Midoria's Heart

Midoria's Heart 35 - Irial

Hey guys, sorry its been so long since I've uploaded. My computer at home is broken, and has been for about three weeks so far (>.<) which makes writing really really difficult. Lucky for me (and you) there's a good working computer at my cottage!! XD

So here you go, the next chapter!

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Chapter 35 - Irial

The journey from the clearing where we’d been captured to Knoxlan took three days and four nights, twice the amount of time it would have taken had we been flying. We made camp when the sun was up, during which time Daniel, Lis and I stayed tied up in the center of a grouchy guard of men. The only comfort we received was the fact that the monsters hid in the shadows when it was light out.

At night we marched through the forests and across the fields, rarely stopping to rest. Nobody spoke, except for the occasional bark of orders, or someone telling us to move faster. Every step I took that brought me closer to the cursed land made the helpless feeling that gripped me grow stronger.

I could feel the very land we walked on dying as we drew closer to Knoxlan. The trees grew sparse and straggly, the grass turned brown, and the air grew so thin it felt as though I were suffocating. I wanted to weep for the awful state of the earth here, but I refused to show weakness. Instead I kept my chin up and took in every detail of my surroundings, looking desperately for some way out of the mess we were in.

Finally, on the fourth night, we reached the borders of a village that had previously been hidden away in the mountain. The Heian and Schatten that traveled with us left us as soon as we passed the first house, leaving us with only a guard of about twenty Aerians.

The houses of the village were in an awful state, but unlike the other villages I had been to recently, this did not raise a feeling of heartbreak within me. Instead, I felt disgust for the owners, who couldn’t even bring themselves to care for the place they lived in. But then I supposed that these men were banished from their true homes, so they wouldn’t really care about this one. I wouldn’t be surprised if they destroyed the houses on purpose, simply because they were angry.

We continued on the dirt road that wound through the village and up the mountain for several minutes, until finally we came to a halt before a large – and, surprisingly, not destroyed – house that looked down on the village below it. To be honest, house was a little bit of an understatement; the building was more along the lines of a mansion.

“Lord Irial wishes to speak with you,” I had been told back in the clearing. “He has plans…” This Lord Irial was obviously the man in charge of everyone who resided in this village; even the monsters seemed to obey his orders. The name Irial sounded familiar… I thought back to where I had heard it before, and after a minute remembered Daniel mentioning him, what seemed like a lifetime ago…

“He tried to kidnap you. The guards caught him and stopped him in time, and he was banished to the far edges of the kingdom. But he swore that he would come back and make them pay for what they did to him.” My breath hitched as I remembered our discussion; how Irial had been the prime suspect for my parents’ murders. Murders that had seemed so ghastly and inhuman at the time, I’d had trouble believing any Aerian could have committed them. But it made sense, given that Irial had control over the Schatten. They were more than monstrous enough to kill that brutally.

It is amazing how easily anger erases all other emotion, even fear and heartbreak. I stared up at the mansion, filled with such an incredible loathing for the man who lived within its walls. I wanted to see him now; wanted to hurt him, to make him beg forgiveness for what he had done. I wanted to see him suffer, to make him lose everything, just like he had done to me.