This chapter has been modified to fit Wattpad.
***
Half the time, we're dealing with the aftereffects of the Eight's evil, the way it ripples out and inspires. Not all evils are cut from the same fetid cloth, but the greater evils of the Eight are able to elevate the baser evils of those around them. The Eight must be fought, yes, but the evil left in their wake must be stopped as well.
-The Necromancer's Notes, Mission Statement, Section 3
***
9 Years Ago
***
Skaria crouched down, hiding from the pool of lamp light. The man in front of her, a guard of the Corpus Veritorum, remained oblivious to her presence. That was good, that was very good. Almost a miracle, seeing as he didn't notice the half-dozen guards in a combination of plate and mail behind her. They had wrapped some of their armor in rags to muffle the noise, but even with that, they still were too noisy for Skaria's liking.
He turned, moving back to a doorway, and that was when Karik'ar move. All she saw was his broad-shouldered frame keep low to the ground, in the dyed grey canvas shirt he wore. One second the man was trying to peer through the darkness with a weak flame, shivering inside its lantern. The next, Karik'ar had wrapped his meaty forearm around his neck. He didn't crush hard enough to do any permanent damage, but it was more than the man could fight. His limbs kicked out sporadically, dancing as he struggled for a breath.
After a few seconds, he went slack. Karik'ar kept choking him just to make sure, but after about five seconds, the Kai'Draen released him. He locked eyes with Skaria.
It was her fault that they were in this mess. They would walk free if they fought alongside the guards, at the front of the assault, the first to die in a fight.
It was efficient. If they died, then possible criminals were dispatched by fate in the course of dispatching other criminals. If they lived, they had proved themselves to the Caeldari guards by putting their lives on the line, and were useful (well, at the very least not harmful) to the populace of Caeldar.
The guards -a dozen and half of them- were clustered behind them. They had crept through the darkness of the sewers, following a path determined by several surveys into the labyrinthine, tomb-like sewer passageways. Blood kept washing out, too much to be some sick man's contribution to the sewer. This much blood came from a dead body. Probably several.
"Move." Skaria and Karik'ar moved forward, every step the mercenary took making her wince. Her hobnailed boots scraped against the flagstones of the sewers. Any small noise could betray them. And if Skaria wanted to get out of here alive and in one piece, she would have to use that element of surprise.
They crept through the door, making sure their equipment didn't scrape on the doorframe. The guards, one at a time, followed them through. They flanked the two of them, their impersonal, mass-forged helmets and uniforms making them look surreal, like some army of identical beings, different only in height.
Skaria stared at the heart of the Corpus Veritorum.
This lair was something dreamed out of a scholar's blackest nightmare. An operating table, with grates emptying into water channels, dominated the room, and Skaria saw someone on it, a hooded figure ministering to them, no doubt with a scalpel or bone saw. Worse yet, Skaria saw the grate at the base of the altar-like operating table weeping a thin stream of dark blood.
Around them, suspended on cord-like chains, dozens of wooden boards hung, with yellowed papers and inked black diagrams staring down at the victim on the table. The chamber, somehow, was taller, threw stories high. Large columns supported the ceiling, and lanterns cast overlapping light across the hooded figures around the operation table. And in the shadow of those columns, the guards stared at the scene.
"An old reservoir," one of the guards said. That explained it. The city of Saefel Caeld had few wells, and got most of its water from melting glaciers. Since Caeld was often too cold for the glaciers to melt naturally, reservoirs and melting chambers were set up to melt the glacial ice. Not all of them were in constant use, and they made a good hideout.
"Is that enough proof to engage?" Skaria whispered.
The guard next to her nodded. "Yep." He slowly drew his sword from the sheathe, slow enough to hide the rasp of the blade on leather. "Men," he said in only a faintly louder breath, "we attack on count of three."
"One." One of the members must have heard them. His dark, peaked hood turned towards them.
"Two." He started walking, grabbing a sword handle protruding from his belt, breath misting in front of him.
"Three." With that, twenty people charged out of the shadows, swords shining in the lantern light.
