The Immortal One

Chapter Nine - Beyond Good and Evil

 Säyä had not spoken a word for three days and nights. Aetós could feel in his Heart how she had pulled away from him. He had expected this...no...he had expected her reaction to be far worse. She was not the first person that he had trained this way, and he had seen their spirits break in the face of the unfiltered reality of death. He had seen them crumble beneath the weight of the difficult decisions that he presented them with. He knew what broken looked like, he could see it etched onto their faces.
Säyä's eyes were not dull and absent. She was not drowning in hopelessness and despair as so many before her had. In her eyes, he saw one thing above all others...anger.
A pure fury born from the understanding of the universe's cruelty. Whereas so many had resigned themselves to the inevitability of the demise of things in the fullness of time, in her soul, she denied it. She raged against it. Her fury was unguided, purposeless, but the fire was present within her. At her hip hung the knife that she had pulled from the chest of the boy Märkis. His blood was still encrusted upon the blade.
They had rested only briefly as they once again traversed the length of Teldiir's country-side.
From the small village on the fringes of the frozen tundra they backtracked deeper into Saekän's territory. She did not question their destination. She did not truly care. The past, the future, in the state that she was in it was as if they did not exist. She was living in the present moment, alone with her pain.

The outpost was guarded by a stone wall girdled with spikes and wards. The perimeter was patrolled by several three-man squads armed with spears and shields enchanted to reduce the kinetic energy received from an impact. They were trained to fight against the Väräk warriors.
Aetós stopped before they drew near enough to attract their attention.
"Do you know what this place is?"
His apprentice said nothing. Her gaze was transfixed upon the gates, protected by four sentries in full-plate armor.
"It is the duty of these men to protect Saekän's border territories. Over sixty soldiers are stationed behind those walls, charged with one task; to shield the common-folk from raiders and threats.
It is their responsibility to patrol the land in order to deter the Väräk from launching an attack. For some time now they have been dealing with the unprecedented rebellion of a group of mages intent on freeing their kind from the shackles of slavery. As a result, they have abandoned their duties and consolidated their forces in order to maintain their advantage and put down the uprising.
The village that you saw was but one of several that have been destroyed as the warriors of Silvä Gädón test the limits of Saekän's priorities.
In the last season alone, over ninety people have been murdered as a result. They were willingly sacrificed so that the magistrates can maintain the status quo. The order was given by Magistrate Bälädis to abandon their own people - he is a man who has never known hardship, or hunger, or true pain. Yet it is here that men made the decision to follow the command. Commander Bórden was warned ahead of time by their spies that the Väräk were going to make an incursion into their territory. He chose to do nothing, and you saw the result of his decision."
Säyä's grip tightened around the hilt of the knife as her fixation upon the gate intensified.
"Why are we here master?"
The sun was setting and the land was cloaked in darkness. Aetós donned his cloak and drew his hood. With his left hand resting upon his sword, he replied;
"That...is up to you."

