Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26: Consequences

"So we were married?" Arkyn asked with no flashes or emotional imitations in his body. One would assume he would have recalled such events every time he looked at Kresha.

Yet nothing came to him.

"Close . . . I am going to explain everything to you in a minute. So first grab some tea and make some drugs that don't induce vomiting, my body is starting to ache again."

Arkyn did as he was told, collecting tea leaves from the Harvest cavern and a large kettle of water from the Water treatment Cavern. When he returned, Kresha had put the painting down and was fiddling with the necklace. She twisted the little obsidian piece attached to the end repeatedly between her fingers.

Only after a couple minutes of Arkyn making tea did she start explaining, he sat at the chair beside her bed with a great deal of focus.

"After the first few years of living in the Ash Keep, I felt a little too isolated. I was so used to talking with Myriad or working in the Frost Keep with Diven, that it made keeping my hunger in check rather difficult. Being in the company of only emotionless machines was making it feel all the more lonely.

So I made frequent trips down the mountain, visiting a little village that started in order to hide from the conflicts brewing in the Eastern regions of Odbrane. I became the strange but familiar neighbour to them, randomly appearing with enchanted tools and metals that helped them grow exponentially faster. By three generations worth of time, they were practically a town."

Somewhere in her mind she was recalling the grand image of her work, the town that flourished under tools by her design, evolving the magicless to live in prosperity.

"This chain was a gift they made for me too, believing I was their godly saviour from the half-century long war." She touched the chain gently, as if it might crumble from the slightest force of her hand. "They even named it Kreshhaven, thinking it would somehow further bless their lands with great protection."

"Of course that was all wishful thinking, the war was just slowly creeping its way to the West once the battlefields were too desolate to fight on anymore in the East."

"A group of soldiers from some side of the battle found them. It didn't matter which side they were on because they were all the same as the bastards who sponsored the war.

Once they discovered the flourishing little sanctuary, they must have wanted all of the farmed crops to feed their soldiers, leaving the townspeople with nothing.

I don't even know how it happened; the town might not have even resisted, they might have even offered to feed the soldiers, but no, in the end they were mercilessly ravaged.

By the time I arrived back to Kreshhaven; all their food had been taken, most of the men were killed, and homes destroyed by someone wielding powerful fire. The soldiers didn't care, there were no consequences to killing the innocent during war.

They got to reward themselves by defiling dead men's wives, leaving children as orphans, and stuffing themselves on someone else's years of hard work.

I didn't know what else to do except let my hunger consume me. I chased their scent for miles, running through the woods like an animal, and what did I find once I finally caught up?"

She coughed out more phlegm, spots of black and grey appearing in the handkerchief Arkyn handed her.

"You." She said once the coughing fit subsided. "A blood-soaked teenager looting the corpse of every man he had just quietly killed in the camp."

"Apparently you had been following them for days, sabotaging their supplies and luring wild animals at them whenever possible, all to break the group down so they'd wipe themselves out. Once weak enough, you'd swoop in to finish the job.

Once they discovered food and women though, you changed plans; simply waited for the right moment at night to slit their throats once they were finished. They had slept so deep from full stomachs and softened pricks, I don't think any of them knew they died.

I won't ever forget that moment of disappointment, of having my revenge taken out from under me. Sometimes I still feel it come back, even now."

There was a fire in her eyes, but the cloudiness of aged vision diminished it greatly.

"Oh, oh oh oh oh! But then there was you, standing there with your fucking grin at my arrival. Despite being in a half feral form and the immediate devouring bodies of your freshest kills; you looked at me just with some sense of understanding and even pity."

"I was pissed, how could someone like you, who didn't care to cry for all those kids in the village, think we were anything alike? I hated you so much at that moment, that I equaled you to those soldiers. In my eyes, you were no different than them.

I wanted to kill you but once I was full enough to go back to my human form, you had disappeared. I carried that hate all the way back to Ash Keep for years.

The truth is now, I blamed you for the massacre cause I couldn't bring myself to look at my responsibilities of having made the town a target. If they weren't using my magic tools and the resources I so willingly shared, they wouldn't have been put into such a state.

So I left and hid back here in the keep, not talking to any of the Afflicted and debating to just let the aging and the disease take over.

Once I realised I had fallen into a depression with no end in sight, I fully committed to wanting to end my life. A last request I made to myself was to die in Kreshhaven, thinking it would harden my resolve.

I walked down to the bottom of the mountain one summer day and once again, I found you. A now scruffy, young adult surrounded by the survivors and teens left behind from the massacre. You gave me the exact same smile right there too.

The war wasn't over, but you stayed at the town, helping the kids pick up on their parent's work and rebuild most of what was lost. Even with the broken down tools, you were there, keeping them going.

I realised that in that moment, you did care for those that had died in that town. You didn't want any of this to happen, you weren't some advocate of death and destruction; you were just a lucky survivor of war's infecting bite."

Kresha stopped and asked for more tea, and Arkyn made it this time a lot stronger. It seemed Kresha's senses were dulling, as she commented the previous cup tasted rather weak.

"So I let the Keep collect dust for a few years, staying at the base of the mountain with a small blood bloater pool I improvised and gave whatever help I could. Magic tests didn't seem so important when building a home for an ever expanding family. It even felt so much more satisfying."

"It sounds as if you finally found yourself a new tribe." Arkyn commented as he poured out the tea, dropping a tiny dose of herbal painkillers in the tea before handing her the new cup.

"In a way, I did. Of course you don't suddenly drop all your demons in a day, I would still get angry and upset when recalling those memories."