Magi: Jaeyria Lightwood

Task #6

She opened her eyes as sunlight streamed over their bed. Her eyes closed again then opened once more as she shook off the lethargy of sleep. Eiridan lay beside her, the sheets tangled around his waist, one arm thrown over his face as he slept. She blushed, remembering the ways they'd helped each other forget.

Slipping out of bed quietly, she found a fresh set of clothes on the floor inside the door. She picked hers up and pulled them on before going to the window to look out over Komesen. Outside, though the sun was shining, the scene was desolate and bleak.

Ashes and dead bodies littered the ground in the outer bailey and on the field where the battle started. The siege engines of Jahad's army were shattered, and an iron-clad dragon lay in the outer courtyard, dead. The outer walls had, miraculously, been destroyed right along with the outer curtain wall's gates. The moat lay dry, and it was filled with dead bodies as well. Scarlet flooded every orifice.

In each place she looked, she saw only the blood of those who had lost their lives in this fool's quest. Blood splattered the outer curtain wall, the inner curtain wall, and the grass. It sparkled dully in the brilliant sunshine of summer, a clear indication of the chaos that had erupted the night before. The bloodshed must have continued far into the night.

Far below, she saw the bodies and the results of her choices. Last night, her choice had seemed like the best one. The only one. Now she wasn't so sure. The darkness in her said that this was the price she must pay in order to have what she wanted. The little bit of good still in her screamed back that this was wrong. That she made a mistake, and it was too great to be forgiven this time.

She drew runes in the air, stepping through a portal to go down onto the battlefield. For whatever sadistic reason, she needed to see the disasters she'd helped to bring about firsthand. Head held high, she swept past the guards and clean-up crews that walked throughout the city. No one dared stop her, and many scuttled out of her way, their eyes averted.

With a grim smile, she realized that the destruction she'd wrought the night before had gotten around to others in the keep and Komesen. Anyone with a conscience left would've been sickened by what they'd done to get here. She had chosen to abandon hers, so she squelched the voice inside that yelled at her that it was wrong.

But as she walked through the destruction that she had enabled, her stomach turned. She'd seen death plenty of times. Her parents died in a spell gone wrong. Her parents died because she lost control of the shadows inside of her. She watched her little brother die, brutally killed by a rampaging chimera.

Never, however, had she seen this much death in one place. Blood made the ground slippery, and her boots splashed through puddles of it. She took it all in, drinking in the details. Why? Because she wanted this to be burned into her memory for the rest of time. Was there a purpose to it? Perhaps, but she wasn't sure what it was. She just knew that she needed to have it engrained in her mind so that she would never forget what she'd done. So she'd never forget that choices had consequences. So that she would have the strength to do whatever was needed.

The regret hit, however, when she ran across the bodies of young boys and girls. They were only teens, if that. Their markings labeled them as Jahad's rebels, and they'd been brutally cut down. A boy with sandy hair and yellow eyes had an arrow through his throat and a spear in his stomach. His yellow eyes stared sightlessly at the sky. Beside him, a girl lay with outstretched hand, her mouth open in a silent scream. Her throat had been slit, and dried blood caked her uniform. Dirt crusted her hair, and blood streaked her face. A handprint stood out on her face, smeared and browned.

You did this. You let Vaxon do this to children. Because you chose surrender over fighting, you harmed others. Your words... Those two little words, I surrender, killed these children. You are evil.