Chapter Six (part 2)

Ven gasped, her hand involuntarily flying to her mouth.

Renning was destroyed. The entire street the inn occupied was a collection of burned out wrecks, the last remnants of their blackened boards and beams pointing skywards like rotten teeth. Some were even still smoldering. That was the bakery that Miss Gemma had run with her perfect apple sweetrolls. Amidst the char and rubble, Ven could still see the brick oven she baked in. And that spot of open sky there? That was Janic’s house yesterday. Now it was nothing but a soot-smothered foundation.

Eujin did not stop for her as she stood there, and after a moment she realized it and dashed after him to catch up. The street they were on emptied into the village square, and there the true weight of Renning’s destruction was finally clear.

The apothecary still stood, looking none the worse for wear. Nearly every other building surrounding the square, however, had not been so lucky. Logen’s smithy looked like it had been smashed with a giant hammer. There were no burn marks that Ven could see, but the roof was now flush with the floor, and bricks and half-finished metalwork splattered out from inside it like the innards of a crushed insect. The top two-thirds of Anders’s house was just completely missing, like it had been ripped clean off. The lack of any visible rubble, and the pristine, seemingly untouched interior of what remained only served to make the effect that much more unsettling.

Eujin, however, did not stop, and left her yet again to stare in wide-eyed horror until her fear of losing sight of him overtook her fear of looking away. They crossed to the other side of the square, where Eujin stepped inside the apothecary, leaving the door open for her to follow. Ven went to follow but froze at the broken body of Anders lying on the ground a half dozen paces to the side of it. His eyes were mercifully closed, but his body was a collection of inhuman angles, and the smear of blood down the wall and pooled beneath him was already well on its way to dry. She wanted to look away, to stop seeing what she was seeing, but she couldn’t. Something inside of her refused to look away. Something in her wanted to remember this, to never let this fade from her mind. Something in her wanted… what?

Ven only finally managed to break out of her fixation when Eujin’s heavy hand clapped on her shoulder.

“Come. The dead will still be waiting for you when you come back.” He said softly. There was no humor in what he said. It sounded more… comforting, somehow.

Despite its exterior remaining largely unscuffed, the apothecary’s interior was a mess, and Ven had to step carefully around the remains of broken bottles and jars to avoid having them end up buried in the bottom of her foot. The room smelled heavily of a dozen different herbs and cleansing alcohol, and the wood floor was now mottled with a patchwork of potion stains. There was a table at the far side of the room, in front of a large bay window that looked out the rear of the building onto more desolation beyond.

Eujin pulled back a chair, and motioned for Ven to sit. Ven did so, giving him a puzzled look as she did so. He appraised her in silence for long enough that she began to get uncomfortable under his ice-colored gaze. This continued until she finally couldn’t take it any longer.

“What are we doing here?” She asked.

Eujin leaned back in his chair and pulled a small knife from his belt, which he proceeded to absent-mindedly flip between between his fingers.

“I brought you here because, for better or worse, it is somehow the only solid building left in the village.” He said. “And because I got the sense that being in the remains of your home bothered you. So I thought a change of scenery might help.”

“I suppose it d- wait, how did you know that was my home? I never said anything about it!” Ven said.

“Your family name means Brewer. We were sleeping in the only place in the village that served as a tavern.” Eujin said, as if pointing out the obvious to a small child.

“...Oh. Right.” She said, slumping back into her chair and feeling stupid.

A faint smile traced around the edges of Eujin’s face for a moment, but it was gone almost instantly. He crossed his arms.

“What are we going to do with you, Syrvena Kunning?” He said. It was phrased like a statement rather than a question. Before Ven could reply, he continued.

“The way I see it, you have two options, since you have no other family to speak of. First, you can stay in what’s left of Renning, and wait for the survivors to return, assuming there are any. Or, you can take everything useful you can find from what’s left and make a new life for yourself somewhere else. Easton, perhaps. They have several large inns there, and it shouldn’t be hard for you to find work at one of them.”

“So I can stay here, completely alone in a ruined village surrounded by the corpses of everyone I’ve ever known and hope someone feels like coming back, OR I can travel to some other place I’ve never been and be homeless and poor while I hope someone will take me in.” Ven said sardonically.

Eujin nodded, his face grim.

“In so many words. Unfortunately.”

Ven laughed bitterly.

“Perfect. Either way I have a good chance of starving to death, but if I go somewhere else, maybe I’ll at least have the chance of being turned into a whore to make ends meet.” She said.

Eujin raised an eyebrow at her.

“I’m fairly certain you have no idea what a whore actually does.” He said.

“I’m a girl, not a moron.” Ven said, glowering at him.

“Alright then. So what are you going to do?”

Ven looked at him, then away towards a piece of brown bottleglass catching a glint of sunlight from the window. After a long moment, she sighed heavily.

“...I don’t know.” She said.

It was true. She didn’t. A day ago this time she would be cleaning up the leftovers from breakfast and hoping she’d be finished with the dishes in time to grab a fresh sweetroll before having to tend to lunch. Now, a day later, she was a fourteen year old orphan with nothing but a festival costume and a pair of leather slippers to her name. How was she supposed to make a decision like this at all, much less this soon? It was utterly unfair.

Ven wasn’t just sad and fearful, she now realized. She was angry. Truly and deeply angry. What had happened to Renning wasn’t just some fluke or something drawn by the festival. It had been caused by someone. Someone who wanted it to happen. And because of it, everything she’d ever loved or cared about had been ripped from her.

She was never going to feel the same again. One day she might no longer hurt. She might build a new life somewhere else. One day she might even be happy again. But nothing could ever replace what she’d lost. And nothing would ever remove her hatred of the ones who’d taken it away.

She thought about all of the faces she would never see again, and all the voices who would never call her name in the street or ask for another pint at the inn. She thought of gathering produce from the market, the little wink Olgret would give her when she slipped a couple extra apples into her bag. What had she done to deserve this? What about Mikken, or Old Havard? What about them? Why did they have to suffer and die?

Ven realized now that she was shaking, her knuckles white on her clenched fists. She wanted to hurt Sevastian LeCrae. She wanted to beat him until he couldn’t be recognized as human. She wanted to hurt and kill everyone who helped him destroy her life. She wanted them to feel the fear she felt. To experience the pain they were putting her through.

And then, almost without realizing it at first, an idea began to form in her head. It was a stupid idea. A ridiculous, absurd idea. But the longer she thought about it, and the angrier she became, the more it came to be the only one she would consider. She would make Sevastian pay. She would learn how to be a killer, and she would hunt him until she finally caught him. And then she would make sure he never did what he did to her to anyone else ever again.

Part of her pushed back at the thought, telling her to stop being ridiculous. Just move on, it said. Just settle somewhere else and start over, it said. You’ll just get yourself killed for even trying, it said.

But so what? She might as well be dead now. She had nothing left to lose except her life, and that no longer mattered to her. What was the point of being alive now? Going through the motions and spending every waking moment trying to forget? What kind of life was that?

No. she was certain now. She knew exactly what she wanted. And she knew just how to get it.

She locked eyes with Eujin.

“I want to be a killer like you. And I want you to teach me how.”

Eujin’s eyes went wide, and for the first time since she’d met him, he seemed truly caught off-guard. He dropped the knife he'd been playing with, and it clattered to the tabletop.

“I’m sorry… what?”