Blood in the Snow
Bedraggled, his shock of auburn hair hung down in an unkempt manner. His clothes, matted with the blood of thousands, were little more than rags. Bound in strong, unbreakable chains, he merely sat on the ground wearily, gazing softly at the full moon. It seemed to him like a prying eye, an eye wanting to sift through his thoughts. He willingly let the moon do so, as his memories coursed through his mind once more, almost as if he was a time-traveller…
--
It was the hour between pre-dawn and dawn. The azure sky was heavy with clouds, so heavy that it seemed that the sky was originally white, and the dark blue patches were where it had been rent apart. The moon and sun were nowhere to be seen, both hidden behind an ivory veil.
It seemed like a perfectly normal day for Rai and his family. That is, till they came.
A serpent snaked through the trees, a serpent made of raised blades. The inhabitants of the sleepy village were positively frightened, and unable to do anything as the invaders came charging downhill.
Only when the serpent had arrived at their doorstep then the village guards acted. They brandished their metal blades, five of them against an army. Trying to put on a pretence of having more reinforcements, they glanced towards their pitifully tiny barracks and shouted.
"Don't fool us. We have a spy within your ranks. We know your tiny numbers. Surrender and give us all of your males, or face the wrath of the Imperial Army."
"I'd rather die than give you filthy soldiers my sons!" A man forged a path through the watchmen. Rai's father.
"Don't you dare speak to King Carron's army like that, you lowborn peasant!" the leader of the raiders retorted.
"And you're much too highborn yourself? Blue-blooded? If you've got royal blood in you, I'm the King of Aquila. Bah!"
That statement had drawn the captain's ire. Angered into action, he held up his massive two-handed blade, impaling the man in his heart. Rai's father sank to his knees, his clothes bloodied, and his heart stopped beating.
His life had waned away.
Rai and his twin brother burst into tears, stabbing sensations of grief being felt in their poor, broken hearts. As the soldiers led the boys and men of the village away, the leader of the regiment came back to claim his sword. He kicked the dead man's head, spat on him and drew out his weapon.
Blood pooled out. He drank his fill of it, sucking on the wide wound, giving his Unreal flesh the energy it needed.
Then, he left, the dark silhouette walking away, his maniacal laughs echoing about the silent valley.
--
Rai was sent to be a slave, along with his brother. Not personal ones, but just extra hands for carrying, cooking and cleaning. At the start, he hadn't lost his naïveté and the happiness only a child could know. He was still cheerful. Yet, the grim moods of the other older slaves had matured him, and his eyes had lost their childish sparkle.
He was labelled a "lifter". Basically, that meant he had to lift tons of grain everyday. Free labour, that was what he was. Free labour.
Work conditions were bad enough. But imagine bathing in the rain, forced to strip along with everyone when the free water fell. King Carron was simply too selfish to spend excess money on his slaves.
And sleeping. No nice, warm beds for slaves, but emptied sacks of grain.
Life equalled agony.
--
"The King is searching for a new executioner! Would any man wish to volunteer themselves?"
The echoing cry roused the attention and curiosity of a now older, stronger and fitter Rai. Tanned by eight years of labour in the scorching sunlight, he was barely distinguishable from the shadowy Slaveroom 17, little more than a dungeon. Rising from his bed, he approached the crier of the statement with a cold, hard gaze. Equally cool and refusing to be scared by a mere slave, he looked Rai up and down, eyes finally settling on the bulging muscles that covered his arm.
"You'll do."
Led along by the tail of the man's cloak, Rai followed a long, curving path upwards to seek the Cassiopeian King's audience.
He waited patiently in the meeting room outside the evil monarch's chamber room. When said man finally thought to taint that place with his presence, Rai was still sitting there. Years of slavery had hardened him and his will, and he did not want to appear bored, weak or tired in front of the man who might free him from bondage.
