Chapter Fourteen
The Cursed Wound Which Wounded Two
DREWTH FELT A SUDDEN TWINGE of worry cross his mind, and the battles before him seemed to fade behind that worry – Arigwhen!
Turning away from his soldiers he ran unheeding of any danger toward his tower. A stray Driadon began chasing him but one of Drewth’s archers skillfully struck him down with an arrow, and Drewth continued running. He remembered the powerful locked doors that no plain Driadonian weapon could penetrate, but still something worried him.
His heart froze cold in his chest as he saw the door of his tower – completely destroyed! He smashed the remains of the door from his path as he charged in, continued charging up the winding stairs.
Each door he passed was smashed open! How could any Driadon do this? The air in his lungs turned to ice as he saw his own home’s door open, and the protective doors handle a ruined lump of metal.
Casting open the door, the scene before him brought him, despite his warrior- strength, weakly to his knees.
Before him lay the stricken body of his wife.
He somehow forced his own weakening self over to her side, clutching her body against his armored chest. “No…” he barely could utter, although his words were to be many more yet he had not the power to speak them.
“Let me die, and not her, any one with the power to allow this…” he tore his gauntlet from his hand and through his bared hand he attempted a Healing spell upon her wound. But oddly, the small white light that emanated forth was stained black upon contacting the wound, and his hand was shocked with pain. “It could not be,” he growled. This was a cursed wound! No Driadon could do this…
But miraculously she came to a bare consciousness. “Drewth….” Barely above a whisper Arigwhen struggled to pronounce. Tears were welling in her fluttering eyes as she looked into Drewth’s own eyes, full of more pain than hers. “Arigwhen, don’t leave me…” he uttered, and kissed her passionately.
Against his lips her breath had faded, and her eyes then closed forever.
He attempted another Healing spell, but again the cursed wound deflected his spell and shocked his hand with pain. “Who could have done this?!” he roared uncontrollably.
And out of the corner of his eye he saw a very familiar staff, left by it’s owner, leaning ominously against his home’s wall. An anger stricken horror rose within and pronounced itself in a single spoken word: “Syndirin!!”
His senses were seemingly bathed in both shocking ice and painful fire.
All of the trust that lead him, the faith that empowered Syndirin’s leadership? Syndirin, he, out of all the battles fought and won and blood that he shed with the sword given by him, he did such for him?
The thin smile that was Syndirin’s face no longer seemed keen and respectable, but sinful and cruel, hiding behind it what wicked teeth.
Syndirin, the imposing and great teacher of Drewth. No, the misleader of him, it seemed, now. No—no longer was Syndirin his Lord and leader. All of the doubts that Arigwhen ever wordlessly expressed had made sense now, of the true evil purposes of Syndirin.
He held her against his chest, grieving; an attempt to reclaim something that was lost forever that he could not bear to lose. It seemed that every moment he ever had with her in his life possessed his waking thoughts, haunting him each in succession, telling the story that was their life unto her death. Could each of those moments, those memories, last forever? Why now, this new wicked memory, did cruelly occur as the final memory of her? Was she truly here, dead? Clutched to his chest, the only heart beating of the two was his own, weakly, painfully, emotionally, alone.
Lost in passion, he seemed to find himself pick up the body of his wife, and, staring at her emotionless face, carry her over to their bed. He wiped the blood from her pretty lips, and kissed them, as well as kissing each closed eye, a final goodbye to her in her endless slumber.
Many a life he had taken or seen be took in many a battle. The only understanding in such battles of life and death was that the enemy was to die. He heeded not the cries of fear or the final cry of death of any enemy; no, slay them he did pitilessly, and then they rested in death.
And lying still before him was another slain, an enemy of his enemy. Through the hundreds of past dead, none had affected him so as this one now, no. Why this death? Why had the killings of battles now have to claim this one, his Arigwhen?
The remorseless cold that arrested each painfully passing moment had washed over his entire life it seemed, so his future seemed just as lost and empty. For now what was the purpose of living without the beauty that graced such life? Why could not now the blade that struck her strike him, end himself who now did not desire to live further?
But his emotion seemed to die with Arigwhen, his other, darker emotions claiming him. The cold that was his forsaken life intensified into an icy anger, a ruthless rage. A new emotion came alive that only his ability to kill would sate. The wicked emotion then did kill all of his grief and apathy and did overcome all tears and weakness that had been along with grief and apathy’s deepest tortures.
This emotion’s name was vengeance. Vengeance with a thirst for the blood of Syndirin.
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