Bórden belched loudly and slouched back in his chair as he let the feast that he had consumed settle in his plump stomach. Partaking of the finest meals was but one of many of the perks that his position afforded him. He had spent twenty years as a soldier, fighting the good fight as a fit and loyal servant of his nation. Now those days of grueling training and labor were over, and he had finally been awarded the comfortable position of authority that he deserved.
Most commanders were quick to recruit slave mages to service them by means of their special abilities; the very same abilities that condemned them to a life of bondage. Bórden had found the hypocrisy rather distasteful, and thus employed his own servants with his own funds. That being said, he was not so empathetic with their cause that he was moved to aid the plight of the dehumanized mages; though he did not despise them either. In his eight years as commander of the Axebreaker Outpost his orders had led to the capture of dozens of mages; men, women, children, who were either forced into the labor camps or worse...sent to the majik farms, never to be seen again. It was his duty after all, so he saw no point in losing sleep over it.
His recent orders had come as a surprise. The idea that a rag-tag group of mages could be a serious threat to Saekän was laughable. They had cast down many of the dark sorcerers at the height of their power and established a nation of their own in a single generation. Still, the magistrates had been explicit in their instructions. Recall all troops assigned to the outpost and ready themselves for battle against the rebellion. He felt it was a fool's errand, a waste of time, but he would not disobey. News reached him in advance of each of the Väräk raids and it had pained him to ignore the plight of his people and offer them up to the barbarism of Silvä Gädón, but surely he had no choice in the matter. He was following orders. For a soldier, the greatest virtue was not helping the people or protecting the weak; their only true responsibility was to obey, and the real matters of right and wrong, life and death, were left to the politicians - those who had never known war and fear.
Bórden cast his distasteful thoughts aside and rose to his feet and stretched. It was late, and his bed called to him for a long and peaceful embrace. He removed his wig and used a cloth to wipe the droplets of sweat from his bald head; the day had been hot and the night was only now beginning to cool. After tending to his hygienic needs, he slipped between his silk sheets and relished the feeling of comfort that washed over him.
His curtains rustled as the breeze blew in through his open window. A single flickering candle sat upon the ledge, and he watched it as he moved closer and closer to the realm of dreams. The lids of his eyes grew heavy and he found that his blinks became longer in duration as each moment passed.
A brief gust passed through the room. The wind howled like a wolf beckoning to the moons. Upon opening his eyes again, a shadow caught his weary gaze. Being half asleep, it was naught but a dreamlike curiosity, an ephemeral mystery that he would contemplate upon waking once again. A second gust cast another shadow upon the wall, and a small voice in the back of his thoughts attempted to bring his conscious mind to attention. When the shadows began to move his awareness returned to him. A rising sense of alarm drove him to wake fully and he cast the covers aside in time to feel something cold bite him. He looked down to see a knife protruding from his chest with a hilt made of animal bone. Holding it, was a red-haired young woman with fury in her eyes. Bórden coughed twice before falling backwards as his strength fled him. In a flash she was atop of him. She pulled the blade out and plunged it in repeatedly until the silk was soaked with his blood. He had no answer as to why this was happening to him, it felt senseless. His life flashed before his eyes as tears streamed down his face. What had it all been for? All of the years of service and hard work, were they wasted? He had survived so many battles where death seemed imminent, and after all of that he was to die in his own bed at the hands a girl that he had never even met? He tried to call out for help but the blood had already filled his lungs. All he could see was the anger in her eyes. A rage that was demanding his death.

Säyä could see nothing but the blood and the look of horror etched onto his face. She had expected a sense of satisfaction, of righteous revenge and justice. Instead she felt the stickiness of fresh blood, colored black in the moonlight. She felt the spasms of his muscles as the blade slipped between his ribs, puncturing his flesh and exposing everything that his skin had been keeping inside. She heard the gurgle that should have been his voice, now muffled by the blood pooling into his airway. After the first few moments the shock set in and altered her perspective. The man before her became no different than the bug that had been crushed on the sole of her shoes; no different from the animals that she had hunted for so many years. His ravaged flesh became no different than the pelts that hung from the line behind Märkis' cabin. He became less than human - he became nothing at all as she took everything away from him. Just like he had done to so many mages - just because they existed.
Despite feeling all of that, she could not convince herself that justice had truly been the motivating factor behind her actions. No. Because in her mind all she could see was Märkis' eyes begging her to save him - begging for death to pass him by. She had failed then, and with each thrust of her blade she prayed to whatever god or devil would hear her, asking for the haunting image to be removed from her memory for all time.
That was not the case however. Instead, her memory of the boy's face was saturated with the blood of her guilt, tinted with the shame of her failure. She cried, and her tears fell upon the corpse of the first man that she had ever killed. A sickening feeling arose from the pit of her stomach and carried with it a haunting voice. Its words echoed throughout her mind, blaming her, judging her, condemning her...
You are a murderer.

"How do you feel?" Asked her master. He stood behind her as silent as a shadow.
She looked at her hands, dripping with blood. The night air was crisp and clear, and the sky was as pure as anything that she had ever seen. Her heart was beating wildly and a severe dizziness had set in. If the room began to fill with soldiers, she would not have the ability to flee, let alone defend herself. Looking at his grotesque body, her vision contorted as surely as her mind was being twisted in the face of her actions.
"Like...a monster. I...I..."
Aetós placed his hand firmly upon her shoulder, and his presence had a grounding effect upon her. She was pulled back from the brink of the abyss of her blackened thoughts and feelings.
"You may not be a hero, but you are not a monster. Death is all around us, it happens every day. If you had let this man live, how many years would pass until something claimed his life? How many people would have died as a result of his orders had he lived?
If killing makes us evil, then this universe is evil to the core - and Time is the greatest monster of them all. It is the law of this world, that nothing should naturally live forever."
The fear, shame, and doubt in her eyes was replaced with the anger that had brought her to this point, the rage that had guided her hand as the blade snuffed out the light in Bórden's eyes. She turned to her master and wiped the spatter from her cheeks.
"Then we must change the world."