The king sat down, staring hard into Rai's eyes. Rai was indomitable, returning him an equally intense glare. Nodding approvingly, the king rose from his seat, fully taking in Rai's muscular frame, and said, "You're given the job."
It sounded all so normal, so ordinary as if he was just accepted as a salesperson for any roadside potion shop. The simplistic callousness of this executioner interview sickened him, but his features did not change one bit, still cold and hard.
Cold and hard. Cold and hard.
That was what he would truly become, an executioner so cruel and unfeeling.
--
He lived in another dungeon, the very room he took lives in. The blood did not nauseate him, nor did the bodies strewn about like hopelessly destroyed dolls a toddler broke. He was past that.
The first time he killed a prisoner, he felt such regret he cried and his own brutality. He had had a conversation with the man before his death, and found out that he was but a peasant who had short-changed on his taxes. But still, the mindless killing was carried on. His head was lopped off by a simple serrated sword given to Rai.
It had turned partially red over the years.
The festering corpses gave a bad smell to the place, but then, he hardly cared anymore. Whereas maggots once repulsed him, now they were his companions, apart from the daily influx of to-be-killeds, but they hardly counted. After all, they lasted less than a week.
Less than a week, because of his blade.
His heart was no longer made of flesh. It was metal. Pure metal. A flesh-and-blood heart would feel, but his did not.
His killed and killed without compunction.
--
"It's a slave this time, caught stealing food from the kitchens. Have fun dealing with him, he's gotta die straight away, Grim Raiper!" That was his nickname among the guards, a nickname meant to poke fun at him. He felt like questioning the cruelty of the King, to send a pilfering slave to death early. But the metal heart in him reigned, and he withdrew his emotions.
A young adult, hands bound with thick rope, was shoved into his large cell. His face was partially covered with the long fringe of his reddish-brown hair, and between the loose strands, his face was gaunt and looked bloodless. Fearful and familiar-looking jade-green eyes stared at him, Rai the Executioner. They softened as they gazed at him longer, and Rai started to wonder why those eyes were familiar.
Probably because they were similar to those he saw in his mirror everyday.
He pounced over from his wooden stool, brushing aside the hair from the man's face. The features were strikingly similar to his, except that Rai's face was fuller. He was, after all, better fed than a mere slave. But that did not matter.
What mattered was, he was tasked to kill his brother.
--
"Brother… Rai! I… I…" Kai, his twin, stammered. Lost for words, Kai embraced his brother tightly, their tears falling onto the ground like holy water being sprinkled. Rai withdrew from it, his metal heart slowly being replaced by his old one.
"Why did you do such a foolish thing? Now… now…" he couldn't bring himself to speak of his brother's horrible fate. Death by his brother.
Rai turned away. He dared not look at his brother, the brother whom he would have to kill. Kai shook his shoulders, forcing their eyes to meet.
"You have two choices. To kill me, or not to. I suggest that you choose the former, or you will be punished. Just kill me now, just end it."
"I can't! I can't bring myself to! Kai…"
"You can. I won't be angry with you. You have to do it. Quickly!" Kai hissed. "You will face severe consequences!"
"Better that than kill my own twin."
Rai refused to choose otherwise. Kai gave up, and when the guards returned an hour later, they were surprised to see that Kai's head was still firmly attached to his torso by a bloodless neck.
"What, you reached your death toll already, Raiper? You hear me, executioner? King's order to kill him NOW!"
"I refuse to," Rai said simply. He crossed his legs and sat down, staring at the guard calmly.
"Aaron! Tell the King of this man's imprudence! I'll deal with him first!" the guard beckoned for his friend to go to the King's chambers. As his footsteps disappeared, the guard stepped into the cell.
He drew his hand back, preparing to strike Rai, who still sat there as if meditating.
The blow never came down.
Rai drew his sword in an uppercut, forming a gaping hole in the middle of the guard's chest. He died before reaching the ground.
