The Blood of Alchemy

Chapter 12: Vineas

Boros had made his way south, to the city of Vineas - the land of wine, and sweet summer grapes and plums. He had not made much progress in any of his redemption. He was starting to think it wasn't any God who had saved him. If it was, perhaps he would have helped find some sort of relief from the guilt he felt. His dreams were of fire, and shadowed hooded faces. It felt more like some eternal punishment, than having been saved. He found he was on some quest, but he didn't even know what he was looking for - so progress, for him, was quite hard to measure.

So far he had only used his time to enjoy some very nice bottles of wine, and enjoy some of the music of the city. Vineas was renowned for having some of the finest trained lute players, harpists and singers. Vineas had a night life that many sought to spend at least some time in throughout their life.

The exiled knight had managed to make out of Oros with a good sum of money by selling his possessions. At first he wasn't allowed to gather them, but he had snuck into his old house and managed to get a few things of value. He had once been wealthy. Knights in Oros were some of the wealthiest in the city, and he had lived in the castle, so he had saved most of it. His bag of rupees hadn't been there, though.

"Hey, you, five stones for this painting here, I did it myself." A merchant yelled to him as he was walking through the streets of the town.

"It is quite nice, but no thank you." Boros said.

The painting was of a view of the city from a nearby heights. It was truly beautiful, the man had painted the detail of the rural city extraordinarily. You could see the long rows of grapevines that surrounded the main city, and the farmers houses in the middle of them. The city walls looked to be just the right size, as if one were really looking into the city. The city walls of Vineas were only about four feet high and built of piled flat stones, not like a castle, but stacked loosely, and you could pull a stone out of the middle if you pulled hard enough. The detail he put into the slates of stone were marvellous, but Boros had no use for paintings.

Inside the city, in the painting, you could see the main fountain in the middle, and the three great golden statues that stood around it, one of a drachyn, one of a mammoth, and one of a great chimera. It was almost as if you could use the painting as a map of the city, he recognized the inn he was staying at, and the pub he was heading to, and the street corner he was on.

Boros continued to the pub, and unlatched the steel hinge of the the heavy wooden door. The pub was down a few steps, built underneath another inn. He was about to make his way down, until he heard a screaming of a mob coming down the street. "Unbeliever! Devil!" they roared, as the sound of the yells grew louder. "Scientist! Falsifier!" The crowd raged.

Boros saw who the mob was after, they had already gotten him. They were parading him around on top of a merchants cart, only the wheels had been ripped off of it, and it, and the man were covered with squashed fruit juices and seeds.

The man's face was quite swollen up, and had clearly been given a good beating. He seemed to have very little consciousness left in him, but his eyes caught Boros' and something in Boros snapped, seeing the helplessness on his ballooned face. It might have been different if the mob had been yelling, "murderer" or "rapist", but they hadn't been, and Boros knew he was getting his chance, right then, to do something.

One of the mob must have noticed Boros' look of rage, and said "He's a blasphemer, he is'. Been sayin' all sorts wicked stuff 'bout the Gods and planets. Dark magick, s'all he's got n'side 'is head."

Boros looked at the fat slob of a man, and then the mob carrying the helpless man, who had now just passed out. Boros turned his chin slowly down to his right shoulder, his lip giving a small twitch. He very slowly, with his eyes turned to diamond slits, moved his head back up, glaring with a frightening rage at the fat man.