Chapter 29

Farley:

My chest tightened as I lost the ability to breathe. I’d never seen a person die before, and especially in such a gruesome way. That man… he had been fine a few moments ago. He had been talking, and fighting, and his heart beat. I felt the magic around him now, telling me that glass made up his insides now. I couldn’t fix that. I couldn’t fix anything.

Hollow tugged on my hand, whispering, “We have to go. I’m not letting him touch you.”

He wanted to leave? But that man had died. He stood frozen in his spot, never to move again. We couldn’t let the guard go without stopping him. He would only kill again.”

“We have to stop him,” I whispered back to Hollow. “He’s tried to kill me twice.”

“Let’s not try for three. We have guards for this.”

I understood where he came from, but I couldn’t walk away from this. How many people had Lwyn killed so far, and how many more would he have if he got the chance? I didn’t want that blood on my hands. I already had too much.

I made the choice without telling Hollow, though not because I didn’t want to. I mostly didn’t have the time, and it would have ruined the whole thing. Standing up, I cast out a blast of magic in the direction of the guard.

The dead body toppled over as I felt the magic shoot out of me. He shattered on the ground, and I winced at the sound of it. The man deserved better than to be a hundred chunks of flesh and glass that flew all over the room.

As for the guard, I locked him in a clear barrier. I saw the stunned look on his face as he beat it with his fists, unable to break out of it.

“Nice,” Hollow said. “I mean, we could have left, but this is an option too.”

“Had to do it,” I said, catching my breath. “To be fair, he tried to kill me twice.”

“Once,” the man corrected. “I only wanted to hurt you that second time. I was going to kill you later.”

Hollow got out his dagger as we approached the barrier. “Well you have a mouth on you. Brave, considering we have the upper hand.”

Lwyn crossed his arms. “Then what do I have to lose. You saw me, so either I kill you, or…”

“Or I kill you,” Hollow decided. “I could tell my father what you did, but I feel like it would be best to not let out a man with magic. You might go off the deep end, and I would hate for you to keep me from getting my dinner.”

Lwyn groaned in response. “Why are you all so obsessed with food? Have you no goals in life? Don’t you want anything solid? I guess people like you and that pile of man over there wouldn’t know a thing about earning what you have, so why would you care? Your whole life has been handed to you. How does that feel?”

Hollow’s expression didn’t change from mild annoyance. The dead people didn’t matter to him, and this was only a crazy man who interrupted his evening. “It feels fine,” he said. “Thanks for asking. How do you feel knowing I’m about to kill you?”

Kill him? Yeah, I guess that had to happen. The man might have been able to escape a jail, and then he would have been a mad man on the loose. If I had to guess, he would probably come for me and Hollow first, if for nothing but the crime of trying to stop him from killing.

“Hollow,” I said, and the other man began to pace. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Positive,” he said, looking at the dagger in his hand. “The man hurt you, and that’s more than enough for me to end his life. If he’s lucky, he’ll die quickly. I have half a mind to make it slow.”

“I bet you have half a mind,” Lwyn said in his pace.

Hollow sneered. “How does the low hanging fruit taste?”

“Like fruit.”

I rolled my eyes. “Let’s just do this. Your father is going to wonder where you are and I would rather we could lock ourselves in your room for that.”

Lwyn pounded on the invisible wall, then looked at me with a glare. “I have a better idea. It’s something to the effect of, I’d dead anyway, so why not blow the world up.”

Magic ignited around us soundlessly, and I flew backward with Hollow. We hit the floor, rolling and hitting each other before we came to a stop. Hollow recovered first, checking on me as my head spun around and around. When he asked me if I felt okay, I just groaned.

Hollow helped me up, and I looked around for the guard. All I could see were the pieces of that man he had killed, missing all the blood that should have been there. I expected that Lwyn had bolted.

“He’s going to hurt people,” I said. “We have to stop him before anyone else dies.”

Hollow found his dagger on the floor, and we went off in search of a killer.

A scream reached our ears as we rushed into a large hallway. I saw a woman drop to her knees, Lwyn in front of her with his hand extended. Her own hands went to her throat, and she choked on nothing. She died before I could do anything about it.

I cast my magic forward at the man, a ball of heat meant to catch him off guard. He turned in time to get hit in his side, but it didn’t do what I wanted. A knock to the spine would have helped us out a lot, but he only started running, not damaged enough to pause.

