"You called for me sir." Devane glanced up from his paperwork to see a jittery injured guard at his door. The advisor's reputation spread like fire amongst the ranks, calling him a force of a man as dangerous as he was quick to pass judgment, and the young soldier coward before the truth of the tales.
"Yes," Devane answered, surmising the man in one glance. Not very tall, not very muscular, average all around. Someone whose corpse would get mixed up with the hundreds of other dead bodies that looked just like his on a battlefield. "You are Yuri aren't you?"
The soldier nodded but stood awkwardly with his hands at his side. Kurr had double the confidence and less than a third of this man's body weight.
"Please sit down," Devane said, gesturing to one of the open chairs by the fire.
The soldier took his orders, and Devane prepared two glasses of wine.
"I just need a general report of the rebellion," Devane said, taking the seat opposite the man as he passed him a drink.
Yuri accepted the glass apprehensively. "The kids all hid in one room, and one of them called out for help, and when I came to make sure they were ok they ambushed me." The soldier explained, looking down at the wine but not risking rudeness by drinking first. "Then they tried to escape but the other guards got to them."
Devane tissed. "How stupid."
"Right!" Yuri exclaimed, relieved to see the advisor's agreement. "We do so much for those children and they try to repay us by running away? Where do they even think they would go? Back to the street?"
"How stupid," Devane repeated cutting off the soldier's excitement. "Do you think I would have to be to believe your story?"
All of Yuri's sudden cheerfulness flushed away along with the pallor of his face. "What do you mean?"
Devane strutted over to the soldier and pulled down his shirt, revealing the long gash Kurr had given him.
"That scar is healing nicely. You're lucky to get away with only the one after you've caused so many."
Yuri grabbed back his shirt. He thought about lying but no man could lie under Devane's gaze, instead, he got angry. "Isn't that what soldiers do?" Yuri spitefully demanded. "It was what I was taught to do when I was in those orphanages not too long ago. When those same scars were given to me and my friends."
"I know the cycle well," Devane interjected, recognizing the all to a common pattern. "When it happened to you, I bet you felt small and weak." The advisor walked behind the soldier, his hand trailing along his shoulder. "I bet you wanted to see what it felt like to be on the other end of that abuse." Yuri looked forward to the fire but felt only the ice coldness of Devane's hand. "Tell me, did it make you feel powerful? Did it heal that broken part of you? Or did it only break more children?"
"So what if that's all I did?" Yuri suddenly snapped as tears doctored his eyes, the reaction of a man that kept too much bottled inside for too long. "You're training them to die for a meaningless war so you can all keep your power. So what if I've hurt a few? You're planning to kill thousands of children!"
"You're right," Devane conceded. "Of the two of us, there is no doubt whose evil outweighs who's. With the scales tremendously tipped to my side."
Yuri's shoulders somewhat relaxed thinking his punishment would be lenient because of Devane's understanding.
"Tell me though, what is it you would have been if you had the choice?" Devane inquired finishing his wine. "Would you be the hero? Like the one in the stories that protect the children from the monsters? Like the monster that attacked you when you were a child?"
Yuri looked at his reflection in the empty glass of the advisor. "I would have been good." The soldier whimpered, almost crying as he thought back to the child he was before he was ruined by one particularly evil guard. "If my monster didn't kill all the good inside of me when I was young."
Devane took slow small steps back towards the fire. "And so what are you now? What is it you grew into?"
"I'm not evil." Yuri feebly pleaded. "I didn't grow up to be evil."
"No." Devane sympathized, turning around. "You grew to be controlled by it." The advisor slashed his hand out in front of him in one quick movement. The thud of the soldier's head hitting the floor proceeded his body collapsing on-top of it by a few seconds.
And the only way to stop evil from growing is to cut it out at the root, Devane thought before he called the guards back.
"Take him away." Devane carelessly commanded as he sat back down at his desk.
Just like Yuri, the young soldiers who carried out their comrade's body had heard of the reputation of the right hand to the king. A ruthless, unfeeling, warrior that had the sharpness of a scholar and the fighting skills of a legend. And the rumors would only grow with the addition of another dead body at his feet.
Devane pulled forward the document he had been working on. A drop of blood smudged the corner leaving his fingerprint behind on the work. 8,215 deaths, he adjusted.