Chapter 14

Blood sprayed from her tiny head. A mist of terrible, yet strangely beautiful, red plumed in the air. Kestrel’s world had slowed then. Time had frozen in amber. Only rage had remained. He had had the strange clarity of thought that comes from abandoning everything but the desire to see your enemy bleed. Kestrel was calm as he shattered the man’s eye-socket, rounding on the remaining guardsman and attacking with furious abandon.

Kestrel’s fevered mind replayed Cillia’s death over and over. The scene shifted in the slumber his broken body demanded.

It mixed in with the hundreds, no, thousands of memories that had poured into his mind.

Something momentous had happened.

The men looked up to him, he’d been their impromptu leader ever since Van’s death all those years ago.

It still felt like yesterday.

“Why me?” he asked for the millionth time.

He knew the answer of course, he wasn’t naturally charismatic like Van had been, and he didn’t inspire the same confidence that Wilford did, but he felt the weight of responsibility deeper than the rest.

He was doing a sacred duty. To not take action was to deny who he was.

He couldn’t give up. It wasn’t in his nature. Van’s death had only served to further convict him of the righteousness of his actions. If he stood by and did nothing after losing his best friend, he would truly be a monster. His conviction had only grown with each passing day.

His stubbornness had earned him the nickname ‘The Bulldog’ among his friends, and they had followed him when he’d tried to rescue Van when he’d first been captured. He had failed then. Five of their numbers had died but still they followed him.

It ate at him every day. He remembered the names of those he lost and the names of their families too. He did the best he could to look out for them.

He was their heart.

He hated it.

They deserved a better leader than him.

He constantly faltered under the weight of those who died under his command. The ghosts of those who had died under him never left his side. He had led too many to their deaths. Far too many.

He wasn’t the leader they needed. He wasn’t the leader that they deserved. He was just a fool with a big heart and conviction. They needed someone like Van. They needed a charismatic hero to be their leader. Not a fool who led men to their deaths. They didn’t need that commander.

But he was the only one they had. Still, they deserved better than him.

If they ever gained their freedom, he’d see to it that they be recognized for what they really were. Heroes preserving the heart of their nation. Saviors that nobody knew they needed.

     Kestrel shifted on his pallet, the foreign dreams invaded his body. This wasn’t him. What was happening? Why was he seeing these visions?

Each movement of his battered body seemed to unlock new memories.

“I CAN’T bring him into this.” Van hissed at him.“What if we fail? What if I get caught? What would they do to him if he knew what we were doing, or even worse, he was in on what we’re doing?”

“But look at his position! He’s already so high in rank! Think of what we could do if he were on our side!” he spat back at Van as they continued to argue over Van’s younger brother. “He could be the key to bringing this whole corrupt system down!”

Van was a fool not to employ his brother in their fight, but no amount of coaxing could persuade him differently and no matter how much he thought his friend a fool, he would respect his wishes. They would bring his family into it. Not the brother that he had practically raised as a son, nor his wife and daughter.

With a seven year age difference between them and a tough childhood spent as the sons of a worthless drunk former noble who seemed to think that his sons would only listen to him if a fist was involved, Van was always defensive when it came to his brother. They hadn’t known their mother, and all they knew of their father was violence.

He needed Van’s protection.

He wouldn’t destroy his brother’s life by dragging him into his mess.

“I WILL NOT risk him, do you understand me!” Van shouted, his face reddened from anger.

“Fine! But know this; we are wasting one of the most precious resources available to us.  One that could easily be turned against us!” he shouted back at Van, leaving in a huff.

Kestrel shifted again. The dreams stopped long enough for him to slip into a deep slumber.

Darkness overwhelmed him.

*****

“You’re gifted little one,” came his grandmother’s comforting voice as she patted his young head.

He had come to her crying, he’d told one of his friends about his favorite memory and the boy called him a liar, it wasn’t his memory, his friend told him. He must have heard HIM say it and was too dumb to come up with his own ideas.

They were HIS memories though. He always had perfect recollection and the events had happened while he was still living in the farmlands near Fiell, before his parents had to sell their property to keep food on the table.

He knew that his friend had never been out of Fiell, so why was he calling him a liar? He was the liar!

