Chapter 86

Violence is Holy

Under the crackling of the roaring campfire, Sylas bit into a piece of chicken, yanking a good chunk of it and chewing through it without savoring the taste. Right after, he helped himself to a jug of wine and continued intermittently doing so until the roasted chicken was gone--well, the half of it, anyway.

The shadows cast by the fire dimmed his face, turned him into a dark silhouette leaning against the tree, the shoulders slightly slouched, as though heavy.

He’d departed three days ago, bound for the forest and beyond, only a sword and some supplies his companions. Rather than having a concentrated plan, he was moving in largely blind--his main goal was to either stumble upon Iun or the human with whom the Thrall spoke before the battle. And if not that, at least to check what was happening near the Well. The castle wouldn’t be able to survive anything for foreseeable future. Another attack... would completely obliterate it.

Settling into his thoughts, he began running over certain things that misaligned--starting with Ryne. He distinctly recalled the young girl blowing up the entire castle when her life was threatened during one of the loops. Though his memory was fuzzy on the reason behind why she ‘exploded’, she certainly did. He pondered why it didn’t activate this time around, and came to a few possible conclusions: either that hand was simply too powerful for whatever was resting within her, it only activated if her life was threatened directly, or it only reacted to whatever was killing Ryne at the time.

“Right. It was a disease or something, right?” he wrestled with his memories, over eighty years of them, trying to recall one, specific loop and the specific details within it. “Ah, forget it, forget it. I already have, anyway,” he mumbled, sighing.

Another point of contention for him was the hand itself--though nobody quite had the time to ruminate upon it due to the factor of trying to survive, it was, by far and away, the most contentious point.

Countless questions poured out inside his mind: whose was it? Where did it come from? How did it appear there? Where did it go to? How come it didn’t leave any identifying mark behind? Was the timing of it truly coincidental?

However, he knew that most of those questions wouldn’t have easy answers--not the ones he could get any time soon. He’d be stuck in the dark and adrift for a long while, though there were still some questions that he could answer--if he could catch the human.

Snuffing out the fire, he put everything back into the leathery sack and tossed it over his shoulder before heading deeper into the forest. Unlike the last time, he could distinguish the tree patterns himself--though it showed the massive progress he’s made with talismans, it hardly made him joyous. In fact, he barely even registered it, merely moving past them and onward without kicking up any fuss.

It was an uneventful, silent, drudging journey. Not an adventure, not an exile, not a punishment--a trek, almost akin to a job. He ignored the swaying trees, the cold, as well as the snow that began to fall on the second day. Driven inwardly by seemingly inexhaustible fuel, nothing bothered him. His single-mindedness seemed to clear open the path in front of him and guide him toward the goal.

He bridged the last gap on the fourth day, barely having rested all the while, and arrived near the last 'station'--the patch of trees beyond which the forest thinned out and opened up into a valley. To his surprise and joy, he saw the flickering of fire, slowing down and silencing his footsteps as he approached. Peaking from behind the tree, he saw flames of the campfire roaring on a small clearing, a figure seated near it, muttering something while reading an ancient-looking tome.

Sylas recognized him--not by the features, but by the black, tattered hood. Immediately, anger burst from his soul--but he held it back. Putting the sack down, he began to creep closer toward the figure. He didn’t know the man’s strength--especially when it came to magic. After all, he stood among the army of the dead and was not attacked.

However, when Sylas stopped right behind the man, looming over him like a cliff over a river, he realized that the man likely had no fighting experience. Sylas had developed instincts for sensing when someone was nearby decades upon decades upon decades ago, when he was still a babe when it came to wielding a sword. Anyone who allowed another to approach this closely, especially considering Sylas didn’t have any assassin-like training, was beyond weak.

Listening silently, Sylas heard the man's heart; ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum. It was even, consistent, yet languid and slow. Comparing it to Sylas' own heart, it seemed that for every ten beats of his heart, the man's only beat seven or eight times. Watching him sit in front of the fire, seemingly no worry or regret in the world, Sylas bent forward and lurched his arm and grasped the man's throat. The latter yelped in shock as the tome he was holding was flung forward by the sheer momentum.

Sylas yanked the man back and realized that the paper-thin figure weighed less than a hundred pounds. As such, even with just using one arm, Sylas dragged the still-screaming man back and shafted him into a tree, pinning him by the neck and lifting him a foot or so above the ground. The bone-and-flesh feet dangled from beneath the robe, desperately trying to touch the dirt below.

He pulled the man’s hood back and finally saw his face, causing him to nearly pull back in disgust; half the man’s face was rotted flesh, the eye’s socket hollow and gaping, with the tendons connecting two sides of the face, stretched tout, with gaping holes in-between.

