Chapter 70

Aris wanted burn down the world. Everything he loved had been taken from him. He had been a fool and abandoned his family in an idiotic and fruitless attempt at confronting Emperor Evrain.

It was his fault that his men had died and his family had been taken at the hands of that monster.

He had abandoned them and they died as the payment for his foolish, evil pride.

He wondered around the hollowed out bones of his property. He found a few more bodies. He wished he could mourn them, but he was numb. Everything had been taken from him.

He needed to get away. He needed to think.

One of the guards that had accompanied him reached a hand to his shoulder to comfort him. He shrugged it off.

“Leave me. I need time to think,” he said.

The man looked as if he were going to protest, but the steel in Aris’ eyes quieted him. There was no arguing with the look of pain and fury that leaked from every pore of Aris’ being.

He needed silence.

He needed to get away. To make a plan. To find a way to save his loved ones.

That is if they were still alive.

He didn’t look back as he walked to the back of his estate, finding one more body, and made his way up the mountain where he, Kestrel, Sephira, and more recently, Corrine had met in the early mornings and dove into the world of Memory Magic that Wallace had opened them to.

He blindly picked his way up the mountain, barely caring for the Spruce branches that scratched at him. He just walked upwards. He needed to think.

Needed to move.

Needed to come up with a plan to fight Evrain, but he couldn’t.

His body wouldn’t let him.

He just kept moving. It was all he could do. It was all that his feet would allow him to do. He just climbed upwards. Uncaring about the possibility of an ambush. If they wanted to attack him, so be it. He would tear through them. He would rip their hearts out of their chests and his teeth would rip their throats from their necks.

He would slaughter those who’d massacred so many of his men.

So caught up in his thinking was he that he barely noticed when he broke through to the clearing where he’d spent so many mornings with Wallace. Now Wallace was gone. He hadn’t found the man’s body among his friends, and that could only mean that he’d been taken.

He had been taken along with his wife, children and niece.

He could almost hear the old man chiding him. He imagined his gravely rasp as he chastised Aris for his bullheaded climb up the mountain.

Except it was real. He wasn’t imagining it.

It really was Wallace’s old soldier voice that was talking to him, scolding him for not even looking.

Tears swelled in Aris’ eyes at the sight of the old man. He was really here.

“Aris, you idiot! What are you doing here? Why don’t you have any men? What happened? Did you kill them? We thought you were dead,” words flowed from his old commanding officer’s mouth. Aris never thought he’d treasure that harsh sound so much in his life.

We?

What did he mean by we?

Aris’ question was answered when he saw his two daughters burst from the bushes where they’d been hiding. They slammed into him with a force he didn’t know possible from such tiny creatures.

“Daddy! Daddy!” they shouted over and over. “You’re here daddy. You’re alive! They didn’t kill you or take you like they took mommy!”

What? They’d taken Corrine? His heart sank. He looked to Sephira who stepped out, hand in hand with Kestrel, the duo led a group of about six other house staff and one other guard, William, with them.

Sephira nodded at the news from her nieces, tears pouring from her eyes, making canyons of white in the ash that covered her face.

Corrine had indeed been taken. Aris collapsed to the ground and started weeping. The group surrounded him.

Ten minutes later he found a semblance of composure and the guards who he left at the foot of the mountain had joined them.

He drew himself up to his feet, the two girls still clinging to his side.

“Tell me,” he said. His voice rang hard like a metalvine.

“It happened not too long after we arrived back home,” Kestrel answered. “Me and the other guards collapsed into our beds bone tired. They waited until after we were asleep to attack. They used long bows to to take out the gate guards, and when they were all dealt with, they attacked with fire. The main house went up first. By the time we had awoken, the flames were already consuming the house and the barracks were burning too.

Corrine was there directing everyone through the flames, making sure everyone was getting water to spray onto the flames. It was fruitless obviously, but she stood there like a general while arrows from those monsters flew down around her, piercing all those who were brave enough to venture out to try and save their home,” Kestrel said. There was awe in his voice.

Aris felt a swell of pride as he listened to Kestrel’s account.

Wallace jumped in. "Kestrel broke free from the guardsmen and rushed the wall where our attackers had taken up post and like some holy miracle of death, he tore through the men. You would have been proud of him. At one point he snatched an arrow from the air and drove it into the eye of one of the men who’d climbed the wall. I don’t think I’ll see another feat like that in the rest of my life,” Wallace said. “He was like a dervish, single-handedly defending the wall while the rest of us ran towards the flames, trying to save as many as we could. It was then that the doors broke down. Our forces were scattered. They brought a force of nearly ten Inquisitors and Forgotten with them. They cut through us as easy as the Wendig tore limbs from our bodies in the Mountain Campains. I watched as brothers were touched and forgot where they were before a knife drove into their eyes, ending their lives.”

The twins were crying now. They had had a front seat to the terror. How must have they felt, not knowing whether they’d live or die at the hands of the monsters that killed servants they had known their whole lives, right in front of their eyes?

