Echoes of memory, p.21
Echoes of Memory, page 21
His demeanor was feral. His head jerked too and fro in a mixture of rage and terror.
“What’s your name?” Treall said, his commanding voice had morphed into a caring one in seconds. He sounded like a concerned father figure desperate to help a lost child. It was unsettling how quickly his demeanor had changed.
“Do you really think that I’m foolish enough to fall for your tricks?” Rel’s mocking voice sounded as if it were straining to break free into a yell. “You’re gonna act like you’re my friend in hopes that I’ll slip up and let out information as I get comfortable. It’s not gonna work. I personally prefer beating the information out of those that I interrogate.”
Treall looked over to Kestrel. He'd liked the boy from the first moment he had laid eyes on him. What the boy had said was true. He had believed Kestrel from the moment his story had made its way about the Ravenscroft barracks, but having the monster from those stories before him was different.
Rel made his stomach roil. He was a shame to his profession.
“Where did you take Cillia’s body!” Kestrel let out a guttural roar at Rel, stepped in, and hit the captive with a backhand that loosened one of his molars.
Rel looked up at Kestrel and laughed. “That’s more like it,” he said as he spit a wad of blood from his mouth. “That’s how you get information out of someone. You beat them half to death. You destroy them like I destroyed that little whore’s spawn of yours!” he giggled like a madman.
Kestrel snapped.
He rained down blows on the defenseless guard. Each one was fueled by the hatred and pain he’d endured his whole life.
Rel’s face rearranged beneath his fists.
It was Sephira’s call that brought Kestrel back to reality.
When he returned to lucidity he was covered in Rel’s blood and three of the guards were straining to keep him from the disgraced monster laying at his feet. Rel’s breath was a wet gurgle of blood.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Kestrel said seeing the horror and disgust in Sephira’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” his voice became a whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry...”
Kestrel went limp and collapsed to the blood-splattered ground. He felt deflated. Kestrel was shocked by how capable of hate and violence he was.
He had nearly killed a defenseless man.
He didn’t dare look up at Sephira. He was sure she was looking down on him in disgust. He was no different than Rel. He’d let himself be consumed by hatred and had twisted himself into something hideous.
Was he the monster he saw reflected in Rel’s blood?
The small band was taken by complete surprise when a sickly sweet voice broke their reverie, saying, “Thank you. You’ve made my work easier. I barely need to do anything to make the body unrecognizable.”
Kestrel whipped his head up to find a heavily cloaked individual standing in the corner, smiling through twisted lips. A hood obscured most of the man’s features, but it couldn’t hide the scars on the bottom half of his face, nor the ones that laced across his hands and forearms.
When did he arrive? How had he entered the guard shack?
“Who are you?” The words had barely left Sephira’s lips before she fell to the floor screaming. The weight of a million tortures cascaded into her mind.
“Wha...” the rest of the group collapsed. Visions of horror danced through their minds. Their words were stilled in their mouths.
“I’m sorry that this has to be the last thing you see before you die,” the man said and rushed forward, whipping a knife across the throat of the young redheaded guard.
The guard who’d been joking and gambling just minutes before was dead before he hit the ground, his throat completely torn through by the impossibly sharp knife.
His hand whipped out and another dagger flew through the air towards Sephira.
“Watch out!” Treall screamed and shoved Sephira out of the path of the Inquisitor’s oncoming knife.
The dagger pierced through the meat of his forearm where her chest had been moments before.
Treall shouted in pain as he ripped the knife from his arm. In the time it had taken him to remove the dagger, the Inquisitor had already jammed long metal spikes into the eyes of both Rel and the second, blond-haired, guard with blinding speed.
Both died in seconds.
“Run!” Treall’s voice barely broke through the memories of unspeakable agonies that the Inquisitor was flooding their minds with.
The Inquisitor crushed the throat of the third guard, leaving him gasping for breath, his throat rattling as he died.
