Kings // c. griffin

Chapter Thirteen

The woods were stranger at night. Everything was big and full of shadows and loomed above Isaac's head like giants about to pounce on top of him. Every breeze was a grounder, every hoot of an owl was really the swish of an arrow rushing through the air. The hairs on the back of his neck stood, chilled, on end. Every step was taken with a shiver.

His cheeks hadn't dried from when he had cried earlier. Cried for the three hundred people killed. It wasn't fair, he thought, that they'd needed to die. The council should have been patient, waited at least another day. He was angry, he realized. Not sad or broken or disappointed, he was actually angry, something he avoided for convenience purposes. But he was furious at the council. They'd murdered people, innocent people. And he was positive that none of them had been Phoenicians, or anyone of even mild importance. It had most definitely been Waldenites, mechanics, plummers, janitors. Working people. His people.

In a fit a fury, he reared back and slammed his fists into the trunk of a tree. He let out an angry hiss from the pain and squeezed his eyes shut tight. Nobody deserved what those people had gotten, nobody. He pounded against the trunk. The were innocent. They had been innocent. His knuckled began to split open. The council had no right to do what they had done. Blood was running down his hands. He was innocent. He had always been innocent. His anger was numbing the burning pain in his hands. His parents had been horrible, and he was innocent.

A yell pushed his mouth open and the scream escaped from in between his lips, full of agony and rage and pain. He leaned forwards, his forearms pressing into the tree. He screamed, the sound echoing between the trees like a siren. His arms were scraped by rough bark as he slid down, falling to his knees. His curls rested against the trunk of he tree, his face parallel to the hard ground. The coolness of the dirt seeped through his pants and chilled his skin; he paid it no mind. His scream died out, the last of the noise echoing before finally fading. The forest around the boy was silent aside from the choked sobs coming from his mouth.

Three hundred people.

His parents.

His innocence.

All were dead.

He turned to push his back against the tree, thrusting his wet face into his warm and bloody hands, not caring about the red substance smearing across his eyelids or his forehead as he pressed them against his face, trying to push against the tears that were streaming down like rivers. His shoulders shook from the pent up rage, the hidden sadness, the fear he had pushed away. His knees quivered from the slight cold, his hands trembled against his cheeks. As he quaked and shuddered, even through the haze of his horribly distracted mind, Isaac came to a conclusions.

He'd always been broken, but Earth had shattered him.

His breathing was shaky and uneven as his hands were bruised and his knuckled were bleeding and his arms were scraped and his insides felt like they were twisting up on him, but he ignored the feeling of shrapnel in his heart and used his quivering hands to pull himself up off of the ground. He wasn't done crying, but he needed to keep moving. He staggered away from the tree, his first steps uneven before he found his balance and kept walking. His vision of the area around him was blurry as he shuffled through the forest. His shoulders were heavy with an emotional weight. He'd always been aware of it though now it seemed more present than ever, as if someone had tripled the weight and then doubled it again. His chest was being pulled towards the ground, and an invisible chain was bending his neck, his entire body slouched in what could have been an elegant curve if his movements hadn't been so forced and robotic. 

Sometime between the time he'd stood up and the time he began to hear voices, he'd hit his leg against something and was now walking with a bit of a limp. He couldn't remember getting hurt and it barely hurt, only enough to put a gimp in his stride. He was slow, but now he was hearing voices. He wasn't sure if it was grounders or the 100, or even if it was English they were speaking, but he recognized a voice.