Chapter XXVI
Mother
"Em? Em, what are you doing?"
She sighed, and turned around to find her little sister staring at her with wide and curious eyes. Eva was a girl of only thirteen, while she herself was already sixteen. A difference of only three years, yet the distance in their maturity could not be measured. Eva was a troublemaker, always disobeying their parents' orders and getting into mischief. It was therefore Emila's responsibility to be the mature sibling and take care of her while their parents weren't around.
Luckily, that wasn't very often. While their father was often busy doing his work as the local healer, their mother was always at home, cleaning up the house and cooking delicious meals for them.
Today, however, Emila was busy and could not be taking care of her little sister.
"Em, what are you doing?" Eva asked again.
"I'm practising my magick," she told her sister impatiently. "I have to master healing - I've even put my archery lessons on hold. One day, when I'm good enough, I'll start working with Father at the sanctum."
Before Emila, on a wooden board, was a dead fish and a knife. Emila was busy making cuts in the fish and using her magick to close them. So far, there were several cuts, a few of which had been closed, which could be seen by thin scars in the dead fish's tissue.
Eva, naturally, looked over her shoulder at her handiwork. "Hmm... Father says that you can only be a healer when you can close up wounds without leaving any scars."
"Of course," Emila said, gently pushing her away. "That's why I'm practising. I'll never get any better unless I work at it, right?"
Eva looked at her with wide, pleading eyes. "Can I try?"
"Why don't you go bother Mother?" Emila asked her.
"Mother and Father are busy," Eva pouted. "All the grownups are having a big meeting in the town hall about those soldiers from Ak-er-a."
"Ak-er-a?"
"Yeah, that's where Father said they were from."
"You mean Acaria."
"That's what I said."
"No, that's not. C'mon, you're thirteen years old already. You should be able to pronounce the name of our neighbouring kingdom." Emila focused her magick on the dead fish once more. It glowed faint blue for a second, and several of the cuts pulled together and closed up. Not all however; some of the larger ones remained open. And even the ones that had closed were still visible as thin white lines. Emila almost swore.
"What's wrong, Em?"
"What's wrong is that I need to learn this, and I'm never going to if you keep pestering me."
Emila regretted her words, however, when she saw the hurt in her little sister's eyes. Before she could apologise, Eva turned and ran off. Emila sighed.
"I'll say I'm sorry at dinnertime," she told herself. "It was mean, but I really do need to learn this."
She knew that if she wanted to be of any value to the town, she would have to take her father's place as the local healer. No man in the town would want to marry a girl like her; and she could never be a hunter if she had to ask someone else just to kill a fish for her. So the only way she could contribute was to master healing magick. Otherwise...
Well, if someone wasn't able to contribute to the town, they were banished.
She wanted to stay in Sulin with her family, so she was determined to work as hard as she could. She would be as great a healer as her father was. Even if she could never have a husband or children, she would still take care of people in her own way.
Emila returned her attention to the task at hand, using the knife to make a few fresh cuts in the fish, and summoning up her mana and doing what she could to repair them. This continued for a few minutes, until she found that she had company again.
"Em, look!" Eva said, opening up her hands. There was a moth in her palm, twitching and looking around, confused. A second later, it flew up out of Eva's hand and disappeared somewhere.
"Aw..." Eva muttered, sad to see her friend gone.
"Eva, you shouldn't play with bugs," Emila chastised her.
"I wasn't playing!" Eva insisted. "I found him by my window. He wasn't moving. So I used healing magick to make him better, just like you and Father! See, I can do it, too!"
"You..." Emila trailed off, realising what her sister had just said. No, that couldn't be right. That was impossible. But still... "Eva... what you did on that moth, can you do the same thing to this fish here?"
"Why?"
"Because I want to see it," Emila told her. "If your healing magick is good, you can practise with Father and I. But first, I have to see you do it."
"Oh, okay." Eva moved past her and placed her hands on the dead fish. The little girl swelled up with mana, and it flowed into the fish. Emila then watched, in awe, as the fish was healed. Not only did the fresh cuts she'd made close up completely, but even the scars from Emila's own botched attempts disappeared.
And then, the fish gasped and started to thrash around.
"Wow!" Eva gasped. "I think the fishy needs to get in water or he might suffocate. Emila, let's get him back to the river. Emila?"
Eva turned around to find her sister agape at what had just happened.
"I've never seen anything like this," Miniu, Sulin's local healer, and the father of both Emila and Eva, said as he stared into the bucket where the reanimated fish was swimming. "This is incredible. Impossible, really, according to everything we've been taught."
The bearded man rose and turned to his youngest daughter. He beamed, and affectionately ruffled up her hair. "Very good, Eva. You've got an incredible gift."
Eva beamed. "Does this mean I'm going to learn healing with you?"
"Absolutely," Miniu said, adjusting his glasses. "It would be a tragedy to let your talent go to waste."
Emila frowned as she watched this. What she has witnessed her sister doing was something that, for hundreds of years, had been believed to be impossible. Eva had used healing magick so powerful that it had actually brought something back to life. Eva was a spirit-form magus, which meant that she was naturally inclined towards healing, but even the greatest of spirit-form magi had never been able to do what she had done.
She hadn't believed it at first. The moth might have been a fluke, she figured, but one couldn't deny the fish that was currently swimming around in that barrel like it had never been dead. Emila had been using that fish to practise her own healing magick for over an hour before Eva had touched it. One of the local fishermen in the city had given it to her, and when she had been unable to do so herself, he had dashed its head against the dock until it stopped moving.
Even bringing something back after a few minutes of death was considered almost impossible. There had been stories, of course, but even a few minutes of death were usually enough. An hour was unthinkable... nothing could be brought back from that.
And yet her sister had just done so.
If restoring animals from death was something she was able to do at entry-level, once Eva had her training she would likely be a greater healer than anyone else in Bacoria. People would call her a miracle worker, and come from far and wide to have their injuries treated by her.
