As Tagon had predicted, his warriors had been efficient and a little before noon the day after, Mugwang had knocked at his leader's office to inform him they had found the woman who had ordered the attack in the forest and they had thrown her into a cell. Tagon ordered his warrior to bring her to him and the latter bowed and went out to execute the order he had just received.
Enoria was about to say something but Tagon did it before her: "you will question her, I haven't forgotten the favor you asked for, but you need to remember that we need to know if you were the target or if Saya was, if she knows about me and if she has other warriors so you'll have to control yourself no matter what she says, does or had done before."
"Don't worry, I know how to control myself," she replied.
"The one whose heart you ripped out would disagree," he teased.
"Lucky me he can't disagree since he is dead."
He almost laughed at the dark humor but he restrained himself and just went back to his documents the time for his warriors to execute their order.
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The time for the warriors to bring the woman to them seemed like an eternity to Enoria and it was when she had just sighed very loudly in a way that betrayed her impatience that a knock was heard at the door.
Mugwang had come back with Yeonbal, other comrades behind them, and they were supporting the woman who had been hurt in the capture and had fainted. They threw her on the floor in front of Tagon's desk, bowed and left as they were asked.
"Is she already dead?" Enoria asked in a sigh as she approached the woman, squatted near her and carefully pulled back the hair that was hiding her face. She didn't hide her surprise when she thought about how familiar the face of the woman was to her. "That would be nonsense," she murmured to herself as she quickly checked her ankles.
"What are you looking for?" Tagon asked.
Seeing the tattoos on the woman's ankles, Enoria just let herself sit on the floor, she passed a hand on her hair and the expression on her face betrayed a total lack of understanding of the situation.
"What's wrong?" Tagon inquired, "do you know her?"
"That's nonsense, that can't be, it's impossible," Enoria whispered as she shook her head.
"Do you know her?" he repeated.
"I- I am not sure, I am quite confused right now but, funnily enough, I think that woman could actually be my mother," she answered with a shaky voice as she looked at Tagon in a way that was almost asking him what she was supposed to do now.
Tagon was confused, he thought her mother was dead, at least that what was she told him. But she was as confused as he was, she thought she was dead too. But she was her mother, she was almost sure of it, her name was Ah-Ra, which would have made sense with the way her warriors were calling her. The reason she was almost sure of it was because in her tribe, they all had an animal that was supposed to represent them, like a spiritual guide. They got this animal tattooed on their right ankle. Her mother's one was a snake just like the tatoo the woman on the ground had. When women had children they got tattooed again on the left ankle, each band representing one child. The woman had three bands meaning three children, Enoria's two brothers had died during the Great Hunt. The coincidences would have been big if she wasn't her mother.
"So what are you going to do?" Tagon asked.
"I don't know, I guess it will depend of her answers," she replied as she finally get a hold on herself, stood up and took back her place near Yangcha, "option one, if she is really my mother and she had nothing to do with the attack or with that group of assholes, you will not lay a single finger on her."
"And option two?"
"Option two, if she is responsible for the attack and the leader of that gang, you won't lay a single finger on her because I will kill her myself for what she and her group have done to me long ago," she answered with a coldness that even surprised Tagon.
The Union Leader just nodded at that, he didn't mind what she was going to do with that woman, he just needed answers on what she knew and what she ignored and that, he was sure Enoria would ask her when the woman would have regained consciousness.
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The wait was difficult for Enoria, she was pacing back and forth in the room to calm herself down and that time, Tagon hadn't made a single remark about it.
The confusion and incomprehension were written on her face, it was obvious hundreds of questions were going in and out of her head and the view of her struggling was difficult to bear for Yangcha who could show nothing and so, even though the situation made him kind of nervous as well.
Tagon had focused on his documents but he glanced at Enoria from time to time as the atmosphere in the room was probably as tense as she was.
Enoria actually didn't pay attention to any of them, she needed answers but she wasn't sure the answers she would get would please her and so, she was waiting for the woman to regain consciousness while imagining scenarios in her head that didn't all please her.
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When the woman on the ground finally began to regain consciousness, Enoria exchanged a look with Tagon who gave her a silent approval for her to start the interrogation.
Enoria took a deep breath before she approached the woman who had sat on the ground, still not fully aware of her surroundings, and she squatted near her. "Who are you?" she asked, her voice as neutral as she could.
The woman didn't answer right away, she took some time to snap out of it, then she raised her head, looked directly into Enoria's eyes and then laughed mockingly at her face. "As if you didn't know already," she started as she calmed herself, "my dear daughter, don't you recognize the woman who gave birth to you?" she continued before she laughed again as an hysterical person would.
Enoria felt tears coming to her eyes, torned between anger, disappointment, incomprehension and a sort of betrayal. "You are supposed to be dead."
"And as you can see, I am not," she replied in a laugh.
The Igutu woman clenched her fist, if it was truly her mother she had in front of her, she was nothing like the one she had known and she probably had lost her mind with the years passing. "How? How did you survive?"
