[TBATE] -More Than One Godspell-

Draven

The view outside the carriage window stretched endlessly—a forest of trees clawing at a dull, gray horizon.

"Hey, why must you have to check my blood? My certificate should be enough to prove I'm clean, that I'm clean—no traces of Vritra blood. Is that not enough to convince you?" Even though I knew he wouldn't answer, I still asked.

"..." There was no answer. Just like with every previous question I've asked, the soldier remained silent.

Maybe he just wanted to be sure...

The carriage lurched to a stop.

"Get out. We are here." The soldier spoke for the first time since I started following him.

I got off the carriage. My legs felt numb from the ride that had gone on for so long that the memories of its start had already begun to rot away in my mind. 

"...What is this place?" Before me gaped a tunnel mouth—small yet somehow wrong in its proportions. They might decide to quickly build this for temporary use, I presume.

Without answering my question, the soldier strode into the tunnel first. He turned with his eyes on me, reflecting nothing more than an order.

Of course, I followed, as we both knew I would.

Without the light from the torches, the descent would have felt like sinking into the throat of a beast. Each step took me deeper, giving me the feeling of the old times when I was an ascender.

"Hey, can I..." I wanted to ask, but the words seemed to have stuck in my throat like a hook, "...Can I ask about my family? Their well-being, I mean."

"..." He slowed down. 

"Please," I choked, my voice trembling. "I just need to know if my wife and daughter are safe. Please."

He stopped. The silence that followed wasn't merely an absence of sound—it felt more like a presence, as if it was an actual living being that would devour me alive.

"...You will meet them soon..." His words came at last, offering neither comfort nor clarity. I wanted to know more. Desperately, in fact. And yet, at the same time, I wished to remain ignorant.

"..." I swallowed hard while he said nothing more.

And just like that, we moved on.

I moved on.

As we trudged forward, my thoughts turned against me, dragging me down into the deepest depths of my worst fears about Yara and Elara. My wife and daughter.

Why had they been taken? Why them? What had they done to deserve this? Were they safe? Were they warm? Were they even...

I clenched my jaw and squeezed my eyes shut, shaking off the thought before it could bloom fully into such horror I could not bear.

But it wouldn't leave. It was still there, festering in the cracks of my sanity like rats.

"..."

The corridor ended at a weathered door, its paint peeling away like dead skin. My footsteps, which had echoed so boldly moments before, withered into silence as if the very air had thickened with its own dread. There, seeping beneath the warped wood, a red stain of old blood spread like fingers reaching for my soul.

My throat suddenly went dry as dust.

"..."

As the door creaked open, I was barely breathing.

"...Yara?" I ran up to her, putting her carefully in my hold, and despite how trembling my hands were, I was able to brush all matted strands of hair off her ashen face. The copper tang of blood filled my nostrils as I pressed my ear to her chest, desperate for any signs of life.

"PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!!!" The faint flutter of her heartbeat came through. It was like a dying bird trapped beneath her ribs. So weak and so slow.

Her white dress—the one she'd worn so proudly to show off our growing miracle—now bloomed with crimson stains of her own blood, spreading like spilled wine across the delicate fabric.

I pressed my palm against her swollen belly, and the world turned sideways. Where there should have been the firm roundness of life, my fingers sank into a yielding softness. The flesh beneath her dress felt wrong—it was like touching wet clay through silk. No resistance, no fluttering response—only a dreadful, hollow stillness under my touch. 

"Wha-what have you..." 

My mind refused to believe what my hands were telling me.

"WHAT HAVE YOU PEOPLE DONE?!!"

The soldier's eyes narrowed, gleaming with a twisted disgust as he spoke. "Don't look at me like that. Those eyes of yours—they aren't going to change anything. It wasn't our fault." He took a step closer. "If that woman hadn't resisted, she wouldn't have ended up like this. She practically killed her own child. This is what she deserves, to say the least."

"What the f*ck are saying!?"

"Ah, yes. You didn't know, how sad." His voice dripped with mockery. "I am saying she earned this fate as a result of her daring to disobey the High Sovereign. She was lucky enough to have Vritra blood traces inside her, and she decided to run away with such a gift. She disappeared years ago, just a child who managed to sneak out. She was presumed dead and possibly had become organic fertilizer for some nameless field, as all possible means were used to find her but failed. That is, until we found out she had been furtively skipping annual blood checks, which is... very unfortunate for her, I'd say."

"..."

Yara grabbed my shirt. "I—I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..." Her apologetic sobs shattered what remained of me into infinite, irreparable fragments.

"Yara...?" I called. Her grip began to dissolve, progressively. Muscle by muscle, sinew by sinew, her hand lost its desperate purchase and fell limply to the floor.

***

The soldier

She died.

And this former Ascender named Draven kept on clinging to his wife's corpse as though his own existence depended on it. His trembling hands brushed against her pale face, his lips murmuring the words I couldn't make out.

"Ahem!" I stepped closer to him, my shadow falling over the pair of them, and yet as much as I didn't want to intrude on his sorrow, there were things that needed to be done.

"..."

"Don't be too upset now, Draven." I began. "Listen, there are many other women out there to replace. You have a lot of options, and with what I'm about to give you—" I lowered myself down, placing a hand on his shoulder, and took out a dimension ring that contained more wealth than most would see in a lifetime, more than enough for him to live comfortably without having to worry about anything in the world. "—can start fresh. A new life, Draven—a better one." I extended the ring closer, its polished surface gleaming inches from his face, but he didn't move. His shoulders remained hunched with his breath shuddering. "On the condition that you leave. Forget this place, this life. Because if we meet again, things aren't going to end well for you."

As a matter of course, he gently placed his wife down and stroked her eyes closed afterward. He took his time looking at his wife for a moment before reaching his hand for the ring.

I put the ring in his open palm and, without thinking, wrapped my hands over his, squeezing it firmly. "Hold onto this. You don't want to lose this, and I hope you won't think about—"

The sudden chill stole the breath from my lungs. Faster than the blink of an eye, both my hands and his hand were encased in a jagged block of ice.

It was too late for me to react.

With a roar of effort, he swung the ice block like a fist, driving it into my face.

I fell back, my spine jarring against the ground as his weight pinned me down. A sharp, frantic pain erupted in my face—over and over as the block of ice slammed into my nose and jaw, blow after blow sending splinters of agony radiating through my skull.
As pain engulfed my consciousness, terror clouded my thoughts, impairing my ability to concentrate on channeling mana to my runes to fight back.

The ice shattered and that was when a new different pain ripped through me.

A shriek of agony clawed its way up my throat, but it came out garbled. Blood spurted out like a crimson fountain as both my arms were sliced off by something coldly sharp.

"Aghhh—gr—aAghh!" My scream refused to come out fully.

"My daughter..." His voice cracked through the chaos of my suffering. "Where is my daughter."

"H-High... Highblood Denoir." I gasped, blood bubbling between my words. "Your daughter wi—will be adopted by Highblood Denoir. That's all I know... please!"

He said nothing more. His gaze grew distant, as if seeing through me to some terrible future I'd helped create. 

Slowly, almost reverently, he raised the ice spike high above me.

"Wait...!" I opened my mouth, my voice barely a whisper. "P-please..."

The ice dropped.

"PLEASE!"

It was too late.

"LET'S TALK THIS THOUGH—" 

And the shadows that gathered and crept closer, curling at the edges of my vision, were the last thing I saw before everything went dark.