The world is chaos. It’s neither fair nor sensible. It wrongs heroes and breeds scums. It is rife with ugliness without a trace of beauty. The malice of the world shall be sundered
By the villain. -- Anon Guest
The Thrice-Sworn was coming. Not yet a King, but the Prophecies called him one. Those in the palaces were terrified of him. Whispers abounded, and Anika couldn't believe half of them.
Won his title in blood. Bearer of a curse. Some said he came in the night like a shadow and struck down the wicked.
Anika had been told she was wicked from the day she could understand what wicked was. So there was no doubt at all that this dark demon lord of the distant mountains would be coming for her. After all, she was an orphan brat, doomed and destined to breed only more orphan brats. Her only hope of partial redemption was birthing more soldiers for the cause.
There were other whispers. Whispers amongst the Hellkin brats. The normal folk had Greatfather Langeven, and the Unwelcome People were gaining... the Felshadow. He was made out of a patch of night, and shaped like a Hellkin, they said. Only he had three horns instead of two. He carried a great sack and, like Greatfather Langeven, gave gifts. Practical gifts, but gifts nonetheless. And sometimes, he carried away great evils in his sack.
Anika was wicked, but she wasn't Unwelcome. So it was either the Thrice-Sworn who would get her or the Felshadow.
She spent her nights in tears. Waiting for the inevitable to come.
And there it was. A dark shadow with three horns. His eyes blazing yellow coals.
Anika cringed as far back as her chains would let her.
The Felshadow unlocked her shackles and gifted her a pair of simple sandals, charmed to fit whoever put them on. "Head to the East," said the shadow. "There are people who will feed you and give you a home."
Anika put on the sandals and scuttled to the door. The soldiers usually guarding it were dead. Slumped at their stations and sitting in pools of their own blood.
The sun came from that direction in the early morning, when the guards came to see if she had her blood yet. So she ran in that direction. Through empty streets. Through gates open just enough to allow one to pass. Past more dead guards.
Along a road she had never seen to a camp she had only heard gossip about. There were others like her on that road. Some ahead. Some behind. Strangers, all.
Someone was singing to mistletoe and holly, making it grow. Someone was passing their hands over bales of some pale fluff, magically turning it into blankets. Someone was plucking the berries from the mistletoe and holly, and turning them into something fat and round and gleaming red. Someone was growing rushes. Someone was harvesting them. Someone was turning them into sandals.
Sandals like her own.
They gave her a blanket after they gave her a bath. No buckets of cold water here, but tubs of warm water and fragrant soap. Kind hands with Combs of Untangling for her hair. Spells of delousing to rid her of her fleas and lice.
A warm meal and a cot in a tent with nineteen others like her and no chains. Nobody kept her in. Nobody yelled at her. People gave her clean clothes and simple underwear.
It was months before she heard that the Duke of Illaburos had perished in the night. In his sleep, they said. Found in a pool of his own blood, they said.
The Felshadow must have come for him instead of her.
Or the Thrice-Sworn had done the same, and either of them had made a mistake.
There was a little school for her and her fellow escaped slaves. Teaching them to read, and teaching them anything they wished to know.
Terrified, but doing it anyway, she raised her hand. "I was told that the Thrice-Sworn or the Felshadow or both came for the wicked. Why did he kill the Duke who cared for us all?"
Which lead to a lesson on ethics, which began, "Which is worse, being born to chains or letting a hundred children starve?"
[Photo by Elijah Mears on Unsplash]
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