Restoring a human being from death however, was impossible no matter how talented Eva was. People disappeared when they died, leaving only behind blood and the occasional severed limb. No magick could prevent or reverse that, but Eva's healing would be so powerful that preventing death would be easier for her than anyone else.
This was great news. Emila was very happy for her. However...
It wasn't good news for her.
That night, Miniu told their mother the news about Eva. She was overjoyed to hear it, and they celebrated by making Eva's favourite sweets. The fish Eva had restored was now in their house, swimming around in a large bowl on the living room table.
Emila ate her meal quietly, and was hardly spoken to the entire time.
After dinner, they discussed how this would change things. F
or the time being, Miniu told them not to tell anybody. Some soldiers from the kingdom of Acaria would be coming to Sulin to meet with the village elder, and they were told to avoid these men. Until the soldiers were done with their business, and they had gone back to Acaria, they were to just keep their heads down and not tell anyone about Eva's gift. Emila understood, and agreed, but it took some extra stern convincing before Eva promised not to tell any of her friends.
Eva, tired from her exciting day, then retired to bed. Emila was not tired at all, so she went outside and sat on the porch, looking up at the moon.
Her mother, Melissa, joined her a few minutes later.
"You seem rather upset, dear," she said, taking a seat next to her daughter. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing is wrong, Mother," she insisted unconvincingly.
"I understand that Eva's getting a lot of attention right now," Melissa said. "This is a very big deal. You know the implications of this, right? Nobody has done what Eva has done in a very, very long time. She'd going to be very famous for this. But this doesn't mean that we've forgotten about you."
"That's not it," Emila told her. "I'm not jealous of Eva. I'm very happy for her. It's just... well, I was practising healing of my own when this happened. I was supposed to start working at the sanctum under Father. I was supposed to take his place on day as Sulin's healer. That's not going to happen now."
"There's no reason why your father can't teach you as well."
"Sulin doesn't need two healers," Emila said morosely. "Especially not when they're going to have someone like Eva, the greatest healer to come along in the past thousand years. They won't need me... Nobody in this entire town is going to need me..." She was doing her best to hold back sobs.
"Emila..." her mother began, her voice soft and consoling.
"No man will ever w-want to m-marry someone like m-me," Emila sobbed. "I-I-I can't..."
"Things aren't that way anymore," Melissa said to her, placing her hand on Emila's shoulder. "Times have changed. People are more open-minded. They won't-"
"I-I've overheard the conversations you and Father have had," Emila said. "D-don't pretend this isn't a problem. Being the healer was my last option to contribute to Sulin. T-they'll banish me now once I'm of age..."
Melissa couldn't answer. She'd been talked into a corner. But her daughter was upset, and she was determined to cheer her up. "Emila, we won't let them just kick you out of the city. If they try... we'll they'll just have to kick us out as well. And once your sister's abilities are known, they won't be so eager to get rid of her. Even if there was nothing you could do to help - which isn't true at all - they would still be willing to deal with you in exchange for Eva. Do you understand, dear? We're not going anywhere, and neither are you."
Emila wiped her tears with her wrist and looked up at her mother. "A-are you sure?"
"I promise," Melissa said, winking. "You have nothing to worry about. Everything will be alright."
Emila smiled and put her head on Melissa's shoulder. "Okay," she whispered.
She never saw the worry in her mother's eyes.
A few days later, Emila was on her way through the marketplace, carrying a paper bag full of potatoes and carrots. Melissa had sent her out to get ingredients for dinner, and she was now on her way back.
She was a bit worried. She had overheard some men talking earlier, and it would seem that the Acarian soldiers had arrived already, which was several days earlier than they were supposed to have. She hadn't seen any of them on her way through town, thankfully. But the townspeople seemed worried about them, and that was enough to worry her.
Nobody had told her what it was they were in Sulin for, or what had everyone so worried. She was still just a kid, apparently.
She nearly dropped the paper bag when she heard a small crash, and a shout of someone crying out in pain. Farther down the road, she could see some men in black and red armour, standing by a meat stand. One of them was getting very close to the butcher, an angry glare in his eyes.
Her instincts told her to avoid this confrontation, but she needed to walk right past that stand to get home. Taking a deep breath, and doing her best to look inconspicuous, she continued on her way.
There were three Acarians there. One was the man harassing the owner of the meat stand, and another was standing behind him, his arms crossed as he watched the event with amusement. The third was a man with long, greying hair, who was holding his wrist. Blood was dripping from a deep wound.
"We're well aware that you Saetician yuppies don't like us," said the Acarian who was intimidating the butcher. He had brown hair, which was slicked back. "We couldn't give a damn about being liked. But we don't tolerate acts of violence like this, especially not on our senior members."
"It w-was an accident..." the butcher tried to defend himself.
The Acarian scoffed. "Sure it was. You just happened to 'slip' and nearly chop off our friend's hand." He picked up the butcher's cleaver. "I should use this to take off your hand. It's only fair, right? In fact, I could kill you right here and now. We're foreign guests, and you're nobody. They would sweep your death right under the rug to avoid any conflict between the kingdoms, especially with the Alliance making everything complicated. Nobody would give a damn about you."
Emila looked around the marketplace. The Acarian was talking loud enough to be heard clearly, but everybody around them was doing their best to look busy, blatantly ignoring what was happening.
"Enough," said the Acarian with the wounded hand. "Let's just go to the healer and be done with this town. They obviously don't have what we're looking for. Don't go starting trouble on my behalf."
"I'm not starting anything," said the other. "This guy's the one who started it when he threw this knife at you."
"Your hour's almost up!" the wounded man said to the other. "We must get going before-"
"This won't take long," the man said, running the blade down the butcher's cheek. A drop of blood ran down his bearded face.
"E-excuse me," Emila spoke in a small voice.
The three Acarians, and the butcher, all looked over at her. The one with the cleaver gave her a dismissive glance, while the one in the back studied her carefully. The wounded man looked down at her. He had kind eyes, but they were filled with sorrow. They seemed to realise something when they saw her.
"What is it, girl?" the wounded Acarian asked her.
