Chapter 69

Aris walked unopposed as he made his way through the labyrinthian hallways of Evrain’s keep. The twisted hallways and hidden were a truly effective defensive measure for keeping the Emperor from unwanted attacks. The back-ways were truly confusing. He had seen other cabinet members getting lost in the hallways as he insisted they stroll through the back ways and passages to keep himself familiar.

He had thought the designs were purely defensive. Now though, he wondered if he was wrong. He wondered how much of these hallways, some of which he was sure he hadn’t yet found, housed Emperor Evrain’s monsters like the Inquisitors and his Forgotten.

He cursed himself for never thinking of the possibility before.

He, like everyone else, had been under Evrain’s spell. He had felt the full effects of Evrain’s outrageously powerful magic since his childhood.

Aris never known a life without it.

It had seemed so normal to him. So normal to everyone. Evrain was the savior who had rescued them from the destruction that had razed their old capital and its twin city on the coast. He was the man who had rebuilt their country.

He was the hero of Vealand.

Except he wasn’t. He was the monster who had torn them down. He’d used the chaos that he himself had created in his destruction of the former capital and it’s twin city of Portin to fuel his transformation. To give himself a new body.

Aris had only just realized why a trail of destruction seemed to follow the man with every incarnation. He fed off the chaos. It was the fuel that helped him change.

That helped him command a new host body. Without that destruction, he was powerless to fight. He was powerless to take a new body. Without that chaos, he would die just like any other man.

How did it effect his power though? Such was the man’s force that a whole nation had fallen under his spell. His power was otherworldly.

Aris had learned in their last battle that felt like ages ago, but had only been this morning, that range of the Inquisitors magic was only thirty yards.

He had stood on the edge, free of the mental tortures, while men, just two paces ahead of him had held their heads and screamed in mental agony.

The Forgotten were like him, they couldn’t use their magic without skin to skin contact.

How was it then that Emperor Evrain was able to control the memories of a whole country? Of anyone who might come into their country? The level of power that it must take seemed unimaginable.

Was that why he needed the violence? Did it somehow amplify his power? Or was it just for his transformation?

Did it matter?

Wallace would say it did. Aris could hear him now, chiding him and barely holding back the hand that would inevitably want to reach to the back of his head and smack some sense into the man for having gone and stared down the Emperor without backup or any sort of help.

It had been suicide, but Aris hadn’t been thinking. His only thought was for his people. For his family.

It had been a foolish, no, absolutely idiotic, gamble that had seemingly paid off. Still, it was a half-wit thing that he had done…But had information now.

He had knowledge that would, somehow, help them in their fight against the demonic Memory Mage, Evrain, that was intent on running their country into the ground and then stomping its head into the dirt until it popped.

How would he use it though?

That was the question. Evrain had given him the information…Had willingly…no, excitedly, shared his vision for Vealand with Aris.

First Fiell, the capital city, would fall into an all consuming cycle of violence and it would spread out from there, tearing the whole country down from it, from the few stubborn exiles who still clung to a life on the coast, to the deepest mountain outposts like the garrison of Kelvar a weeks ride into the mountains from Fiell.

It would all fall if Evrain had his way. They would be used like faggots feeding the fires of his transformation. He would sacrifice the life a whole nation to to live a few years longer.

It was the ultimate demonstration of pettiness and Aris hated the man for it.

How did he fight it though? How do you fight a man, to whom brutality was a snack that helped him gain a new life?

Aris stopped to breathe in the cool night air, the castle guards who had joined him in his fight against Evrain reigned up their horses too.

They sat in silence, not daring to utter a word.

Aris’ thoughts were leading him in circles. It all kept returning to just one question. How was he to fight that monster when fighting him meant feeding him? He couldn’t see an answer for the life of him, so he forced himself to detach himself from the situation and rest his mind.

He looked over the city of Fiell. He saw a large gash cut through the middle of it in the moonlight night. It looked as if a scythe had torn through the city, destroying everything as it cut a swath through Vealand’s capital.

