Chapter 124

Hung in Desires

Silence reigned between two silhouettes who cast long shadows that warped into the thin and branching trees. Roaring flame shone as brightly as it could yet still struggled to alight the drowning darkness of nature that surrounded it as well as the heavy clouds of muddied truth that pressed from above.

Sylas remained silent as he tried to recollect and recall as much as he could about everything. There were millions of memories struggling for his attention in his head, some more so desperately than the others, but their importance could not be measured through that alone. In the muddy waters of the countless images, he recalled the very first time he met the dead’s ‘Emperor’--it was a distinctly non-friendly meet, what with the figure threatening the racial war from the onset.

And yet, the woman claimed otherwise. She claimed no interest in anything human beyond shallow trinkets and petty desires. Taking a swig of the extremely addictive wine, Sylas sighed once again, rubbing the bridge of his nose. His breath was toxic, in part due to wine, but in part because he was trying to exorcise the seas of doubt within him. As always, he couldn’t trust anything--for all what was said could hardly be seen as truth, and instead was just one of the many potential realities.

Rather than focusing on the details, however, he elected to look at the larger frame. Even if the nitty-gritty aspects of everything were wrong, the framing remained consistent through most tales: the Empire before the coming of Kingdoms was powerful, vast, likely far more magical. And it was beaten and defeated and entirely wiped from history. That was what caused Sylas the most hangups.

Erasing an entire Empire from the books and collective memories was not easy--it was either through world-scale magic, or through the absolute, dogged terror that saw everyone who spoke of the Empire end up headless. Generations of such terror will easily distort the truth and reality and those in power can swap it with whatever they wish. But that was another issue: they didn't. In every history book Sylas read, there was just a gaping hole before the Kingdom's founding. None of the historians even bothered to come up with a backstory to the entire thing--the most he saw were the simple 'men arrived in search of the holy land and found it'.

Everything surrounding both the Empire’s existence as well as its fall was shrouded in inconsistencies, lies, and half-truths. And those few that seemed to know something were really keen on saying nothing.

“What do you think she meant,” Agnes suddenly broke the silence. “When she said I could have been much more?”

“Hm?” Sylas looked up from the fire and met her gaze. She seemed disturbed and scared, as though her heart feared the truth more than the lies. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Could have meant anything. She was one cryptic bitch.”

“Was she?” Agnes quizzed yet again. “She answered truthfully whatever you asked.”

“... if you asked me if I were an immortal,” Sylas said. “And I replied ‘only for a time’, I would be both truthful and cryptic. I imagine that you being far more means your magic would be stronger. If the destruction of the Cairns has something to do with the weaker magic as she implied, and the magic of a Prophet is still strong enough to bore through the realms and reach gods, it’s possible you could have, like, fucked a mountain with your finger. Though, to be honest, this soft one suits you better. I can’t imagine you grinning like a madwoman, going around and yanking heads off their necks.”

“... the more we unveil the truth,” she said. “The more it seems that it stayed hidden for a reason, Sylas. Doesn’t it feel as though we are poking at something that should remain undisturbed?”

“Yeah, kind of,” he nodded in agreement. “But... do I have a choice? Eventually, I’ll make my march on the capital--the seeming center of all the shadowy nonsense. I can’t afford to make that journey blind. The more I know, the more I’ll realize if anyone’s fucking around and lying to me. Truth is the foundation upon which all else is stacked.”

“...” she turned silent, as did he.

Though, at one point, he had a clear plan of how to proceed forward, by now, there was little remaining of that original idea--he’d planned on marching onto the capital come springtime, getting the Kingdom on the Prince’s side by visiting villages and towns on the way. He had hoped to gather both the support of the voices and swords as to have some bargaining power.

Yet, time and again, he was forced to alter the plans--to the point where was even uncertain whether marching toward the capital was the best idea. In fact, he was second-guessing most of the decisions he’d made before. Rather than going with the Prince and an entire entourage, he wanted to go alone, to meet the King all by himself, and to try and get some straight answers.

He wanted to go alone to meet the Queen, too, to see whether she truly was the heinous shrew that the stories portrayed her as. He knew more than anyone in the castle, Prince and Derrek included, and unless it was the final march for him to finally complete the ‘main quest’, there was little point in dragging the Prince along, especially now that the boy couldn’t even walk.

And yet, he was reluctant to leave them behind. He was restless whenever he couldn’t see them and couldn’t protect them. He almost felt more duty-bound toward that than the quest itself. After all, the quest was merely a phantom, something assigned to him by the powers-that-be, while the duty of protection was innate. He wants to stay by their side and guard and guide them, the whole lot of them, while crowning Valen is something he simply has to do.

If it were up to him, he would never pursue it--but it wasn’t. Even beyond the quest, Valen himself wanted to go, wanted to become the King. And Ryne wanted to go with him, as did Derrek wish to return for his own reasons. He was a cog that spun their wheels, but he was not the one steering the chariot.

“We should go back,” Sylas said. “I still need to make preparations for the journey to the village.”

“You’re still going?”

“Of course,” he shrugged. “Therein’s the gate, and therein’s the keeper. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s fine. I just figured you’d rest for a while.”

“Eh,” Sylas shrugged, putting out the fire. “Rest is all mental. And since I am mental, I am always rested.”

“Ugh...”

“Ha ha ha, c’mon, your one requirement is to laugh at my lame jokes!”

“In another lifetime, perhaps,” she cracked a smile, standing up. “But you’re right. We need answers.”

“Can I ask you something personal?”

“Wow,” she exclaimed softly. “If you’re asking for permission... it has to be something insane. So, no. Obviously.”

“Why do you always pull over a shell whenever we meet someone new?” his question seemed to stir something in her as she quickly looked away.

“As I said. No.”

“Hey, hey. We gotta talk and stuff.”

“Not yet.”

“Haah, fine,” he sighed. “But I’m not a patient man. I don’t have that much time to wait!”

“Ugh.”

“Ha ha ha...”

His laughter ran whole as they began their trek toward the castle. Over three miles away from the walls, Sylas realized something was off--the smell was different. He frowned and sped up, and though Agnes noticed something was off with him, she didn’t ask, simply matching it.

The two covered the distance relatively quickly and chanced upon something that caused Sylas to audibly sigh while Agnes gasped in horror. The castle was... on fire. The dead and the living were fighting still, the clashes of steel and the blood of the flesh decorating the massive yard. Cursing under his breath, he crossed into the castle's grounds and saw that they'd been fighting for a while and that the dead were winning.

It didn't take a genius to realize that this was an anomaly triggered specifically by his meeting with that woman. Agnes and he had ventured north before and fought the dead just the same, but this had never happened. He was angry. Frustrated. Bordering insanely wanting of someone's head. Was it the woman? Unlikely. She was far too strong to play petty tricks. If she wanted to, she could have just killed Sylas and destroyed the castle without all the games.

Who was it then? Possibly the very same people she told him to hunt down. Maybe those shadows that had gone silent. And maybe it was the faes and the fairies and maybe it was the gods themselves and maybe it was all in his head. At this point, he just wanted it to stop.

"What do we do?" Agnes asked in a panic.

“What’s there to do?” Sylas shrugged, drawing out his sword. “Look around for anything that can talk and beat the truth out of it. If there’s nothing that can talk, reset the damn thing and weep in frustrations once again. Gods, I hate this world. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. This is worse than when games just toss ten thousand more enemies at you as means of making it more difficult. Fuck this world, fuck that chick, and fuck whoever’s behind this shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”