Hollow cursed, and we went after the man again. The only problem being that he headed into the room with all of the castle guests. There must have been a couple hundred people in there, all trapped in a room with a man who thought he had nothing to lose. It couldn’t end well.

People started screaming before we even got into the room, and I heard them as glasses broke and tables got knocked over as they ran, I assumed. When we got back to the others, I couldn’t spot Lwyn in the mess of people trying to get out of the castle. They trampled each other, not seeming to care if they hurt anyone. I felt the magic being throw around, but I couldn’t find where it came from.

“Do you see him?” I asked Hollow frantically.

He looked around, but came up as empty as I did. “No. Father!” he called as he hurried to the man. He tugged me behind, finding the king taking up a sword. “Where is he?”

King Morec shook his head. “He just came in,” he said. “Lwyn. He started killing people, and he didn’t even say anything.”

“He’s insane,” Hollow said over the screams. “If that explains it. Turns out your advisor has been wrongly imprisoned. And your other one is dead.”

“What?!”

“Sorry, but this man decided to try and take the whole place down with him, so if you have a sword I can use, that would be helpful.”

People pounded on the doors, but they wouldn’t open for them. It left a pushing mob gathered at the entrances, shrieking and scratching at the wood. I could feel how terrified they felt of what came for them. A man hidden in a crowd, killing without care.

Three people flew through the air, but it hadn’t been like with me and Hollow. These people flew, and their bodies hit the walls with a cracking sound. They fell fifteen feet through the air, and their bodies broke on the floor. I gasped, reaching for Hollow so that I would have something to hold onto.

“Oh my god,” I said breathlessly.

“Stop him,” Morec ordered me. “You claimed to have all this power, so why don’t you use it?”

Hollow stepped to him, eyes narrowed. “How about you lose the threatening tone when you talk to her?”

“How about we not fight, because there’s a killer hidden in the room?” I said. “It’s fine, Hollow.”

Morec threw me a hateful look. “I told you not to call him that.”

And even though it wasn’t the time for this, Hollow drew a line in the sand, taking a place at my side and stealing a sword from a passing guard. When the man looked at him in question, Hollow growled at the guard to go do his job.

“This ends now,” Hollow said to his father. “Don’t disrespect her or I swear I’ll take her now and leave you all for dead. Slay your own dragons from now on.”

“No!” I said. The man had a point, suggesting I used my magic. I had nearly threatened him with it, and I had to put my money where my mouth was. Did I have the ability to do this? I feared for what would have happened if I didn’t. “I can do this,” I lied, hoping it would become true. Fight later. People are dying.”

As if on cue, more of them screamed out, and it sounded pained. I watched a man who once hit me with a rake, running from the crowd. He screamed about fire in his head, and he clutched at his hair. When he dropped, the man went perfectly still.

I didn’t understand where all this came from, because I couldn’t see Lwyn around. As hard as I looked, I didn’t see any sign of the man himself. How could he have been killing people if I couldn’t even see him?

“Why the hell is he doing this?” Morec asked, staring at one of the bodies. “I don’t understand. He always did his job, if not a little overzealously.”

Interesting word for a man who wanted another job so bad that he would start killing. “He thought that he deserved better than what he had,” I told the king. “He is under the impression that his wisdom goes unused.”

“And killing guards above him and framing/killing the advisors too would get him what he wanted?”

Hollow shrugged. “He’s crazy. He also attacked a witch. If he got to a witch that didn’t have the morals Farley did, then the guy would be as dead as a doornail by now.”

“Well thank you so much,” the king said.

Another flair of rage hit me out of nowhere, and I got out from behind Hollow. “Are you fucking kidding me? All you people do is tell me I’m an evil killer waiting to happen. Some of you think I literally sacrifice babies to the devil, who I’m fucking. I’m really damned if I do and damned if I don’t, aren’t I? If I use my magic, I’m evil. If I don’t, then what am I? Stupid? Lying? Tell me, because I would love to know.”

Morec stared me down, but had nothing to say. However, Hollow did. “This changes if we manage to not die tonight. Farley is going to be around for a long, long time, and she deserves to feel comfortable in our home. This is also a great time to mention I’m moving her into my room.”

It was not a great time to mention that, because it just seemed like yet another thing he didn’t fill me in on before making that choice. Maybe it made me a bad person to let that distract me when so many people needed me, but I couldn’t help it. I would have to make a point to Hollow not to do this again.

