novellaaa Chapter 51: The red mud
Chapter 51: The red mud
Darius’s mind fractured into a terrible, echoing void. He stood paralyzed, his gaze locked onto the mother and child as his lungs refused to draw air. Inside his skull, his thoughts spun out of control, a frantic, disorganized swarm of denials.Dasha? Dead? No, sleeping in the mud. He said sleeping. But Dasha has never slacked off. Not on a night like this. Not when the very survival of the Nagarono depends on the guard detail.
Then, a sudden, icy realization sliced through his panic, making his stomach drop into a bottomless abyss.
Don’t tell me... The captives? Did those wretched foreign childs somehow break free? And Dasha... No. Impossible. They are mere children. Sniveling, starved runts. They couldn’t even scratch Dasha, let alone slaughter her. It is impossible. I have to see it for myself. Perhaps the exhaustion of the past weeks has finally broken her mind, and she simply collapsed.
Darius squeezed his eyes shut, his jaw setting so hard his teeth groaned under the pressure. His fists clenched until his knuckles turned a bloodless white, his nails biting deep into his palms. He forced a heavy, ragged breath into his burning lungs, fighting to drag his shattered composure back together.
The mother and Bantam simply watched him, the boy’s hollow, unblinking eyes tracking the subtle tremors in Darius’s frame.
Darius stepped forward, his knees nearly buckling. He forced his voice to drop into a low, strained gentleness that rasped like sandpaper.
"Bantam..." he breathed, his eyes trembling. "Where... where did you see your big sister Dasha?"
The boy did not answer immediately. He maintained his unsettling, dead-eyed stare for several agonizing seconds, the chaotic orange glow of the distant embers dancing across his pale skin. Slowly, mechanically, Bantam raised a small, mud-caked finger, pointing past the colossal shadow of the deity statue toward the dark, stagnant edge of the clearing.... where Dasha’s rapidly decaying corpse lay rotting into the filth.
Darius didn’t wait for another word. He lunged forward, his boots tearing through the mire as his heart hammered violently against his ribs with every desperate stride.
Behind him, an eerie silence fell. The mother, gripped by a sudden, contagious dread, quietly followed, dragging Bantam along by his limp hand. Across the settlement, the deafening roar of the inferno had finally died down to a low, hissed spit. Through the combined efforts of the water-shamans and the bucket lines, the tribesfolk had succeeded in conquering the blaze.
But as the smoke began to clear, an entirely different, far more permanent darkness was waiting to be uncovered in the shadows.
As Darius ran, a hundred desperate questions erupted in his chest, pounding against his ribs, but he ruthlessly tore them away. He focused entirely on the path ahead, his vision narrowing to a sharp, frantic point. Yet, the moment he breached the heavy shadows of the deity statue, his momentum evaporated. His strides slowed, turning heavy and dragging, until he completely locked up—a rigid statue of flesh once more.
Behind him, the mother and Bantam came to a sudden halt. The woman’s gaze swept past Darius, locking onto the dark shape in the mire, and an involuntary gasp tore from her throat. Her hand clamped violently over her mouth, her entire frame turning to jelly as she stared at the horrific ruin of Dasha’s corpse.
Darius offered no outward reaction. He did not scream; he did not curse. He simply stared down at the broken body of the girl, bathed in a thick, cooling pool of her own lifeblood.
Then, slowly—with an agonizing, mechanical deliberation.... he began to walk toward her.
He reached the edge of the crimson pool and collapsed to his knees, the thick mud soaking deep into his trousers, mingling with the fresh blood. Even though life had long since fled her body, Dasha’s eyes remained wide open. Those dead, unblinking eyes stared blankly into the empty sky, reflecting nothing.
The sight sent a physical, white-hot ache straight through Darius’s chest. His hand instinctively clenched over his own heart, his fingers tightening against his leather tunic as if trying to hold his ribs together. With a trembling, infinitely gentle touch, he drew his fingers across her eyelids, forcing them closed.
A single, heavy tear spilled from Darius’s eye, splashing directly into the pooling blood beneath her head. He reached out, his fingers brushing against the deep red wetness coating her neck. His jaw clamped shut, his teeth grinding together with such immense, violent force that the bones in his face groaned, threatening to shatter under the strain.
He lifted his hand, staring blankly at his own skin, now stained a dark, glistening crimson with Dasha’s blood. The absolute reality of it crashed through his denial, causing his face to drop into an expression of raw, hollow despair. The tears came faster now, carving clean lines through the soot and ash on his cheeks.
They were not bound by blood. They were not real siblings. But Dasha had been every bit his sister; he was the one who had watched over her, the one who had raised her through the brutal trials of the jungle. Seeing the blood of the very person he had protected and nurtured made his chest feel as though it were about to violently burst.
Then, his gaze flicked to the side.
Lying in the dirt just inches from her hand was a weapon. It was a sacred silver blade—his own sword. The very weapon Veythor had used to butcher her. Darius reached out, his fingertips grazing the cold, stained steel, and in that microsecond, his mind forced him to visualize it: the boy holding the hilt, the sharp arc of the blade, the frantic, surprised gasp of his sister as the iron tore through her throat.
With that final image, the last remnants of his sanity splintered into nothingness.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHH!"
The absolute, primal roar of grief exploded from Darius’s lungs, tearing through the quieted camp like a physical shockwave. Bantam and his mother visibly flinched, reeling back from the sheer, unbridled agony carried in the scream. Farther down the path, the sound cut through the lingering smoke, and several armed tribesmen instantly dropped their buckets, turning their heads before sprinting at full velocity toward the shadows of the statue, drawn by the shattered cry of their commander.