Fire and Flame [Iroh II x OC]

Chapter 75: Forgotten past

"I want to hear the rest.", I stated.

"Which rest? I already told you everything."

"No, you didn't. You are hiding something."

"I thought we won't push each other."

"You're right. But this bothers you. I don't want you to worry like this.", I said looking deep into her eyes. She sighed and nodded.

"One day we had a mission. Every week, one girl disappeared and never returned. It was our duty to find out what happened. Weeks have passed and we sill didn't have a clue, what was happening in this village. So one day, I returned back to him. But he wasn't present. There was a disgusting smell in the house and although he had warned me, not to go to the cellar my curiousness won over me. He had told me before that he had a special hobby but never told me what it was. So I went down to the cellar and opened the door. What I saw, nearly knocked me off. A girl, that has gone missing, was tied on the pillar. Her clothes were ripped off and she had cuts and bruises all over her body. As she saw me, hope crossed her eyes and she started to move. What I didn't know, was that he was standing right behind me. I felt his breath in my neck and turned around. I accused him of betraying me but he just laughed and pulled me inside the cellar, closing the door. He then hugged me and whispered in my ears and told me that he wasn't. Then he turned around, I didn't know what he was doing first but then...", she paused and I saw tears in her eyes,"He took out a knife and stabbed the girl repeatedly. I tried to stop him but I couldn't. When she stopped moving, he turned over to me with a smile and told me that he would never hurt me. Then I felt something hitting the back of my head and everything went black around me.
As I woke up, I was tied on a pillar. My head ached and I was freezing. Only then I realized that I was in a night dress. It was dark outside and inside. I wasn't in the cellar anymore. The air around me was molding and there was a smell of iron and something else. Of something that was...decomposing. It was pitch black but somehow I managed to see something because of the moon's weak light that was shining into the small room."

She stopped her story and started sobbing. Tears were running down her cheeks and I pulled her closer to me. I knew that Saira experienced a lot but I never expected her to come up with this. She wiped her tears away and continued:"I saw corpses around me. All of them female and the girl that got stabbed by him before. I suddenly heard someone enter the room. It was him. He kneeled down in front of me and looked straight into my eyes with a sick smile on his face. He told me that he wasn't cheating on me, the evidences were laying next to me. He took his knife out again and I thought that he would do the same to me as he did with the now dead girl. I thought he would stab me to death but he didn't. He just started cutting several part of my body while laughing and kissing me. This was the special hobby, he was talking about. He loved seeing blood. After he was satisfied with the blood lake under my body, he gave me a last kiss and left. My face and whole body were burning. I tried to untie myself but I didn't success. After hours of trying I finally succeeded. I didn't know how I managed to do that but I took the rope with me and was about to open the door but it was locked. I was dumb enough to think that he would let the door unlocked. I knew that I didn't have any time so climbed out of the window. As I was outside, I noticed that I wasn't in the village. I was in the forest. My feet were bare but I started running. I was totally disoriented, no lights were seen. It was as if I was in a labyrinth. I suddenly heard a terrific laugh but I didn't know where it came from. I turned around but I couldn't see anyone but the laugh was echoing from everywhere. I lit a fire in my palms to see where the laugh was coming from. Suddenly he stood behind me and wrapped his arms around me. He whispered in my ear that I couldn't escape him and ran his tongue down my neck. After that he asked me for help. Together we would gift the girls their last peace. I shivered in horror and elbowed him to run away. But he kept yelling that he would find me and that I couldn't escape. I ran as fast as I could but after some time I felt my feet burning, I was bleeding. I stopped in the labyrinth, with no clue where I had to go next. But somehow he managed to find me. He knew this forest like his own pocket. This time, he didn't have that grin on his face, he was completely emotionless. He told me that he had given me a chance but it was my pity that I didn't accept it, so I had to pay for that, he had to get rid of me. My heart started to race but I knew that I wouldn't run away this time. I just smiled and walked closer to him to lay my lips on his. I knew he was confused, he didn't expect this. I told him that I needed time to think and that I was ready to help him."

"You did what?", I asked shocked.

"I told him that I would help him. We went back to the little house, where the corpses were laying. We would find a peaceful place for the ladies to rest, how he said. But before that, he needed energy. So he took out his knife again and started his game again. The white night dress, he had put me in, was coloured red again. After that, he fell asleep. I then took out the rope, he had tied me up with before and that caused him to wake up. Of course he had suspected something but it vanished when I sat on top of him and started seducing him. He had asked me what I was about to do and I just told him that after he played his game with me, it was my time to play my little game with him. He agreed on that and I continued tying his hands on the bed as well as his legs. I took the knife, he had put on the nightstand and played the same game with him, he did to me with the only difference that I seriously injured him so he wouldn't be able to move when I untied him. But he didn't yell, not groan in pain, no. He just laughed and moaned. It pleasured him. I then told him that I would get something from the cellar. He got suspicious and I put the necklace, that was given to me by my great grandfather, on his chest to gain back his trust. He then nodded and I went down to the cellar. There, the girls were still laying. I checked each one's heartbeat but no one of them was alive. Except one. The one who he thought was dead earlier. But she wasn't. Just unconscious. I carried the corpses out of the house from the backdoor and as I wanted to carry out the living girl, she suddenly grabbed my wrist. She wanted to scream but I prevented her by putting my hand on her mouth. I asked her to stay outside until the moment, I gave her a sign. She nodded and I went back upstairs to the man who enjoyed seeing others in pain. He fixed me with his lust filled eyes but I just took my necklace from his chest. He was surprised to see me leave and asked me what all this meant. I looked back at him for one last time and lit a fire in the middle of the room. He started laughing again and told me that he couldn't believe how foolish he was by trusting me."

"What happened then?"

"I let the house burn and took the girl with me. We informed the Chief and brought him to the burning house."

"Did he-"

"Die?", she completed my sentence," I don't know. No one ever found his body. Either he's burned to ashes or he is still alive."