(THOB) Chapter 155: The Story of The Shadow Child (Patreon)

“My thanks,” the man replied Prince Mardin from beneath his hood. “Now there was once a young boy once upon a time in the ruined cesspool of a beautiful city. He enjoyed his life within his limited confines, unknowing of the beauty of the larger spaces that existed outside his comfort zone. Then at a young age the evils of without came to disrupt his peace of within, and he found himself losing much of what he loved. Fueled only by vengeance he trudged along a life he convinced himself to be a lonely one, stalking after adults so old he couldn’t dream to defeat them through any means.

“Then one night he came across his enemies, all four of them, making themselves enemies of a child his age. Mind you, there was nothing special about this child save his thirst for vengeance.” There was a pause as he succumbed to thinking. “Perhaps we could say even that didn’t make him special,” he said at last. “So seeing a child about to suffer a fate he wouldn’t wish on any but the men about to give it, against his better judgement, he threw himself into the event, head first. Suffice it to say, he was no match for his foes for which he had stalked for weeks. Doomed to share the same fate with this child who was a girl, obviously, he prayed to no god and willed no savior. And then a nightmare that had threatened him for years gave itself leverage, spilling into his waking moments as it so often did.” He tapped a finger to his chest. “From the chest of his would be executor protruded a hilt the likes of which he had always stayed away from simply because his curiosity was not sufficient enough to outwit his instinctual fear. But that night he had nothing to lose. And when men thought he simply struggled for his last breath, what he truly struggled for was the knowledge of what would happen should he draw. Did he succeed?” His hood cocked to the side questioningly. “Yes, he did.

“And with it came a pain the likes of which he would never wish on another child. And yet, with pain came strength and purpose. First, he took the hand that held him by the neck, splitting forearm from the rest of its body. His assailant screamed in pain and while no blood spilled, he took the man’s head next.

The others weren’t given the time to react. All they’d had the chance for was to discard the little child who could do nothing but run. He took each of them in strides. Dismembering another human had never been so bloodless and acceptable before, and so he killed them, each stroke coming with an uneven pain that he wondered if he had drawn the short end of the stick. But he had already begun, so he would not stop before the end. And thus, he took his first lives without conscience, and passed out at the edge of a dirty alley under the cover of rainfall, burned as the consequences of his action. In the years that came he was asked the story of how he was burned, and each time he spun a tale bearing truths and the same lie: two children saved by a hooded man. Everyone listened, and none was the wiser.”

A silence settled between them and Mardin understood it to be a signal that the tale was ended.

“A beautiful story,” he praised honestly. “I seem to have heard something related to it during my visit to one of the cities of the realm, but yours is most entertaining. Would you mind if I tell it at court one of these days?”

The man shook his hooded head. “It is the tale of the Shadow Child.”

Mardin snapped his finger in recognition. “Yes,” he almost exclaimed. “The Shadow Child of the Underbelly. Even the Lords employ it to scare their children from bad deeds.” He placed a finger to his bottom lip in puzzlement. “Although, yours is different. Why is that?”

“Because it is the true tale.”

“And you believe this because?”

“Because I intend to reenact a bloodless night tonight.”

Mardin frowned. “Will you come at me with a sword gifted to you by your malice and fashioned from the darkness of the night to smite me with shadows?”

The man’s head inclined to the side. Whether in puzzlement or contemplation, Mardin did not know. When his guest answered, his reply was as vague as it was simple.

“Perhaps.”

“You are but a liar and a fool,” Mardin told him, and taking the bottle on the table, he tossed it, bottle and its contents, into the fire place with so much force that it shattered on impact. Then he returned his attention to the assassin as he heard the sound of footsteps hurrying into the room. “And I have no place for such in my service,” he finished as he rose.

The room, surrounded by his fifteen elite, he froze midway through his rise, transfixed by the sight of the assassin before him.

