Chapter 18 - Child Born in Terror

A bit of distance away from the city, Dominic was being held in the capital of Jeti: Jeti City. Verwa had moved him from the 5th military base to a cell inside the president’s castle. The president was the ruler of Jeti. Kings, queens, presidents or rulers- it didn’t matter. They were all the strongest beings in this world, second to only the gods themselves. Each ruler had been glanced at by a god or two before, confirming their position.

Dominic, in handcuffs, was thrown into a cell. He knew he would be questioned soon. He just didn’t know who would do it.

A moment after thinking this, Verwa walked into the cell. He swung the keys around his hands, before slicing the cell open with his wind magic.

“I know you don’t have the audacity to escape, so I’ll just do this!”

Dominic grit his teeth. Verwa was right. Dominic trusted that Ame could find a way to ensure their safety, but trust wasn’t enough to give him peace of mind.

“Dominic! I haven’t seen you in an hour. I missed you so much!”

Dominic completely ignored Verwa.

“Dominic! I know you hate me! Don’t get mad, I’m just doing my job~”

Dominic turned his head and was about to stand up, when the entire room went silent. An overpowering presence was causing the air to thicken simply by walking in the room. Every footstep heard drilled another nail of terror into Dominic’s mind.

From around the corner, a man walked in. He stood at a height taller than Dominic himself, and had cloudy silver eyes that even Dess’ couldn’t compare to. His body was incredibly well built, and his stubbled face looked irritated enough to pierce through Dominic’s soul. His hair was white and his jawline was sharper than the blade on his hip. He wore the usual Jeti Army outfit- a dark gray vest with a gray undershirt. He removed his cap. And then his vest.

He wrapped the vest around his fist, before squatting and punching Dominic into the wall. The bricks cracked and his head bled.

Dominic couldn’t do anything. With a straight face, he repositioned himself right back to where he was.

Dominic knew who this was. He had heard this exact description from Ame, and from hundreds of other people. And every person had the same advice.

“Run. Don’t attempt to fight him.”

Dominic grit his teeth. He obviously couldn’t run.

This man was Justin Beckwith, the first commander. The right hand man of the president himself, and the man at the unreachable peak of Eternal Flame’s aspirations.

He spoke, his voice deep but not terrifying.

“Do you have any idea how much pain you’ve caused me?”

Dominic stared at him.

“Yes. But I don’t care. Don’t lay a finger on any of the children in our group.”

Justin’s eyes widened, before he fully stood up.

And he laughed.

“Aha! Ahahahaha! You! YOU! You’ve brainwashed these children! YOU, a cause of war who splits families apart, HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THE DEATH OF A SINGULAR CHILD!”

Dominic grit his teeth as Justin put his bloody coat back on, followed by his cap.

He took a cigarette out of his pocket and put it in his mouth, before lighting it and walking away.

“I couldn’t care less about what Marē is saying. I don’t care if he ‘needs you for the trial’. I don’t care if he needs to ‘repay his debts’. You’ll be dead, and he can fight me if he has a problem with it.”

He slammed the door to the cell and walked to his office.

Verwa looked at the door, and then looked back at Dominic.

And sat down next to him.

______________________________________________________________________________

Directly across from the cell, Justin entered his office. He specifically kept his office near the cell so he could be constantly reminded of the pain the prisoners went through.

Every scream he heard, he would remind himself.

That pain is caused by their own sins. That pain is caused by the terror they caused, for no person in there was innocent.

…Most of the time.

Justin sat down at his desk, and looked at a paper.

On the paper was a face he had been studying for a while.

“Nell Moren. The Child Born in Terror, made for terror. Who really are you?”

Justin spoke to nobody. It was as if he knew somebody was listening. As if every word he spoke was being recorded by the watchful eyes of a god.

He moved his hand to another paper on his desk. The image was blank. He read the document.

Sy (Requested) ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ - The Seventh Wind of Heaven (Requested)

Age: ⬛⬛

Birthday: ⬛/⬛

Threat level:⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛

Appearance: ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛

Weaknesses: ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛

FINDMOREINFO

He gripped the paper in his hand, and crumpled it with a single fist.

“You’re a murderer, Nell. That’s what you are.”

He stood up from his desk in anger, and walked over to a wall. He placed his hand on the wall as it split in half, acting as a secret door, leading to a hallway.

He walked down the red carpet in the hallway until he reached a door. He opened the door and entered the Jeti armory.