They were shaking when he wrapped his arms around them tightly, willing every last bit of comfort he could into his strong arms.

“They took her,” Kestrel said. “But not before she shouted to me to get the children to safety.”

Sephira nodded. Tears were streaming from her eyes. Kestrel wrapped his arm around her and tenderly kissed her forehead. Aris didn’t even think twice about the action. He only wished he could comfort her so.

“They almost took the girls from us too and would have, if it wasn’t for old Wallace here,” Kestrel gestured towards the grizzled old soldier who Aris finally realized was covered in a lattice-work of shallow gashes. “They would have been taken too but William and him grabbed the body of one of the fallen Inquisitors and used it as a shield. They fought like demons straight out of hell as they forced their way to where the kids were and their blades took the lives of everything they touched. I don’t know much of what happened next, but we found each other and decided to head for the mountains,” Kestrel told Aris.

He nodded. Aris’ eyes were intent. He was hungry for every bit of information he could gather.

“Did she suffer when they took her? Did it seem like, at their touch, she lost her memory?” Aris asked.

“It’s impossible to tell for sure,” Kestrel replied. “But I didn’t see any of the signs. I’ve seen the touch of the Forgotten enough to know what it looks like. I know the look in people’s eyes as the memories they were just clinging to are washed away and locked in some neglected area of the mind. Thankfully I didn’t see that.”

Aris’ shoulder relaxed a little bit. He hadn’t realized how tight he’d been holding them. They ached.

“And you’re sure you weren’t followed here?” Aris asked as he kissed his twins again and shot a look of love at his niece Sephira.

“Yes we were,” Wallace answered gruffly. “But Kestrel and I broke from the pack. We waited until they converged to grab the girls and we killed them.”

They didn’t whitewash what they had done for the children. The twins had seen many die this night. They would never be the same after this evening. Aris hated that they had been forced to grow up so quickly by Evrain and Edrian Wolls.

He wished more than anything else that he could give them the childhood he’d been denied at the hands of his abusive father but Evrain’s slaughter of so many of his men though, had put a punctuation mark on their childhood. There would always be the one period where they watched servants they had known their whole lives and called friends killed along with almost the entirety of the barracks that their estate housed.

A precious part of their childhood had been stolen from them.

“Kestrel desperately wanted to save Corrine. He almost went after them after she was taken, but I held him back,” Wallace informed Aris. “I don’t know where they’ve taken her. I assume that it’s the Keep.”

Aris nodded his head. He wanted to kill Wallace for stopping Kestrel but he held back. It had been the right thing to do.

Silence overtook the small group.

It was a long silence.

It felt almost sacred. Like talking would break the trance that had fallen over the small group. Even the twins recognized the gravity of the moment and they held their tongues. It was William who finally broke it when he asked, “so what are we going to do? Fight? You know I’m with you until the very end. Damn the Emperor to the darkest depths of Hell if he stands against us.”

Wallace, Kestrel and Sephira all nodded.

“Bring Mommy back,” the twins words were barely more than whispers, but even there, in the dead of night, halfway up a mountain, their words carried weight. They had commissioned their father to action. He would find Corrine. He would save her.

He would shred to pieces anyone foolish enough to step in the way of his rescue.

Aris nodded to them, a promise made in the movement.

He would return their mother to them even if it meant he had to tear the whole world down. There would be no escaping his wrath.

*****

Blood spilled from Corrine’s mouth. She had cut it during the initial battle that had left so many of her maids and servants, to whom she referred to as her house friends, dead. She had been so focused on getting everyone out of the burning building that was consuming the life that she had built by piece by piece together with Aris, the man that had once been her brother in law, but had become a lover after their mutual memories of the other had been stolen at the hands of a Forgotten.

Her whole life had been taken from her by a few burning arrows and the absence of her husband by her side.

How could this have happened?

What sort of monster allowed this things?

“Where are you taking me?” She asked, her mouth finally slipping free from the poorly tied gag that had been wrapped around her mouth in an attempt to silence her.

Her question earned her a backhanded slap that rocked her jaw and made more blood well in her mouth. They pulled the gag up and tied it tighter around her mouth causing the fabric to dig into her skin, adding a burning pain to accompany the throbbing of her head.

Great.

Just great.

She’d gotten herself kidnapped and didn’t know whether or not if her husband was alive, or had been murdered at the hands of Evrain like so many others had been.

She trod onwards towards the keep. The Inquisitors hadn’t even bothered to sneak their way back to their headquarters that Corrine expected to be somehow connect to Evrain’s palace.

It was almost as if they wanted to be discovered. They wanted the attention they were getting.

Why?

Why now?

Why hide for years? Why be such a secret, so much so that even her husband Aris, who was in charge of the city guards had thought them to be little more than rumors for years, then suddenly stroll through the city so carelessly?

Why were they forcing their visions of torture on the few men who were brave enough to peek their heads out to see the strange procession?

Aris would know. She felt resentment at that thought.

