to Brunt? I’m sure you were all certain it was another one of their small raids. A couple lives would be lost, you’d bury the bodies, and go back to your normal lives.” Shade kicks at a clod of dirt. It rolls downhill. “You never dreamed it would turn into carnage. Your father probably told you he’d be right back. Your mother probably didn’t even bother getting a weapon for herself. She was so certain everything would be alright.”

  “Stop,” Axle whispers.

  “They killed your father right outside the door. Killed your mother, too. And then they saw you . . . Oh, you expected them to kill you, but no . . . they took you with them instead and . . .”

  “Stop it!” Axle screams. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” He grabs Shade’s shoulder and spins him around. “What are you trying to do to me?”

  Shade eyes quiver at the physical connection and he pries Axle’s hand from his shoulder. “I’m trying to make you remember. Remember your first night in captivity. The first night we met. The first time we dared to show backbone. The anger we felt when we watched them butcher another boy just like us. Remember the night we escaped! They hunted us like animals. Mercilessly. Savagely. We both swore, on the gods and on the lives of those we had lost, to slaughter them someday. To throw them in hell. Together! Do you remember?”

  Axle’s eyes tremble. He opens his mouth. Closes it again. He shoves Shade away from him and turns his back.

  Shade flinches at Axle’s unconscious show of disgust.

  “I . . . I can’t be like that anymore, Shade. Please try and understand that,” Axle whispers at last.

  Shade stares at him for a long time and, for a moment, I think he might show a hint of sorrow in his gaze. Instead, he smirks, his lips curling up against his teeth in that vicious way that used to frighten me. Now it makes me want to cry with guilt. “See? I told you, didn’t I?”

  Axle lifts his chin.

  “I am alone in this world,” Shade says. He kicks some dirt into the crater one last time and stomps off.

  The edges of my vision blacken and the darkness spreads into the scene before me, swallowing Axle and the deathly crater in a black abyss of smoke and white, flashing lights.

  I am blown from the vision so fast that I fall on my knees. I lower my head and vomit. The stench smells better than the rotting carcasses around me.

  I lie on the ground, too weakened to get up. My head is an iron cage, and my thoughts hammer against the bars like a wild mob.

  The shadows did that to Shade! Why didn’t I figure it out before? His hate. His tirades. His scars. His vengeful nature. They shattered him. Pulled him apart. Took everything from him. That time he’d saved me, in Kirath, all those years ago – he’d been hunting them. Hunting them out of hatred. Out of emotional hav
oc. Out of vengeance.

  I want to console him. I want to help him. But I don’t know how.

  The eyes of the bound skeleton watch me rise.

  I cannot leave it like that. That person – the shadows traumatized it just like they did to Shade. The thought fills me with hot anger. I see shadows cutting into Shade’s skin. I see shadows laughing at his pain. I see shadows craving his screams.

  I will not let them rob this poor dead soul of a proper burial.

  I find a rusty scythe and pick out a spot near the border of the grove where yellow daffodils bob in the light breeze.

  I start digging.

  I wander through Brunt from dilapidated building to burnt tree-lines to hanging skeletons searching for the inn. I know I am lost before I’ve even begun, but I don’t care. Every step I take reminds me of that grove. Of that unspeakable, furious rage in Shade’s eyes. Of that horrible night where one of the shadows spoke to me – twice.

  “There you are!” Axle’s voice startles me so badly that I pull my dagger. “Whoa. Whoa. Easy there, Kyla.” He stops laughing when I don’t join in. “You okay?”

  Shade isn’t far behind him. He looks up when he detects the concern in Axle’s voice and scans my face. He frowns at what he sees.

  “You look pale,” Axle remarks.

  Shade joins us.

  “I’m fine.” My throat sounds scratchy. Like I’ve been crying. I have. But, gods, don’t let them know that.

  Shade reaches out and touches the back of his hand to my forehead. It burns a cold chill into my veins. I push it away, quickly.

  “I’m fine,” I repeat, forcing some volume into my voice. Why does his touch frighten me?

  Axle’s eyes narrow. That gods-damned intuition of his knows I’m hiding something.

  Shade’s eyes suddenly darken, and he pulls both of his Illathonian blades from his back so quickly that I shift away. He’s looking towards a mangled patch of ivy and branches.

  My nose detects the keen scent in the air.

  “Blood,” I whisper.

  Axle slowly pulls his blade, too.

  Shade creeps towards the bushes, both swords crossed X-wise, so that if an animal jumps at him he can slash upwards and easily kill it.

  I palm my dagger and start to follow him, but Axle pushes me behind him and shakes his head. I glare at him. He remains stubborn and blocks me with his wide shoulders. We creep forward together.

  Shade steps through the bushes. They only rise to his waist, so we still see his reaction when he sees where the smell is coming from. A vein pulses at his neck wildly.

  I duck beneath Axle’s arm and rush into the bushes before he can grab me. I stop beside the pool of blood and stare at the remains. An animal. Or what’s left of it. There aren’t any legs, eyes, or ears. Bloody intestines hang from a branch directly above the body. They steadily drip blood onto the ground. Flies cover the carcass and relentlessly buzz through the air. I swat four or five from the same spot on my neck. A few attack the ostracized scar on my shoulder. The scar from the shadow blade on my arm. The fresh cuts on my legs.

  Shade lashes out and swats a handful of the black bastards away from my face.

  “Thanks,” I mutter. The flies don’t even touch him.

  He kneels beside the pool and dips a finger into the blood. It comes back red and watery. I know what that means.

  It’s a fresh kill. Maybe an hour at most. Just long enough to attract buzzards and let the forest animals know that something has died.

  I’ve seen this butchery once before on my first day in the Wilds forest.

