The War (All Chapters + Synopsis)

Chapter 16.1 - Lues

My sister has a faraway look as she tells us about the events that broke her in a way no normal forms of torture could. I have to swallow back the bile, as I'm told about the crime my uncle committed, the horrific crime so terrible that all who have committed the same crime have been executed since the dawn of justice in Feralis.

The horrific tale she tells us is so extraordinarily disgusting, that I can't wrap my mind around it. She was put through something so terrible, by her own uncle no less, but she didn't become a worse person, she didn't let it break her completely. She became a better one, and that's what makes it unbelievable.

Yet I believe it, because of her faraway look, because she massacred the soldiers after what they did in Mikro, and because the week after she returned she barely spoke or reacted to anything. The incident in Mikro brought her out of the haze that she'd entered, sometime between when they caught her, and killed my father. Our father.

"How did you escape?" Amalia asks, breaking the silence that had become suffocatingly thick.

"I faked my own death, they let me out of the cage and took the restraints off. I killed them both in the quickest, most painful way I could. I broke the other prisoners out and we got out of the facility," Ilena explains, her answers clipped, talking about this is costing her something. "The place where we were held was only a few miles away from Moor."

"Wait, they held you right outside of the city?" I demand, outraged that nobody had realized, that nobody had thought to look so close, except for my father. But why did none go after my father, search the place where he vanished and later died?

"Yes, a compound, owned by Carber," she answers, and I feel the rage bubbling up again, how dare he do this. Take my father away from me and abuse my sister in that way. For treating her like an animal.

"He's going to pay," I insist, and Ilena's eyes sharpen.

"Yes he is, but not if we rush and accidentally make him a martyr," Ilena responds, and I let out a sigh of frustration.

"How do you suggest we deal with this then, General," Katlyn says, using my sister's formal rank. My sister smiles at that, her rank brings pride to her.

Unlike so many nobles, like myself, Ilena actually earned her rank through her own efforts. She ran away from home to enlist in the Feralin Royal Military, and went through the usual military training, at the cost of a year in the Pits on our mother's orders.

She was in the same class as Katlyn, that being how they met. Of course, my sister had been using an assumed identity, and as I understand it when Katlyn found out Ilena had been lying, her response had been less than friendly. After getting over the initial shock though, they became extraordinarily close.

"I have some plans, but... I'd rather not repeat them, so, maybe we should call a war council. Rhyfelwr and the Brein, they should be there too," Ilena tells us.

She starts to get up, a little bit shakier than usual, but after all she's been through, after all she just forced herself to go through again, I shouldn't expect anything more than usual from her. Ilena steadies herself, with that lethal grace that makes her such a good spy and soldier. Katlyn passes her the crutches, and Ilena places them under herself.

"I need some fresh air," she says, and makes to leave the room. Katlyn follows, opening the door, I nod to her to say that she can go, and she leaves with my sister.

Amalia and I are left alone.

"You never knew that did you?" Amalia inquires of me.

"No... I suspected, but it was all kept under wraps by my mother," I explain. "I never knew how awful my uncle could be, I didn't know what a monster he was and I don't know how I didn't see it."