Chapter 60

Word of the riot arrived to Aris mere minutes after it started. He had set up watch on his house the day after the attack on Sephira and Kestrel by the corrupt Guard Rel. An attack that had resulted not only in the loss of one of his best men, but the lives of five others as well, including Rel and the Inquisitor that had destroyed everyone else with the touch of his terrible magic and martial skills.

Aris ran to the stables and saddled the nearest horse the moment he heard word of the assault on his gates.

He trusted his men implicitly, but he also knew how easy it was to default to violence when surrounded by a mob. He needed to get back to his estate before someone lost their lives. Before all hell broke loose.

Worries plagued Aris’ mind as he passed the bones of the city sprawled out below him. His heart felt like the burned out shells of the houses and businesses that had been devastated by the fires caused by Emperor Evrain’s Inquisitors.

What if, when he returned to his home, he found it razed like all the ones he passed? What if he were to stumbled across the mangled body of his wife Corrine? What would he do if the crowd had laid their hands on his twin daughters? What might have happened to his niece Sephira?

Aris didn’t want to think about it. Dwelling on those thoughts made him sick. Sick and furious. He couldn’t allow that. Riding into a battle hot headed was a surefire way to die. He had seen it countless times.

“Calm yourself you fool!” He chided himself as the wind whipped at him. “Calm yourself and think of how to keep your family safe!”

Even as the ground was a blur beneath him, he focused on his breathing and quieted his mind. He would protect his family. He wouldn’t let fear overtake him. He wouldn’t let it blind him.

He would protect them at any cost. He was willing to pay the price that his elder brother Van had paid. If he meant saving his family, he would lay down his life.

He would do whatever he needed to protect those whom he loved.

Aris’ heart sank as he neared the estate. He saw the scars of the fire before anything else, the blackened trail of destruction that scored the ground.

“No. No no no no no!” He thought as his eyes took in the scorched earth.

But wait…

That’s all it was. None of the buildings bore any of the scars of fire. There were no signs of the monster that a blaze could become as it consumed whatever was in its path in its ravenous maw.

Aris’ heart lifted a little.

He came to the gate. He saw the dark scorch marks on them, but still they stood, resolute against the great destroyer. What had happened here? Where were the rioters? He saw the faint hints of blood in the darkened earth, but no bodies.

Where were Corrine and his children? Could the mobs have made it inside the gate already? He had come as quickly as he’d heard the news, but the messenger might have arrived much later than he realized.

Aris’ stomach twisted again.

No guard was at the gates to open it for him, but it was cracked open enough that he was able to pry it, and with a large burst of strength, swing wide the large door.

The sight that greeted him surprised him.

Corrine stood on the steps, directing his soldiers and the remaining mob like some general out of a great painting meant to adorn the walls of a militaristic king. Her back was straight and she spoke with such force and conviction that Aris’ spine tingled upon hearing her voice. He would follow her into battle. He would die for her. She was amazing. She had united both the troops and the rioters. How she’d done so was beyond him. Aris was amazed. He loved her.

“You, go help my girl Sephira and Kestrel,” she commanded one of the guards, who had just returned from some unknown duty.

Aris stood at the back of the crowd, taking in the scene. Corrine was a sight to behold. She led with the ease and confidence of a man born into battle. Aris wasn’t sure what had happened, but by the scars of the fire and the blood on the ground, he knew it couldn’t have been good. From the reports that had led him to abandon his post and hurry back home, it had sounded like he would return to a burned out shell of a home, but here was his wife, commanding both the soldiers and rioters with the air of a long established monarch.

“You,” Corrine’s voice shifted when her eyes fell on Aris. “You come here and take over for me,” her voice quieted.

Aris nodded and broke through the crowd, moving like a man half convinced he never left the dreams of his previous nights rest. The closer he got to the stairs of his house where Corrine was commanding the mob, the more he saw his wife’s posture and the look of fear in her eyes. She was terrified. Her hand was shaking ever so slightly, and he could see that it took all her strength to keep herself together and give the impression of an unbending steel spine.

Seeing her standing there, in front of the soldiers and rioters who had minutes ago been killing each other. commanding them with such force despite the terror that consumed her made Aris’ heart swell.

He loved this woman.

To hell with her being his brother’s wife before he had died. She had made vows to him too and he had let his guilt for something old and beyond his control or scope of knowledge at the time eat him alive from the inside out.

