The Shadow of the Accursed Executioner

Chapter 8: The False Kings

The field, a pointless stain within humanity's slaughter, smelt of iron. The lands of the dry south, now a stretch of lifeless turmoil, had settled into silence. The wind rustled the torn banners as thunder began to roar from a distant plain, as I sat on the backside of a decorated horse, buried along, with many pillagers and lifeless sentries, pondering beneath my stained helmet, clutching my winged spear laid across my armoured thighs, to rest my weary arms.
        But through the midst of the field as she pressed her laced boot into a pile of buried arms and legs, the old hag appeared. Kiah Furswall, my noble lord, had appeared. Strong and stoic, she wore a black robe, thick and well-knitted along with a vial, revealing only her nonchalant face. She pinched her hips to lift the skirt of her fine grown as she kicked away a helmet, beaten with dents, for a place to stand firm.
        Kiah glared upon the bodies, with black scorch layered beneath the fallen. She marked her face with a vague expression, uncaring, yet certain that nothing could of been done to stop the inevitable, once more.
        "...Did you know this is the twenty-seventh battle to have happened here?" She said. She spoke with a finely rasp voice, strong yet dull.
        A punch of wind stretched the tarnished banners as she placed her hand against her head, holding onto her tightly wrapped vial from a sudden gust of wind. I then turn my hidden eyes toward Kiah, staring plainly into her direction, as still as stone.
        "But it seems that all boys really are the same..." She released a vague grin, unsettling like two unseeable pins had shot through her cheeks, gently raising her wrinkles.
        I remained silent, worn, still, now turning my faceless grits toward her satisfied smile. As now her smile fell faster than a lingering jest.
        "I had never told you that I had five brothers..." She added. Then she turned her eyes toward the south to embraced the view, the cold and slight descension of the lands from our place amongst the fallen.
        "My eldest brother." She peered strongly. "He was quite the leader... Strong. Honourable. Stupid. He had it all."
        She smirked with a face of irony. "But you know what got him killed?" She asked, yet vaguely asking herself.
        "..."
        "Loyalty." She answered. "But of course, one shall send their best into battle. But the problem is...when will you not? He died quite brutally in the end. A sword right through his neck."
        "..."
        "But my second eldest brother was a poet." She said. "Yes, indeed, 'was'. But I shouldn't have lied to him so much. The truth was that, he wasn't very good at it."
        She dropped her eyes, playfully, a fake frown upon her own thoughts. "Then after another one of father's lessons on ideals, he entered that wretched pile of a free city, and years later, he died. Died, during a riot in the Capital."
        Then Kiah turned silent as she eyed upon the scorch of black marks beneath the fallen, peering into its dark, cleansing remains. She then gazed up at the black skies as lightning flashed her face.
        "...You know about it too, do you?" She asked, a tiny etch of passion poured from her voice. "They say the black marks will take thousands of years to clear... They say...that the fire burns for days across the seas, as well."
        She smirked with a faint scoff. "Now that is something I would like to see, wouldn't you agree?"
        "..."
        "But after I had watched my third brother die from their seemingly never-ending flames." She went on, continuing about her brothers. "I had to beat him myself, you know. Till he was no more. For his body...consumed by their flames. It was perhaps, the nicest thing I ever did for him. Oh, how he screamed..." She lightly grieved.
        "..."
        "But those flames had also branded me..." She announced, as she peels back her right sleeve, revealing the cinders of a dragon's flame, which had burnt away her entire forearm, now a bold, red spot—
        "...!"
        As now a sudden voice, agonised, buried beneath the fallen, had disrupt the silence. For a pillager began to crawl away, slower than a snail, buried in blood.
        "Well? What are you waiting for?" She implied. "Do what you boys do best..."
        Eventually I rose up and unsheathe my shortsword, looming over the dying pillager with my metal legs between his ribs. I pressed the blade into the back of his neck, for a quick and painless death. For he, nor I, deserved a death, such as this.
        I slogged through the lifeless remains, returning back to the horse to rest amongst the fallen. And after another blow of nature's breeze, pondering for the passing of the pillager, I spoke.
        "I never had a choice."
        The old hag pulled her sleeve back down. "But here you are, still standing." She smiled. "And so, then it must have worked..."