Chapter 10: Aftermath

The silence of the dead is an answer to our questions.

The battle had ended.

“I did it,” Chairo spoke softly, with barely any grip on her halberd left. She looked at the sky, drenched in the blood of the giant she had just slain. There were very few emotions inside of her besides relief. She thought about this moment a lot, obsessively even. She felt that she knew exactly how she would react after this battle, but she didn’t react the way she thought she would.

It was in the afternoon, and the sky looked normal. She didn’t even realise it was day, let alone the clouds in the sky. She hadn’t been aware of night and day since the day that she had to leave the village. All the memories came back, flooding her head, without the emotions attached to them. She felt a slight sense of relief, but that was all she felt. There was no absolute joy, happiness, spite, or even regret that this moment took so long. There was only slight relief. She kept looking at the sky.

“I didn’t notice, the sky is so beautiful looking at it from the village. It is as if the trees open up for our eyes to look at the sky,” she said in a whispering tone. She wasn’t talking to anyone but herself at that instance.

The body she pierced through, right behind her, lay on the ground, it was pouring blood on the ground slowly but surely. The blood came to Chairo’s feet, she felt it but didn’t want to look at it. She looked at the sky for the time being.

Chavi and Chore, both safe, just finished their fight and looked at Chairo. They knew the battle had ended, but many still had to come. Yet, they still wanted to favour this intense moment in between them. They kept staring at each other, and Srishta, without moving a muscle. The body of the boar was still moving even if its legs weren't working.

“Maybe we should do something about that,” said Srishta. He had already considered the massive cleanup that would be required and whether they could salvage anything from their bodies.

“Yes we should,” said Chavi while he was walking on the head of the boar. He implanted his sword in the boar’s head and cut it open to make a deeper cut. He kept going up until the boar stopped moving. That is when the boar was finally dead. Chavi was fully covered with blood, some of it from the giant boar, and a good part of it from all the killing he had done of the goons.

Our heroes of this fight haven’t realised yet, but there was an audience watching all of this from afar, it was the villagers hoping and praying for saviours to take back the village that was once theirs. Their prayers had been answered.

The party of heroes was still mentally processing what had happened in this very short amount of time, where the battle took place.

Srishta looked down at his weapon. He was unsure if he actually impacted the battle at all. He was also uncertain if this was his own emotions speaking or him objectively looking at what had happened.

“You did absolutely phenomenal, especially for a man with little to no experience. Without you, we wouldn’t even have had the weapons to pull this off,” Chavi immediately answered, feeling what Srishta was thinking.

“Man, we would’ve been killed way earlier with blades that couldn’t even go through our enemies throat you know, you might think other people could’ve done the same but they really wouldn’t be able to and whatever Chairo pulled of, never seen that before but I am certain you were a part of it,” Chore chimed in with what Chavi had just said.

“I have no clue what that was. I have never seen it before,” Srishta answered.

The timing was impeccable on what Srishta just said because the long, jet-black spear Chairo was holding suddenly turned back into the halberd he had improved for her.

“Thank you, Nayotake, for your help. Wouldn’t have been able to do it without you,” Chairo looked at her halberd, she was barely keeping it in her hand with a very weak grip on it. Then she turned to Srishta, and she started whispering.

“Thank you for everything you have done.” Srishta saw her lips move, but he was too far from her; he had not heard what she said. Suddenly, he saw her pass out while holding the halberd; she was passing out slowly. It wasn’t falling to the ground instantly, but rather in steps. The moment Srishta noticed that she was losing her balance, he ran towards her to catch her. Srishta was fast enough and immediately tried to keep her conscious.

“Chair, please stay awake, there must be a doctor here, he will take care of you, do not worry,” Srishta started frantically looking around him. As he searched for a doctor, he noticed a mob of villagers coming their way. This group seemed human, except for the weird marks on their faces and other specific differences that made them slightly non-human looking to him. They could still accidentally be confused with humans, but there were some dead giveaways to make sure you knew they weren’t human. However, the differences were slightly different for each of them. What Srishta noticed is that the siblings he had met did not look like them. They didn’t look like them at all. The siblings had a darker brown skin tone with pointy ears and a round face, they looked more human than the rest of the villagers.

An old man came up to him and started talking: “I am the doctor of the village, the siblings know me, let me take care of her.” he looked at the brothers waiting for Srishta to see their nod of approval. The brothers nodded and Srishta understood he had to let her go for the doctor to examine her.

The doctor started examining Chairo on the spot, and while he was doing so, the mob gathered around them. They did so at a respectful distance, and they started chanting; they were whispering so as not to wake Chairo up. They were whispering something in unison.

“Giant slayer, giant slayer, giant slayer,” they kept chanting the same thing in whispering tones while attentively looking at what the doctor was doing with Chairo.

“Giant slayer, giant slayer, giant slayer,” the chant kept getting louder until they stopped whispering.

“Giant slayer, giant slayer, giant slayer,” it started becoming louder and louder until it wasn’t normal talking anymore.

“Giant slayer, giant slayer, giant slayer,” the mob didn’t care anymore if she was sleeping; they had to chant it, they had to scream it, they simply had to state the facts as they saw.

“Giant slayer, giant slayer, giant slayer,” they were yelling this time, all in unison. The yelling woke Chairo up for an instant; she started looking around, confused, and then the yelling finally registered.

“He wasn’t that big,” she muttered. The moment that she opened her mouth, the crowd went silent, and they all heard what she had just said.

“GIANT SLAYER, GIANT SLAYER, GIANT SLAYER,” the crowd around her went absolutely wild and started yelling at the top of their lungs. The doctor, understanding he wouldn’t be able to do anything about this, told Srishta to put her on his back and bring her somewhere safe so he could take care of her. Srishta did as the doctor said.

The mob did not follow; they did the opposite. They created a path for them to walk through easily. So Srishta walked with Chairo on his back and the doctor next to him. Chairo was still holding her halberd as if it were the only thing important in this world, the faint grip she had transformed in her sleep to a grip that would not let go for anything in the world.

Srishta walked slowly through the big group of villagers. He hadn’t expected to encounter so many villagers; he hadn’t seen many when they were walking towards the center of the village.

“They were all hiding in and around the village, some were basically slaves to Bran Tren, others went into the forest, staying nearby, hoping for a saviour to save their home. Either way, most of the villagers weren’t active participants in the village while Bran Tren was here; nobody was really. Everybody is eager to go back to how it used to be; the baker wants to make his bread again. The teacher wants to see his kids again, and the carpenter would like to start fixing the houses around the village with the other construction workers here. The librarian would like to go back to his books and so on,” Srishta hadn’t realised this. They saved actual lives.

They kept walking through the mob until they found a home that seemed suitable for a doctor. There wasn’t much choice, but this one was the least bad, so they took her there. There was a comfortable bed inside where Srishta put her, and the doctor went to work.

She slept peacefully, knowing her village was finally safe again, and if something happened, Srishta was there to make her village safe again.