Chapter 37 - Justice

Kenn threw away his last bit of dented armor and sprinted across the street toward his brother, his heart pounding in his ears.

Ganen stood hunched over a pool of blood, breathing hard and bleeding from three separate arrow wounds—one on each shoulder, one on his stomach.

"Stay with me, Ganen!" Kenn shouted as he ran, his voice hoarse.

Just as he reached him, a sharp impact jolted Kenn's body, making him stumble. An arrow buried itself deep into his arm, the force twisting him sideways. He clenched his teeth, staying on his feet but seeing blood spurt out of him. He winced in pain, shaking his head.

"Over there! To the left!" he barked at a guardsman who stumbled into view, his face pale and fearful. The man hesitated, his hands trembling as he gripped the hilt of his sword before he charged toward the figure in the distance.

It was a hopeless effort—like a lone mouse trying to take down a cat, and Kenn saw it coming before it happened. He had barely opened his mouth to shout 'dodge!' before the arrow hit the unarmored guardsman square in the chest. The man crumpled forward, the sword slipping from his hand as he hit the cobbled road hard, motionless at his killer's feet. The killer hopped forward lightly, graceful as the wind, and kicked the guardsman's body with a bare foot before yanking the arrow out of its chest and nocking it again.

Kenn turned back to Ganen, his mind racing despite the blood loss. There was no time for hesitation. Covering his wound with one hand and grabbing his brother with the other, he began to hobble away from the slaughter.

"Move! Now!" he shouted to Ganen.

His brother nodded hastily, groaning in pain. They stumbled away from the battlefield, bleeding onto the cobbled main road all the way. Arrows whistled through the air, striking down people in every direction—guardsmen, merchants, even a woman and a child.

Kenn kept his eyes forward, his arm around Ganen.

There was nothing he could do. There was nothing anyone could do—not until that creature ran out of arrows. Nothing even seemed to hurt it, and that was when they could get close enough to fight back. It had the shape of a human, but it didn't move or act like one.

What vengeful god had the Ryzayahns angered to deserve such a slaughter? Kenn's mind churned with the question as he dragged Ganen away from it, his blood-filthy boots slipping on the cobblestones. Had they trespassed into some divine grudge, unwitting pawns in a punishment meant for someone greater? Were the gods angry at the lord and lady Dremon for making a paradise in their city?

Or was the world simply that cruel?

Kenn's breath hitched, his legs burning with every faltering step as he tried to keep both himself and Ganen upright. He was growing weak. His brother was faltering. They both had lost too much blood—but they had to keep going. They had no other choice.

Far behind Kenn, the sharp twang of a bowstring snapped, a sound that froze his heart in his chest. The sound of whistling … and then Ganen violently lurched out of his grasp, tumbling away from him as an arrow sprouted from his back with a sickening thud.

"Ganen!" Kenn shouted, his voice cracking. He fell to his knees beside his fallen brother, grabbing hold of him again … but he was already gone. The latest arrow had pierced straight through his heart.

Kenn's chest tightened, a sob tearing its way out of his throat as he stared down at his brother's battered body. Then, a new realization hit him like a hammer to the stomach, leaving him completely breathless.

It was never meant to be a quick kill.

Both of Ganen's shoulders had been pierced, then his stomach, and only then, his chest.

The sequence had been deliberate. The killer had wanted them to have hope, to try to escape. It wanted them to hurt.

Kenn took a deep, shaky breath and looked towards the sky, sobbing and letting his tears fall onto his brother. He prayed to the gods, to Aru and Vifafey, for mercy and justice.

The pained cries coming from all over slowly quieted down, and a deafening silence began to spread over the streets. A shadow stretched across the cobblestones behind Kenn, blotting out the sun. He didn't need to turn around to know who it was.

***

Eletha grimaced.

"I've heard that question three times by now," she said, tilting her head to one side and blowing a strand of hair away from her face. She stepped up behind the meat-man, her feet already slick with his dark red blood.

"W-w-w-why are you doing this? Why? Why?!" she mimicked. "You meat-men are hopeless. So desperate for a reason when it comes to your people dying, never giving a damn when it comes to mine."

Humming a tune, she twirled the bow in her hand before carefully slinging it over her shoulder, letting it rest after a morning's work. Her cold eyes fixed on the meat-man she'd left for last. The mewling, blood-covered thing was still trembling on its knees. She loomed over it as it sobbed and leaned down so that her breath blew against its ear.

"You, I'll tell," she whispered. "And I'll even put it simply enough for you to understand. You've spent millennia tormenting every kind of life that isn't yours. This … is justice."

With those parting words, she kicked the meat-man onto the ground and left him there to bleed to death.

As she walked away, she found herself enjoying the morning sun.

A warm spring wind carried the pungent smell of soon-to-be fertilizer, and she sauntered past streets littered with corpses. The meat-men would take care of them on their own time. She'd recently learned that in the place she was, the Northern Third of Ryzayah, they buried their dead in the ground despite the lack of any kind of Accord. That was nice. Perhaps the Goddess had somehow tricked them into such habits.

"Praised be Phosyphia, lady of life," she said, her gaze flickering to a cluster of small flowers growing defiantly in the cracks of the meat-mens' cobblestone road. Their petals swayed slightly in the faint breeze. Scypha slowed as she walked past, offering them a sincere smile.

"Keep fighting," she said. "We'll make of this place fertile ground."

Eventually, she thought. The 'city' was still crawling with meat-men, and getting rid of them all would take quite a while. Still … she had nothing but time.

She thought for a moment. "Blessed are we all who work in Phosyphia's holy name," she said. A simple prayer, but one she hadn't spoken in a while.

Perhaps it was her Oakmother's influence that had stopped her. Always so insistent, always preaching about harmony and peaceful coexistence, even while she and her sisters starved, their heart tree's small and weak … It hadn't seemed right back then to pray to the goddess. Not under the Oakmother's shadow, not while biting her tongue as the meat-men trampled over her home and dignity.

But now … Eletha was no longer bound to an Oakmother. That chapter was closed, devoured by flames ignited by the meat-men themselves. Her people's heart trees had been reduced to ash and smoke.

Perhaps even … it was her fault. If she'd never helped that idiot Berrick, never opened her stupid mouth to warn him of the poisoned well, perhaps the meat-men bandits would have simply gotten what they wanted from the village and moved on. Perhaps they never would have turned their greedy eyes toward her people.

But she had.

She had told Berrick.

She had shown kindness to the old meat-man and offered him a warning when he'd needed it, and it had cost her everything.

It was too late to go back, too late to make the right choice.

The warm wind blowing on Eletha's cheeks suddenly turned cold.

Now, she was on her own. Only the goddess knew how far she was from her sisters or if they were even alive again, as she was. Perhaps it would be decades before their acorns found fertile ground, before they found the corpses they needed to take root and grow into new heart trees. Or perhaps it would be forever.

As for her … She was alone. All alone … trapped among the meat-men.

There was nothing left for her to do but spill blood. Spill it until her hands were red, until her arms ached. Until the memories faded, the pain in her heart grew dull, and she could forget.