Chapter 29: The Judge's Secret

Sypha stood next to Trevor, staring down into the pit of spikes.

Sala had been absolutely skewered. There were spikes poking through his entire body. Sypha did her best to not look at the sight. How had this pit come to be here? How had the Judge known about it? She had heard, in the month they'd been in town, that this area was off-limits to people. Was this why?

Trevor crouched down and looked in. 'What's all that? Under him?' He paused. 'This thing's been used a lot.'

There were scraps of material. Her brain insisted on recognising the material as clothes. And now that he'd drawn attention to it, Sypha's eyes were drawn to the bones in the pit. Her gut churned. 'What are those small bones?' She shifted closer to him. 'Animals?'

Trevor turned and looked at her. Usually, she could read his expressions pretty well. But this...was something new. She couldn't work out the emotion behind that expression at all. Trevor stood up, though, and he took her hand. He led her away from the pit and back to the remains of the town.

Sypha didn't complain.

They returned to what was left of Lindenfeld, and to the Judge's house.

'He asked me to burn it down,' Sypha said.

'It's actually still standing,' Trevor remarked. 'Should we burn down one of the few buildings left?'

'It was his last request.'

'You know what?'

Sypha looked at him.

'Let's go in.' Trevor immediately walked into the house. Hesitantly, Sypha followed him. They walked the familiar way to the Judge's study. Sypha stopped at the door. Trevor walked around and picked up the key on the dish that the Judge had seemed compelled to regularly touch. He then turned around and looked at the door behind him. 'I just wanna know what's behind that door.'

Sypha's gut churned. 'That doesn't seem right.'

'Come on.' Trevor yanked down the curtain that hung over the door. 'This guy was so organised. There may be...something the survivors could really use.'

He knew as well as she did that there were no survivors. She was about to say something when he stuck the key in the lock and turned it. Sypha's curiosity got the better of her and she came over as he pushed the door open. She peered around into a small, dark room. Trevor walked in and Sypha hesitantly followed. In the dark, it looked like the room was barren except for a lot of platforms sticking out of the walls with something on them. Sypha lit a flame over her fingers so they could see what they were.

Shoes.

Small shoes.

Sypha gasped as she caught sight of a pair that she'd seen before. She remembered, a couple of weeks ago, a small boy running past her and Trevor. He'd been lively and quick. She hadn't seen him since. But she was certain the pair of shoes she was looking at now were the same ones that he'd been wearing.

And there was so many more.

She looked at Trevor. He was glaring at the shoes, darker than she'd ever seen him glare at anything. There was pure unadulterated rage on his face. And she knew. He'd suspected something foul. Perhaps he had ever since the Judge said that he'd killed Sala when he was in hardly any state to kill anyone. But he'd come in here because he wanted to know for sure.

'The scraps of clothing in the pit.' It was out of her mouth before she could stop it. 'The small bones…'

'Yeah.' His voice was like ice.

'He said he killed Sala.'

'Yeah.'

'It was his pit.'

'He was the Judge,' Trevor said scornfully. 'And he found his little pleasures.'

As his voice shook on the last two words, Sypha realised she wanted to get out of this room; out of this house. She extinguished her fire and fled the house. As she stopped in front of it, she struggled to catch her breath. She was going to burn it down. But she was going to do it because she was suddenly taken with rage and she had to let it out somehow. It didn't take Trevor long to follow her out.

Once he was out of the path, she lit her fireballs up. They were larger than usual. She shot them all at the house. It exploded in an inferno. Sypha dropped her hands, fists clenched. As she watched the house burn, she was overtaken with a need to just get away from this place. She didn't even notice her fists were shaking.

Not until Trevor reached down and took one of them.

'I want to leave here,' she said. 'Now. And never come back.'

Trevor stepped in and wrapped his arms around her.

Braila

'I'm going to go and meet up with Trevor and Sypha,' Yvette said.

'Why?' Law asked.

'I have a feeling that I need to.' Her eyes narrowed. 'No idea why, but it won't leave me alone.'

Law rubbed his ear. 'I'll just trust it's a Slayer instinct then. I do have one question of my own though.'

'And that is?' Eliza asked.

'The kind of magic that magician had must've been incredible,' Law remarked. 'So why was that one scared man unaffected by it? He's obviously not magically-inclined himself.'

'As far as we know,' Eliza corrected her husband.

Law looked at her. 'Huh?'

'In this day and age, and this part of the world, magic is sinful,' Yvette told him. 'There's no difference between here and more accepting places – not when it comes to people born with magic potential. It's just that most in Christian regions never have a chance to figure out that they have magic.'

Law pondered that for a moment. 'Usually self-protection is something intentionally done.'

'Usually, but Trevor's never done it intentionally.' Yvette grinned. 'All of his wards are placed on the whole bloodline rather than cast by himself. Trevor doesn't know magic. Not the hardcore stuff anyway.'

'Only because your family died before they could teach him,' Eliza pointed out.

'He has no particular talent for it anyway.' Yvette waved it off. 'At any rate, the point is that people can be magical without even knowing it.'

'True,' Eliza said. 'And many magics are involuntary, especially when untrained. So, the odds are that this fellow was one of those.'