He had let guilt, guilt not of his own making nor choosing either, eat him alive and his wife had paid for it. He had been a coward and pretended to sleep when she’d cried late at night, back bowed with concern for her husband and the darkness of the world he’d dove into that had slowly dragged her away from him.

She deserved the truth. He loved her more than anything in the world. He loved her and love demanded truth.

But the truth was terrifying. The truth could tear them apart, still keeping the truth from her had already been ripping them apart. It had driven him from her with far more surety than the list of ‘what ifs’ the truth held.

As he looked upon her, standing resolute in the face of a terror that was causing her to shake he realized something.

He was a coward.

He had kept the truth from his wife in the name of keeping her safe, but he knew that wasn’t the real reason. It wasn’t about keeping her safe. It was about keeping himself safe. He was afraid of what she might do if she learned the truth.

He was afraid she’d leave him. Scared she would be disgusted with him. He was frightened of a thousand tiny things. He was afraid and that fear kept him from her. It kept him from truly loving her and just as bad, the fear didn’t allow her to love him.

He was cutting her from her marital bonds by giving into the gnawing doubt. She deserved better than that.

He needed to truly love her. He needed to let himself be loved, because love without knowledge isn’t real love. It's a bastardization. Real love is seeing everything and still being faithful to the promised bonds.

Not even thinking of the crowd, Aris caught Corrine up in a sweeping embrace and planted a big kiss on her lips.

“Thanks. Thank you for everything. I’m so sorry. I’ve wronged you greatly and if I could spend the rest of my life righting that wrong, I would. But first we must deal with what happened here.” He whispered into her ear.

Corrine just nodded. Unsure of what was happening.

“So what happened?” he asked.

Corrine gave a brief, but comprehensive explanation of the rioters, their assault on the gates, and the tragic incident that led to the fire which threatened to consume the nearby houses.

“Thank you my dear,” Aris said when she finished her summery and gave her a peck on her cheek. “I can take over from here. Or, if you wish, I’ll leave it to you. You seem to be doing a much better job of it than I could ever do,” he joked with her.

“No thank you. This taste of your job has been enough to whet my appetite for the rest of my life. You needn’t worry about me ever stealing your post. I don’t fancy taking your job. I’d rather just take care of our children rather than a whole city of them.”

Aris laughed.

The crowd watched on. He cleared his throat.

“I know what you may have heard, and I can assure you it is untrue,” his voice, so tender with his wife seconds ago, had turned iron. He captivated the crowd with the voice of an orator. His hands danced as he spoke. “It is true that I was there when the assassins attacked Emperor Evrain, and it is also true that I tried to capture some of the assassins for further questioning. I wanted nothing more than to capture them and root out the source of their rebellion. If I could find that, I could rid our nation of the evils of the rebellion forever. But I was never given the chance.”

Aris paused, letting his words sink into the ears and hearts of their hearers.

“I tried to capture them, but before I could, the Minister of Defense, Edrian Wolls, ordered them slaughtered. He had a force of more than twenty slaughter the small group of less than ten. They cut them down with reckless abandon. They enjoyed the slaughter. They murdered everyone they could. It was a horrific bloodbath. Only one of the rebels broke through, and he was hunted down by the Inquisitors.”

The crowd that had been whispering as they listened to the General’s words immediately went silent.

The Inquisitors weren’t real. They were just boogymen. They were stories told to scare little children into obedience. They were nightmares. They couldn’t be real.

But Aris Ravenscroft himself had said they were real so they had to be; despite them rioting, it wasn’t because he was a liar. The public tolerated liars. Sometimes they championed them. No, they had attacked his estate because he was an honest man. He was an honest main who had failed them when they trusted him the most.

“Did he really say the Inquisitors? It’s just a story right?” A voice in the crowd whispered. They believed him, but didn’t believe they’d heard him correctly.

“Yes, I did say Inquisitors. And yes, they are real, and it was they who killed the rebel leader. Not me,” Aris said.

“Do I tell them?” Aris thought. He wanted nothing more than to warn everyone about Emperor Evrain and the threat he posed to their great nation of Vealand, but they wouldn’t believe him. And if some miracle happened and they did, it could just as easily lead to their deaths.

Yes, they’d just rioted, and blood had been spilled on both sides, but he was their protecter. He’d dedicated his life to protecting the inhabitants of Fiell, and by extension, Vealand. He didn’t want their deaths on his hand, but some part of him, deep in his stomach told him that they would die if the truth wasn’t revealed.