  Shade also remembers. “Do you want to bury it this time too, Kelban?”

  I shake my head.

  He stands, grips his swords in both hands, and walks off.

  I wonder where he’s going. It’s almost dusk.

  Axle grips my elbow and turns me away from the gruesome sight. “The others will think we’ve deserted them.”

  I follow him back to camp with one word ringing in my head.

  Shadows. Shadows. Shadows.

  Gregor doesn’t say anything when we return an hour after dusk has fallen. He throws both of us two portions of jerky and continues to warm his hands by the fire.

  “I can sleep alone tonight,” I tell Axle.

  He doesn’t argue.

  Dirk, Axle, and two other men are chosen for the first shift on night watches.

  Keegan and four men sit by the fire smoking a black stub that I recognize as a “chafrass root.” It is not a drug, but it is flavored and very addictive. Some alchemists claim that it can be used as a life enhancer. But alchemists are known as glorified merchants unless they have a certificate from the Celectate or a priest to prove their occupation. Although, here in the Wilds, things are probably different.

  Axle makes his bed fifteen feet from mine. He bites into his jerky.

  I watch him as conspicuously as I can. How did he survive captivity? I wasn’t even aware that the shadows left people alive, much less, took slaves for themselves. It almost sounds like they have a grasp of what a “society” is.

  Almost.

  “Guardian, where is the hunter?” Gregor asks Axle when two hours have passed and the brooding warrior hasn’t returned.

  “Ignoring his duty,” Keegan mutters beneath his breath. A few of the men around the fire mumble their agreement.

  Not good.

  Axle shrugs. “Patrolling the perimeter. Allocating a border. How should I know? I’m not his damned nursemaid.”

  Gregor ignores Axle’s verbal annoyance. “Do you know if he’ll return before daybreak?”

  Axle shrugs again. “I know he’ll return. That’s all.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Keegan snorts. He puffs out a breath of gray smoke. “I was afraid we’d lost him for good.”

  Everyone but Gregor, Axle, and I chuckles.

  Raw anger eats at my insides. If they knew . . . if they only knew what had happened to him would they laugh? Would they laugh if they’d been through a damned second of what he’d endured? Would they have survived if they had? I almost want to find out and that heavy pulsing returns to my hand.

  The fire near Keegan crackles and a shower of sparks snap from the flames. Several men jerk backwards. One of them trips over his own feet and falls flat.

  Axle laughs so hard he doubles over.

  I smile and curl my fingers into a fist. The pulse dissipates.

  I don’t know what wakes me. Perhaps a stick cracking. A snort from one of the slumbering men. Or even the crackling fire. But when I open my eyes, Axle is gone. He already had his first watch. He should be sleeping.

  I sit up and look around. He’s not in the camp.

  Stumbling to my feet, still groggy from sleep, I walk to the corner of one of the crumbled walls and spot him leaning against the edge of the wall that surrounds Brunt’s perimeter. His neck is stretched as he scans the forest. I know who he’s looking for. I start walking towards him until a dark shadow steps up next to him. I almost scream a warning until I recognize Shade’s Illathonian blades glowing on his back. But Axle didn’t notice him and jerks in surprise. I slip behind some nearby trees. They are ten feet away.

  Slowly, they start to walk past me, Shade in front. When he passes beneath the moonlight, I flinch. He’s caked in blood. Spots dot his face. Drench his vest. Color his boots. He doesn’t seem to notice it.

  “Holy shit, man, what happened?” Axle asks.

  Shade doesn’t answer him and bends down by the creek that runs between our camp and the wall. Hopefully the rippling stream disguises my heavy breathing because if Axle or Shade turn around they will definitely see me.

  “Shade, would you answer me, damn it?”

  “I found it.” Shade splashes some water on his face.

  Axle groans. He shakes his head. “That’s not gonna do you any good. You’ll need to get that water all over you. And your clothes are filthy too. If the others saw you like this do you know what they’d do? They�
��d . . .”

  “They’d call me a monster,” Shade says. He wipes some blood from his lips and stares at the stain on his hands. “Or a cannibal.”

  “More than likely they’d ask questions. And we both know how much you hate those. So clean up, man!” Axle tosses a towel he’d been sitting on at Shade. He catches it.

  “You came prepared, I see,” Shade remarks.

  Axle rolls his eyes. “Once you’ve been through this half a million damn times you learn a few things.”

  “About time.”

  Axle flips him the finger and turns his back.

  Shade strips off his vest and struggles with the belt around his hips.

  Heat eats at my cheeks. Oh, gods, is he going to strip?

  He pulls the belt free.

  Shit.

  He turns around to lay his Illathonian blades on the ground. The single white, zigzagged scar on his chest stands out on his tanned abdomen. I stare at its lines. Now that I know it’s origins, my gut clenches whenever I look at it.

  I turn away as Shade finishes undressing. I hear water splashing. A few gargled curses as it laps up against a fresh wound. I count the minutes in my head. Stare at the trees. I never knew how intricate the development of tree bark and leaves were until now. When I grow bored of that I try to count the number of stones at my feet.

  Water drips onto the ground. He’s stepped out. He hisses with discomfort as he pulls on his pants. The belt jingles as he struggles to slip it on.

  “Don’t even bother getting into that,” Axle says.

  I turn around. Shade’s trying to loop his arms through the vest but grimaces every time he twists his right arm into the arm-hole. He bends over and tries to wiggle into it. I watch the vest slide upwards farther and farther to his shoulders until finally, when he straightens out, it falls into place.

  “You never listen!” Axle complains.

  Shade ignores him and grabs his swords. “Just a good bone bruise. It’ll heal in an hour when I get some ointment on it.”