Chapter 238

Tears of Silence

Senna and Sera traversed carefully, putting hoods over their faces and avoiding main streets, only using alleyways. The war was raging, they realized; sitting within the Palace’s confines was akin to living within the center of a metropolis... inside a soundproof room. The moment they stepped out, the noise swarmed them. Sounds of the distant roars, near screams of agony, stomping feet and hooves and cries and wails.

They ran into countless corpses regularly, some piled into tiny pyramids, some even already afire, some yet strewn about haphazardly in the pools of blood and chopped limbs and destroyed weapons, and a few stranded in absolute isolation, likely those who were trying to run away.

Senna handled it much better, often dragging Sera or outright skipping certain places that seemed too horrifying, choosing to go the long way around.

“This is... insane...” Sera mumbled as they passed yet another burning pyre, in the middle of the city, the surrounding buildings reduced to ruins. If it weren’t for Senna hoisting her up, she would have immediately fell. Despite the sight, she couldn’t smell anything-- realizing swiftly that Senna was using her Mana to clear the air.

“...” Senna didn’t say anything, her eyes darting about. The harrowing reality was the same everywhere it seemed. People too caught up in their fantasies to care for the realities, sacrificing tens of thousands of mostly young for empty and hollow goals and dreams and aspirations. “Let’s go,” she pulled Sera into another alleyway, but noticed that the girl stumbled and keeled over, vomiting. Rather than forcing the issue, she decided to settle for a moment and rest, holding Sera’s hair as the latter emptied her innards.

The girl calmed only a few minutes later, trembling still as she leaned against the wall. Though she didn’t want to, her eyes inadvertently veered toward the horror, like two curious, sentient gems set against her will. She winced and quickly looked away, up at Senna who looked at her calmly. Sera found it strange, as well as saddening, how a girl her age could remain so calm and unfazed by the horrors. She didn’t take it that the girl was cold and unfeeling, as she knew that wasn’t the case, but that she’d seen and experienced things much like this and likely things worse than this.

“Do I really need pity from a girl who just emptied a week’s worth of meals?” Senna asked with a strange look in her eyes, prompting Sera to smile gently.

“All of us could use pity, once or twice,” Sera said.

“... you better?” Senna asked.

“I always fancied myself clever,” Sera said suddenly. “That, unlike my ivory-towered brothers and sisters... I knew the world. I knew the people. I would sneak out and roam these streets and meet commonfolk and eat their bread. I was just like them, I thought. I wasn’t Awoken, I wasn’t blessed by the Gift, but cursed to be a stepping stone for some Conqueror hungry for glory.”

“...” Senna remained silent, listening patiently.

“Is everyone this evil?” Sera quizzed, almost pleadingly, as she glanced at Senna.

“Everyone? Na,” Senna shook her head. “My dad says, though, that we all have the capacity for it. But being evil is a choice that we have to consciously make. And even then... true evil is just a story.”

“... he said that my brother wasn’t evil,” Sera recalled her conversation with the strange man. “He sounded almost like he was talking about a pup.” Senna didn’t say anything, but understood; perhaps, to Cain, wars like these where people driven by hollow ideologies and burning passions truly weren’t inspired by evil. “Was all of this... truly unavoidable?”

“... I don’t know,” Senna replied honestly. “Maybe, maybe not. Everything is avoidable if we go far back enough and start tinkering with shit. Like, there’s a popular joke in our world,” she added. “How a massive world war that cost tens of millions of their lives could have been avoided if just one man was accepted into an art school.”

“Wait, what?” Sera asked, chuckling at the absurdity.

“True story,” Senna laughed. “But it’s entirely possible. Like, I probably wouldn’t be here right now if Cain wasn’t really, really, really stubborn and persistent.”

“That sounds super creepy.”

“Eh, kind of?” Senna shrugged. “But he was also the first grown-up in my life that ever treated me with even the slightest respect.”

“...”

“Perhaps, if someone hugged your brother a bit more when he was young, he wouldn’t feel like the only way to have fun was to set his entire Kingdom on fire and watch it burn? I dunno.”

“Yeah, sure, because-- as everyone knows --hugs are a de facto way to prevent madmen from burning the world. It is written in all the books, naturally.”

“Shit around as much as you want,” Senna said. “It’s true.”

“I’m a Princess,” Sera said. “We don’t shit.”

“... you clutch on some weird things,” the two had resumed their walk, with Sera seemingly having recovered somewhat. “It’s like in our world, where girls shit rainbows.”

“What’s a rainbow?” Sera asked.

“... you’re fucking with me?”

“Huh? No.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t know what a rainbow is?” Senna asked but then realized that Sera likely spent her entire life underground, where there was no sun, a quintessential element for a rainbow. “Shit, that’s probably one of the most depressing things I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“Seriously,” Sera grew frustrated. “What the hell is it? Tell me.”

“It’s, uh, how do I explain it? Like... a streak of colors in the sky? Like seven colors, next to each other, like in arc across the sky? It’s pretty cool.”

“... huh?”

“Shit, I never really thought about it, but rainbows are kinda hard to explain to people who’ve never seen them. Uhm, it’s... it’s like if you paint seven colors onto a canvas, but then you enlarge that canvas massively, and also remove it, and just have those seven colors float in the sky.”