Treall pushed through the memories of having his arms sliced open with hundreds of tiny cuts, then having them forced into a vat of hot pepper sauce and rushed at the Inquisitor with a blinding flurry of swings from his metalvine.
The cry and Treall’s furious attack gave Kestrel just enough clarity to rush to Sephira’s side to grab her hand and pull her to her feet.
The pair stumbled out of the cell making their way to the door...
Then another wave of memories assaulted them. It was worse than the last one. The fingernails...The broken bones...The weeks without sleep...
Still, Treall and the Inquisitor danced a deadly routine as each searched for an opening and parried, dodged, and slipped blows with astounding speed.
“Go! GO NOW!” he shouted at Sephira and her companion who’d fallen to their knees near the entrance of the guards' station, overwhelmed with the misery and horror the Inquisitor was pouring into their brains.
Treall’s call brought Sephira back to a semblance of sanity, giving her enough time to see him use his metalvine to deflect the large obsidian knife the Inquisitor had aimed at his chest.
The Inquisitor used the momentum from the parry to bring his arm around in a twisting motion, scoring a deep gash on Treall’s already injured right arm.
Treall cried out in pain and dropped the metalvine into his open left hand. His right arm had been taken out of commission by the stone blade, but he was a Falis master, nearly as deadly with his left as he was with his right hand.
Sephira could barely track Treall’s motion as he dropped his center of gravity and the metalvine whipped towards the Inquisitor’s ankle, connecting with a shattering crack. She was sure that would incapacitate the man, but in the blink of an eye, the memory of the pain that Inquisitor had just felt now overwhelmed the trio.
Kestrel’s eyes went unfocused, he was drowning in the mental agony the Inquisitor was flooding them with. Blood began to trickle from his nose.
The Inquisitor growled at Treall and stumbled forward on his injured ankle. He swiped at Treall but was easily sidestepped by the guard who spun and aimed another blow at the Inquisitor’s already injured ankle. This time the blow shattered the bone and the hooded man fell to the ground in agony.
As the hood slipped from the Inquisitor’s face, Sephira could see that the man was barely older than her and Kestrel. Though scars covered his face and body, youthfulness radiated from his features.
Almost as if the unhooding had lessened the young Inquisitor’s power, Sephira looked to her side to see Kestrel coming out of the stupor the Inquisitor’s attack had caused.
Whatever had happened to them, it seemed as if it had affected Kestrel much more than it had Treall. She was still shaking from what she’d seen. How much worse had it been for Kestrel? He was covered in a sheen of sweat and vomit trickled from his lips. Blood still leaked from his nose.
Treall leaned over the assassin, snatching him and hauling him back to his feet.
“Who are...” Treall’s question was interrupted by a small punch dagger the Inquisitor had hidden in the fold of his robes. The young assassin fell with Treall, who collapsed, dead, the dagger blooming from his chest.
“Nooo!” Sephira screamed as she watched the blonde soldier drop to the ground, gasping for air as his body failed him.
Kestrel screamed a guttural cry as he looked at the fallen guard. Treall had been one of the first of the guardsmen to treat him as an equal.
The Inquisitor rolled over and fished for another hidden blade.
Kestrel didn’t see it. He was too focused on Treall.
He was going to die.
Sephira screamed and dove at the Inquisitor, the force of the blow drove his head into the ground.
The loud cracking sound snapped Kestrel’s attention back to the two who were now tangled together on the ground, battling for control of the knife the Inquisitor had dropped when his head rebounded off of the hard wooden floor.
Kestrel launched himself into the fray, desperate to keep the knife from plunging into Sephira and ending her life as its brother had done to Treall mere moments before.
The Inquisitor ripped the knife from Sephira’s hands and lunged towards her stomach with the blade. Kestrel slammed into the man hurtling him to the side. The knife barely missed digging into Sephira’s stomach and bounced off the hard floor as the Inquisitor’s face slammed into the nearby cell bars.
Kestrel was flooded with memories upon touching the Inquisitor.