“Stop,” I said. “Just… just let me try something.”

I closed my eyes, focusing on pushing my power out in a way that wouldn’t hurt anyone. Knowing most of the bastards in the room, I assumed that none of them had magic. If I could focus mine on finding something that would match it, then I could feel out where Lwyn hid out, and then we could take down the threat before more people had to fight.

The magic blasted forward, going through every human in the room. They didn’t even notice it in their hysteria, but it shot right through the massive doors that had been locked before. It broke the magic, and people started running. I did too when I felt my power latch onto something. I saw one of the bodies in the pile begin to glow, telling me exactly where I needed to go.

Hollow called after me, obviously unhappy with my choice to take off without him. I’d be less likely to get hurt, so I wished he would have stayed behind. I knew that wouldn’t happen, so I let the dream die.

Lwyn saw me then, and he had to have known where the magic came from. His hands raised in the air, and he got ready to send something at me. I shoved Hollow out of the way, and narrowly dodged it myself. The woman behind me… she didn’t.

I turned to see her standing there in shock for half a second before she dropped, the hole in her torso made it hard to, well, stay alive. And that blast had been coming right for me. I could have been dead, just like that. Here one second, and the next would have been Hollow watching me die. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t keep putting everything else above myself, including what people thought of me. Should I have thought that Hollow’s grief would have been worth the life of a woman who I had caught stealing from my family?

My eyes narrowed at Lwyn, and I made a choice. Before he could try and attack me again, I threw another gust of magic at him. One that would freeze his body, and kill him within a minute. He wouldn’t be able to break out of it.

I didn’t give him enough time to escape, and the man caught it right in the chest. As the room emptied of people, Lwyn froze where he stood. Not even his eyes could move, but I knew he saw me approaching. I knew he had to have been aware of his fate.

“What did you do?” Hollow asked.

I smiled. “I just made his insides a timebomb. In about thirty more seconds, he’ll be dead.”

Hollow stared at me for what felt like a long time, and I couldn’t read his expression. “You’ll have killed him?”

“Yes? Why?”

He didn’t answer me, but he raised his sword into the air. Then he slashed at Lwyn. In one smooth motion, the guard’s head came off of his body, and fell to the floor. It rolled, leaving a trail of blood in its path. I gagged, and had to look away.

“Is it done?” Morec asked as he approached, dagger in hand.

Hollow turned to give his father a look. “No, he’s fine. If you nail the head back on, then he should be ship shape in no time.”

His father sighed. “Can you not be serious right now? There are at least seven dead people in my castle, and I’m not in the mood for your mouth.”

“Then you should have locked me in my tower and never let me out, because a body count doesn’t mean anything to me. The one that mattered lived, and everyone else can burn.”

Silently, the king scrutinized me slowly, and I didn’t like his gaze on me. I felt like he tried to see my insides, or figure out something he couldn’t have seen anyway. It didn’t make any sense for Hollow to love me, so if he looked for that, then the man would be disappointed. Eventually, he would learn to give up on the efforts.

“Guards!” King Morec yelled out, gathering three men in a second. “I want that man’s body burned in the center of the village. Make sure everyone is watching. Have the bodies of the other dead taken to their families. Then let them know that they will be given a little money to get by for a while. I’ll be making a speech tomorrow, and make sure that everyone knows that they don’t have a choice in coming.”

The men went off, and as they began to gather bodies, I looked around the room. It had started as a nice dinner. In theory. It had at least been nice for everyone but me, so…. Now, the tables had been turned over, and food mixed with blood as I took in what I had a hand in. If I had attacked when I could have, then these people would have been alive. But I hadn’t, and I didn’t even know why anymore.

“Farley,” Hollow said as he set his sword down. “Are you okay?”

I could only shake my head.

His arms came around me, and he held me against his body. “I think we should go upstairs now. You don’t need to see any of this.”

Maybe I did. Maybe I needed to see what magic could do. Those villagers all watched people they knew die by magic. They saw what they had been afraid of, and while one of the threats had been handled, I still stood tall. They all knew that, and I didn’t doubt for a moment that the thought would not leave their minds. All that happened tonight, it would only make their hatred for me solidify. I would never be what I wanted to be.

“Yeah,” I decided. “Let’s go.”

Hollow took my hand, and he led me out of the graveyard.