The Cruel Queen [On Hold]

8| The Crosser

Rewritten
***

Jae took in a deep breath, the cool air filling his lungs. He'd been travelling for two weeks upon his Equo steed, but most of the time he'd been sleeping.

He was starting to miss the castle, but he loved the silence the forest brought him.

Most of the land between Carralliz and the East was forestry. The strip of land was also the coldest during the winter.

But never colder than the North.

The immortal could already see the border, the one he would have to cross. It was the part he most dreaded. The part of the journey that would be the most painful.

Literally.

His steed had brought him as close to the border as he could. Jae would have to leave behind the luxury of a horse.

Jae told the horse to go back to the castle, and it did.

Illegally crossing the border did seem like a nice task, but he would have to do it legally.

Jaeger approached the border.

The second an archer could spot him, an arrow pierced his shoulder. The force of it caused him to falter in his step for a moment, but he continued his march.

A guard on the border blew a horn. He then proceeded to announce his words to Jae. "Who are you? There are no scheduled crossings of the border today."

Jae scrunched his eyes as he looked up, the sun blinding him temporarily.

The magnificent stone walls of the border stood taller than the walls around Carralliz's castle. It reminded him of a magnificent wall he'd seen in the western region of the East. A time before he'd been adopted by Atlas, the former king of Carralliz.

Jae said nothing, so by law, the guards of the border, or the Praesuls, shot him with arrows until he "died."

The Praesuls did not belong to any continent or country. Their job was to simply kill everybody that tried to cross the border without a warrant or a scheduled crossing. Their duty was passed down to their children and they could enjoy the best of both continents.

It seemed a little harsh to Jae. Killing everyone who wanted to cross, but it was exactly what he needed.

His body fell to the ground. His heartbeat stopped, but he would "come back to life" in a while.

Blood oozed out of his wounds and pooled around him. For the few minutes of brainpower he had after "dying," he wondered how he would remove the blood from his clothes. He couldn't exactly strut around the East with dried blood on his black clothing.

The Praesuls descended from the top of the border. They picked up Jae's "corpse" and dumped his body into the mass grave.

They carried him through the wooden gate and dropped him into the hole.

The mass grave was in the East. It was a huge crater in the ground where the bodies of the illegal crosses would end up.

Skeletons and decaying flesh almost filled the hole.

How did the Preasuls deal with the smell?

Even though he was "dead" with an unbeating heart, the smell managed to crawl up Jae's nose.

His brain remained conscious, so he recalled memories until his body woke up.

Before, when Cyra had stabbed him with seven swords, he never "died." It was simply because his heart was never pierced.

But the Praesul archers managed to get his heart, and it was perfect.

If they hadn't, his heart would have kept beating.

Jae's eyes open at twilight, arrows still lodged in different parts of his body.

They never caused him any pain, it just annoyed him almost as much as five-year-old Cyra.

He debated whether he should remove the arrows or get out of the mass grave first. The immortal concluded escaping would be a better move.

He studied the Preasuls from a distance. They had huge lamps with fires burning in them. They moved around, trying to locate any illegal crossers.

Jae set the patterns to memory and devised an escape route.

In five minutes, the lamps would go inspect Carralliz's side of the border. He would sprint into the forest and then think of something to do then.

When the time came, he climbed out of the hole, using the dead and decaying bodies as a ladder.

For the longest time, he'd been holding in puke...and it started to burn the innards of his throat. The second he was free, he would empty the contents of his stomach.

In the darkness, the black-haired immortal couldn't navigate the root-filled ground of the forest. He'd almost tripped fifteen times. He'd also scraped his face on the pine trees many times.

As if the arrows weren't enough.

His run in the forest did little to calm his fear that a Praesul had seen him.

Then he saw a little cottage with a flickering fire.

Motivated, his feet thundered against the ground faster and harder than before. But that also meant he tripped on a root.

Cursing, he kept running, desperate to enter a safe haven.

He just hoped the cottage did not belong to a Praesul.

***
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Word Count: 908