For a moment, Vestra stood with an unnatural
stillness, watching as the limp body of the boy was carried off
towards the cave. And then, her brow contracted in a sharp frown as
she made her decision.
So be it, then…
With a deep breath, she bounded off down the
hill … towards the cave where the Zelgron were marching.
__________
As Carcasar and the others of the horde
approached the entrance of the cave, they found it blocked by a
brown cloaked person who stood before the entrance. Carcasar held
his hand up, and the entire horde drew to a stop. He strode forward
slowly, going closer towards whoever it was that stood blocking
their cave, and stopped ten metres before him. With a closer look,
he found that it was a girl.
Vestra let her eyes drill into Carcasar for
a quiet moment, before speaking in a steady, steelen voice: “Put
down the body and leave.”
Carcasar blinked, feeling that this day had
just lost bounds in its level of surprises.
“What’s this? We’re having a second guest
for this meal, are we?” Carcasar beckoned to the body carried over
behind. “I presume you’d like to join him? That’s twice the fun for
us.”
“Put … down … the body,” repeated the girl
in a slower tone. “And leave.”
“Or else, what?” demanded Carcasar.
The girl continued to bore into him with her
black eyes. And she said, “Maybe if you’re unlucky enough … I’ll
let you find out.”
Carcasar threw his head back and filled the
air with the terrifying sound of his laughter. Behind him, the rest
of his brethren were beginning to growl and inch forward, their
eyes fixed hungrily on a new target.
“You know what?” asked Carcasar. “I think
–”
But before he knew it, there was sudden,
blurry motion eclipsing everything in front, and he found himself
thrown backwards, soaring over the air. The rest of the Zelgron
crumpled and fell over each other as he smashed into them, causing
a ripple among the entire tide.
Before Carcasar could straighten up again,
the girl gave another flick of her hand. The boy’s body went
soaring off the Zelgron’s hands who were heaving him, and came to
land right before her feet. She slung his unconscious body over her
shoulder and shot off into the night…
With a roar of rage, Carcasar drew straight
and plunged into a race after her. The girl was dizzyingly fast,
even with the weight of the boy slung over her. With thrice the
agility of a cat, she bounded forth over the lands, leaping and
lunging over obstacles and hurtling out of their reach.
His insides bristling with a rage, Carcasar
shot after her. He propelled himself forth mindlessly, sprinting
over the hilly, sloping terrain after the girl. But the girl was
slipping out of view, her mystical speed unhampered.
Carcasar finally trotted to a stall when the
distance between him and the girl had climbed to well over a
hundred metres. Feeling wrath like nothing his whole life rise
within him, he pointed a long nailed finger to where the blur of
his target – the girl and the boy carried over her – were growing
smaller and meeker, disappearing.
“You’ve marked an enemy,” he said, feeling
the fury simmering in his own voice. “And a deadly one. Hope with
all your heart that we don’t meet again.” His voice went lower.
“Because if we do…”
Everything seemed to spin about in a groggy
whirl. Nothing made sense, except for the dangerous absence of
reason, and logic. An endless blankness enveloped the entire world,
and Ion along with it.
And then, a blurry trickle of lights
occurred, and slowly, shapes formed out of the gloom. A peaceful
tune seemed to pierce the grogginess, giving direction … a tune of
serenity, beauty.
Ion felt himself lying on a soft surface.
And hovering above him, blurry, and yet clear, was a figure … was
it an angel?
And as the blur cleared, his vision met the
most beautiful thing he had ever seen his entire life.
“I’ve healed most of your wounds.” the girl
said. She had long, jet black hair tied in a ponytail. He couldn’t
tell which species she belonged to, unable to make out any
distinguished features. Her skin was a light brown colour, and her
black eyes gazed concernedly at him from the side of where he lay.
She was holding what looked to be a strange, sponge like cloth
which was half dipped in a bowl containing a thick greenish liquid.
An unmistakable herbal substance.
Twisting his neck slightly, Ion saw that he
was lying on a straw mat placed on a grass surface. The familiar,
black spread that was the night sky prevailed overhead.
Ion looked at the foot of the cot he lay,
where a warm looking, aged woman stood.
“You’re lucky this young woman here brought
you to me in time.” She flicked her gaze towards the girl by Ion’s
side, who nodded absently as she stirred the herbal substance with
her cloth. “Or else…” The aged woman shuddered. “No other healer
would’ve been able to help you.”
“You’re a…” Ion strained to form words out
of his cracked voice. “healer?”
“Lucky for you that I am.” chuckled the aged
woman. “Whatever it was that happened to you, it was the nastiest
I’ve seen in a while. I’d rather not know how it happened, but
let’s agree not to do it again, shall we, son?”
She trotted away, and Ion craned his neck
harder to find that he was in a vast green field. And a large
number of more straw mattresses lay spread well over the field,
with ailed and wounded lying on them. There were about four of five
more healers, all of them aged as the woman was, tending to them.
They were clearly overworked with the number of sickened and
wounded victims to tend to, and were moving hurriedly from patient
to patient, trying to patch them all up.
Far out on the distance, a cluster of hut
like buildings could be seen, along with a glimmer of orange lights
between them. They were in a village. Ion guessed that this was the
nearest village to where he’d been. The girl dampened the cloth in
the bowl of herbal substance, and smeared it on the large red gash
stretching across his right arm. A cool sensation spread across the
ghastly wound. The herbal liquid brought a soothing relief to the
aching, searing wound.