“Y-y-you?!!” the man mumbled in a hoarse tone, as though he had a throat full of phlegm. “How--what--”

"Shut the fuck up," Sylas growled, pinning the man's throat even harder, causing him to yelp in pain and yet be unable to talk. "From here on out, you only talk when I ask a question--and the only words I want out of your yap are the answers. Are we clear?!"

“Who do you think--AAAGH!!” upon the man’s attempted protest, Sylas heaved his leg and kneed the man in his groin. The latter keeled forward, the remaining eye bulging out, lips gaping in pain. “How dare--AAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHH!!!” upon the repeated attempt, Sylas smashed his fist against the rotted side of the face, breaking every bone in it and causing the man to topple down onto the ground, rolling through the cold and wet and dying grass.

Seemingly overtaken by something far more primal, Sylas walked up to the now-crying man and kicked him, repeatedly, while the latter struggled to defend himself. The sounds of the cracking bones regularly cried out into the night, a song of horror and despondency, background to the act of seemingly inhumane, unrelenting violence.

Sylas calmed down only after the man stopped defending--he was lying flat, most of his bones broken, bleeding like roadkill. Crouching down, Sylas lifted him up by the collar again, causing the man to wince and cry softly in pain, the shuffling of his bones aching more than death itself.

“You don’t have to answer,” Sylas said. “In fact, please--don’t. Keep up your dumbassery. Give me the reason to keep coming back to this point and use you as a punching bag to try and lift some of the fucking anger that makes me want to slam my own head into the wall. Go ahead. Tell me to fuck off once more.”

“...” the man, however, didn’t say anything. The bulged, bruised eye stared at Sylas in horror; he was bleeding from every orifice, with every bone in his body seemingly being broken. He hardly had the strength to breathe, let alone protest.

“...” Sylas gritted his teeth, forcing himself to calm down as he took a deep breath. “Let’s try this again, then. Who are you?”

“...I--I--I...”

“I, I, I, I fucking what?!”

“I--I’m Tessar!” the man winced and tried to pull back when he saw Sylas raise his fist, but only further hurt himself in the process.

“Tessar. Tessar. Tessar. Very well. I’ve committed your name to memory. Now, Tessar, you will break down in great detail why your masters sent the hounds upon the castle.”

“I--I don’t know,” Tessar mumbled, weeping openly and freely. “I--I’m just a minion. I don’t know anything! I don’t know anything!”

"BULLSHIT!!" Sylas pushed the man back and slammed him into the ground, causing the latter to spew out a mouthful of blood while the sound of the bones snapping echoed out once more. Blood further began to gush out from the man's ruptured mouth, gurgling sounds joining the shallower and shallower breaths. "You have to know something! I told you, I have all the fucking time in the world--hey, hey? Oh, fuck," Sylas sighed as he let go of the collar, the body limply resting against the ground. The man died--his singular eye wide, haunted, terrified, blood pouring out across his lips.

Sylas grasped at the man's hood and cleaned up his hands before walking over to where he left the sack, picking it up, and sitting by the campfire, busting open the last jug of wine he had. Though he'd gotten no answers yet, he wasn't worried. There was another time. At least, he knew that the man was here--even so many days after the attack.

"Right, that tome he was holding," Sylas mumbled, looking around until he noticed the tome--inside the campfire, only a few remnants of thick leather remaining, all paper burned. "Oh well," he mumbled, disconnected, glancing further north where, beyond the last patch of trees, he first saw the Well open. Rather than immediately bolting there, he chose to settle down for a little while and rest, since he suspected that he'd be killed off fairly quickly as soon as he crossed that threshold.

He was alerted abruptly by the sound of the crackling branches, shooting up to his feet and drawing out a sword, turning back toward the source of the sound--where he killed Tessar. There, looming above his corpse, Sylas saw one of the strangest sights in his life--all those he’d seen in this life included. There stood a white doe with a black crow perched on top of its head. The two shifted their heads from the corpse and onto him, almost as though they were humans, and gazed at him. Sylas stiffened in place, almost wanting to kneel beneath those eyes.

“Can he see us?” the crow asked.

“He can see us.” the doe replied.

“Can he feel us?” the crow asked.

“He can feel us.” the doe replied.

“Does he believe in us?” the crow asked.

“He does not believe in us.” the doe replied.

“How can he not believe in us?” the crow asked.

“For to him, we are not real, dear crow.” the doe replied.

“We are real to all.”

“Not to those who unfathom.”

“Not to those who unsuffer.”

“Not to those who unbleed.”

“Not to those who unsaw.”

“...” Sylas stared and stared, rooted in place, before mumbling softly. “What the fuck?”