Dust: An Elysian Tail

Before The Storm

Written by WildSnivy

Chapter 10

Paradise Lost

"Marcia..."

"I didn't want to, Jin," she sniffles, wincing at the cold steel forcing itself against her throat. "He...he was..."

"What the hell did you do?" I bark furiously. I'm not sure if I mean to direct that question at Marcia or Cassius, but I suppose it could be applicable to either of them.

Marcia sharply inhales as Cassius feints an attack to slice her neck. "Be mindful of your tone, boy," he snarls threateningly.

I tighten my grip around the receipt, crinkling it in my fist as I shake it towards the innkeeper. "Marcia, why does he have this?" I demand.

"I had to!" she desperately weeps. "He...took Roscoe when he came to the inn last night. He was going to kill him if I didn't spy for him. I..."

She struggles for air for a moment. I glare at the person behind her. "You knew what were up to all along, didn't you?"

"Yes, I'm afraid," Cassius monotonously, blank facedly replies. "But just knowing doesn't quite cut it here. We needed something more...substantial."

"He blackmailed me, Jin. I didn't want to do it, but...Roscoe..." she chokes on her words. "He was onto us from the start. He knew about the job I sent you on, and he wanted the evidence..."

She heavily breathes in and out twice. "He wouldn't give back Roscoe until I found it..." She sniffles again, and then glares at Cassius out of the corner of her eye. "And this bastard won't give him back!" she shouts fervently. She'd probably fight back, do something, anything against her captor, but all three of us know she's helpless at the moment.

I brush away part of my jacket to unveil my sword, but Marcia immediately screams as Cassius puts more pressure onto the blade. "I would not advise that, Jin," the commander states in a serpentine whisper, then points to his desk. "In fact, I'd suggest you remove your blade and set it down for now."

The arrogant half of my personality gets the better of me. "Make me."

Cassius slowly pulls his sword hand back. Marcia yells in pain, and a small red trickle starts to flow out of the side of her neck.

You moron! "Alright, alright!" I exclaim, my hands immediately jumping into the air, and then back down to my belt. "Just don't hurt her!"

"Then put your sword on my desk. Now."

I immediately unclip the sheath and toss it away from me, sending it clattering onto the commander's bureau. The sword backs off, and Marcia finally starts breathing again, her panicked respirations the only noise in the tent for now.

Cassius shuts his eyes and takes a slow, deep meditative breath, completely opposite to Marcia's breathing pattern at the time. "Now, let's all calm down for a moment," he requests. "This is not as grave a situation as you would think."

Marcia's composure finally returns to her, but her eyes are still frightfully looking over her shoulder at Cassius' cold, unforgiving stare.

The commander continues talking. "This is actually ideal, now that I think on it. Marcia has defected and provided us crucial evidence to our investigation, and you, Jin, have just now surrendered to us and practically verified our suspicions."

Because you needed me to do that. I'm lucky that sentence stays inside my head.

"You have done me and your race a great service, and it's only fair you're compensated accordingly," he flatly adds. Then he brings his sword behind Marcia and, to my surprise as well as hers, starts cutting the rope binding her hands together.

"Miss Marcia, we shall begin with you," he states as he finishes slicing through the rope. Marcia grabs one of her wrists, gingerly rubbing it in an effort to assuage the rope chafing.

Meanwhile, Cassius digs a dark cloth out of his uniform's pocket and uses it to wipe his blade off, removing the crimson edge from the surface. "First, your cousin. I'm sure you'll be happy to see each other again."

"Where are you keeping him?" she quietly growls.

Cassius doesn't respond right away, and instead continues to clean off his sword.

Marcia turns around to face the commander. "Cassius? Where's Roscoe?" she repeats, much more angrily.

The commander pulls the cloth away and holds it against the torchlight in the tent, inspecting it to make sure the blood is completely gone.

"Where is he?!" Marcia boomingly, furiously demands.

Cassius pauses for just a moment more before replying.

"The Life Thread."

My spine freezes.

He glares at Marcia.