Did it have to do with the vision that he had seen when he touched Evrain? Could what he had seen be real?

Wallace, despite his crotchety attitude, was a masterful teacher and he’d drilled into the General the differences between real and fabricated memories. What Aris had seen hadn’t been fabricated…But it also was impossible.If it was true it meant Evrain had to be centuries old

Attaining that age wasn’t possible.

All those thoughts passed in the blink of an eye, and his speech paused for just the slightest breath before he began speaking again. “The Inquisitors are real, and they were the ones who killed the rebels. They slaughtered them without mercy. Without a second thought they killed. You may have heard that I’d fallen in the battle,” Aris said.

Some in the crowd nodded.

“It wasn’t due to the Rebels being strong. It’s true that they were, they had military precision, but Edrian Woll’s force was far too large for them, they never stood a chance. No, it was the dark magic of the Inquisitors that felled me,” Aris said, making a snap decision. He may not be able to warn the masses against Evrain and his evil, but he could turn them against the Inquisitors, and maybe, just maybe, showing them the dangers of the Inquisitors would lead them to the one who created the monsters that had started the fires that’d destroyed their city.

Maybe, they like him, when confronted with the truth of the Inquisitors would come to see Emperor Evrain for the monster he truly was.

Aris surveyed the crowd, at the mention of magic, the whispering that had been building died down again. Silence fell over the group. Surely what the General had said must have been some strange turn of phrase.

He couldn’t believe in magic, could he? Magic was only real in the fairy stories of old.

“It was their evil magics that brought me down. I too, was a victim of the darkness that they used against the rebel leader. I felt the terror that they shared with him. I felt the fear that they fed into his mind. I saw the visions of torture that they shared. I saw it. I felt it, and I can assure you. When I call what the Inquisitors do, dark magic, I am by no means stretching the truth. They have magic, and it is evil,” Aris Ravenscroft addressed the small crowd of both soldiers and malcontents that hadn’t yet been assigned tasks. “They are able to infect the minds of others. They share visions of horrors. I’ve seen strong men fall to their knees in terror at the mere sight of them. Those monsters have killed my own guards. They almost killed my niece. These things are monsters and they’re our common enemy, not me, not the guards. The Inquisitors. It was them who started the fires that took everything from you. It was them. They are the monsters we are fighting. They are the ones who destroyed everything you hold dear. They burned your houses. It was their fires that killed your loved ones. It was them, under the direction of Edrian Wolls who destroyed your livelihoods. The Minister was looking for any excuse to bring his soldiers, the soldiers who should be protecting our borders, into the city to take over and control the city. He was playing a dark political game, and you, you were the pawns caught in the middle. You were a sacrifice by a corrupt politician in a game played to win control of the heart of Vealand, and he didn’t care if he burned half of it down in his attempt to take over.”

Aris watched as his words sank in. He saw the fury building in the eyes of his men. In one inspired move, he found a solution to deal with Edrian Wolls. He would take the first head off of the hydra. He would destroy the man who, he was certain, was behind the leak of the news that had led to his estate being attacked by the angry mob. Now he would take that same mob and he would turn them into a weapon. He would wield them like a blood covered metalvine against the man who had so desperately been trying to destroy him ever since the day that he’d reported news of the planned attack he had just told the quieted rioters of. With any luck, he would neuter the dangerous man’s power.

But Aris wasn’t going to kid himself. He knew he desperately needed luck to be on his side. Edrian Wolls had Emperor Evrain in his corner, arguably the most powerful memory mage to have ever existed. Not only was Evrain on the power-hungry Minister’s side, but he too, had access to the Emperor’s force of secret police in the Inquisitors, and the Forgotten too who had been weaponized. A little force like this couldn’t stand against the weight of the whole Veaish Empire, no matter how broken it had become under the reign of Evrain, who had raped the minds of his people, convincing them he had saved the nation all the while destroying it and destabilizing it from the inside in order to cause its collapse a second time.

The more he thought of what they had to face, the more impressed Aris had become with his brother and the movement that Van had started. Dren and his small force had nearly succeeded in their attempt upon the Emperor’s life. Their small seed of rebellion, scattered to the wind as the life fled from their bleeding bodies had found a home. It had taken root in Aris, it had found its way into Kestrel and had began to grow in him. Just as how the rebellion hadn’t died with his brother Van, but had only bore deeper into Dren and the survivors, Dren’s death hadn’t gone to waste either.

