Fever Blood

Chapter 111: That Night

They shall know the penalties for their sins, the cost of their monstrosities. Some argued that they can be redeemed, but that isn't the case with the Eight. They are unwilling to atone for their crimes, unwilling to undo the evils they have created.

And those tragedies are coming to wreak havoc upon them.

***

Thirteen Years Ago

***

Kyra hated the town. 

She didn't know why her father had to visit the stinky town, why he had to take her with him to Alberion. He had said the place was important, that it had something to do with ancient history. But she had seen that 'ancient history' when her tutors had explained to her why she was going to the hamlet in Alberion. 

The Pit. 

She had seen the colossal grate drawn in her books, and now she had seen it in color. The picture, thankfully, didn't catch the rotting stench of the carcasses thrown into the bottom of it, nor the smell of burnt... something. She had seen it, thought it was gross, and demanded to be taken away. 

The town was no better. Kyra sat in the one place that didn't smell like a farm, the garden of the inn she and her father were lodged in. With the high walls, covered in climbing ivy adorned with bell-shaped red flowers, she could almost block out the rest of the stinky town. A guard dozed off in a seat by the entrance, and Kyra sat away from him, at her own table in the middle of the garden (Which was wonderful for the town, but pitiful compared to the garden she had at home), sipping tea. 

Well, rank water was more like it. This town had no good tea. Father was right when he said that Alberion was uncultured, though he always said Mother had been the exception.

"Psst!" Kyra looked over to see a pair of wide dark eyes staring over the fence, framed by a tangled mess of black, wild hair. "What are you doing?" the boy asked.

"I'm enjoying morning tea," Kyra said, annoyed. She wasn't supposed to interact with the peasantry, but she was also a lady, demure and polite. So, she was polite to the stinky peasant boy. "What are you doing?" 

"I'm trying to get people to play Kick the Jar." He frowned. "Trouble is, Hani lost her leg to wasting fever last winter, so our team's uneven. Want to join?" 

There was a look in his eye, a wild and dangerous gleam that almost scared Kyra. Part of her wanted to join him, to sneak by the guards, explore the dirty and wild town, to play and have fun. 

But that was for the underclass. 

Kyra had better breeding, had better schooling. She was to participate in nobler, finer arts, things that required at least some measure of delicacy and grace. Kick the Jar, however, wasn't one of those delicate arts, and offering her could only be an insult to her great stature. 

"No, I absolutely do not want to play with you. You're stinky and you're dirty and you're yucky!" 

The boy's face fell. "Aww. You don't have to be mean about it. You sure you don't want to?"

"Don't make me call my guards!" 

"Why?" the kid asked. Kyra glared at him. "I'm just asking if you want to play."

"Because playing something like Kick the Jar is what dirty and yucky people do, and I'm not a yucky person," Kyra answered, a smug smile on her face, her arms folded. 

"But do you know it's yucky? How do you know if it's yucky if you've never tried it?" the boy asked. Kyra was about to answer before, with a resounding crash, the boy's face vanished from view. A second later, he was back in view, with more dust on his face. "Sorry. Pail slipped."