Aris’ heart ached at that sight. These people; no, his people, deserved better than this. They didn’t deserve to die at the whims of a monster who used their bodies as tools for the bloodshed that would enable him to live longer.

It was them that he would fight for. Them he would die to protect. Them that he would sacrifice the lives of both him and his men to save.

“But do you need to?” a voice spoke in his mind, one that had grown more common with passing day since that fateful one where he’d received the memories of the dying rebel leader, Dren. “Do you ned to fight him? Do you need to kill those who stand for him? You’re giving him exactly what he wants when you do that. You’re playing right into his hand.”

That thought caught a hold of his mind. What if, by fighting the man, he was giving Evrain exactly what he needed? Was there a way to fight without fighting? Was there a way to keep a civil war between his men, the civilians, and their common enemy of Edrian Woll’s troops?

“What if it’s peace that we need? What if by not fighting the man, by refusing to give into the chaos that he demands from us, we’re able to thwart him? What if I lead the people, not to fight, but to leave? To abandon Fiell and start a new town. Have them make a new home somewhere else?” The more the thought ran through Aris’ mind, the more appealing it became to him.

Edrian couldn’t feast off the destruction and taking of men’s lives if there were no men left for him to destroy.

The rest of the ride back to his estate, the idea blossomed in his mind.

Yes.

Not fighting back was the safest venture.

But how would he convince his men, the men he’d trained these last few weeks specifically to fight Evrain’s Inquisitors and Forgotten to lay down their arms? How was it possible to make both his men, and the men of Edrian Wolls lay down their arms? How was he to unite the people into a mass exodus that would save their people from Evrain’s intentions for their destruction?

A plan was starting to form. Each step of his sturdy mountain bred pinto stallion, a holdover from the Waxchtachi people that had once called these foothills their ancestral home and now numbered only in the hundreds, brought him closer to a solution.

It was almost there. He knew what he needed to do. He just needed to talk to Wallace, to talk to his wife Corrine. He needed their thoughts, their wisdom, to fully form the plan that was baking in his mind.

If he could just talk it out with them, he might have a way to beat Evrain and save Vealand from the monster.

He urged the pinto forward towards his estate. The cool night air was like a whip in his face. It invigorated him.

When he had first peered into Evrain’s memories, he’d thought the fight was hopeless.

He thought there was no way to win. But Evrain had given him a gift. Evrain had given him the blow that could kill him and he hadn’t even known it.

*****

Aris smelled the death before he ever saw it. He tasted the copper tinged air. His mind immediately went to the battlefield. That scent in the air brought back memories of hundreds of deaths. It brought back the memory of watching his comrade having his arm wrenched out of its shoulder joint and the spray of blood that had covered everything as a mad Wendig, that pale, pallid giant that haunted the mountains, had killed his comrade before throwing the still living body so hard the force of the crash finished the job the tearing off of his limb had started.

Aris knew that scent. He knew it better than he ever wished to know.

He knew it, and before he saw it, he already knew where it was coming from.

His heart clinched. It felt like one of the Wendig he’d spent his young life fighting had reached into his chest, ripped open his ribcage, and clamped its massive hand on his heart. He fought to breath. He pushed his horse. He was practically flying when he caught site of the first bodies.

They weren’t his men. They were soldier’s under Edrian Wolls command. Their bodies had been pincushioned with crossbow bolts. Five long strides later though, he saw what he’d been dreading. He saw his men mixed in among the fallen soldiers.

He looked to see a new recruit, who’s name was…what had it been? Emperors balls! Why couldn’t he remember?!

Stefan.

His name had been Stefan. He’d been one of the citizens who’s house had burned down but had joined the cause after Aris’ rousing speech. He had shown promise. He had been a natural with the sword and the metalvine had become an extension of his body in under a week.

That hadn’t saved him from the knife that was sticking out of the back of his neck though. All the skill in the world couldn’t save you from an attack you didn’t know was coming.

