Chapter 19: Abyss

Tye was with furrowed eye brows as his attacker suddenly stopped and just clenched his head in pain.

"If only you would say more! I could help!" Tye yelled at the man.

The man only clutched hard on his head from a sudden splitting headache.

The man now stopped holding his head and glared at Tye in absolute silence.

His eyes wide open and as red as blood. How this man was still alive in such a state, made Tye to shudder.

And the man's question made Tye's shuddering even worse

"The way you fight... The way you are... Are you a Kiltarn?"

Tye was stiffened.

He didn't answer at once. He only stared back at the man. Cause too many thoughts were going through his head.

How can a deranged man know of his origin, when he's crazy?

If a man like the one in front of him could tell so easily, what more for normal people?

Tye only found it harder to breathe as the fire on the torches on walls of the cave crackled and the place was air tight.

Then Tye, in shock, replied

"What do you mean?! Who told you I'm from Kiltar?!"

The man glared at him

"Kiltarns are selfish!"

Tye furrowed his eye brows and sighed

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"That idiot that sold fruit to this village and vanished just when everyone went crazy, that's selfish!

And you remind me of him—"

"Wrong! You're wrong! I could have helped you people, but you won't let me!"

The man became furious at Tye. 

He didn't charge at Tye this time just yet. He reached for a pocket on his tunic and brought out an iron gauntlet.

He began saying as he equipped the gauntlet

"Kiltarns are selfish and cunning! People like that need to stop breathing!"

As his stomps echoed throughout the cave and sounded like a stampede of bulls running at neck-break speed, Tye drawed his sword.

"There's still a part of the story of what happened to this village that's missing" He thought

"And until I find that part" He said, barely dodging his attacker

"This village and it's people will never be saved!"

At this point, he had only one option left.

Take death or bring death.

This reality made him grit his teeth in anger, realising he has to end this man.

He didn't want to at first, cause this man for some reason, hasn't gotten completely mad unlike others that eat the fruit.

"I don't have to kill him!" He thought.

He began slashing his attacker's legs. With every time he dodged, he slashed a limb. And another limb.

Of course, his attacker didn't know of this cause he couldn't feel the pain.

The fact made Tye annoyed.

"How do I pin this guy down without killing him?!"

Cause if he were to get him down, he'd get up quickly.

Trip him and have him hit hard on the ground, he'd recover way faster than if Tye was to be hit like that.

"You filthy Kiltarn!—" His attacker stopped moving as he noticed a sword through his stomach from behind.

Tye gritted his teeth

"I'm sorry. Your people, I will help you people."

The man turned back and had the most calm expression Tye ever saw him have

"No more suffering!" The man said, with his breath slowly dying down and his eyes fading.

Then the man closed his eyes. And breathed his last.

Tye sighed. Falling to the ground to sit down, he gazed over the dead man.

"I wish it didn't go like this." He said in gloom looking over the dead man.

Now that Tye reflected on their fight, it was as if the man was holding back so that Tye would find it easier to kill him.

Tye looked around and there was only little lights the torches gave. Any step forward was into total darkness.

He looked ahead and then behind, from the direction he ran away from. The direction that had more people like the man he just killed.

Getting up to his feet, he dusted himself and took a torch.

"This should last." 

And he went deeper into the cave.

He walked for a while, and only caves leading to other caves could be seen.

Still heading in a forward direction, he saw a narrow path.

The path was so narrow that it could only support two feet at a time. More than one person on it would cause another to fall.

And looking down, he saw that on opposite sides led to dozens of meters down. Covered in darkness.

The more he looked around, the more gloom he felt.

His legs began to shake as he put one foot onto the path.

Filled in so much fear, he kept his foot off the pathway.

Getting angry at himself for fear, he put his foot on the path again.

And then he kept it back due to fear.

Fear of falling over into an abyss of darkness.

He began to fume and exhaled.

He looked back and saw that there was only darkness. And regardless of which path he takes, the unknown awaits.

So he set his foot, one after another, onto the narrow but manageable path.

As he would put his torch around, there was nothing down, left, right or center.

Horrified by the fact he was just in utter darkness, his feet slipped and he nearly lost balance.

His eyes widened and his heart raced as he nearly fell over into darkness and death.

He now began to be shaky all over his body as he carefully went on the never-ending path.

He kept walking and shaking without even realising when his feet hit a gap on the path that was small but in essence, made it two paths that were closely in front of eachother.

He slipped, and this time, he couldn't hold himself.

He fell off the path and lost his torch as he saw it falling with him.

He lost his breath in utter shock as he was only in darkness.

***

"W-wait! You mean Prince Timothy's cousins is the Rogue's leader?!" Yiss asked surprised.

"Yes! That's right!" Kti said enthusiastically.

"Something doesn't make sense here. Why is Timothy's cousin going through something like becoming the Rogue's leader?

Only to hand power over to Timothy if the Rogues succeed?" Yiss asked completely baffled

"That's cause they've known for a while and our leader saw it as only Timothy—since his mother vanished—can handle Kiltar."

"Is that really it? No hidden motivation?"

Kti furrowed his eyebrows in annoyance

"What? Do you think it's everytime that cousins betray themselves?"

Yiss thought of his words in silence.

Lina said

"Yiss has a point. Why would he go through all this struggle, for a Prince no one even knows his current location?"

"Ha ha!"

Kti only started laughing at her question. Tears were rolling down his eyes and he wiped them off and said

"Phew! You made laugh back there! 

Now, what makes you think that if we wanted to locate Timothy, we wouldn't have done so?"

"I don't know... You people don't seem all that great." Lina said shrugging.

"Well! If you must know, we know a lot about Timothy and his cousin.

If you must know, Timothy is a great tracker. He's talented at finding people and things. And our leader learnt these skills from him.

With time, we'll meet the prince when we have to."

He says getting to his feet.

"Yama has left me to overlook you two. Now, we leave Blood Forest."

"To where?" Lina and Yiss asked.

Kti put on a malevolent frown

"To begin our plan of ruining all of Kiltar's government."