Ah-Ra talked easily, answering Enoria's questions without difficulty. While laughing, she told her daughter that she didn't have to survive the attack of the Daekans during the Great Hunt because she was always safe. Actually, she was the one who gave the position of the tribe to one of the Daekans. Enoria's father was really good at hiding their tribe, the Daekans would have never find them without a little help, so, Ah-Ra had met secretly with Mubaek. In exchange of the tribe's position, she was free to start a new life in Arthdal, after all she was a Saram.
Surprised could be seen on Enoria's face and she quickly exchanged a glance with Tagon but his expression showed that he didn't know what Ah-Ra was talking about, or at least he didn't remember Mubaek having told him about that meeting.
Ah-Ra explained that her new husband had opened her eyes and that she regretted not having realized sooner that the blue-blooded and the Sarams weren't supposed to mix up. She was now convinced that the Sarams were the only worth walking on Arth and that those with blue blood as well as those of mixed blood were monsters with whom they should never be assimilated with.
"A monster? Just because my blood is different from yours doesn't make me a monster," Enoria replied with gritted teeth, "how can you say such things when you had three children with a Neanthal?"
"I was forced to," Ah-Ra answered.
"You are lying, that is not true," Enoria replied, "you loved him and he loved you, don't you remember?"
"I remember having to hide because you were hunted, I remember we couldn't settle anywhere because we always had to flee, it was only a question of time before the Daekans found us. I didn't want to die."
"And so you sold us to buy yourself a new life?" Enoria asked with gritted teeth.
"They didn't want me! I am a Saram, my blood is my protection, I am superior to you! Why would I have died because of all of you? That wouldn't have been fair! I didn't want to die, I don't want to die, you brought bad luck to us, you shouldn't have been born, you are a sin, you shouldn't exist, monster! You are a monster! Get away from me, cursed child!"
"You are completely insane," Enoria deplored.
"Am I?" Ah-Ra asked as she suddenly seemed to regain composure. An expression of disgust appeared on Ah-Ra's face and she suddenly split on the ground next to her daughter.
As much as she wanted to show nothing, Enoria's face was betraying her anger and her confusion. She took a deep breath trying to control herself, she tried to pretend she had not seen or heard what had just happened giving another chance to her mother to get a grip on herself as she thought she was talking nonsense. "Are you the one leading that group of tattooed men?"
Indeed, Ah-Ra confessed being the leader of the group her daughter had encountered and so, she was indeed the one who had given the order to attack in the forest. She had ordered them to kill Enoria because she feared to be found back, she feared for her actual family to be hurt for a past she regretted and denied.
She had talked with such coldness that Enoria felt a pang, she used to think they had been forming a family but now she wondered if she had not just been blind for half of her life. She remembered the laughs, the smiles, the happy moments and she couldn't help but to wonder if she had been imagining they were happy like they were or if her memories were distorted.
While her daughter was still digesting everything she had already heard, Ah-Ra continued: she thought that Enoria was a threat to her family because if someone was to know she had been associated with Neanthals and had Igutu children, she could get killed independently of the immunity Mubaek had given her years ago.
When the tribe was being wiped out, Ah-Ra had tried to flee to Arthdal, on the way she had encountered a group of slave traders, she had been captured but she had managed to turn it into an opportunity by seducing one of the traders to the point she had earnt her place as one of them. A few months after that, she had discovered, thanks to a young woman Enoria had met but whom the group had caught, that her daughter was alive and so, she had sent her men to take care of her. But to Ah-Ra's surprise, Enoria had unexpectedly survived and killed the majority of them and only four of her men and none of the women they had captured had come back. After that failed attack, Ah-Ra had lost track of Enoria until she had seen her in the streets of Arthdal and had decided to send more warriors, better trained, to not lose the opportunity to get rid of her again so that her link to Neanthals and Igutus would be definitively erased one and for all, but to her surprise, her daughter had survived again.
Once again, Ah-Ra looked at Enoria with a disgusted expression, she thought that only a monster could survive attacks of this importance.
Enoria stayed silent for a moment, words couldn't immediately come out from her mouth as she remembered the painful memories. "Were you really the one who had sent those men to me fifteen years ago?" Enoria asked with a shaky voice but Ah-Ra didn't reply and just smiled, confirming with a look that indeed, it was her, "do you know what they have done to me? Were you the one to order that?"
"I didn't give details, my order was to get rid of you, what happened before was none of my business."
"How can a mother do that? How can a mother send a bunch of men to poison, kidnap, and torture her own daughter? Do you know what they were planning to do to me if the poison they gave me didn't stop having an effect because of my Igutu blood? What did I ever do to you to deserve that?" she questioned, with a mix of sorrow and anger in her voice.
- You survived so, see it as a positive experience, it made you stronger.
Enoria was speechless by the violence of her mother's words. The mother she remembered was a gentle, open-minded and beautiful woman the exact opposite of the woman who was in front of her and she wondered what exactly had happened to her to have become such a hateful person. "A positive experience? Stronger? Don't make me laugh," she said as she grabbed her mother's chin violently, "I was a girl, I didn't need to be stronger, I needed to be safe. You took my safety away. The members of the tribe and I were innocent. You are the real monster, you betrayed us."