"I-I'm the town healer's daughter," she said. "I can fix your hand for you. You wouldn't have to go all the way to the other side of town."
He smiled, and presented his hand to her. Emila set her bag of groceries down, took his hand in her own, and gathered up her mana. She focused her magick on it, closing up the long cut in the tissue.
But when she took her hand away, she frowned. "I-I'm sorry. I thought I'd gotten good enough to erase the scars by now."
He looked at the back of his hand, where there was a white line. "No, no, this is very well done. Thank you very much, miss. This is indeed very helpful. You should get back home now."
The tension seemed to be diffused now. She smiled, picked up her bag, and started back down the road when a voice stopped her.
"What's your name?"
She turned back around. The third Acarian was addressing her now, the man who had stayed in the back until now.
"E-Emila," she answered.
"You said you're the daughter of this town's healer," the third Acarian said, taking a few steps towards her. He had sharp eyes and a trimmed black beard. This one made her nervous. There was something uncomfortable about the way he was looking at her. "How old are you?"
"Sixteen," she said.
"I take it you're training to be your father's successor?" the Acarian continued. "He must be very proud to have such a beautiful daughter. Do you have any other family?"
"Serpos," said the man she'd healed in a quiet voice. "We need to get going. We've checked the records already. She isn't here. And Dreevius' h
our is nearly up."
The man named Serpos raised a hand to silence his companion. He continued to talk to Emila. "Surely it's not just you and your father?"
There was something in his gaze that demanded she tell him the truth. "N-no, it's not. There's also my little sister, and my mother."
"Do they have names?"
"M-my sister's name is Eva," Emila said. "My mother's name is Melissa."
Serpos grinned. "Thank you, young lady. You have indeed been very helpful today. Run along home now."
The Acarian with the grey hair frowned, and gave one last regretful look at her before he and Serpos returned to the meat stand where the third was waiting. "Let's go," Serpos ordered.
The other Acarian took one last glance at the butcher, and swung the cleaver down into a goblin leg. "You were lucky today."
The three Acarians marched away. Emila watched them go, wondering why they had asked her those questions.
Two weeks passed.
Things settled down once the Acarians were gone. Emila never told her parents about the encounter in the market, worrying they would scold her for talking to those soldiers. She was worried for a few days, the uncomfortable look that Acarian had given her lingering in her mind. But nothing bad ended up happening, so her worries soon vanished.
While Eva had become the primary focus of her father's teaching, one day Miniu took her into the sanctum and sat her down.
"For my entire life, I've been working to push new boundaries in the art of healing," her father told her. "I've seen too many people die in my life, and wished I could have saved them. But not even the greatest healers can save everyone, which is a hard lesson your sister will have to learn one day. I'm going to need you to do your best to protect her when that happens. She's going to be a better healer than anyone who has come before, so when it happens, it will be more devastating to her because of it."
"I understand," Emila replied. "I'll do anything I can to help Eva."
"While you cannot save everyone, if you have the power to save a life, you should," Miniu continued. "In my many years of research, I've uncovered something incredible. It's a very powerful spell... it may even be one of the ten lost arts."
Her eyes grew wide as saucers. "What is it?"
"I call it the Soul Tether," he told her. "It involves you taking the mana emitted by someone's soul, creating a thread of your own mana, and linking their soul to your own. I haven't been able to test the effects in depth, but it may have the power to keep someone alive even after they should have died."
"That's incredible..."
"It has it's problems, though. By linking their mana to your own, it slows down their rate of mana production. To function, they would have to use your mana in place of their own if they ran out. It also slows down the rate of natural healing, which would create problems with healing the injuries that would have killed them in the first place. If used temporarily, it could allow you to keep someone alive long enough to treat them, but you should not allow yourself to remain linked to a person for too long."
"Why not?"
"The tether could affect your mind. If you are incompatible with someone - as in, too different in personality - this could lead to insanity in the worst scenario. If you are very compatible with someone, it could result in you growing overly attached to them and even shunning others to be around them. You have to be very careful with this technique. Another name for the Ten Lost Arts is the Ten Forbidden Arts. There's a reason their use was banned all those years ago."
"W-wait, are you going to teach it to me?" she exclaimed in surprise.
"Would I have brought you here to tell you all this is I wasn't?" Miniu asked with a grin. "Your sister is not mature enough for this. It's bad enough she can bring fish back to life, the last thing we need is her running around town binding the soul of any boy who compliments her."
Emila rolled her eyes. "No kidding."
"I'm going to show you the weave, but don't actually use it on anyone, okay? This spell is for emergencies only."
"I understand, Father."
A few days of training, and Emila was sure she'd grasped the use of the Soul Tether. It was impossible to know without actually testing it on someone, but her father had commanded her to only use it in emergencies, and she was going to follow that.
She spent her time with her mother after that, helping her around the house. She felt left out, as her father was taking Eva to the sanctum every day for training, but as long as she was helping somehow, she was okay. She continued to practise healing on her own, and made gradual progress. It was funny, actually, that she could make knives out of her ice magick, and shoot a bow fine, but she struggled with something that she actually wanted to do. Why couldn't people have talent in the things they enjoyed, she wondered. It would make life so much simpler.
One day, which was just like any other day, she was sweeping up the hallway when Melissa approached her with a basket.
"What's this?" Emila asked, opening up the wicker. There were a bunch of sweet rolls inside.
"Those are for your father and sister," her mother said. "Could you take those over to the sanctum for me? If you do, you can have one."
While Eva was the one who enjoyed sweet things, Emila would be lying if she said she didn't enjoy having one once in a while. "Alright, Mother. I'll be right back."
"Don't run through the streets! You might trip and fall!"
Emila made it to the sanctum in only a few minutes, largely because she ran most of the way. When she arrived, her father had a dead goblin set up on the table, strapped down for safety, just in case. One of its legs had been sawed off, with the two severed ends placed close to each other, but not touching.