Her eyes go skeptical, and then shocked.

And, almost like the next second of my life never happened, I see Cassius' glistening, polished steel blade, wet again with blood, fully run through Marcia's abdomen, all the way to the hilt.

I don't know how long Cassius holds his sword there for, and I don't want to know either. All I know is that, after what feels like a painful eternity, I see him yank it out again, and the innkeeper falls to her knees, her hands weakly pressing against the wound. She stares back up at Cassius for a brief moment, like she's silently praying for him not to do this.

The response never comes. And Cassius stoically, almost gracefully, flips the blade over in his hand and runs it into her again, impaling her just above the collarbone.

The last thing I see her do is raise her hands slightly, towards the sword, until a moment later, when they fall limply back to her sides.

And only then does Cassius retract his blade again. Marcia's body falls backwards onto her feet. He pulls the black cloth out of his pocket again.

"How unfortunate."

And I snap. All of a sudden I'm watching a play, experiencing the main character's actions in first person. I'm not in control of him, nor can I say or do anything to change how he's about to act. It's useless to act against it; all I can do is just watch.

It starts with me breaking my surrender and grabbing the hilt of my sword on the desk. I feel my legs starting to mantle the desk as well, and somehow they coordinate themselves to step on the sheath as they climb up, allowing me to pull the blade out with one hand and raise it over my head. Like a springboard I leap off the edge of the desk and above Cassius, ready to slice him in half lengthwise.

"You bastard!" I hear myself shriek. Cassius isn't even looking at me; he's still wiping off his blade. I feel a small adrenaline surge, as I start to think I'm going to connect...

There's a small flash of light, and then three things happen at once it feels like: an ear-piercingly sharp twing noise, a jolt of pain across the front half of my body, and the sight of my sword's blade twirling across the tent and sticking itself into one of the crates.

I collapse onto the ground chest first. With effort, I manage to look at my hands, sprawled out in front of me, and despair as I see my sword has been bisected, leaving me with the hilt and a jagged two or three inch long fragment of what the blade used to be. I look further up. Cassius is holding his sword like he just swung it in my direction.

I try to push off of the ground, but the pain in my chest fires up again, and I can only get myself up a few inches, just enough to see the front of my shirt had been cut through from the bottom left to the top right. I can feel the cloth get colder against my body as it tries its best to stymie the blood loss.

"I don't believe you'll die from that."

He walks over to me and crouches down, the sword that slew Marcia resting on his lap like a pet.

That only makes me more furious. "Why did you kill her?" I angrily demand from under my breath.

"I think we both know the answer to that question."

"She was innocent!" I yell back, then immediately wince as Cassius flicks his blade underneath my chin.

"Nobody is innocent tonight," he softly, blankly informs me. "You provided me the evidence that proves that. Your family, your friends, your whole town, is guilty."

He spins the sword around in his hand again and stands up. I can only see the bottom half of his legs now. "And now it comes to me to ensure this happens no more."

I growl with reserved anger. "If you so much as touch Ginger..." I start to threat.

I hear him sigh, almost with exasperation. "Please, Jin. I've no intentions of killing you or your sister."

He marches over to his cot, and my eyes follow him. I see a hand reach down for his hat and pick it up.

"For now, at any rate," he sinisterly adds.

I almost enrage a second time. "What the hell do you..."

A soldier barges in on me. And I don't have the energy to raise my voice over his. "Commander," he addresses, paying no attention to the civilian bleeding in the main area in front of him.

Cassius turns to him. "Sergeant."

"The operation, sir. We head out in fifteen minutes."

"And I haven't forgotten. Thank you very much," Cassius replies. The solider exits without another word and Cassius kneels down next to me again, his hat once again obscuring his face.

"But, before I depart, Jin, it would be remiss of me not to give you what you came for."

"You're...still going to..." I can get myself to finish that thought, either out of physical or mental shock. Possibly both.

"I've always been a man of my word. And I see no reason to deny you the cause of your parents' deaths."

I don't like the way he says that. "What..what do you...?"