Directly in the center, encased in glass, laid a blade. Its black and green handle stuck out, but the blade itself was covered in a white and lime green sheath.

He closed his eyes, and held his arms out. His palms were facing the ceiling, and strings of wind shot up out of his hand.

He spoke to the sword.

“Oh, Servant of the Mirror. You are the cause of my suffering. The being that pushes me forward, no matter how much I want to stay in the past. You owe me a debt. Please, allow me to become your propagator. Allow me to take your blade. And allow me to sever the heads of the heathens before me.”

A warm wind surrounded him as the glass around the blade cracked.

He opened his eyes, and grasped the handle. He held the sheath softly, before pulling it off. He looked at the unsheathed obsidian blade on his hip.

With one breath, he bent his knees. He held the hilt of his sword.

And, across the country, a mirror cracked inside of somebody’s internal world.

Justin Beckwith had acquired the sword of a god, and in turn, had become a propagator of one.

SHING!

The entire prison area of the castle had been cut in half.

The wood, brick and metal cut had turned molten on the ends.

Under the frame of one of the few intact doors stood Verwa.

“Um. B-Beckwith?”

Justin grinned.

“Verwa. Go find Eternal Flame. Tell them that the execution is rescheduled.”

“Aye Aye.”

Verwa left the room as Justin Beckwith stared up at the severed ceiling.

“I will not be stagnant. For the good of the world. For the good of my citizens.”

…

“And for you, Zbrke. No longer will there be children born in terror.”

______________________________________________________________________________

…

I didn’t remember what happened after that night. I bought Kaya a Vatro pendant using the rest of the money, and then I went home. I think.

When I woke up, I was laid down in a bed.

Huh?

I looked around, and the only person I saw there was Ame. It seemed to be the same hotel room.

Cough Cough

My head shot towards the source of the sound. Ame sat on the chair, coughing. It was a normal occurrence for humans to cough, but there was something that wasn’t normal about it.

Humans usually didn’t cough up blood.

All I could do was stare at him for a moment as he avoided eye contact. Before he could tell me anything else, I propped myself up out of the bed and began to heal his entire body for injuries, but nothing was there. He was coughing up blood without any injuries.

Was he sick? Nobody here had any skill with medicine.

“Are you sick? You don’t have any injuries. We need to get you to the hospital. You can’t die. You can’t.”

I couldn’t let him die of sickness after everything we did. I couldn’t.

“Relax, Nell. I’m alright. My throat just got scratched, hehe~.”

He was obviously lying. I couldn’t sense any injuries when I tried to heal him. Humans only lie to protect themselves, but lying in this situation would do the opposite. Why was he lying? I didn’t understand. But I couldn’t let him do this to himself.

I grabbed his arm and pulled him downstairs. I would normally listen to whatever Ame said, but in this case, it would be harmful to him. I, at the very least, knew his value.

“SY!”

Sy shot his head towards me as I dragged Ame down the stairs into the hotel lobby.

“This is the first time I’ve heard you yell. Are you okay?”

He still seemed rather gloomy. I couldn’t hear the energy in his voice that was usually there. His demeanor was incredibly similar to Kaya’s at the moment.

“Ame’s sick. He coughed up blood.”

“I told you, I just scratched m-”

“He's sick.”

Kaya and Sy had just regained an inch of their happiness from the day before, so I hated doing this to them. They, of course, did not take this well.

Kaya was repeating something to herself.

“We can save him. We can save him. We can save him. We have 5 days. We can save him.”

After saying this, she lifted herself up off the chair and pointed out the window towards a hospital.

“I’m already strong enough to save Dominic. I am. I’ll train more just to be safe. When Ame gets back from the hospital, I’ll show him the strategy we came up with. Then, we save Dominic before the execution even starts. We will save him. Ame, don’t you dare be out of commission or I’ll kill you myself. Sy, come with me.”

She dragged Sy by the wrist outside into their training area. I had noticed she was wearing the Vatro pendant we bought. Before I said anything to Ame about it, he spoke.

“I’m glad you brought them outside. You did a great job at cheering them up, especially when you weren’t feeling that great either-”

“Stop talking.”

“Yes sir.”

I didn’t want him to waste his energy on speaking when he didn’t need to. I hated being rude to him more than anything, but I couldn’t control it. It was for him.

I bit my cheek as we exited the hotel and walked to the hospital in silence.