"What have you just done, Rai?" Kai whispered. The guard's body was still, somehow, caught in uncontrollable spasms and blood kept pouring out.
"Now we will both die together, and that's what I was aiming for."
--
Cassiopeia's King Carron was rather shocked to find the Captain of the Cassiopeia Castle Guard lying at his feet, a wound in his chest. He glanced up at Rai and the slave, thinking back to what the man at his side had just told him. He finally made the connection when he saw clearly the similarities between the two men before him.
"Ah… so the Grim Raiper refuses to take his own brother! And he dares to defy THE KING'S ORDERS!" Delivering the last three words in a fierce shout, he ordered Aaron to bind Rai in chains. Rai inclined his head and stretched out his hands in grim acceptance.
Now, the two prisoners were left behind, the King and his guard leaving without a word. They huddled together wordlessly, knowing the fate that would befall them.
Death.
--
"The ex-executioner and his brother shall go up onto the castle battlements!"
Guards have come to bring the twins to their execution place. They are dragged along roughly, their chains scraping across centuries-old concrete, forming scratches that would last forever.
They hobble up flights of stairs awkwardly, the chains binding them not aiding in their movement, instead forming obstructions and obstacles. More than twice, they fall down, but are jerked none-too-gently, and forced upright.
The top of the floating citadel was meant to be a viewpoint for the panoramic landscape, or during times of siege, a place where men could pour boiling oil down, or survey the surroundings for signs of enemy approach. So many uses, yet now there is a new one: for executions.
They are placed just before the edge of the castle, now very clear about what is to happen. They will be pushed down, condemned to a messy end. When the herald sounds his horn, they know that the King has arrived to see to their deaths.
The horn comes after a half-hour, staining the twilight silence with a note of death.
The King now rests in his throne, brought up by other slaves. This regal red chair seems out of place amongst the blackness of the walls and floor. When the new Guard Captain, Aaron, whispers something into his ear, he nods, a gleeful and mischievous glee coming into his eye. He looks like a child who is dismembering a butterfly, cruelly tearing out its wings.
Guards take their place behind the condemned duo. They stare at each other, both hard and soft expressions rising behind cool features, an undercurrent of love beneath their unsmiling lips. Unspoken, yet present, love presides between the two.
The connection between their eyes is abruptly broken as Rai is given a shove.
He begins his graceful plunge downwards, a somehow slow descent through the air. The falling snow around him seems to accompany him in his fall, making the scene seem so beautiful. He is, however, resigned to his fate, and tells himself to meet it happily and without regrets.
When he meets the harsh rocky ground, he feels a sharp pain on his back. He ignores it, and draws from the last vestiges of his willpower to smile.
It will be his last gift to his brother.
When his heartbeat inexorably fades away, he finally forces out a sad, but nevertheless warm smile.
His last gift…
to his brother.
--
Death lingered in the cold, frigid air, the real Grim Reaper having claimed two souls for itself. Owls hoot in the forest not too far away, as if mourning for the loss of two lives. Vultures circle high above the air, unhappy to touch this pair of bodies, this strange, man-made carnage.
The blood from the loving brothers, killed so unjustly, killed in the name of King Carron, slowly pours out from gashes and wounds. If one gives a closer look, one can trail the slow, sinuous paths the two separate blood pools take in the snow. When they finally lie in their last resting place, never to move again, they mingle and strangely, form an all-too-familiar shape which makes the scene seem so magical, so ethereal.
They form a red heart, a symbol of love-
it lives on even after death…
Author's Note:
Bwahaha. I bet you were disappointed because the summary made it sound so much cooler =-=. Loosely based on the UNREAL world, with a few changes. I do realise that UNREAL isn't long enough yet for this kind of stuff, but heck. I'm still thinking of how to flesh out the later parts that I couldn't get around to finishing Chapter 2. Almost done with it _. Hope you enjoyed it, but you probably didn't -.-. The descriptions are lame and pitifully few in number. I overuse the same words.