Chapter 168
When the Smoke Ashened the Skies
The group of three spent quite a few days navigating the path around the village, having to abandon horses just halfway through that journey due to the terrain that was impossible to cross on the hooves. The ground was uneven and rough and covered with frozen roots with the trees spiking out in thick groupings, making it difficult to even trek on foot, let alone on a mane.
Sylas led the group silently, unbothered, occasionally stopping when he realized they were getting tired. He was growing calmer, and it was beginning to gnaw at him. It was growing more and more difficult, day after day, to rouse himself awake from the strange, quasi-slumber he was living within. It was eerily akin to how people grow immensely calm in the wake of their death when they finally make their peace with it. What worried him was that... he wasn't dying. Not anytime soon, anyway.
This was who he was becoming--a husk. He worried about it, but figured anger would be there to burn for all eternity. But even that... was waning. Though it was resurrected briefly each time he would die and find himself back on that fated day, it wouldn't last. It was like the wick of a candle thrashing about, fighting for the fire to burn. But the wax always runs out, sooner or later.
It was as though he was melting into a pot, the parts of him slowly being eaten by the beast that was time... and he was vanishing. He fought hard to keep his eyes open, but they were growing heavier. At the same time, he felt bitter--terribly bitter. He was human for so long, and through everything, and now that he saw the light, that he saw hope, that he saw the possibility of it all ending... he was more a wisp than a human.
He had dreamed of feeling this way for most of his stay in this world. He would have given anything to not have felt all those times that emotions burned and buried him alive. And yet... he felt it all, time and again. And now... and now he was turning hollow. All he wanted was to remain silent, give out orders, and push forward.
"Hey," Av called out suddenly. "You alright? You look an awful lot like some of my soldiers do after a long skirmish."
"... what's that look like?" Sylas asked with a faint smile.
"Empty, mostly. Glazed," Av replied. "Like someone ripped their soul out of their chest."
"We're four days away at this pace," Sylas said. "But I can already smell it."
"Smell what?"
"The castle," he replied. "It's been burned. People I supposedly care for and love are there, and they are dead or dying. And look at me."
"I'm sure they aren't."
"I butchered hundreds of people with the excuse it could be undone," Sylas rambled on again. "Butchered. Men, women... children. That was my solution to everything, all the time. It could be undone. Well... one thing persists, it turns out. Me. And now... and now I'm this. I need to rev my soul into being fueled by something. For so long," he added, lowering his head. "I put anger forward. I forced it, because I needed it there. I couldn't accept the fact that it was disappearing. But... there's little there, I realized. Haah, I've truly gotten old. It's difficult to care when you've seen everything. Difficult to pay attention to things that will pass."
The night passed and another dawn came, and with it, they rode. They rode in silence, the only sound the gallops of the horses and the melting snow. There were no words to say, though many questions still lingered on Av's mind. He kept them to himself, though, chilled by the glazed gaze that beckoned at him underneath the nightly campfire.
Three and a half days later, the group arrived and, as Sylas had already predicted, found the castle smoking. Its many walls were trampled and beaten, towers demolished, and the living turned into decaying carcasses. The many ghouls still wandered mindlessly about the castle's ashen and bloodied grounds, growling like mad beasts.
Av and Vanessa gasped at the mortifying sight, their souls chilling; though they had seen the dead walking before, they had never seen the aftermath of a ghoulish invasion. Bodies lay strewn across, most disemboweled, the haunting expressions on their faces like the notes of the world's most haunting melody.
As they walked, Sylas oft slashed and stabbed, killing all the ghouls they encountered effortlessly. Eventually, they chanced upon the body of a young boy, blonde-haired, his expression stern and defiant. Though Av had never seen the Prince, he recognized the royalty of the boy--even beneath the layers of dried blood, the kingly blood was still captured elusively on the face of the youth.
"The Prince?" Av quizzed as Sylas crouched next to the boy and closed the latter's eyes gently.
"Hm," Sylas mumbled. "He fought valiantly."
"Seems like it," Av was confused by the morbid calmness that Sylas displayed, as though this was a sight he'd encountered countless times before. "Should we look for survivors?"
"There's just one," he said. "She's coming."
"How do you know?"
"You learn to know these things," Sylas said, standing up and looking around. "Nothing special about this one, it seems."
"You're finally back," a woman's voice startled Av and Vanessa who drew back and took out their weapons. Facing the location, they saw a fairly young maiden dressed in a simple, ornate dress strut through the battlefield of ash and blood, unmarked. "Since you weren't dying, I figured you'd return."
"When did they come?" Sylas asked.
"Fifteen days ago, maybe?" she replied. "It was quick. They came at night and burned through a quarter of the castle before any meaningful defense was mounted. Cripples and boys, though, hardly stood a chance. Who are they?"
"I killed him, Ash," Sylas said. His words caused the woman's eyes to widen as she rushed forward like a bolt of lighting, tossing her arms around him.
"I knew you could do it! I knew it! Still doesn't answer my question, though," she added, trailing backward.
"Met them in the castle beyond the village," he replied. "Someone as strong as him doesn't have any business being this far north. Thought it an oddity."
"... how'd you kill him, in the end?" the two talked comfortably as though Av and Vanessa weren't even there.
"By being a proper badass, how else?"
"Sylas..."
"It hurts that you don't trust me."
"I've never trusted you," she said, turning after toward Av and Vanessa. "You two must be tired. I've just thought about eating if you're hungry."
"Uh... sure?"
"Let's go," the woman walked toward the end of the castle, passing by the scorching trails of fire, blood, and ash, ending up in the nearby woods. There was a feast-like spread there, shocking the two, while Sylas seemed entirely accustomed to it.
"Don't be so shocked," he said. "She's a Prophet. This much is nothing to ask of those who cursed her."
"... seriously, what the fuck is going on?" Av asked out of frustration. He figured the woman was something, though even he wouldn't have ventured a 'Prophet' as even the first ten guesses. "Did I see some entirely different sight from the two of you out there?"
"No, we saw pretty much the same one," the woman replied as Sylas began eating away immediately.
"Then what's with the nonchalant attitude? Aren't those your people?"
"We'll have to go north the next do-over," Sylas suddenly spoke as the woman ignored Av and turned toward him.
"Why?"
"I have to stop the brokered deals," he said. "I'm getting tired of having my home burned down time and again."
"She won't listen, you know?"
"Then I'll raze enough land till she does," Sylas shrugged.
"You think that's smart? Won't that just ignite another conflict?" she asked.
"It's worth a try," he replied, taking a sip of wine that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. "If I fail, I fail. If I succeed, these little excursions will finally stop."
Silence, once again, fell over the tiny group. Av and Vanessa hardly had the appetite to eat, often glancing back at the scalding ruins of the castle, wondering why the two in front of them were so nonchalant about the whole ordeal. They also spoke of going north, but there was nothing north but the woods and the tall cliffs bordering the ocean. Nothing, it seemed, made any sense.
In fact, Av mused, he had more questions now than when he first walked into that room and saw the topless figure sitting there, oozing the kind of energy that carved out terror in Av's heart.