Jeti City was an insanely large city. Ame lived on the west side on the border near Baum, and the city stretched nearly a fourth of the country's length. The far east side, near the center of the country, was the most populated area. That was where we were right now. High rise buildings were scattered about, but the city was overrun by shops and restaurants more than anything.

I could only observe the sight of the effort that went into this in passing as we walked to the hospital.

With barely any time passing, we made it in. I walked over to the doors to open them, but it opened by itself. I reflexively jumped back. Ame didn’t have the strength to laugh, so all he did was smile softly.

I sat down in the waiting room with him for a bit until they called my name. I didn’t have good experiences with doctors, but this needed to be done. Ame and I walked over to the room as they laid him down and asked about his symptoms. Every question they asked, he responded with a no.

“Do you believe you’re sick?”

“No.”

“Do you have any issues?”

“No.”

The doctor’s eye twitched out of irritation.

“Then why are you here?”

Ame just laughed.

As he was laughing, I tried to stop him, but it was too late. He coughed again and blood came out. The doctor immediately snapped out of it and put him in some machine. It was making a whole lot of terrifying noises. Even though they told me not to, I looked inside the machine. Thankfully, he was fine. After a bit of time they released him from it.

“He has no internal injuries. He’s not necessarily sick either.”

Huh?! He wasn’t sick?! How could he cough up blood then? Nothing made sense. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to do something.

“These doctors are useless. Ame, I’ll fix you myself.”

I grabbed his arm and rushed out of the door, but got stopped.

“Wait. I know what’s wrong with him.”

“I told you it was my throat getting scratched, Nell.”

The doctor spoke.

“It’s not that either. I said he wasn’t sick, but it is something similar to sickness. It’s a magic condition that can be caused by two things. The first thing is stress, which Ame does appear to have a lot of, but not a high enough amount for it to singlehandedly lead to this. The second way thing is an opening to their ‘heart’. Nobody knows exactly what it is, but it is theorized to be a part of a person beyond their physical body. That part of Ame had been accessed, and it was forced out of equilibrium. His magic is off, so it’s the only explanation. I believe it's a mix between both the stress and the access to that place.”

Ame and I both froze there, staring at the doctor. There was nothing we could say.

The doctor was talking about his internal world. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew it existed. He said that it had been accessed and forced out of equilibrium.

I was the only person who accessed Ame’s internal world. This was my fault. This was entirely my fault. I wanted to know more about him, so I entered his internal world, which led to this. I wanted to know more about Kaya, so I entered her internal world, and she got her hand cut off.

Every time I tried to get closer to somebody, they were hurt. I needed to stay away from them. I needed to run. I… I…

I couldn’t let this happen. There was nothing in this world that mattered to me more than Ame. Some things could equal him, but nothing could pass him. I needed to focus on helping.

“Can you fix it?!”

He lowered his head.

“Back in the day, when I was studying in Basila, I heard stories of people who had this condition in Cittaglia. If I remember correctly, it’s called Nokhtsol. The Maylem warriors would undergo insane amounts of stress during the training. All of them would die within a week. Cittaglians don’t have magic though, so Ame’s case is rare. After three cases in Cittaglia, doctors found a cure. It’s a plant that's only processed in Cittaglia. If you go there, you can find it. It should only take maybe four days to go there. That’s the only cure I can think of. My apologies.”

I couldn’t think. My brain stopped working. Not because of too many thoughts, but because of too much of nothing. I couldn’t think of a single thing that we could do. If we wanted to cure Ame, we would have to leave Dominic to be executed. If we sent one person to get the medicine, we wouldn’t have enough power to save Dominic.

It was either Dominic or Ame. I couldn’t have both. No matter how much I wanted to have both, this world wouldn’t allow it.

And both of these were my fault. Both of these were caused by my need to know more about them. I was acting like an animal. I needed to leave.

Ame pulled me outside. He sat me down at the curb as I stared at the morning sky. The stars were barely visible, but they still existed. But it hurt. It hurt for them to watch me. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t fucking stand it. Dominic taught me swearing was bad. Ame taught me how to swear. I didn’t know who was right. I didn’t know who to save. I lied. I knew who I wanted to save and I felt disgusting for thinking it. I couldn’t think this way while Kaya and Sy were struggling. The disappearing stars’ gaze shot down at my body as if it was crushing it. I couldn’t do anything as they observed my sins.

My only option was to balance my eternities. Only one could come out on top, and I’d come out with a piece of me gone. No matter what.