Chapter Three: The Merciless Maiden
Gus let out a sigh as he stood above Xaphile's unconscious form, arm still extended and eyes grim with dismay. The horned boy lay face-down in the dirt, glossy black hair ruffling in the wind.
"I apologize, my Lady..." Gus eventually muttered. "Tis my fault this happened."
Ella refused to respond.
Breathing heavily, she grabbed her sword from where it had fallen, looking beyond enraged, but when she stalked towards Xaphile and lifted it high, Gus's heart nearly stopped since he knew she was going to kill him. With a gasp, he threw himself in the path of the sword just as the blade came down, falling to his knees and spreading his arms, praying she would halt.
Sure enough, her hand stopped just short of his face, pale eyes losing their reflective sheen, and he felt beads of sweat run down his forehead as he looked at the glinting blade hovering only an inch from his nose. Her shoulders heaved with every ragged breath, expression murderous.
"What are you doing?" she hissed through her teeth. "Move, Octavius... now."
Gus swallowed in the face of her murderous wrath, but refused to lower his gaze.
"My Lady," he hummed, trying to remain calm. "For once... show mercy."
Her eyes immediately widened in outrage and her wiry arm bulged, shaking violently.
"MERCY?!" she roared, making him flinch and causing birds everywhere to take flight. "TO A DEMON?! TO A BEAST?! NEVER!"
Her scream was so loud that it echoed off through the woods, reverberating multiple times. Gus swallowed again and gathered his courage before he wheedled, "Ella... in all my years, I have never once led you astray, you know this. Please, won't you at least lend me your ear?!"
"I'm amazed, Octavius," Ella growled, face crinkled with hate. "After what happened ten years ago, you are the last person I would have expected this from."
"Is that not more of a reason to heed my words?" he demanded. "Hear me out! I beg you!"
Her face contorted with fury and barely leashed rage, but she lowered the blade.
"If it were anyone but you, I could and would ignore this request for mercy, but as my guardian and my Prime Minister, I'm putting my trust in you," she muttered, digging the point of her sword into the ground and leaning on the pommel. "Speak. You have one minute to convince me not to cut this filthy creature's head off."
Gus grimly nodded and said, "this... boy... is different from any demon I've ever seen."
"Different?" Her eyes narrowed. "Different in what way?"
"He saved my life, my lady," Gus explained, lowering his head. "He refused to leave me behind when we were surrounded by the boar demons. Even though the odds were against him, he fought against the entire swarm with his bare hands just to protect me from them."
"Preposterous," she snapped, glaring down at Xaphile's curved horns. "I don't believe it."
"Tis the truth!" Gus exclaimed, incensed. "Trust me, I would not have believed it, either, had he not done so before my very eyes, and what's more... he is either unbelievably good at mimicking human emotion, or... or he can truly feel emotion."
Ella stiffened and with a whoosh, she jerked the sword out of the dirt and held it against the unconscious boy's neck, glaring dangerously into his eyes. Her irises were glassy and cold, and he knew that if he said the wrong thing, she would kill him then and there.
"Demons do not feel," she coldly reminded him. "Have you forgotten this?"
"No," Gus calmly shot back, fighting down his rising nausea. "That is why I was caught off guard by his strange mannerisms and behavior. He doesn't act like a demon in the slightest."
Her eyes narrowed, and she looked down at Xaphile's black hair for a moment before ramming her sword into the dirt and squatting down. Gus watched as she gripped his thin horns and turned his head, examining his features with genuine distrust before he rubbed his eyes.
He was beginning to feel lightheaded from the poison spreading throughout his body, but when he swayed, she looked up at his mauled arm and started digging around in her cloak. Moments later, she pulled out a small glass vial and tossed it to him, watching as he snatched it.
"Drink that," she grumbled, going back to staring at Xaphile. "It'll stop the poison from spreading any further, but when we return, head to Amelia's shop and have her patch you up."
"I will... and thank you, I owe you my life," he grunted, and after uncorking the glass vial and downing the contents, the two of them were quiet for a while.
"This... creature," she eventually muttered, rolling back on her heels. "What did he want with me? Do you know?"