"I am not the only one who betrayed the tribe," Ah-Ra said.
Her words made Enoria freeze and for a moment she wondered if one of the men she had not managed to catch when she was sixteen could have seen and reported things they weren't supposed to know about before attacking her.
"Look who you are working for now," Ah-Ra continued, "you are working for the one who ordered the tribe to be wiped out, aren't you ashamed? Do you think your father would be prou-"
"Don't you dare mention him, you have no right to do so," Enoria said as she wrapped her hand around her neck and tightened the grip.
"You should have died with him," she managed to say despite the lack of air.
"Well, it's really unfortunate for you that I haven't because there is no way you are going to see the sunrise again."
"Enoria," Tagon interrupted, "even if you chose your second option, don't forget we need to know exactly what she knows."
"I haven't forgotten," Enoria said as she released the grab she had on her mother's neck.
"I won't say more than what I already said," Ah-Ra mocked.
"Don't be so certain. I don't care what I have to do to know everything I need to know. Ah, and you probably already talked too much for your family's sake, for someone who wants to protect them you are doing a really poor job," she said before she stood up and turned to Tagon. She asked for permission to give an order to one of his warriors, permission that Tagon granted, then she called for Mugwang who, reluctantly, listened to the request Enoria whispered in his ear then he left to execute what he had been asked to do.
"What are you going to do?" Ah-Ra asked with a bit of nervosity.
"I am going to make you regret what you did to the tribe and to me," Enoria explained, adding that she was going to make her suffer so much that she would beg her to kill her. She turned to look at Ah-Ra and the spine-chilling look in her eyes made the latter shiver.
" You won't do that, I have two young boys, you are not capable of hurting them, I am your mother, I know you are not capable of doing such things."
Enoria laughed at those words, a cynical laugh that turned Ah-Ra's blood to ice. "But you see, Mother, I am not the girl you knew anymore just like you are not the woman I used to know. The women we used to be, they have both died that day and so, today, I am gonna give you a good reason to call me a monster and you'll watch me destroy your family like you have destroyed mine."
She had talked in a slow murmure that had penetrated Ah-Ra's ears like a poison spreading.
"I am going to kill you," Ah-Ra said.
"Would you like to try? Here," she continued as she unsheathed her dagger and put it into Ah-Ra's hand before she stood up and took a step back, "try if that's what you want."
The lack of hesitation with which her mother attacked her made Enoria's blood boil. She had wished she would come back to her senses, she had hoped for her not to give her a reason to really kill her and it hurt her to realize that she had been wrong, her mother was gone for good. She didn't allow her to give her a single scratch, disarmed her more than easily and then, when Ah-Ra tried to attack her with bare hands, Enoria injured her three times with the dagger she had got back: one time for her father, one time for her older brother and one more for her little brother. Then she slapped her so hard that Ah-Ra fell back on the floor and that, that was for the rest of her tribe members she had buried one by one with her bare hands and because she was more than upset at the moment. She didn't have any more doubts about what she was going to do, that was an option two and nothing would make her change her mind.
Ah-Ra was taken away and put back into a cell the time for the Daekans sent after her family to succeed in their mission.
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"Are you ok?" Tagon inquired, once he was once again alone with just Enoria and Yangcha.
"No, I am not," the Igutu woman replied, "I feel like tearing her body apart but as you can see, I am controlling myself."
"Are you really going to kill her? She is your mother, your heart could wav-"
"Waver? No Tagon, that will definitely not happen, I will stick that dagger in her heart and watch her catch her last breath just like she saw me catching my first one."
Tagon didn't reply to that, he had always appreciated determined women but he could feel that that situation was hurting Enoria more than she would confess it. He kind of saw himself in her, he hadn't wavered either the day he had killed his own father not too long ago, or even the day he had come with the plan to put Atturad in fire despite knowing his mother would probably be burnt alive too, but it didn't mean what he had done hadn't touched him. Maybe Ah-Ra had been right, just like Sanung had been, maybe they were monsters who should have never been born, mistakes who needed to be erased but to do so, they would have to be defeated by someone stronger than they were and that, he didn't see it happening before a long time. They were Igutus, they were maybe monsters but at least strong ones.
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As hard as it had been for him, Yangcha had stayed impassive when Enoria was confronting her mother. He had wished to be able to step in, to make that woman -who was nothing like the one who had been described to him- shut up instead of hurting the one he cared about. He had wanted to take Enoria into his arms when he had seen her distressed but he couldn't.
When he saw Tagon focusing on what he was reading, Yangcha took advantage of the short moment it was giving him to brush his hand on Enoria's. He couldn't comfort her the way he wanted but he wanted her to know he was there to support her.
The touch hadn't needed to be longer, he had quickly withdrawn his hand but she knew what he wanted to tell her with that short gesture she appreciated. I am here, I know it's hard but hold on tight, she didn't need to hear him saying those words, she just knew he was telling them to her. And, in the silence of the room, she found some comfort in the fact he was just next to her.
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A moment later, Mugwang knocked again on the door. He looked at Tagon then at Enoria and informed them that his unit had successfully accomplished the mission they had been given.