Aris had known the hopelessness the man had felt as he lay bleeding out, subjected to the physical and mental tortures of the Inquisitors.

Dren had died, and he thought that hope had died with him, but it hadn’t. Wallace was still there, and Kestrel’s appearance had shaken off the cowardice that had caused the man to hide from the destiny his mother had beat into him from a young age.

Kestrel had stirred Wallace into action, he had wakened the sence of purpose in the old soldier that he had thought he’d lost upon the death of Van and the tearing apart of the man’s family.

Wallace hadn’t been able to do anything and he had shut down, but Kestrel had roused the sleeping spirit inhim, and it was only due to Wallace’s training that they had been able to find out the monster Evrain really was. So, just as Kestrel and Sephira had roused Wallace to action, Aris decided in that moment, he too would do the same. He didn’t know what Emperor Evrain was planning, but he knew he would fight it.

He would do what Van had failed to do. He would raise an army to fight the monster who had infected his beloved Empire like a cancer. He would bring Evrain down from his false throne.

He just needed to win over the crowds. If he could win them over, not partially, but completely, right here, right now, then he could build that fighting force they so desperately needed.

He could tear down the monster that threatened to tear down their nation.

He needed to choose his next words carefully. What he said here could either save Vealand or damn their nation.

“It was Edrian Wolls, that snake who calls himself a man, who did this to you,” Aris gestured to the burned earth behind the crowd. “It was him, using dark mages that we think of only as legends, but are all too real, to destroy what we hold dear. I’ll tell you this now. Edrian Wolls thought to attack me with the information that caused you to riot. He thought to use my virtue against me. He thought that he could destroy me reputation by telling you the fires were started because of my mercy, and you attacked here because, in your hearts, you know it’s true. You know that I am a merciful man. I may be harsh, I may be strict, I may, at times, even be brutal. But you know that I’m a man of my words, and I’m a man of mercy. You know that I’ve only ever loved and served my country. He thought he could use my virtue against me. He thought he could wield the truth as a weapon against me by morphing it to his means but truth is never the enemy of the truthful. It is our greatest ally! Truth protects those who protect it, it destroys those who manipulate it for their own means! We, my friends, have truth on our side, and we will tear down the Minister of Defense and all those who have enabled his monstrous grab for power!”

Aris could see the fire returning to the crowds eyes. He was winning them over. He had taken the strike of Emperor Evrain and his dog Edrian Wolls, and was countering it.

Aris could see the small force of guards who were watching hardening with determination in their eyes. Just moments before he had arrived, they’d been lost. They had feared the rumors might be true. They feared that Aris had cursed them with his mercy, but now, seeing his strength, their hearts were set aflame. The uncertainty that had filled their eyes was now replaced with steel.

They loved Aris Ravenscroft. He was a strict but fair leader, and above all, he was a virtuous man. He would not lead them anywhere he was unwilling to go. They would follow him wherever he led them.

Aris Ravenscroft knew that he had won over his troops in that moment. Now he just needed to capture rest of the crowd. If he could win them and convert them to his cause, they could fight back. They just might have a chance against the monstrous power of Evrain and his unfathomable depths of magic.

“We will fight them. We will fight Edrian Wolls and the Inquisitors that he used to destroy our loved ones. We will fight their dark magic with virtue. We will fight those who wish to warp our minds with visions of pain and hatred! They will not, no, they cannot stand against the truth! They hate the truth, but we have it on our side. It’s our great ally! With truth on our side, we will tear down the monster Edrian Wolls, who tried to destroy our city and all those who sided with him and enabled such a terrible thing to happen! We’ll find the monsters who lit our beloved capital on fire and make them pay. And you can be certain that they will pay for lighting those fires! We’ll light a fire under their feet. We will smoke them out! We will smoke everyone who is trying to destroy our beloved country out!”

The crowd was cheering by the end of Aris Ravenscroft’s speech. He ed won over their hearts. He had taken the anger that had so recently eaten away at their hearts and redirected it.

He had just planted the seeds of an army. The two forces that had, just minutes ago, fought and spilled each-others blood would now stand together, shoulder to shoulder, ready to spill their own blood to save their comrades.

His turning of the mob was truly a sight to behold. His rhetoric was powerful. It was easy to see how, despite how much he insisted he hated the political game, he had risen so high in the ranks of Evrain’s government.

The man was an inspiration.

There were many people that would die for a great leader, but he was the kind of man that inspired his followers to live for him. His guards would follow his every command.