Eva glowed with mana, and Emila watched from the doorway as the amputated leg slid a few millimetres up the table and reattached itself to the stump. The flesh around the cut sewed itself back together, and closed up, everything in the leg - flesh, bone, arteries, and muscle - reattached where it belonged. After only a minute of work, the leg was back on the goblin as though it had never been cut off.
The most impressive part, though, was that Eva hadn't overdrawn on her mana and accidentally brought the goblin back to life. That was the real progress.
"I brought snacks!" Emila said, announcing her presence. Eva turned around and saw her, and practically started jumping in excitement. Miniu tossed a blanket over the goblin corpse, and wiped off his glasses.
"Wash your hands!" he commanded Eva, drawing a groan from her.
They found themselves outside, sitting on the small wall overlooking the city, peacefully eating their sweet rolls. They watched the various people in the market and the streets. It was such a nice day.
"Father's going to see if he can get me an arachne corpse!" Eva told her excitedly. "He has to clear it with the capital first, though."
"Most girls your age wouldn't be excited about something like that," Emila replied dryly. "Most girls your age are afraid of tiny spiders, much less ones as tall as a man."
"They have eight different legs!" Eva continued. "I can take them off and reattach them in different spots!"
"That's gross," the older sister muttered.
"She's progressing at an impressive rate," Miniu said. "Her mana is so powerful that the real challenge is teaching her to control it. Believe it or not, it's possible to heal someone too much."
"It is?" Eva asked.
"It's actually very dangerous," Miniu told her. "Not only can you get mana fatigue from wearing yourself out, but you can also make someone sick by giving them too much mana when treating their wounds. This can even result in a rare condition that is very hard to treat and is often fatal."
"Wow, I never knew that," Eva muttered.
Emila did.
"Healing is one of the hardest arts of magick to master," Miniu told her. "It takes very fine control of your mana, a lot of mana to use, and knowledge of the human body. Most people can learn how to heal cuts
pretty easily, but more complex treatments take years of training. Your magick is powerful enough to force-heal injuries, which could save a life in an emergency, but most people who are going to come to you aren't going to need such intense treatment. Healing them that way would actually create more problems."
"I see..."
"That's why we're just sticking to animals and monsters until you have more control over your mana."
Eva started to dig into another sweet roll, and Emila, who was sitting on Miniu's other side, leaned over to her father and whispered to him, "You're not going to tell her about Reverse-Healing, as well?"
Miniu's eyes grew wide in faux-shock. "Let's not give her any ideas."
They both laughed, and Eva looked at them in confusion, not understanding what the joke was.
The happy moment was cut off by a blinding flash of light.
"Wh-what?!" Miniu exclaimed.
They heard the sound of dying screams as they tried to see after the intense flash. Emila rubbed her eyes, and could faintly see what was happening. Men in black and red armour had appeared, and were attacking the town. The villagers were screaming, and trying to run, but there were three soldiers for every one of them.
"What is this?!" Miniu exclaimed in shock. "N-no, it can't be! I thought they... How in the world did they just appear like that?!"
"Father, what's happening?!" Eva cried out, grabbing the hem of his cloak.
"Acarians...!" he said through his teeth. "Get inside the sanctum, now! Both of you!"
Emila wasn't listening. She had jumped down from the ledge, and was running into town, despite her father's protests.
"Where is she going?!" Eva asked.
Miniu's face grew pale. "She's worried about your mother. Come. We have to get back inside the sanctum, where it's safe."
He took his youngest daughter and all but carried her to the sanctum. The basket of sweet rolls fell over the edge, rolling out into the streets.
Emila knew the city well, having spent her entire sixteen years of life in it, so she was able to make her way back home quickly. The things she saw on the way were horrible; she almost got caught because she had to stop to cough up the contents of her stomach.
The villagers who had been killed were the lucky ones. Now that the initial rush of the attack was settling down, the soldiers were taking survivors and making sport of them. Some of the men were being beaten in circles of armoured soldiers they could not escape. Others were being whipped, screaming as the tiny hooks at the end of the lash tore the skin from their backs. One man had been set on fire, and was running around, screaming and flailing his arms about while the Acarians pointed and laughed. And the women... Emila didn't want to think about what they were doing to them.
Even the children were being tortured.
"Monsters," Emila whispered. "They're not human."
By some miracle, she was able to make it back to her house without being discovered. She feared the worst, but she let out a sigh of relief when she saw the house was untouched. No broken windows, the door was still closed, and no signs of struggle. She ran, and threw open the front door...
And froze.
Her mother was there, seated at the table, alive and unharmed. But she wasn't alone. There was a man there, in the black and red armour of Acaria, with long hair as black as her and her mother's. The man looked over to Emila as she entered, his single eye glowing red.
"Well," he said. "It looks like we have company."
Melissa looked up at Emila, her eyes growing wide.
"And who might this young lady be?" the Acarian asked Emila's mother.
"I don't know," she said. "I've never seen this girl in my life. She probably just came here looking for a place to hide from your soldiers." Melissa was giving Emila a look that she knew meant to keep her mouth shut.
The Acarian raised an eyebrow. "Is that right? I don't know, she certainly looks a lot like you. Same black hair, same green eyes, same pale skin, same pointy chin. If I didn't know any better, I'd say this was your daughter."
"I don't have a daughter," Melissa insisted. "I don't know who this girl is. I may have seen her in the market once or twice, but I don't know her name, or who her parents are."
"What's your name?" the Acarian asked Emila.
"Kiera," she lied. "I'm the city's record-keeper's daughter." It was the best she could do; there really was a Kiera, who was the daughter of the record-keeper, but she was likely already killed in the attack.
The Acarian stared at her for a long time. "I see. Well, my name is Zinoro. I'm the king of Acaria, and the leader of the men who are destroying your home and killing your friends. Nice to meet you, Kiera. Come, take a seat. I was just having a chat with Melissa here."
Emila hesitated. She could make a run for it, but she couldn't just abandon her mother like that. And they would probably find her if she went back out there. It didn't look like she had much of a choice in the matter. She slowly walked over to the table - the table her family had eaten dinner at for her whole life - and sat down beside her mother.