"No," Gus admitted, "but he definitely said a great many things that confused me, first being that you and he had been acquaintances for many years, and also, as strange as it was to hear it, that you had died several months ago."
"What?" she scoffed, frowning at him. "Humans don't associate with monsters, much less befriend them. That much should be obvious, even to a bizarre creature like this. And it should be common knowledge that I'm very much alive. I'd never let myself die, for any reason."
Gus fell into an uncomfortable silence for a moment.
"That is, in truth, the biggest reason I am begging for you to show mercy," he murmured. "I cannot help but feel that he truly believed that you had died, My Lady. The expression I saw didn't just touch his face, it touched his eyes, and it touched them so deeply and painfully that he genuinely reminded me of Marty Crawford for a few seconds."
Ella blinked, eyebrow twitching.
Gripping Xaphile's dark hair and lifting his head up, she leered at his features, nose wrinkling.
"I don't know this beast," she sneered. "To think, he put his filthy hands on me..."
Gus winced when she looked down at his horns with a malevolent expression of disgust, but to his surprise, she actually dropped him again and stood up.
Walking over to her sword, she jerked it out of the dirt once again and carefully wiped it clean of the blood coating the blade, sliding it into the sheath strapped to her waist; then she snatched her daggers and sheathed them within her cloak. He watched as she dragged her hood up and turned, planting a hand on her hip.
"Well?" she snapped, tapping her foot. "Grab it. I've decided not to kill it. Are you happy?"
Gus immediately ran a hand through his hair, sighing in relief.
"Ella, thank you. Thank you heeding my words and for sparing him."
"Who said anything about sparing him?" she coldly inquired. "You're taking this beast back to the village as a prisoner. He'll make a good display, at the very least."
That made him pause, and for a second he had to backtrack and process her words, but once he did he blankly looked up at her, lowering his hand. It took him a second to find his voice, but find it he did, and with a croak he asked, "you're going to make him into a display?"
"Yes," she bluntly sniffed, waving him along. "Come, Gus, and bring your new pet. The evening hour approaches, and I have yet to eat my supper."
A shiver ran down his spine, but he smothered it when something suddenly occurred to him.
"Hold on," he growled, suspiciously narrowing his eyes, "what were you doing out here, Ella? I wasn't supposed to be due back until later this evening, and you couldn't have known that my plans had changed or even that my life was in danger. And how did you know I was poisoned?"
She froze mid-step the moment he asked, but didn't turn around.
"One of the perimeter scouts happened to see your predicament and came riding back to the village to warn us about the danger you were in," she said lowly, shoulders stiff. "I grabbed a remedial antidote from Amelia's shop before running here because he saw you get bitten."
"You mean you came to save me?" Gus asked, eyebrows raising before he groaned. "My lady, we've been over this hundreds of times! You can't keep putting yourself in danger!"
"It's my job as Countess to protect those I govern," she snapped. "I grow weary of this! Let us be off!"
Gus blinked a few times when she stormed off, then sighed and stood up, grabbing his hiking pack before hefting Xaphile over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes.
"Sorry, lad," he grunted, shaking his head. "Looks like you're in quite a fix, now."
He then carried Xaphile's unconscious form down the road after the silver-haired maiden.
As they walked, distant walls began to take shape behind the trees... and eventually, they made it to a drawbridge. Ella took her hood off, folding her arms until someone standing on one of the wooden parapets looked down at them.
"Lower the bridge!" a distant voice called. "Lady Ella has returned!"
She folded her arms and waited while the bridge was lowered, but once the path was set in place, she swept across the wooden bridge without hesitation and entered the town, but when Gus cautiously followed her, many adults who saw Xaphile lying limply across his shoulders turned pale and ushered their children indoors.
Ella's lips twisted into a smirk as her eyes flicked around.
"This should be fun for a while," she murmured darkly. "They hate demons even more than I."
She came to a halt and folded her arms when a group of angry-looking men wearing chain-mail armor began to approach, trotting down the wooden stairs from atop the settlement's walls. Gus began to feel exceedingly worried when she chuckled.
"What are you going to do to him?"
The question came out of him before he could stop it, and although he wasn't really expecting her to respond, that's exactly what she did.