One swung at Skaria, and only her lightning fast reflexes let her keep her head. She brought up her blade as the cloaked Corpus Veritorum member swung his heavy blade down at her. Fortunately, at the angle she held her viper blade, his heavier sword slid down the length of steel. Her arm went numb from the shock of the blow. He was surprisingly strong for a homicidal surgeon.
She sidestepped his next blow -he had little, if any, discipline with his blade- and rushed past him. Her numb arm would be useless. Time for her knife. Her left hand whipped to her side, wrenching her knife free, and she struck, punching through the fabric, feeling it sink through cloth and flesh and grating on bone. She yanked it out and struck again before he could ready his own blade, again and again, until the dark cloth glistened with blood.
He sank to the ground, bleeding out onto the stones, and Skaria moved onto the next one. She could picture nothing, nothing but Amshara's deformed face, staring back at her, as if she was accusing Skaria. More. More had to die. It wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be over until every one of them was dead or rotting in jail. Then, it would be over in truth.
Then Skaria would have peace.
But that peace would be bought with bloodshed. Slaughter. Death. She rushed at another member, about to stick his sword in one of the guards. Her blades flashed in unison, her viper blade piercing his back above his heart, the knife sinking into the small of his back. It cut his spinal cord in three pieces, and he dropped like a stone. She felt hot blood on her face, burning as hot as her wrath. The guard seemed shocked by her, but that wasn't important now. He was superfluous, useless to her. Karik'ar, however, wasn't.
She saw her friend facing down two of them, his giant blade keeping them back. He was skilled; the Kai'Draen didn't use brute force alone to overpower their guards. But it would only be a matter of time before one of them scored a lucky hit.
And that time came.
The member's blade tore into his shirt, and when it came out, the length of steel was stained red. That was it. The last straw. No more of her friends would die by these monsters. She charged in, gathering her power. "Stop bleeding!" she commanded, throwing her hand towards Karik'ar.
The stain on the rags of his shirt stopped growing, and one of his opponents screamed. Blood welled at the seams of his fingernails, down his nose, and he wept the crimson fluid from his eyes, the whites of which were now red. He screamed, a wet gargle, before thrashing on the ground in a spreading pool of red.
His friend might have been about to scream, but Karik'ar's massive blade erupted out of his back, and he slumped over, the scream dying in his lungs. The Kai'Draen turned his blade to the side, and the dead body slid off it and landed with a wet thud.
More members of the Corpus Veritorum poured from shadowy openings, blades drawn. Skaria didn't think. She acted purely on instinct. Grabbing the small bottle from one of the pouches on her bandolier, she hurled it at the first of the advancing Corpus members.
There was the crack of breaking glass, a louder bang as the volatile chemicals mixed inside, and then a fwoosh as sulfurous clouds choked the still advancing Corpus Veritorum members, weaving through their ranks, choking and suffocating them with... something foul-smelling, that was all that Skaria knew about it.
The man who had sold her the bottle had called it a "blistersmoke bomb." He said the stuff in that gas tended to have slow dispersion rates after it exploded, and it irritated the skin enough to induce blistering. Skaria shuddered to think of what inhaling it did. Non-fatal, the man had said, but definitely unpleasant.
They collapsed, gasping at the foul fumes. Others surrounded them, taking their place, but they breathed in the blistersmoke and joined their compatriots on the floor.
Soon, those that weren't dead were on the ground, hands outstretched, not moving for fear of death from the guards. They were cowards, the lot of them. Of course they weren't going to move or risk their life. It took courage to do that, and to have courage, you needed a heart. And seeing what these people did to the innocent, Skaria knew they had no heart.
The guards rounded them up, and one of them, who had stayed back during the fight, opened a burlap sack he had been carrying, out of which he pulled dozens of chains and shackles. They had come prepared to take them alive. "They don't deserve that luxury," Skaria snarled, stepping toward the prisoners.
"Stop." One of the guards grabbed her hand with an ice-cold steel gauntlet. "They're going to hang for this. They'll face justice."
"Justice?" Skaria pointed to the dead body on the operating table. "They should end up like her. That would be justice, not this," she said. The Corpus members huddled back in fear of her. Good. Those soulless worms should be afraid of her.