"Would you like something to drink?" Zinoro asked her, so kindly that there was no doubt he was mocking her. "I'm sure Melissa could fix you something."
She shook her head.
"You do look like you've lost your appetite," Zinoro said. "I suppose you wouldn't be wanting anything to eat or drink after what you probably saw on your way here. That's too bad."
"Enough," Melissa said in a firm voice. "Leave her be, Zinoro. You came here for me, not her."
Zinoro smiled. "Awfully quick to defend a girl you don't know, aren't you?"
Melissa said nothing.
The Acarian turned his attention back to Emila. "I'll have you know I don't like being lied to, Emila."
Emila was so afraid she was shaking, but she still managed to speak. "P-please don't hurt my mother."
"I haven't come here to hurt your mother," he replied. "I've come here to hurt my mother."
Emila blinked. She was confused. Why would the king of Acaria come to a city in Saeticia to find his mother...? Who could possibly...
And then it hit her like a brick to the face. Her eyes grew wide, and she looked over at her mother, searching in her face for some denial of this. Melissa said nothing, just maintaining a firm face and matching Zinoro's gaze.
"I want answers," Zinoro said to her. "I want to know why you've betrayed me, and why you've betrayed my father."
"I betrayed nobody," Melissa told him. "If anybody has betrayed anyone, it is you who has betrayed him."
Zinoro's single eye narrowed in rage. "Explain."
"You know your father was a man of honour," Melissa told him. "What he did in Sono, he did for his people, not for personal gain. He would never have done the things you are doing. Consorting with dark forces? Slaughtering children? And you justify it by doing it all in his name? How wrong you are. You spit on his grave."
Zinoro reached across the table, striking Melissa with the back of his gauntlet. Emila couldn't help but cry out, seeing that happen to her mother. The steel glove was hard, and when Melissa sat back up, there was blood at the corner of her mouth. But she did not lose her composure, maintaining a steady gaze at Zinoro. She had an expression Emila had never seen on her before; the look of a queen.
"You are not my son," Melissa told him. "You ceased to by my son the day you entered that temple. When you emerged, your eyes as red as a vampire's, I knew what you were going to become, and I could not bear to watch the last member of my family turn into that. That is why I left."
Zinoro scoffed. "And you fixed that by creating more. You replaced me with these bastard girls."
"I married Miniu. My daughters are legitimate."
"That does not make it better!" Zinoro almost shouted. "The former queen of Acaria, the wife of some healer in Saeticia?! You never thought about his legacy for even a second, did you? You left me alone, to carry the weight of his entire kingdom!"
"
His kingdom is a ruin," Melissa said. "Manorith's kingdom died with him in Sono."
Zinoro shook his head, his mouth twisting into a grin. "That's where you're wrong, Mother. I am rebuilding Acaria. I will resurrect the kingdom, slay Lodin, and destroy the Alliance. I will do my father justice, and make Acaria into the empire he always dreamed of!"
"You would need a much bigger army to do that," Melissa told him, a hint of a smile appearing on her. "There aren't enough Acarians left alive to accomplish what you speak of. Acaria is nestled between those mountains, bordered on three sides. Good luck launching an invasion against the three great nations with so small an army and one direction to attack from."
Zinoro frowned. Apparently, what Melissa had said was true, because he didn't seem to have a retort to that.
"It makes no difference," Zinoro said. "I am keeping true to his legacy. I am the one who is honouring him. You are a traitor, both to me, and your late husband, and to your kingdom. And traitors must die."
Zinoro rose. "Hold the girl."
Out of the shadows, another Acarian stepped out. This was the man from before, the one with the trimmed black beard who had asked her all those questions. Serpos, she remembered, was his name.
Serpos stepped up behind her and grabbed her by the back of her shirt, pulling her back. Realising what was going on, she started to struggle. "No! No, don't kill my mother! Please! Please!!!"
Serpos grabbed her by the chin and forced her to look him in the eyes. "Stop struggling," he ordered her in a firm, commanding voice.
Emila suddenly felt very lightheaded. She felt lethargic, like the very strength was being pulled out of her. Serpos' eyes seemed to be pulling her in. She was really sleepy all of a sudden. She couldn't muster up the strength to fight anymore.
"Zinoro," she heard her mother saying. "Please, spare my daughters. It is the only thing I ask of you. Please, don't kill my little girls. You say you're a man of honour, so honour my dying request. Do not hurt them, please."
A pause. "I will consider it."
Emila then heard the sound of a blade cutting through something, and hitting wood. It sounded kind of like what she heard at the butcher's stand in the market when he was cutting up meat for her dinner. She'd always liked that butcher. He was nice; he always gave her and her sister an extra slice for free.
She was so tired, she just wanted to sleep. She found that she was turned around, and she could see the room again. That Zinoro guy was standing there, talking to another Acarian. He looked pissed about something. The other Acarian looked uncomfortable, like he'd made some kind of mistake. He was handing Zinoro something; a pair of glasses, stained with blood.
She giggled a little. Her daddy had glasses just like those.
That Zinoro guy tossed the glasses away and left her house in a rush. Emila looked down at the dinner table. Her mother's dress was spread out over the length of the table. There was a huge splatter of blood where her mother's head would have been if she'd been wearing it. Uh-oh, Emila realised. Mother would be angry when she saw this. The dress was certainly ruined in all that blood.
She was thinking a lot, she realised. All that thinking was making her tired. Since that guy behind her was nice enough to hold her up, she decided there was no point trying to stay up anymore. She closed her eyes. He'd definitely put her in her bed later.
She couldn't wait for tomorrow morning.
Maybe Mother would make her favourite breakfast.
"Get up, you stupid bitch! C'mon, wake up! I'm not about to fuck a corpse!"
Emila gasped as she felt a bucket full of ice-cold water being dumped over her head. She panicked, immediately realising that wherever she was, it wasn't her bedroom.
"W-w-where-?"
She cried out as she felt someone slap her across the face.
"Shut up! Who told you to talk?!"