Why hadn’t he been there? He should have been by her side!

She chastised herself the second that the thought entered her mind. Aris hadn’t been there. That meant, almost certainly, that he was still alive. That meant that he would be coming for her.

She was more certain of that than she had been of anything else in her life.

Corrine’s life had been manipulated and controlled from the shadows for years without her ever knowing it.

She had been the wife of Aris’ brother Van, a hero who had sacrificed himself to try and bring down Emperor Evrain and restore memory to the nation that the madman had destroyed.

Even now she couldn’t recall him. Every time she thought of him, there was a black-hole like void in her memory. It wasn’t that he was forgotten to her, it was that he’d been stolen from her. Completely cut out of her mind.

After that, she had been placed with Aris, most likely in a sick way of monitoring her. She loved him though. She loved him more than her life itself. She would gladly give everything up if she could prolong his life just one second longer, and she knew that Aris would do the same for her.

Evrain had put them together to keep tabs on both of them, but in doing so, he’d brought together the forces that would be his undoing.

She swore that to herself.

Some city guards saw them. They saw her being led, bound and gagged by the Inquisitors.

She heard their shouts.

The Inquisitors did nothing as the trio of guards who were patrolling together cautiously approached them. She recognized the one in the middle. He had lived and trained in their barracks only a year previous. His name was Collin. He was a handsome blond haired young man.

He had left the barracks soon after marrying his sweetheart.

He was the first of the trio to die. The Inquisitors had waited until he was within striking range before they all focused their evil magic on the man and brought him to his knees with horrendous visions of torture that one of the Inquisitors shared in a sick, twisted way of pleasuring himself.

She almost vomited as she watched the memories of torture dancing across her mind. It was like she was right there with them, experiencing every single torture that had been inflicted on them.

Collin had it much worse before the blade bit into his neck and killed him before he could realize what had happened to him.

The other two guards rushed the group of Inquisitors. Terrified, but desperate to avenge their fallen comrade.

The first one fell ten feet short of the group of Inquisitors. A series of throwing spikes stood out from his hemorrhaging chest.

The second felt the touch of a Forgotten and lost himself. Corrine knew that she would never forget the haunted look in his eyes as he suddenly found himself in the midst of the hooded, scarred men, only to be, the next second later, to have his jaw sheared off by a heavy bladed sword that took half of the man’s neck with it as well.

She screamed into her gag as blood spurted onto her, painting her already ash stained clothes a dark shade of red to match the black soot that had smudged her stained dress.

They laughed at her terror.

A half a second later, the laughs had stopped and fist slammed into Corrine’s gut, doubling her over and making bile rise in her stomach.

They yanked the rope that tied her hands together, and the rough material bit into the skin around her wrist, forcing her to stand up. She felt blood trickling at her wrists. It was then that she realized that they hadn’t blindfolded her.

Why hadn’t they done so? Her stomach twisted. She’d been married to a detective long enough to know. The fact that they were marching so openly through the streets, the fact that they hadd killed recklessly and had shared their visions of torture with any who dared to venture close to see what was happening, the fact that they led her, un-blindfolded, could only mean one thing.

They didn’t expect her to live through this.

The fact that they didn’t care what she saw was even more terrifying than the realization that they felt as if they were leading to her death was more terrifying to her.

Whether she lived or died mattered little to them. That meant something bad was coming. Something terrible. That meant that, if, with the help of some miracle, she survived, they didn’t care that the wife of the only remaining noble in all of Fiell, and most likely the whole of Vealand, could indict them.

That meant the destruction of Vealand was coming soon.

She needed to stop it. Corrine needed to fight. There was nothing, not a thing that she could do, but she wouldn’t let that stop her.

She would still fight. She would finish what her first husband, Van had started. She would bring to completion what Aris, the man with whom she’d shared so much of her life and loved so deeply that it ached in her bones, had started when the memories from Dren had flowed into him.

The group marched right up to the keep. Had they stopped bothering to hide their presence even here?

Then it hit her. There was nobody for them to hide from. Only yesterday had every noble but her husband been slaughtered. Corrine wondered how many of the small band that surrounded her now had taken part in the massacres of the noble households. Had any of these been the hands that had torn the tongues from a whole family? Were any of these Inquisitors the men who’d raped a whole noble family before pincushioning them with knives and spikes?

These men marched straight into the keep, leading her behind them.

They turned at the first servants corridor. A few twists and turns and one hidden door later, she found herself in a new passage. It was immaculately dark. The air was cool. It bit into her bones. They led her onwards. She wasn’t sure how long had passed before they reached their destination or how the Inquisitors knew to find it in such suffocating blackness, but soon they arrived.

It was only after stopping that her eyes began to grow accustomed to the dark that these monsters called their home.

She was in an underground prison. They shuffled her into a small cramped cell that seemed as if it had been built for children.

The group left without a word.

She looked over to her left. There, sitting in the cage next to hers, was a tiny redheaded child.

Her forward stare was constant and unblinking.