Everything that happened next happened at once, and yet he watched it as if it were intended for him to see. In the man’s grip came a burst of flame, and from the space around his hand a blackness spilled from somewhere within the light like a pool of blood from an unattended injury, smoke rising as it came to life, drawn from a place Mardin could only surmise to be an abomination. And when it was over, like the tale of the Shadow Child, in his grip rested two short swords like the falchions of great archers who bore the battlefront in the ancient tales of history with a width the span of one adult hand. And when the assassin moved a darkness moved with him, opposing the light of the room. Each man he passed fell without resistance, each deathblow bloodless as had been promised, and he had no doubt the same would be of the men all over his manor.

When the assassin came to stop before him, all other bodies lay sprawled on his floor in black death and hidden behind the darkness of the hood he knew there was no conscience.

“You’re the shadow child,” he stammered. It was less a question and more a statement. And when the man nodded, the remaining words spewed from his lips in an uncontrolled rush. “I swear to you, I had no hand in the events to befall the guild. If they would give me but a chance to prove it to them, I will, and with so much returned generosity for sparing my life and giving me the chance to exonerate myself. I swear this to you. I will forever be in their service till the crown leaves my lifeless body.”

The man shook his head and that one act was enough to silence Mardin. Then he took off his hood and Mardin felt the air sucked out of him. “B… but you are a p… priest,” he stammered. “Why would the seminary want me dead?”

He knew the man’s face. He’d spoken with the man alongside his father once. Somehow, he didn’t have to try to remember the name. It came to him easily. Father Vi Antari.

Antari shook his head and Mardin knew his next words even before he uttered them. “The seminary doesn’t want you dead.”

He knew the rumors. He and the priestess, Lenaria, had been close, so close they’d been rumored to be lovers. If that were true—and he found he believed it to be—then Father Antari would know the path he played in the priestess’ life and his connection with the guild in having tried to end her life while she had been nothing more than a nun.

“I swear to you,” he found himself saying. “I had no hand in what became of your priestess. It was all the action of the Venin guild.”

“I believe you.”

“Then why are you here?” he blurted.

Antari's gaze took on the mildest of puzzlement. “I believe I have already told you this, Mardin. I wish to reenact the bloodless night…” He paused, and seemed to think, as if trying to remember something else: something he wasn’t supposed to forget. Then he seemed to regain himself. “And because she never liked you, and never forgave you.”

Impossible! “There are many people who she didn’t like. Many who opposed her. Too many to count. This is ludicrous, you cannot kill us all simply because she didn’t like us!”

Father Antari nodded, and again his answer was vague but his voice was without malice. When he spoke, it was the voice of a man who felt nothing, an empty man disinterested in what he was about to do. “Perhaps.”

“Then—”

Antari cut him off with his next words. “I cannot kill them all,” he said, “so I’ll settle for you.”

Despite the flame burning in the fire place, the cold was unlike anything Mardin had ever felt, not even when Ornai, his younger brother had challenged him to lie naked in the snow during the winter of his eleventh year, a dare he had been stupid enough to see through.

He spared his chest a brief glance, catching the sight of the black blade buried deep inside it. When he looked up he was met with eyes as black as the blade he was dying from. Wasn’t one of the things that made the priest stand out the sight of how oddly blue his eyes were? So why are they black?

Ezril stepped away from the prince, leaving the body to crumple to the floor and the blades to dissolve into nothingness.

He placed his hand on the man’s shoulder and stepped away just as it burst into black flame from the single touch. Another thing about shadow fire most people didn’t know was that it was capable of spreading if controlled right. But he didn’t need to control this one, the bodies lay in contact with each other. In time, the flames would spread on their own. He wondered if the other bodies outside the room would have finished burning by now. It was an unimportant thing to think off, so he returned his hood over his head and left the room. Rin could have the men for all he cared, perhaps she could view it as an offering to forgive Lenaria, regardless of how deformed their souls would be. Maybe, then she wouldn’t punish her so much.

Somehow, he doubted it.

After all, both he and the goddess knew he had lied to the prince. There were actually two people he would settle for. One was now lying dead and burning with his men as he left the manor.

The other was the goddess he had just sent them to.

One day he would come to face Rin.

This he swore.