She felt tears stinging her eyes. She opened her eyes enough to see what was going on. It was night time. She was in the woods somewhere, beside a river. There was a man standing over her, undoing the straps of his black armour and tossing it aside. Somewhere in the distance, she could see the faint orange glow of a camp.
"Don't got a lot of time before someone notices you're gone," the man said, looking down at her in a way that made it all too obvious what he wanted. "Mmm, you are a looker. Zinoro's got good taste, keeping you." The man started to undo his belt.
"N-no!" she said, trying to crawl away. "Don't! Please!"
"I said shut up!" the man said, kicking her in the stomach. Thankfully, he had taken his boots off, but the pain still left her gasping. The man scowled, and said, "If you keep screaming like that, somebody might-"
He never finished. The man choked, a knife coming up from behind him and slitting open his throat. He spat out a mouthful of blood, and collapsed, disappearing.
The knife was tossed aside, her rescuer coming to her side. "Are you okay? Did he hurt you?"
"N-no..." she managed to say through her sobs. She looked up at the man to see long grey hair, and tired eyes. She knew immediately who this was; his hand still bore the mark of her mistake. The mistake that had cost her everything.
"Can you walk?" he asked her.
She nodded. The man gave her his hand, helping her up to her feet.
He handed her a backpack, a sheathed short sword, and a brown travel cloak. "I grabbed as much food as I could for you. There should be enough to last you a few days, at least." He pointed south. "There's a town about twenty kilometres south. Don't stop there. We have spies there. Keep going to the next town."
Trembling, she tried to pull the cloak up over her shoulders. She was so cold, from the frigid night air, and the bucket of water that had been dumped on her. Her hands were numb and she couldn't do it. Seeing her struggles, the man did the clasp for her.
"T-thank you..." she said. He also took the backpack from her, and helped get it on her back.
"Do not linger," he warned her. "They're likely already looking for you."
"Come with me," she pleaded. "Please..."
His eyes looked very sad then. Old beyond his years, and full of regrets. Perhaps this moment would become another one. "I'm sorry," he said. "There's somebody else I still have to save."
"At least tell me your name."
He frowned. "It's probably better if you don't know. Now go! Run and don't look back! Trust no one!"
She thanked him once more, and she took off into the night. She ran. She ran, and as she ran, memories of the previous day started coming back to her. She remembered the attack. The people being tortured; folks she had known her whole life. Her mother's dress, and the massive blood stain where Zinoro had decapitated her. Her father's glasses, stained with blood, and the implication that Zinoro's anger stemmed from his men having killed her father and sister right after he had just promised to spare them.
The tears came, running down her cheeks. She did not stop to cry. She kept going, her feet kicking off the ground and pushing her forward. She ran until the woods stopped, and she reached the first town the Acarian had spoke of. She continued to run, leaving the town behind. She ran, the sun starting to rise by the time she had reached another town. She didn't stop there, either. She kept running, following the road south. She ran until her feet bled and her heart was pounding painfully against her ribcage, and then she kept running.
Finally, she tripped on a rock and fell, stumbling over a small hill and collapsing in the dirt by the side of the road. She tried to get back up, but her body was too tired to rise at this point. The tears started to flow now, the grief and pain of her entire life being destroyed in a single afternoon flowing forth.
She cried herself to sleep.
"Are you alright, dear?"
Those were the first words Emila heard as she drifted back from her disturbed slumber. So soft and gentle, she initially thought them to be her mother's. For a single fleeting moment, she dared to believe that it was her mother waking her
, and the awful events lingering in the corners of her mind were nothing but an awful nightmare. She could not allow herself to feel that hope, because she knew it was not true. Her feet still ached from the long night of running.
She opened her eyes to the midday sun above her. Sitting at her side in the ditch she'd fallen in was a small elderly woman, staring at her with confused, but worried eyes.
"I-I'm fine," Emila managed to say. It was hard to speak, she found, as her throat pained from thirst.
She took a better look at the old woman at her side. She was dressed in travel clothes, worn and muddied from what must have been months of travel. She carried a large backpack covered all over in overstuffed pouched and bottles that dangled and made little clinking sounds against each other with every small movement; it looked far too heavy for someone as small and frail as her to carry.
"Are you by yourself out here?" the old woman asked. "You don't look dressed for travel..."
She looked truly concerned, Emila thought. But the Acarian who had freed her had warned her not to trust anyone.
"No, I uh-"
"There was an attack yesterday on the town of Sulin," the old woman said. "We were actually on our way there when another merchant warned us, so we're skipping it over. Acarians, he said it was. Nasty folk. Thought they'd been wiped out fifteen or so years ago. In any case, what I mean to say is that it's not safe for a young lady like yourself to be out on your own."
"Um..." Emila didn't know what to say.
"We were just about to stop for lunch, when my husband spotted you here," she continued. "At the very least, why don't you join us and tell us what happened? I can't, in good conscience, move on without some assurance as to why you spent the night in a ditch."
The old woman smiled, and it was the same sort of sweet, caring smile that Melissa used to give. Suddenly, Emila found tears welling up in her eyes, and it took a monumental effort not to start sobbing right then and there. Her throat tight, Emila agreed to the old woman's request.
Immediately, it was clear something awful had happened to her, and the old woman said, "Oh you poor thing. Come here." She drew Emila into a warm embrace, and the younger girl had not the heart to refuse it.
The old woman, who introduced herself as Marie, helped Emila up out of the ditch and up the hill, showing surprising strength for someone her age. Once back on the road, they found the previously mentioned husband waiting. His name was Harold, and he was just as kind to Emila as his wife.
They all sat together and had lunch. The two of them were travelling merchants, and had been since they had married in their early twenties. They had travelled all across Bacoria, passing through each of the lands at least once in their long lives. They were currently on their way to T'Saw, the capital city of Sono, where they meant to sell the last of their spices and use the money they had saved to buy a nice home in the city to retire in.
Eventually, the conversation turned to Sulin. They had stopped there a few times before, and had meant to yesterday, before they got word of the attack.