“Yer’ special my little fish, you’ve a great gift, it’s gonna cause you immense happiness and deep sorrow,” his grandmother said as she soothed him in her strong Coastland accent. “You’ll not have an easy life my little fish, but you’ll've a full one. An maybe one day you’ll use yer special ability ta save a city, or kingdom, or maybe even the world,” his grandma whispered into his ear as he fell asleep.

“What’s happening to me!” Aris thought as a tsunami of foreign visions assaulted his mind. “What are these?! What am I seeing?!”

“If I can just share my memories with them, even just one of them it should be enough. It has to be! I must do this, or there will be no future for us! I’m gonna die here, but if I can just share it with one of them the fight’ll go on,” he thought.

Aris stood in a stunned silence as the memories flooded him.

The world around him flowed like a river around a boulder. He stood immovable. Aris vaguely registered Edrian Wolls commanded his men to kill the traitor who had sold out his comrades.

If he had known it was happening, Aris would have been furious at the Minister of Defense. They needed the man alive! It was utter foolishness to kill him~

He didn’t hear the screams though.

Another set of memories washed through his mind, overwhelming every sense in his body. His muscles stood rigid in shock.

“Why did I have to take on this role?” he thought.

It hadn’t been long after Van’s death, which had shaken him so greatly that he had taken on the responsibilities that Van had been in charge of.

He hadn’t needed to and he knew it, but nobody else had stood up to take the mantle of leadership and he wasn’t willing to let it die with his friend. He owed it to Van, and even if he hadn’t, doing nothing would have corroded his soul.

Still, he questioned that decision every day since.

He still remembered the shock of Van’s passing. He thought Van would never die. He was too smart. Too charismatic.

Too clever to die.

But the emperors tentacles reached deep waters. Nobody was safe from his grasp. Not even one so well loved as Van.

What was happening? Why was he seeing these things?

“Who is this? He was friends with my brother? How did I not know of him?” Aris thought, bewildered. 

Aris hadn’t known his brother as well as he’d thought.

He knew he'd lost his life in a foolish rebellion against their emperor, but he had never known what part his brother had played. Even until his dying breath, Van had kept that part of his world silent from him.

Had Van truly been the father of the rebellion?

Another wall of memories crashed into Aris. He lost his footing.

He’d been taken while he was sleeping, lying in bed with his wife. She had woke as they had grabbed him, letting out a glass shattering scream as she saw the guards hauling his nearly naked body from their bed.

She’d screamed for them to let him go, but they hadn’t listened.

She had jumped at them, kicking, punching, biting, and scratching, demanding that they unhand her husband, she was rewarded with a broken neck for her efforts to save her beloved. 

Another had been murdered on the streets for calling out the Emperor’s evil. He hadn’t numbered among them. He had just been a rogue mage. All that was remembered of him was the disgusting creature he had been.

If the emperor wanted you to be remembered as a monster, you would be remembered as a monster. He wouldn’t have the decency to give you any choice in the matter.

Each new revelation made Aris sick. The tides of memories overwhelmed him. It was a miracle Aris hadn’t vomited yet.

The events unfolding before him were foggy, as if he was seeing them from the bottom of a river after a large weight was dropped and silt stirred up…but he was seeing clearly for the first time.

He’d been crying. His eyes still stung, they were rimmed with red. His cheeks were flushed. He had just lost his best friend.

He still was angry at Van’s brother. His position shouldn’t have mattered, he hadn’t even had the decency to show up to his execution! That was evil. He would never forgive the man for abandoning the brother that had raised him.

Van’s brother hadn’t seen him off in his departure from the world.

He hated Aris. Every fiber in his being despised the despicable worm.

Aris fell to his knees.

The memories felt like physical attacks, each new blow drove him further down. What was he seeing?

It was more than he could handle.

His head felt like a someone had dropped tinder into a flour mill. Explosions of pain flashed in his head and nausea attacked him.

His vision swam.

Aris wiped his dripping nose as an afterthought and saw his hand smeared in red. He hadn’t noticed blood leaking from his face, forming a puddle at his knees.

Had that all came from him?

“Help,” was the only word that he could force from his mouth before the darkness took him.