The Eye of Chaos (Council of Champions Book One) ✔️

Chapter Thirty-One: The World's Truth Unveiled

            Cecilia made her way out of the fortifications, only to be met with even more death and blood. Swords polluted the ground like common insects, all of them died in blood or internal organs. Bodies lay face first in puddles of mud, stone hard ground meeting their body. A black sky loomed above; the corner illuminated by the rising sun which turned part of the sky a deep shade of red.

            The sword at her feet was stained to the hilt in brown and red, a still heart clipped to the end of it. She hardened her heart at the sight of it and pushed through the garden of corpses.

            Cecilia reached a body she had laid her eyes on earlier and picked up a rough sword belt from the body’s waist and tied it around her own. The she attached her rapier to it. As she walked, it bounced against her leg, comforting in a way that she didn’t try to understand.

            It was unfair and unnatural for all these bodies to die like this. Neither the rebels nor the King’s troops deserved to die like pigs in a slaughter house. A boy stood upright in the ditch, dressed in the Caedule royal uniform of red and white, with three spikes stabbing him like a ladder.

            She tore her eyes away from the dead boy, but the image stayed in her mind. Promising to haunt her until the day she met the same fate. Cecilia stomped in a hole filled with brown sludge which looked nothing like the mixture of dirt and water it should. Her every step made the ice cold fingers clasp tighter around her heart, killing her soft emotions.

            A sole figure caught her attention. The woman was pretty, but even her lifeless body told of her loyalty and obedience. Her knowledge and compassion. Cecilia wanted to scream. To cry. To run up to the body and embrace it.

            But Madeline was dead. Her chest stabbed repeatedly and her skirt flipped. Poor Madeline. Her faithful companion and like her replacement mother.

            Cecilia stumbled forward to the body and pulled down Madeline’s dress and removed the knives, daggers and the sword plunged into her chest. Pride swelled up in Cecilia. To have to be killed with so many weapons, Madeline must have scared the shit out of them. Always the reliable, even in death.

            She left her friend, with a sad smile. There was no point in grieving over the dead. She had learned that long ago with the death of her mother.

            Questions threw themselves at her without restraint, pounding away at what little sanity she was retaining. What had happened here? Where were the reinforcements? Had Kaya not managed to bring back the rebels in time?

            Cecilia staggered forward, past the fortifications, past the dead bodies, away from the awful sights and into a lush green forest miles away. She continued to advance forward, no concept of time or distance. She just needed to keep moving or she would go crazy.  

            Squirrels squired around her, birds chirped musically in their homes, the sound of water lapping softly against the shore calmed her. Her footsteps started to bring her closer to the river, something pulling her in its direction. She walked out onto the beach, a trance like state controlling her movements.

            More bodies littered the beach, flooding the ice cold blue water with warm red blood. The sight barely raised her heart rate. She continued on. It was as if something ominous called out to her. A person calling out for help.

            Cecilia was convinced her legs had stopped working, but the scenery was still changing. Horses strewn on the ground in horrid misshapen states, to human parts chopped up into indistinguishable parts, to a wooden stage where a princess hung from a noose. Clothes in a beautiful white dress, a golden crown sitting on her crooked head. The ice cold fingers snapped her heart, as her eyes fell upon the familiar face of her friend.