Marie did not fail to notice the expression on Emila's face when Sulin was mentioned.
"It was your home, wasn't it?"
Blinking through tears, Emila nodded.
Marie frowned in sympathy, and placed her hand on Emila's shoulder. "I'm so sorry, my dear."
And that was it. Unable to take any more, Emila buried her face in her hands and broke down crying. Everything came rushing back; the slaughter in the streets, the death of her mother and father and sister, the man who had nearly attacked her in the woods...
"You don't have anywhere to go, do you?" Harold asked her.
Her sobs were the only answer.
The two of old merchants exchanged a look. They had already made up their mind.
"Well, here we are," said Marie. "The city of T'Saw. The greatest city in Bacoria, I would say, and I've seen most all of them."
Emila was agape as they passed through the front gate and emerged into the open stone-carved streets of Sono's capital. There were so many people, it absolutely dwarfed Sulin, or any of the small towns they had stayed in on their way through Sono. The buildings were tall, carved right into the mountain, and painted in the bright colours of Sono. And in the distance, at the highest point of the city, stood the magnificent Ivory Palace.
Harold seemed less impressed. He leaned against the city wall, short of breath from the long steps up from the Markira Field.
"I already have a reservation set up at a nice inn," Marie told Emila. "The Tipsy Troglodyte. Odd name, but the man who owns it is honest and the rooms are comfy. We can go right there and drop off our things. And then, we'll take you sight-seeing! How does that sound?"
"Fantastic," Emila said with a bright smile. "Could we go to the palace? I've heard stories of how amazing it is there."
"They won't actually let us go inside, but we can certainly go up to the entrance." Marie turned to say something to her husband, and her smile dropped a bit. "Harold? Are you alright?"
"F-fine," he said, his breaths thin and short. "Just need to rest a moment..."
But Marie could see something was wrong. "Emila. Help me with him. We have to get him to the inn quickly."
"There's nothing that can be done," the healer said to them as he rose from Harold's bedside. "If it was an injury, I could heal it in seconds. If it was an illness, the apothecary could brew a remedy. It's just old age. Once it catches up with you, there's no way to stop it."
Marie's eyes grew wide in disbelief. "No... That can't be... He was so strong just a few months ago."
Harold slept now, tucked warmly in a bed at the inn. Emila stood behind Marie, watching all this with a frown. At her side stood the stocky innkeeper Trent, who had carried Harold up to his room for them.
"At his age, he should not have been travelling so much," the healer told Marie. "Didn't you say your last trip lasted a year and a half? It's amazing he lasted as long as he did."
"We just wanted to get that last bit for the retirement..." Marie said, her voice falling. "He can't die now, we just made it here..."
Emila stepped closer to Marie and put her hands on her shoulders.
"I'm sorry," the healer told her. "The best you can do now is keep him comfortable and happy. He'll last a few days more, at least."
"Yes, we'll do that," Trent said. "The two of you have been good to me over the years. Anything you need, just say it."
"I have to go now," the healer said. "I have other appointments. The girl has healing training, right? If any other symptoms come up, she can take care of them." And with that, he moved past them and left. Emila did not glare at him, or say anything, though she wanted to. Had this been in Sulin, and her father had been summoned, he would have stayed and comforted Marie.
Still, he was right about one thing. There was nothing that could be done. There was no cure for time. Once someone was dying of age, no healing magick could stop it. Not even the lost magick her father had taught her would save Harold.
Trent excused himself, telling them to call for him if they needed anything. And then Marie and Emila went to Harold's bedside, where they would remain.
"You're an amazing girl, Emila," Harold said to her, his voice quiet and tired. "You deserved better than what fate gave you. Well... I suppose you're still young. All the opportunity in the world. Me, on the other hand..."
He coughed, and Marie's hand tightened on his, like she was trying to hold him in this world. Emila sat beside her, tears on her cheeks, listening to what would probably be his last words to her.
"Don't give up, okay? No matter how hard things get for you, hold onto the hope that things can get better. We've been through a lot of rough spots, and we always pulled through. And you're stronger than we are, in your own way. So promise me you'll never give up."
"I won't," she said immediately. That's all he was asking? She would have given them the world. These two ki
nd folk took her in, and asked her for nothing in return but a promise not to give up? Then she never would, so long as she lived.
"Good to know," he said with a smile. "Emila, you're like the daughter we never had. We often spoke of settling down one day and having children of our own. In the early days. As the years went by, we had those talks less, until they stopped entirely. It was always a regret of mine. But travelling with you let me live out that life, a little bit. So thank you for that."
He coughed for a moment, and then said to his wife, "Marie, could you do something for me? The package... the one we were to sell here for that retirement money... could you open it and give it to Emila?"
"Harold... are you sure?"
He nodded. "We're not going to need it, are we? I want her to have it."
Marie rose from her seat and went to their backpacks. She overturned Harold's, spilling a hundred bottles of spice out onto the floor.
"Emila, you can do whatever you want with this," he said. "Keep it for yourself, or sell it and live comfortably. It's up to you. But right now, I have a request. I want you to use it for me right here."
A bit confused, Emila turned as Marie returned to them. She rose up from her seat, and accepted a heavy object, wrapped up in crumpled paper. She turned away from them as she unwrapped it, and when she had finished, her eyes grew wide and she drew in a breath. In her hands Emila held a solid gold lute.
"I know you don't like to sing, Emila," Harold said. "I know it's a selfish thing I ask. But please. I want to hear your voice as I pass. I want the last sounds my ears hear to be something beautiful."
Emila hesitated. Her mother had taught both her and Eva to sing from a young age, but only Emila had had any talent at it. She could play a lute well enough; but the only songs she knew were those her mother had taught her.
While her time with Harold and Marie had softened the pain of losing her family, it had not erased it. Lingering always just under the surface, sometimes all it took was a single word, in a harmless context, to shatter every defence she had and bring forth those emotions. A mention of sweet rolls, or of the type of perfume Melissa had used, and suddenly Emila was right back there, staring at that massive bloodstain where Zinoro's sword had gone through her mother's neck.