Ion craned his head and found that most of
the cuts and gashes in his body had been healed, except for the
deeper ones. After applying the paste of herbal liquid, the girl
produced a thick white cloth and wrapped his right arm, and the
deep gash over it, with the cloth. It was thick and cushioned,
fully concealing the deep wound, which seared like fire when he
moved it. It wasn’t fully healed. But Ion was alive … and that was
indeed much to be grateful for.
Ion looked up at the girl, feeling a loss
for words. “You … saved my life.”
The girl paused and fixed him with her
tender black eyes. The depth within them seemed to absorb him for a
moment. A faint smile came across her lips as she nodded.
“You’re lucky I chanced past that place,
when it happened.”
Ion’s thoughts rolled back to the event that
came right before this. The dreadful, horrific memory. For a
fleeting second the zombie like, terrifying beasts flashed before
his mind again, life like. Dementing.
He felt slightly dazed at how close his
escape from the jaws of death had just been…
And yet, it was. He had been saved. By
nothing short of a miracle.
He turned to the girl, frowning. “But …
how?”
She looked around her, slightly wary, then
bent closer to him and whispered, “You happen to be talking to a
mystic.”
“You’re … a mystic?” Ion’s eyes widened very
mildly: this would have been quite surprising in another, normal,
pleasant circumstance. But now, it seemed to roll beneath the
weight of his hideous escape from death.
The girl nodded. “And I know you’re one
too.”
“You do?” asked Ion. “How come?”
She lowered her voice even more, bending
closer to him by the side. ““I saw you fighting them off … Carcasar
and the Zelgron. I was in a nearby hill.”
“And you fought them all off to save me?”
asked Ion, raising an eyebrow.
“It was easier than it sounds.”
Ion gaped at her for a second, as a strange,
warm emotion welled within him. An emotion he couldn’t rightly
place.
She risked her life to save mine.
He blinked and lay
back against the mattress. He realised, all of a sudden, what the
emotion was…
Gratitude. True and unselfish.
It came from a side of him he’d forgotten
for a while now. Ever since he joined Vonayz and the assassin crew.
A side he thought he had shed … But he now realised that side was
still very much within him, alive.
Ion turned his head to gaze at the girl
sitting by his side again, and she gave him a comforting smile.
“Hang on for a while.” she said, preparing
to get to her feet. “I’ll get back to you.”
“Where’re you going?”
She looked around her, and let her voice
fall soft again.
“The healers can’t handle all these patients
by themselves. Can’t you see they could use some help?”
Ion’s mind worked on what he’d heard for a
second longer, before abandoning its attempt to find sense in it.
“So?”
The girl gave him an incredulous look. “So?
I’m a mystic, aren’t I? Am I just gonna sit here and let my powers
go to waste? Not when people need my help!”
And she rose and strode off, bending down
over a patient in a mattress closeby, who seemed to be deathly ill,
with strange blue skin.
Ion let his jaw hang slightly as he gazed at
the girl, who secretly used subtle mystic healing tactics to help
the patients mattress after mattress, moving through them quiet and
unnoticed. Helping them silently.
A part of Ion felt a growing
disconcertedness. Something was wrong, right? How could somebody
want to help people this way, completely unconditionally …
completely selflessly? Hadn’t Ion learned beyond a doubt that this
world was but cruel and soulless? … That it had nothing of this
strange, selfless element he was witnessing now? He felt the
monster within him growl angrily, the monster that believed that
this spectrum deserved the cold treatment he gave it, for it was no
warmer … But as his eyes lay fixed on the girl, watching her help
the patients, he felt something more powerful slowly awaken within
him. Something infinitely more powerful. And for that split second,
the killer raging within him went mute in submission to another
voice.
A long lost voice.
Marion and Selia’s words of wisdom replayed
at the back of his mind, as a long lost echo. Words that reminded
him of the need for selflessness and nobility in this world.
But the swell of emotion was instantly
blocked out by another violent crash of rage.
They’re gone!
he screamed to himself,
wanting to tear his insides out.
They’re all gone, aren’t
they!
Marion and Selia … his parents who had
taught him to be kind and selfless … where had they ended up?
And Eol … his brother, his innocent, noble
hearted brother … where had he ended up?
They were all
gone
.
The blast of fury shook his insides. And he
felt a renewed urge to throttle every other living person his eyes
fell on, to rip every man he saw around him limb to limb … and to
tear everyone’s throat out…
“Hey, I’m back.”
He whirled his head and found himself
staring into those beautiful black eyes again. And as the girl’s
eyes, with their endless depths absorbed him, Ion felt the storm of
fury vaporise instantly within him.
She sat cross legged beside him, and bent
down with another swift look around.
“Now, tell me. What business did you go
seeking with those creatures for?”
Ion scowled, half unable to remember
himself. Then, slowly, he realised that he had been looking for his
assassination target. The strange vigilante who Grando had wanted
him to track down and bring back for him.
The girl, who had been looking at him with a
slightly stern look, shook her head. “Look, you may be a mystic,
but you should know better than to go looking for trouble. There
are things in this world that aren’t to be tampered with. And the
Zelgron are one of them. Carcasar is one you shouldn’t mess
with…”
“Carcasar?” asked Ion.
“The warlord of the Zelgron.” she answered.
“The one whose eye you gashed.”
Ion’s jaw lowered. “That thing’s got a
name?”
“That thing’s got more than just a name.
It’s got a horrible fury.” A quiet shudder crossed her. “Carcasar
never forgets a target, never. And for what you did, you’re
definitely going to be in his hitlist … I suggest you watch your
back.”
Ion sat even higher, ignoring the stiffness
clutching the muscles of his back. “You’re saying … he’s gonna be …
after me
or something?”