“Yeah, right,” Sera scoffed. “With how much you fuck with people, I’d swear you were that moron’s blood daughter.”

“I never thought I’d be called a lair for merely suggesting rainbows exist,” Senna chuckled lightly “Oh well. You live and you learn.”

“Eh? Where’s everyone?” Sera suddenly asked, prompting Senna to alarmingly look around. However, she didn’t notice anything strange beyond nobody else being there. The streets were abandoned, there were no corpses, no signs of any fighting, and though it appeared odd for a moment, she quickly realized why-- this was relatively close to where she estimated Cain was fighting, and she was well aware that even the tail-ends of the shockwaves of the fights he participates in are enough to turn most people to ash effortlessly.

“We’re getting closer,” Senna said as she sped up, ignoring stealth completely, and dragging Sera-- who yelped in surprise-- along with her.

Senna quickly summoned out a heap of iron in the shape of a blade and leapt on top of it, pulling Sera next to her and prompting the girl to scream in panic as she quickly wrapped her arms around Senna’s waist while the two took off from the ground. Sera closed her eyes for a moment as the wind whipped her cheeks, but as the world settled and turned silent, she opened them. She was flying, high, like a sparrow, but wingless.

The world beneath her grew smaller, distant, alien almost; the sensation was different from when she was looking at the city from within the Palace, perched on top of one of the towers. It was freer, more beautiful, inviting.

“Wow...” she mumbled softly, only then realize that there was a thick coating of Mana around her, likely shielding her from the harsh winds. “You see this every time?” she quizzed.

“Every time?” Senna said. “Na, other times I see lakes and stuff since, you know, I don’t exclusively fly here.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“We’re here,” Senna’s heavy tone immediately drew Sera’s attention away from the city and to the front where a sight left her pale and terrified-- rather than to call it a crater, it was more akin to a massive sinkhole. Ravaged landscape stretched on for miles, ruined cliffs and hills sprawled about in the essence of carnage.

It didn’t look like two men fought, not even two very strong men-- it looked like two ancient beasts crossed swords and consumed the world around them. It looked nothing like the rest of the world, with charred holes still billowing smoke everywhere, destroyed rubble turned into piles of ash slowly carried away by the wind. It was all... horrid. Not something any one or two men should be capable of.

“This...” she mumbled uncertainly. “How is this possible?”

“... this is nothing,” Senna mumbled, her eyes darting about until she noticed misshapen piles of ashes down below, prompting her to trace Mana into her eyes and notice one, faintly shimmering presence of Mana down below.

“What do you--AAAH!” Sera screamed out as Senna abruptly dove at the incredible speeds, reaching the ground within a few seconds and stopping abruptly. Were it not for the arm holding her, Sera would have tumbled off the sword and onto the ground, likely dying. Senna immediately jumped off the sword and landed near the pile of ash, tossing her arm forward and conjuring up a bout of invisible wind that carried ash off, revealing yet another, perhaps even more terrifying sight down below.

Two men lay barren, coated in thick layers of dried blood, missing chunks of their bodies, both unmoving. Though gray ash had paled their appearances slightly, both, even beneath it, seemed bloodless, as though drained. Limbs, facial features, holes in torsos and abdomens and even heads... it was as though Sera was witnessing a nightmare, a brutal, personalized nightmare. She saw Senna’s face pale immediately, drained of blood, as her sapphire-blue eyes widened into saucers as she swiftly knelt next to one of the two bodies. Sera didn’t know how she recognized it as Cain’s, as she had no means of distinguishing the two disfigured bodies.

“No, no, no, no, god no, no,” she mumbled for God. “DAD!!!” she screamed at the top of her lungs as she cradled the man’s body into her arms, ignoring all else and taking out a potion from seemingly nowhere, uncapping it as tears began to drain through her eyes, her arms shaking. She dropped the potion in the panic as it began to roll, her quivering arms dropping the body as she scrambled forward, slipping and falling, chasing the potion. Sera recovered swiftly, realizing it was her turn to be the calm one, racing over and grabbing the potion before racing back to the man and kneeling in front of him, holding up his head that was as heavy as lead. She felt like vomiting once she lay her eyes on the disfigured and abominable face unlike any human’s, but held it back; forcing herself to calm down, she gently parted the man’s lips and poured the contents of the potion, red, slimy liquid, into the man’s mouth. However, the potion spilled out of the mouth’s corners.

The liquid didn’t go down the man’s throat, prompting Sera to bend forward and press her lips onto his and blow air directly into the man’s throat, trying to open it up. At the same time, she put a mouthful of potion into her own, shoving it into the man’s to try and get him to swallow. She did it five-six times unsuccessfully, each failure increasing her dread further, before she managed to finally get the throat to open up slightly and for a few droplets to pour down. It was like the droplets of rain falling in the midst of the sunburned desert-- swallowed immediately, desperately wanting more. She poured the remaining contents of the potion’s bottle directly, and Cain swallowed, though still unconscious.

Senna finally recovered and sat by her side, still quivering and shaking and crying. Sera grabbed her hand and held it tightly as the two waited, seconds ticking like the grains of sand within an hourglass. It was all slow, even if the changes were visible. The man’s blood rumbled and raged, loudly enough that even Sera, nearly void of magic, could hear it. Yet, the horrifying sight remained as whatever lay beneath it began to slowly recover.