"Tell me, Jin. When news first arrived that your parents were killed, did they say how?" he consolingly asks. "And you can be honest. No reason to lie now."

I take a shaky breath in. "They said...it was a scouting party," I answer. "Royal Army..."

I think his eyebrow jumps in response. "Intriguing," he notes. "The story wasn't as skewed as I initially thought."

"What...what are you talking about?"

"I'm confirming the report is all. Yes, your parents did die at the army's hands."

The rest of the blood in my body freezes over as I glare back up at Cassius. "You...knew about this?" I quietly shout.

A slight, sinister laugh is the response, and Cassius puts an unsettling, demeaning hand onto my shoulder. His face is still neutral, but I swear, somewhere, underneath that blank, emotionless visage he always wore, I swear I see him smirking at me.

"My dear boy," he whispers back to me. "Not only did I know about the caravan, I lead the party that found it."

His head shifts up slightly, and the torchlight barely sneaks in underneath his hat, unveiling the cruelest stare I've ever seen.

"And your parents indeed fell to my blade that day."

Whatever little air I've scraped together into my lungs immediately falls away.

He killed my parents? I glance back up at his face, trying to sneak a peek underneath that hat, hoping, desperately hoping that he's lying.

My heart sinks.

I don't think he is.

"Your parents were remarkably loving people. Commendably, even," he continues to lecture. "And not just to you and your sister either. They actively went out of their way to defend a race beyond salvation. One that is nothing more but a blight, a disease on this land that must be extinguished. Their loyalty and sacrifice, I must admit, is admirable to say the least.

"But that doesn't alter the fact that they were in direct violation of a Royal decree that day. And they knew full well what the consequences would be. They died not because they were supporting our enemy. They died because they were caught doing so. And they paid the price.

"Which brings us here. Though I will have to give you some credit, as you made a rather good effort trying to run me in circles, hoping I'd just give up once I'd start to think I'm wasting my time. However, just like your parents, you've been caught. You, your sister, your friends, everybody. And now it's time to serve the sentence."

What are you just lying here for? Do something! Except everything is refusing me. The remnants of my sword are still in my hand, and I'm gripping it as hard as it will allow me, but my body can't find the energy to swing it. I'm searching for something, anything I can do to retaliate. But there's nothing. Not within my limits right now.

I start to despair. I'm the only person who can stop if not delay Cassius right now, but, as much as I hate to admit it, I can't. All I can do is just stare at the fragment of sword and pray something happens.

Another soldier barges in. "Commander, ten minutes!"

"I'm coming, Sergeant. Fear not," comes the reply. He stands up to walk away, but stops himself and turns back to me. "Oh, actually, I need to get this resolved first."

"You're going to kill him, sir?"

I grunt and struggle to leer back up at the commander. He mirrors the stare perfectly.

"No, not yet at least."

"Sir?" the soldier asks back, just as surprised as I am. You're not serious. You can't keep me alive. Not insinuating death is a likable alternative, but after everything he just told me?

"I think you heard me quite clearly the first time. Where can we keep him?"

The soldier shudders. "Uh, there might be some room in the barracks that we can..."

"Good enough," he replies as he yanks out his sword once more. I cringe, anticipating the cold steel strike to rain in at any moment now.

"Goodbye for now, Jin," Cassius says, and instead of the cut of the blade, I instead feel the forceful impact of a boot, stamping itself on the center of my forehead.

Another Note From the Author

Hello once more! If this chapter looks shorter than usual, you're not going insane. Because it is. As you may have guessed, the finale is on its way, and to keep it from being overly long, I thought this would be a decent cut off point for the time being. I don't want the story to go too long without an update either, and seeing as how the final chapter is on its way, I want to make sure it gets the attention and care it needs to conclude the story properly.

Long story short: yes, this is a short chapter. Yes, I intend to make the final one a bit longer to compensate you for your patience. And yes, you definitely should follow me so you don't wait any longer than you have to for the conclusion to Before the Storm!

Thanks for your support, and see you all next week!

WS