"I won't be doing anything," she sweetly informed him. "I'll let the villagers have some fun once it wakes up, then we'll lock it in one of the cages we keep in the marketplace."
Gus turned pale.
"What?" he breathed. "My lady, you can't be serious. Those cages are designed to hold small to medium sized game! Putting a lad like him in one of them would be inhumane!"
"It's not a human, orc, or elf, so being humane doesn't matter," she icily informed him. "You should know me well enough to know those words are no farce. In fact, since you're the one who decided to ask me to have mercy, I'm leaving the responsibility of taking care of that thing to you."
Just as she finished speaking, the captain of the guard walked up to them and Gus frowned deeply when they made eye contact. Captain Angelo Macintosh was his elder brother by five years, but the two of them were as different as night and day since he was introverted, simple-minded, and reserved with his thoughts: he preferred the solitude of the woods over the bustle of the town, and he was very sympathetic towards others.
Angelo, on the other hand, was extroverted, aggressive, he always made sure he knew what was going on within their country in order to advise Ella, and unlike Gus, he was merciless. The captain glared at Xaphile's long black hair, grey-green eyes lingering on his horns before those steely irises flicked to his claws and bizarre tail.
"What is the meaning of this, Lady Ella?" he demanded. "For what reason have you brought a demon into our sanctioned walls? I do not understand."
"Don't worry, Angelo, this one's harmless," she explained. "I decided to bring it back so the villagers could release a bit of anger. Plus, this one is actually rather exotic compared to the other monsters I've seen. At the very least, he'd make a decent live display."
The man's eyebrows rose into the helm he was wearing and for several seconds worry flashed behind his irises, but he quickly masked it and nodded, seeming to think about the idea.
"I can only assume you're doing this to raise everyone's spirits," he muttered, giving her a stoic, emotionless look. "This might come as a shock to the villagers. They might kill the creature if they are not watched closely as most of them still have a grudge against the demon race."
"Not my problem," she flippantly retorted. "If it lives, we'll toss it in a cage, if it doesn't we'll burn the body. Either way, one less demon to worry about."
The worried expression flashed through his eyes a second time.
"All right," Angelo sighed, grimly shaking his head. "One condition, though... we tie the damn thing up tight before letting the villagers do as they wish."
"I'll leave that to you," she snorted, giving him a salute. "I have to go make sure that the other soldiers are doing well with their training. Be sure to inform the village that the responsibility of caring for the creature falls to Octavius. He seems like the type who can handle it best."
Gus watched as she gave him a respectful salute and stiffly walked off, not looking back.
"Welcome back, Brother," Angelo grunted, eyeing him. "Set the monster down so I can bind it."
Gus winced and did as he was told, averting his eyes when his elder sibling pulled a rope off his belt and roughly jerked the unconscious boy's arms behind him. He watched as Angelo tied Xaphile's hands... then his ankles... then wound more ropes around his upper torso.
The other guards chuckled and nudged each other when he finally finished.
"Vex," Angelo grunted, glancing at one of the guards, who immediately stood at attention. "Start informing the citizens that tonight they have an opportunity to return their pain to one of the monsters making their lives so difficult. Tell them to meet us in the central plaza in one hour."
"Sir," the guard grunted, giving a salute before jogging off; as he did so, he began shouting the news loudly, drawing the attention of every person he passed. "TO ALL THE TOWNSFOLK OF CHISAGO VILLAGE! MEET IN THE CENTRAL PLAZA IN THE CENTER OF TOWN WITHIN ONE HOUR! THIS IS MANDATORY!"
"Eriker, Damien. Take the beast to the plaza."
With nods of approval, two more men hefted Xaphile's weight and roughly carried him away.
Gus watched them go with uneasy eyes.
"What happens now?"
Like before, the question escaped him before he could stop it, but Angelo turned and fixed him with a cold stare.
"You may leave until it's time for our unexpected festivities," he said, giving a slow smirk. "Good job, my brother. Lady Ella rarely gives anyone praise."
When he walked away, Gus watched him go with a bad feeling in his gut.
Wondering if he'd done the right thing.