Each stride of his sturdy mountain horse brought more bodies. His eyes turned from them though. He looked towards his estate. Or what was left of it. Even now, flames licked off of the buildings.

The barracks where Wallace and Kestrel had called home had been completely destroyed.

It must have been attacked first.

Aris’ heart threatened to escape his chest it was pounding so hard. He slowed to a crawl. He inspected every body, praying that somehow, someway, his family had been spared.

He didn’t find them among the fallen outside of the burned shell of what had once been his estate.

Everything was eerily quiet. Far too quiet.

Aris expected wails, the burning of embers. The sounds of…something, but there was nothing. No sounds came. It was as if the world had stopped and quieted itself at the sight that laid before him.

Everything but the stone that had been the foundation of his mountainside estate had been consumed. How had it burned so quickly? He’d been gone for less than three hours. Had Evrain had men waiting outside his estate to attack the moment he left it?

Most likely yes, and Aris had been fool enough to think himself safe. To think that somehow his house was free from the wriggling tentacles of Evrain’s destruction.

Evrain had had all his noblemen murdered. He’d had tongues cut from heads that his men hung on display.

Of course his home wasn’t safe.

He should have known that.

No that wasn’t true, he had known it. He’d known it but ignored it and now his family and men had paid for it.

He stood in shock as he surveyed the scene.

He recognized the burned corpse of young Wilhemina, a new maid that they had brought on not a month before the assassination attempt and every disaster that had subsequently taken place. She had fit in so well. The twins had taken to her and she’d quickly been promoted from maid to tutor. She had been a wonderful governess.

Aris recalled the look of enrapt attention on his daughters faces as they learned under Wilhemina’s expert storytelling. Aris himself had learned things he’d never known the two or three times he’d set in and watched his daughter’s lesson’s with their ever sunny governess. She had, in a few short months, become part of the family. They couldn’t remember a life without her.

Her scorched body was twisted in agony and only on closer inspection did Aris realize that one of her ears had been sheared off before the fire had took her. He had seen this before.

He’d seen the work of the killer who the took ear of each of his victims. He had chased him for a long time.

The killer had been one of Evrian’s secret force of killers. Aris wasn’t surprised. More than likely the man was an Inquisitor paired with a forgotten. Nobody ever remembered the man’s face whenever a murder occurred. It was as if he’d never been there at all.

That was why he had never found the man. The murderer was a useful tool for Evrain so he protected him. Kept him from being found. Sheltered and protected him.

Aris moved stiffly through the broken thing he’d once called his home. He had thought he’d known the pain of the men who had lost everything to the fires that the Inquisitors had started, but now, standing here in the shell of the place he had once called his own, the place his children had grown up in, the place where he’d befriended and trained so many of the city guards that kept Fiell safe, he finally realized the gutting sensation that each man must have felt, losing everything to that heartless monster of fire that thought no cruelty, but ate everything put in front of it.

He felt like he had lost a part of his life. All his memories had been consumed in flames. Still, that couldn’t compare to the ache that raged in his soul with every movement as he searched through the bodies scattered everywhere corpses of his family in a shell-shocked state.

He didn’t find them.

Thank Heaven above and everything good, he didn’t find them.

His heart lifted then seconds later crashed back to the earth as a new thought came to him.

He hadn’t found them, did that mean they had been taken by Emperor Evrain’s men?

His stomach roiled at the idea. The image of Evrain’s hand caressing the side of Corrine’s face enraged him. What if Evrain had his wife and daughters with him right now?

What would he do?

Aris didn’t have to think twice. What had just been mere minutes ago, but felt like a past lifetime, he had decided that he wouldn’t fight. He would destroy Evrain through pacifism. There could be no chaos to fuel a transformation if there was nobody fighting.

He had thought the plan solid, and it had been. It was a stroke of brilliance.

But Evrain had expected it. He took away the option of peace.

Evrain wanted violence? Good. Aris would bring war to the man. He would unleash the damned gates of hell on Evrain.