But to sing one of her mother's songs; was she capable of such a thing?
She knew she had to try, one way or the other. Even if she broke down into tears halfway through, she still had to do it. It was all she could do to give back to the kindly couple who had, quite possibly, saved her life.
"All right..." she said, turning back around to face them. "I'll sing-"
She froze. Marie was out of her seat, kneeling at the bedside, clutching Harold's shirt and sobbing silently into it.
The bed was empty.
A week passed.
Emila passed through the crowded streets of T'Saw, on her way back to the inn where Marie waited for her. She felt invisible among all the people; no one spared her even a second glance. When she had first arrived at T'Saw, she had felt like it could be a second home for her. Now, she didn't know if she believed that anymore. Her hope, her optimism, her enthusiasm; they had died along with Harold. His death had been a cold reminder of what the world was for her now; a bucket of cold water through the dream she had been wandering through.
Marie was taking it so much worse. She had lost her husband, her companion for more than six decades. She had hardly left the inn room since his passing; it was all Emila could do just to get her to eat.
Emila passed a commotion in the streets. Some man - a worker for a shoe store, it seemed - had been discovered to be a mundane. The owner had beaten him and thrown him out of the store, and now citizens passing were kicking and spitting at the poor man. All because he was unable to weave magick.
Emila would have stopped to help the man, and heal his wounds, but she knew she would become a target the same if she did. There was nothing she could do to stop them, or to help the man. Emila did not hate the mundanes, as so many in Bacoria did; her parents had taught her better. But as the public saw them to be some sort of enemy, anyone who helped or gave them quarter was an enemy as well. Emila could not bring angry folks throwing stones to the inn.
She passed the scene in silence, doing her best to shut out the sounds of the cries of the man in pain. It was a reminder that even though she had it rough, things could still be worse. She had to be thankful for what she did have.
Emila made it back to the inn, passing through the front entrance. At the counter, Trent nodded to her as she passed, and she made her way upstairs, and to her room.
"Marie, I'm back," she called out as she entered.
There was no answer.
"Marie?"
Emila searched the room for a bit, even checking inside the bathroom, and Marie was nowhere to be found.
"Perhaps she went out," Emila muttered.
And then she saw it. At the bedside, where Marie had slept since their arrival in T'Saw, there rested three bottles of dreamshade; a sleeping drink made from an herb that had been among the stock of spices they sold. All three bottles were emptied, and in front of them, there was a handwritten note.
Immediately, Emila knew what had happened.
"Oh no..." she said. "No no no, this can't be..."
Emila ran to the bed and took the note.
I'm sorry to do this to you, but I can't take it any longer. I have spent so many years with Harold by my side, I'm just not able to live without him. Please, Emila, be strong without us. Sell the lute, take the money, and go be happy.
Marie's name was signed at the bottom.
"No..."
Emila pulled back the sheets of the bed, and sure enough, Marie's dress lay beneath, its wearer vanished.
"Cheer up, kid," Trent said to her. "It was what she wanted. I know it's hard to lose them both so quickly, but they wouldn't want you to be miserable forever, right?"
Emila said nothing, staring at the counter in front of her. It had been nearly a month already since losing Marie, but it felt like it had just happened yesterday. The wounds remained fresh, and refused to close. Now it was not only her family that tormented her thoughts, but Harold and Marie as well.
"What are you going to do now?" Trent asked her.
"The money from the spices will run out soon," Emila said quietly. "And I can't sell that lute... I just can't bring myself to do it. So I guess when I run out of gold, I have to leave the inn..."
"And after that?"
She shrugged.
Trent stared at her for a while, then sighed, and poured up a glass of ale. "Here," he said, handing it to her. "On me."
She said nothing, simply taking a long drink from the glass, and then setting it back down.
"I'm not going to let you just go out on your own, with no money," he said. "I need to give out all the rooms to customers, but the attic has space. It's a bit cramped, but it's clean and there's a window. In exchange for letting you stay there, you can do work during the day. Cleaning, dishes, and serving food and drinks to the customers. I already have two girls who do that stuff, but I can take another if your payment is just staying here. And you still get tips from customers. It's easy work, so what do you say?"
Emila was silent for a while, then she took another drink, and said, "Okay."
Emila lost track of time. She worked at the inn, doing whatever Trent asked her to, and when she was done, she went upstairs to the attic and slept. The small money she pocketed from tips went into a sack beside her bedroll, and remained untouched. The days passed, and turned to weeks, and the weeks turned to months. Like a puppet, she went through these motions again and again, too apathetic to muster up the will to do anything else.
All Emila knew of the outside world was the discussion she heard from those staying at the inn. Usually it was just things she cared nothing for, like gossip about the prince and princess of Sono. But occasionally, she he
ard mention of her half-brother, and the army he was rumoured to be building on the other side of the mountains. They said he intended to rebuild the destroyed kingdom of Acaria, and take revenge against Sono for the death of his father.
At first, she dismissed these stories, though it did match her memories of him. But over time, she heard the stories again and again, along with others. It became hard to deny the truth of it, and the possibility that a war with Acaria might truly come to be.
She started to have nightmares. She saw blood on her hands, bodies in the streets. She saw people being whipped, screaming in pain and begging for death. She saw the women being thrown down and assaulted. She saw an army of faceless soldiers in black, marching through the burning streets of T'Saw, her brother leading them. She would wake up, covered in sweat and holding back a scream.
And then, Emila heard another tale. Acarian soldiers, spotted in various towns across the Alliance. They seemed to be searching for something; or someone.
It had to be her. Who else could it have been? Illegitimate or not, Emila was still a threat to Zinoro's rule, wasn't she? He wanted to find her, and have her killed, so he could proceed with his plans unhindered.
She had to find some place where he would not find her; where nobody could find her. Somewhere where no Acarian spies could report her to Zinoro for a reward. A few people in the inn had mentioned a town at the edge of Saeticia whose inhabitants had vanished seemingly overnight. She could try that.
Surely, nobody could find her there.