He recalled himself as a young child, before all the misery that had overpowered everything he had ever known.
Somewhere, buried deep in the Inquisitor’s subconscious, he had happy memories.
He had been the youngest child of a loving family of well-to-do bakers. He hadn’t wanted for anything and those memories were bathed in a golden light, the happiness hidden there felt almost unreal.
It was as if it were someone else’s life. Not this monster's.
But he knew it to be true no matter how he ran from it. There had once been joy.
“You were happy once,” Kestrel whispered, his hands shoving the Inquisitor’s face into the bars.
“What!?” the Inquisitor looked at Kestrel, stunned, his form rigid in shock.
“You were taken. They grabbed you when you were a child. You had a beautiful life before all of this,” Kestrel gestured over the fallen bodies with a nod of his head.
The scarred young man looked at those he’d killed.
Pain burst in his cerulean eyes.
“They were a threat! They could cause the downfall of my savior!” he shouted as if trying to convince himself.
“What savior?”
“Evrain! He saved us!”
Kestrel’s stomach twisted. He thought he might vomit again.
He had seen the man’s memory. It had been brief and foggy, but he had heard it clear as day. The people who had abducted the Inquisitor when he was a child had invoked Evrain’s name too.
“You know that isn’t true. You remember what they said when they took you,” Kestrel said, letting go of the young man and backing away. “You held on to that memory. You hid it. You buried it so deeply that everyone thought it was forgotten. Still, you and I both know who took you. Who made you this way. We both know,” Kestrel’s voice trembled with shared pain.
The Inquisitor looked around the room. Rel had spikes sticking out of his eyes. Bodies littered the small shack.
Blood pooled on the floor, sickly sweet and still warm.
He had murdered so many...
It couldn’t be true.
But he knew it was.
It was true.
He had clung to the lie that Emperor Evrain had been the one who saved him. It was the only thing that had given him a semblance of sanity.
But he had always known, hidden in the depths of his soul, that it had been a lie. He had slaughtered so many in the name of his torturer...
He couldn’t live with that.
He didn’t deserve to live.
The Inquisitor dove and snatched up the knife...
...Then drove it through his own neck.
Chapter 33
KESTREL AND SEPHIRA skulked through the alleyways that Kestrel had once called home in a shellshocked daze. It was all either of them could do just to think straight. Aris was in charge of the city guards, but it was impossible to tell how many had been corrupted like Rel and neither wanted to chance it, so their journey was painfully slow as they flitted from shadow to shadow, praying nobody saw them in their blood-soaked clothes.
Neither said a word. Each was swept up in their own thoughts. Kestrel had been brought into this world by Wallace, he had practically begged the old soldier to teach him magic. The black and white world had been dyed in shades of grey, but nothing could've prepared him for what had just happened. Even the worst of memories that Wallace had used as a shield for his mind hadn’t readied him.
He had thought everything would be so easy.
What a fool he’d been.
How much worse was the trauma for Sephira, he wondered?
She was unaware of the currents that steered their nation. How deep did those tendrils of magic dig into their world? What Kestrel had seen had shocked him to his core and he had grown up on the streets.
He had seen comrades slain before his eyes, Sephira hadn’t. How could she possibly handle what they had just seen?
Sephira, for her part, seemed to be taking things in stride.
She didn’t know how to process what had just happened, so rather than being flooded by thoughts and emotions, she shut down the part of her mind that had witnessed the brutality of the Inquisitor and his sudden, shocking suicide.
She blocked it from her memory.
Sephira didn’t know what bothered her more, the fact she was able to shut herself down so completely or that the strange touch of magic seemed familiar to her, as if what the Inquisitor had done pulled at an old and long-forgotten scar on her soul.
Why did the magic —and how did she know it was magic?— seem so familiar to her? She knew that she hadn’t ever trained in it, nor could she recall ever learning about it, but she still had an innate knowledge of what she had just witnessed.
