"I don't know… I don't know… but we… we have to take care of this at least." Enri said in a hushed tone as she clung to her sister and looked at the sea of death that was once all the world she knew. 'Markus, the old mayor… he and his wife could always be counted on. Mother, father… they were so looking forward to the harvest. Now all that will go to waste…' Enri thought and looked out at the fields where her family once tilled the soil, generation after generation, life after life, so far back that the names of the people who first brought their hoes down into the earth beneath their feet were not even names any longer.
'No, none of us will harvest those crops… all our work, it came to nothing… I can't stay here. Nemu and I can't survive on our own, we'll die. The village will be reborn with new transplanted peasants, and it will all start over again. But nobody will remember that we were ever here… they'll just dig a big hole, throw all of my friends and family into it, and then cover them up. We won't even get a marker to show that we lived.' Enri's grim thoughts made her tighten her grip on her little sister, she knew what it meant for Nemu to be this young.
In a few years their mother and father would be just outlines, their faces, their voices would be gone and Nemu would have only the vaguest recollections of anyone who was ever here where they now knelt. And Enri very quietly began to cry. Her crystal tears falling down her cheeks and dripping one by one and two by two into the auburn hair from one of the last of the Emmott family, to the other.
Momonga however, turned his focus away from that sadness and toward the thundering noise of rushing hooves that revealed itself to be men at arms, with a great giant of a man riding at the head. 'That armor, so real… all of it… the smell of sweat and blood…' The last of the Forty-One folded his hands behind his back and pressed them there so that he could feel the skirt beneath his robe, and squared himself off, unable and unwilling to move, he waited while Sebas took position at his left hand.
'What is this…?' Gazef wondered as the scene took shape in front of him, the scattering of slain villagers, particularly those toppled in a mass with one another, that was to be expected. 'Just like the other sites, the other villages…' But what he hadn't expected was that there would be armored men aplenty, they lay with heads exploded, bodies cracked, armor shattered, some were nothing but red stains on the ground that held pools of blood in armor that had caved in to crush the bodies it was meant to protect.
'Did the villagers…?' Gazef wondered as he slowed the horse down, but he never completed the thought. Not as it was. In front of him there stood a robed magic caster standing as squared off as any soldier, and an impeccably dressed older man that could only be a butler of great dignity and refinement, clad as he was in the fine black tailored suit.
And at their back, a weeping woman and a small child.
'Hostages?' Gazef wondered, then again rejected his own first thought, it wasn't until the horse was down to a walk that it hit him, 'They are protecting that girl and her… daughter? Sister?' He wondered and gave the reins a tug that brought his warhorse to a halt at last.
"What happened here?" Gazef asked, and the tall robed caster tilted his face up to say in return…
"My servant and I saw this village under attack, and we chose to intervene. Unfortunately we were too late to save them all, but we did," the caster turned to the side and gestured behind him toward the pair, "save at least these two. I take it you were after the ones responsible?"
A rumble of shock and approval went up from the soldiers, a sentiment Gazef shared, he dismounted from his horse, approached the caster, and went down to one knee. The overwhelming sense of… awe, charisma, hit him like a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky. 'A true… noble, like someone out of a myth. A hero of the sort all of us from peasant villages dreamed would come to help pull us back from the edge of death…' Kneeling seemed only right.
"Thank you. We have been chasing the ones responsible for weeks… always a little too late. Always behind…" Gazef sighed and bowed his head, "Always failing the ones we were sent to protect."
"My Lord." Sebas spoke up and stretched out his arm, pointing off into the distance. "Forgive my interruption, but there are more coming."
"More of yours…" Momonga asked.
"Gazef. Gazef Stronoff, Royal Head Warrior of Re-Estize. And no… no these wouldn't be mine, but?" Gazef cocked his head, as did all his soldiers. "I hear nothing, Lord-"
"Momonga of Nazarick. And my servant has a keen ear, if he says more are coming, he is right. And if they aren't yours, whose are they?" Momonga asked and averted his eyes away from the intense gaze of the Head Warrior.
'Eyes toward the threat… exactly as they should be.' Gazef felt his estimation of Momonga rise another notch, and answered the question.
"It was suggested that these raids were part of a plot, a trap to lure me to my death since the King would no doubt send me to face our enemies. I suppose these are my assassins." Gazef said and slowly rose to his feet to join Momonga in looking into the direction the servant pointed moments ago.
"I see." Momonga replied. "Then I offer you a choice. You can stay here and fight, or I can take you all to my home, at least for now. You will be my guests, and I promise you safe passage back to your King."
The noise of hooves was rising to a level the rest of them could hear, and the fifty soldiers who followed Gazef all gripped the hilts of their blades.
"Can we escape, they'll be here in minutes, Lord Momonga?" Gazef asked and felt his heartbeat quicken with the promise of a pending battle.
"Easily." Momonga answered and holding out his hand, he muttered the spell [Gate].
The hole in reality appeared, and Momonga faced the weeping village girl and her little sister. "Do you want to live?" He asked her, and she clung tighter to her sister, rising to her feet and holding the girl at chest level.
