Return of the Fallen Volume 9 Chapter 18
The light from the evening sun faded and the darkness of night covered the Great forest. A few fires dispersed throughout the soldier’s camp kept some light around. Not enough to feel safe in this strange environment but enough to hopefully keep the predators at bay. A few guards here and there patrolled constantly while others had just fallen asleep recently.
An eerily atmosphere coated this place and everyone could feel that something was wrong. It was almost as if they were being watched. After just barely surviving Zephris’s traps, everyone was on edge.
Still, even with their nerves fried, and fear ever-present, the exhaustive battle, and the now lacking adrenaline brought heavy eyelids and drowsiness even to the guards.
A minute passed, and then five and then an hour. A pair of ears listened in the distance. The sound of relaxed breathing spread all around.
Zephris looked up toward the moon.
(It’s nearly time.)
Just as this thought passed there was movement within the camp.
“AHHHHHHHHHHH!”
A horrid scream rippled out followed by another.
“MY EYES! MY EYES!”
All at once the entire camp awoke and similar screams echoed out one after another.
(It’s time.)
Zephris calmly walked into the encampment and approached a staggering soldier. The man was gripping his face and was screaming about his eyes. Black liquid poured from his eyes and the only thing left was the sclera. Not just him but all over the campsite, soldier after soldier no longer had irises or pupils and instead were left with only the whites in their eyes. They were blind.
Zephris approached this soldier and without the soldier’s notice, he took the sword at the man’s waist. Without hesitation, Zephris drove the sword into the man’s chest with no fight. The man had literally not seen it coming and hadn’t defended himself in the least.
Just like this first man, Zephris simply walked up to soldier after soldier and proceeded to stab his blind enemies without resistance. After killing a mere ten though, something unexpected happened. Out from a tent situated dead center of the camp, both the Mage and the village chief walked out in shock.
The two looked all around in dread. The Mage ran over to one of the soldiers and grabbed him by the collar. The man instantly freaked out.
“NO! NO! DON’T TAKE ANY MORE FROM ME!”
The Mage screamed in his face.
“WHAT IN THE 7 REALMS OF HELL ARE YOU GOING ON ABOUT! WHAT IS WRONG WITH EVERYO…
The Mages’ words froze in his throat as he finally saw the man’s face or more specifically the man’s white eyes.
His hand unclenched from the man and he stepped back in fright. He had never seen such a sight. Not just this soldier, the Mage quickly saw that everyone was in the exact same state.
The Mage scanned around him and immediately found the culprit. Zephris stood calmly in the middle of this chaos. As people screamed and stumbled about, gripping their faces in agony, tripping and falling over into fires, Zephris just stood there with a cold look upon his face.
Both the Mage and the village chief looked upon this child covered in fecal matter, with an uncaring look and the two both understood he was responsible.
The Mage roared in fury.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!”
Zephris calmly stabbed another unsuspecting soldier in the throat before taking a small step forward.
“Only what I’ve had to. It’s not my fault these soldiers aren’t careful of what they put in their bodies.”
The Mage’s thoughts spun rapidly before he thought about the only thing these men had taken while they were there. His eyes instinctually shot toward the long stream before fixating on Zephris.
“You poisoned the water, how, when!?”
Zephris tilted his head.
“Hours ago. This stream is the closest source of water to where you all finished fighting. Man can not live without water. Since this stream stretches for a long while, I simply had to add something a little ways up ahead. For both you and the chief to not be blind and stumbling about, I guess that means you both drank the water you created with magic. I miscalculated. I knew you could use the element of water but I figured you would have exhausted every ounce of power during the battle. It seems you kept a small reserve just so you could have some water later. I wonder if that small amount of power could have been used to save just one more life if you hadn’t been so selfish.”
“You little bastard, demon, half breed! Do you realize what you’ve done, do you know the damage you’ve caused. This will not simply end with your death. The death of your mother and father, the death of your sister, everyone in the village. Everything will be torn down and burned, reduced to rubble and debris. You will not get away with this!”
The chief shook hearing this and he gave the Mage a look of horror. Before he could say anything though, the Mage glared at him.
“You say one word old man and I’ll kill you as well. If I don’t kill this kid here and now, I really will destroy your village in its entirety, so just shut up and stay out of the way.”
The chief remained silent for a moment but he remembered how these soldiers were incredibly loyal to their lord. The moment one mentioned going against their master’s will, that soldier was killed. The chief wished to remind the Mage of this, even under threat of death.
“Lord Ogastx will not sta
*Chhhshh*
Before the chief could finish his words, the Mage pointed his staff at him and froze his entire right arm. The very next moment, the Mage slammed his staff into the old man’s arm with blunt force, and the chief’s entire arm shattered like glass and fell to the ground in a hundred different frozen pieces.
The instant his arm fell away, an incredibly sharp pain hit his mind and he fell to the ground in agony.
*AHHHHHHHH!*
This scream brought even more of the Mage’s wrath and with another wave of his staff, he hit the old chief on the back of the head, knocking him out cold.
“I waned you to shut the hell up, now look at you, missing an arm like a pitiful broken doll.”
The Mage looked back at Zephris and was surprised to see that the boy had no reaction to even this.
“You really are a monster. Seeing someone you’ve known your whole life, lose an arm like this and you simply stand there without a care in the world. Had I known this from the start, I would have crippled you the first moment I hit you in the chest with my ice. No, actually, given what I know, I would have ended your foul life then and there and prevented all of this mess from ever occurring. Don’t worry though you rotten little shit, I intend to remedy that mistake tonight.”
Even though Zephris was a child, his mind was more mature than others. Hearing this Mage call him a monster was ironic after the Mage literally just destroyed the chief’s arm.
“What makes me a monster and you a saint? Everything I’ve done this day, I did to protect my family. You though, you march into my home and try and take my family away because your master wishes to conquer everything beneath the sky. You people that only see my family as less than because we have elf blood running through our veins. You people who will cause war and chaos everywhere you go and kill every innocent person who does not submit. Maybe I am a monster but that is nothing compared to what all of you are.”
“Hmph, and what are we?”
Zephris didn’t know. He didn’t know what was worse than a monster but whatever it was, this man certainly fit that description.
“Whatever you are… Something so foul, I do not believe the word has even been invented yet.”
As Zephris spoke up to here, a quiet stillness took over. The screaming scrambling soldiers had come to a stop and had all collapsed. Black liquid still pouring from their eyes until there was nothing left and with that, they moved no more…they were dead.
The Mage was a bit shocked by this.
(Such a frightening poison. For it to lie in wait and then kill them in this grotesque manner. Had I used all of my power earlier, I too would have drunk from that stream and I too would be dead by now. This brat is too dangerous to let live. He and I have a grudge that cannot be settled without one of us dying. Were he too actually join my Lord, he would be looked on favorably by my Lord and one day this boy would stab me in the back without a doubt. I’ll kill him now and blame it on one of the other men or maybe on one of those Griffons. Either way, I will end up punished for failing but Master would spare me my life. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.)
The Mage gripped his staff tightly. Zephris was a mere twenty feet away. At this range, the Mage could create several spears or daggers of ice. The ways he could kill the boy were far too many to count. The Mage didn’t wait for the boy to make a move and quickly raised his staff.
“DIE!”
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