Why did it feel so familiar? Why did she feel like the magic she had witnessed was her birthright?
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Kestrel’s feeble apology broke the long silence between the two of them. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Sephira said.
It was a lie, but not completely.
“You wouldn’t have been dragged into this mess if it wasn’t for me,” the tone in Kestrel’s voice told Sephira he blamed himself for what had just happened and he would back away from her to protect her as a result.
A wave of sudden anger blazed in Sephira’s chest. She clenched her fist.
The man was an idiot. He had no right to say that!
She stopped in her tracks. It was foolish to be so angered, but she couldn’t let his words go. She was so furious. She didn’t know whether she wanted to scream or punch him in the face. She had to physically restrain herself from slapping him.
“What’s wrong?” Kestrel asked, puzzled.
“You have NO RIGHT to do that!” Sephira hissed.
“Do what?”
“You KNOW what you’re doing!” she accused Kestrel.
Kestrel gaped at her, at a loss for what he had done to offend her so. His idiotic silence only stoked the fire in her.
“You have no right to decide for me!” her voice was nearly a shout.
Kestrel desperately tried to shush her. Fearing their presence would be discovered.
“You do NOT get to run away from me and call it protection! That’s what cowards do! I’m not gonna let you run away like a coward! You’re not in the streets anymore. You don’t get to act like a coward anymore! Now you’re a man. You’re training under my uncle, the bravest man in the empire, and you’ll act befitting of your training! You WILL NOT hide behind fear and call it protection! Do you understand me!?”
Kestrel stammered at a loss for words. Her words had cut through every argument that had been running through his mind. Eventually, he simply nodded. Unable to understand how she had cut through the lies he had told himself and hadn’t known that he believed.
Even bedraggled and covered in the blood of slain comrades, Sephira was beautiful.
She was astonishing.
Kestrel had never known any with the same inner fortitude as her. How was she so wise beyond her years?
Her words had, at the same time, taken any argument from his lips and had admonished him into action.
She had killed a burgeoning cancer in his heart with a few simple words.
She truly was amazing.
The walk, which usually would have taken half an hour, was dragged out into a two-hour excursion as the pair skulked through the shadows, Sephira following Kestrel’s well-trained lead.
When they approached the Ravenscroft estate, Kestrel turned from the path that Sephira had always used and led her on a circuitous mountain route that kept them from any prying eyes.
It was the twins Elan and Elise who first spied the pair, covered in blood, and disheveled with torn and tattered clothing. Without a word the two turned and ran into the house. Seconds later Corrine appeared in front of them and spewed a series of questions, admonishments, at them, and a stream of vile curses that reddened the ears of the duo at whoever had attacked them.
It took nearly five minutes before the two could get a word in edgewise between Corrine’s alternating scoldings and curses.
“What in the name of the Almighty happened!?” she said, finally pausing to hear an answer from the pair.
Kestrel looked from Corrine to Sephira and back, unsure of how much Sephira’s mother knew and what to say. He opened his mouth to speak, but Sephira quickly hushed him by placing her blood-soaked hand on his shoulder.
“We were attacked. We were able to get to safety, but Treall wasn’t so lucky. He died protecting us,” Sephira hated omitting things for her aunt Corrine, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell her of the Inquisitor that had attacked them, nor of the slaughter that they had witnessed at his hands.
She wasn't sure why, but she felt dread at the idea of her aunt knowing of the world of magic that her eyes had just been reopened to.
Sephira would tell Aris, but she couldn’t shake the fear of what Corrine would do if she knew the truth.
“I hate that you have to lie to me. But you will tell your uncle Aris what happened,” Corrine glared at the pair. “Now before we do anything else, I’ll have baths drawn up for the two of you, and when you are both washed, we’ll see to your wounds,” there was a hint of sadness in her voice that the pair felt that they couldn’t share the whole story with her, but her many years as the wife of a general had tempered her. Some things couldn’t be shared after the heat of a battle.