"I-I have to. Nobody will remember them if I die." Enri said and with the sleeve of her shirt she rubbed the snot free from where it ran out of her nostrils.
"Then come with me. And Warrior Captain, follow with your men." Momonga gave the command and pointed toward the void, the human warriors were hesitant at first, but when the two peasant girls raced in without hesitation, they followed two by two, each man leading his horse on foot and passing into the gods alone knew what fate, until only Momonga, Sebas, and Gazef remained.
"Sebas, deliver a message to the ones who come here after the Head Warrior, inform them I am displeased by this needless violence, and that another occurrence will bring swift retribution. And then call for another gate." Momonga said and Sebas bowed at the waist.
"As you wish, My Lord." Sebas replied and took a step away from the pair, watching as they vanished into the void, the gate closed before the eyes of the Butler of Steel, and he turned his face toward the new thunder that closed in on the dead village.
'It will be a very stern message.' Sebas thought and squared himself off as his master had but minutes before, and the figures of humans on horseback came into view. They expertly formed themselves into a horseshoe pattern, partially surrounding Sebas, and their leader in the center, a silver eyed blonde human, made his first address.
"You there… where is Gazef? If he's hiding, tell him to come out and his death will be swift and merciful."
"He has gone back to my master's home." Sebas replied and narrowed his eyes, "My master, gracious Lord that he is, has bid me deliver a message for you to carry back to your country."
Nigun frowned, the old man was as out of place as a priest in a brothel, and he stood like a statue despite the carnage all around him, then there was the numerous dead armored soldiers who were disguised as knights of Baharuth. None of the other sites had more than 'one' dead man knight. But a quick tally by his immediate view was that almost all were dead.
"A message?" Nigun asked, he glanced to his left and right, the other members of the Sunlight Scripture shrugged.
"Yes, but first… are the massacres of this village and others, the responsibility of your Kingdom?" Sebas pressed the question home, and before the blonde human spoke, the Butler of Steel knew that it was so.
Nigun tilted his head up in an arrogant, mocking fashion, "Yes, they were, what of it?"
"And you knew that they were human? Yet still you did…" He looked over his shoulder at the ones who died kneeling and helpless, "that?"
"Mere peasant trifles, no one of any account died, what of it, what is this message and where is Gazef Stronoff?" Nigun demanded, the white bearded man seemed curiously nonplussed by the presence of the team of magic casters that had him nearly surrounded, a tingle of his nerves warned him, 'Something is wrong, very, very wrong.'
"I see. Then this is his message to you." Sebas said, and the weight of a mountain made of fear crashed down over the Sunlight Scripture, as if they were surrounded by ice that gripped their hearts, their bodies were like statues sculpted out of manifest horror, and the white bearded butler was out of sight.
There was an explosive noise to the left, then to the right, the ebb and flow of time seemed to move like molasses running down a tree in cool weather. Not quite frozen, but everything was only 'oozing' on from moment to moment, and in this fashion, Nigun witnessed the death of his scripture. Blood flew and bodies crumpled or were sent flying and spewing droplets of red, skyward, all Nigun could do was struggle to move.
The white haired man seemed to appear for mere flashes, there long enough to bring another fist into an unfortunate body and then gone until the next spray of blood or tumbling body…
The others had no time to even scream, until Nigun stood alone, open mouthed, and staring into the face of death in the aged and regal face.
The sensation of the frozen world was gone, and everything moved at normal speed again, tumbling, falling, flying away or landing in a heap of crumpled meat.
Sebas spoke with agonizing slowness while sweat dripped down the face of Nigun, and the veteran Scripture member's knees shook as his legs threatened to collapse under him. "This is your message. Tell your Kingdom that if your soldiers come again to land under the eye of Lord Momonga, that what happened to your men here will happen to yourselves."
The silence hung, and Sebas raised his hand, Nigun closed his eyes, the will to even beg for his life was shattered like glass, and then he felt the slap. A crack across his face that rattled his jaw. Left, right. Left, right. Left, Right. Again and again the slaps came, knocking teeth free from their roots, they tumbled out of his mouth and down into the grass at his feet, Nigun's head snapped back and forth with the dictates of the old man's blows.
"That is a fraction of the pain your kingdom caused. You live to bear the blame for failure and the message my master wanted carried. Now go. If I see you again, you will not survive." Sebas said and pointed back the way Nigun had come.
Nigun fell to his knees, his jaw was cracked, he was sure of it, pain shot throughout his face, to his left and right, all his subordinates lay dead, the smell of their blood thick as a fog around him, the old man turned and walked away, dismissing the last invader as if there was no threat to be found.
Nigun's heart raged in his breast, but it raged like an angry dove hiding beneath its quavering wing… and the courage to strike back, to cast a spell, to even reach for the item bearing his promised miracle… was simply gone.
He could only look down at the bloody grass amidst the stench of blood and death until after the sun had set, and only when he gathered the will to stand did he think to wonder, 'Where… exactly did that monster go? No human could have done that… how do I explain this? How… how?' He wondered, and on shaking legs, he turned around to make for the horses, and find his way home, leaving his teeth, and his unit, behind him.