"No." The guard set his hand on his sword. "That is not how we work. We keep the law, end life at the execution block, unless the criminal tries to fight back." Skaria glowered at his impersonal helmet. "And seeing as I've conscripted you in community service, you're going to obey that law. Is that clear?"
Skaria saw herself drawing her blade and letting it taste his life blood. She saw herself in the middle of a mountain of their corpses. She might be killed, but so be it. She would die fighting.
And then a small voice in her head told her otherwise. She moved her hand off the pommel of her sword. "Fine. But they deserve to hang."
"And hang they will." The guard stared her down, almost daring her to fight, to defy him. Either that, or they were trying to warn her, to prevent her from doing something stupid. She couldn't tell at this point. Rage and vengeance clouded her mind, begging her to end their miserable excuses of lives.
She smothered it, pushed the hatred down beneath the placid waters of self control. There would be time to let it burn, time to watch them suffer for their crimes.
But until then, she bade her time, and turned away. "We're leaving," she said to Karik'ar. "I count this bloody debt fulfilled." She didn't ask the guard if her debt was fulfilled; she told him, and made it clear she wasn't going to take any different answer.
Karik'ar's wound hadn't started bleeding again, but Skaria didn't want to risk it. They were headed home, free from the guards' quest, free from their quest.
The Corpus Veritorum lay, shackled, bleeding, or dead, but their specter still lingered in her heart.
***
It had been four days since the last of those monsters hastild been hanged, and the rage and anger hadn't gone away.
Karik'ar was itching his wound. His cut had been shallow, and hadn't disturbed the scars around his body. "You alright?" he asked.
Skaria grunted. They hadn't left her alone. They still haunted her thoughts, stalking through her mind, tormenting her. They still lingered, dredging up the vile and terrible emotions that came from the deep parts of the soul. They were born out of the abyss of despair.
Amshara wasn't at peace. She still stared at Skaria, accusatory. They're dead! Skaria shouted to her lifeless face. All of them! Every last one of them, every one, is dangling from the gallows or buried in a pauper's grave. Wasn't that what you wanted?
There was no answer. The face just stared back at her, accusing her. The murderers were dead, those lifeless eyes seemed to say, but that didn't do anything for her. Amshara was still dead, and no matter how much blood was spilled in her name. No amount of death would bring her back.
Karik'ar rose, checking under his bandages, where they showed through the neckline of his shirt. They had a line of red down the blanched white cotton fabric. "I'm going to see if there's anything to eat down there." He rose. "You want something?"
"Not hungry," Skaria snapped at him.
"Alright then, no need to be angry," Karik'ar said defensively. For someone of a supposedly warlike race, who was supposed to be consumed with bloodlust and rage, Karik was calmer and gentler than most humans she knew. He leaned down, crouching next to her. "You know, you should spend some time with people, not just me."
Skaria glared at him.
"Or you could sit up here and mope, your choice." Karik'ar rose. "See you later," he said, before leaving the room, and closing the door behind him.
There was nothing, nothing left, just Amshara's face staring back at her, accusing her. Her body was dead, but her spirit lived on, and that spirit tormented her. You could have saved me, it seemed to say, but you didn't.
It hurt her, hurt worse than being stabbed (and Skaria had been stabbed before. It was no picnic, mind you). It would have been better had she felt physical pain, because then she could understand it. She could comprehend the pain she now felt. It would have been better, it would have been understandable, if it was a physical wound, a bloody rend or tear in her flesh, instead of the ache that hurt her deep in her soul.
She kept the door closed, was quiet. It hadn't worked. Her crusade against the Corpus Veritorum was meant to end the guilt. By killing them, it was meant to end the shame, to kill the guilt inside her soul. Skaria had done that. She had slain the Corpus Veritorum. She had squashed those miserable vermin under the heel of her boot, but the pain in her soul hadn't gone away.
She took a deep breath. There was nothing left for her, nothing but the pain and the void. And, maddened by her pain, Skaria chose the void.
Author's Note: This deals with touchy subjects, and is in no way meant to glorify the acts depicted within. If you or a loved one are considering self-harm or suicide, reach out. Seek help. You are not alone, and there are millions of people out there willing and wanting to help you. Whatever darkness you may be in, do not believe the lie that you'll never be free, and reach out.