Chapter 4: The Village of Velle (1)
The village was burning.
Flames devoured the thatched roofs, spitting whirls of sparks into the black sky, and smoke crept between the houses, low and acrid.
At the center of the square, some fifty villagers were crammed together on their knees, pressed against one another. Around them, fifteen men in black cloaks moved without hurry, weapons in hand. Every so often, a pommel would smash the mouth of a man who begged too loudly, and the raiders’ laughter rolled across the square while the loot piled up.
They had all the time in the world, and everyone knew it.
In the front row of captives, a raider stopped before a young woman in her twenties, her face lowered, her shoulders trembling. He sized her up for a moment, smiled, then grabbed her by the hair and dragged her out of the group.
"You. You’re coming with me."
"No... no, let me go! LET ME GO!"
He threw her to her knees in the middle of the square, in plain view, and his free hand seized the collar of her dress. The fabric tore with a sharp rip, baring one shoulder, then the other.
"NAÏA!!"
A teenage girl burst out of the group of captives, barely fifteen, and sprinted across the square, fists clenched, straight at the man holding her sister.
She didn’t make it five meters before a raider swept her aside almost carelessly and crushed her to the ground, a boot planted between her shoulder blades.
"Stay put, girl."
She struggled, clawed at the stone, in vain. So all she could do was watch, cheek pressed against the cobbles, her sister three meters away. Three meters, and the whole universe between them.
"Let her go..." Her voice cracked, rose, exploded. "LET GO OF MY SISTER!"
The laughter redoubled.
And in the group of captives, a woman went mad.
"My girls... NO, NOT MY GIRLS!" She thrashed between two raiders holding her by the arms, her face ravaged. "Someone! Help them! PLEASE, HELP THEM!!"
No one moved. The villagers kept their heads down, hands over their ears, for they had understood the rule long ago: raise your eyes, and you die.
The mother, though, was past fear. In a sudden burst, she bit the hand holding her, tore free of the grip, and fell forward, crawling on her elbows toward her daughters.
"Naïa! NAÏA—"
A shadow blocked her path.
"Is she ever going to shut up, that one?"
The voice was deep and weary. A man was making his way through the chaos, and the other raiders drew aside as he passed. Tall, massive, a long bare saber resting across the back of his neck, his cloak black and clean stood out against the patched rags of his men. The leader, clearly.
He stopped over the mother, who lifted a streaming face toward him, and for a second, she must have believed he could still be begged.
"P-please... my children... leave me my children, I beg y—"
The saber moved.
A red line appeared beneath her chin, thin, barely a thread. There was a heartbeat of silence, then everything gave way. The blood gushed, and she collapsed, knees first, forehead second, onto the reddened cobbles, three steps from her daughters.
"MAMA!!"
The two cries burst out at once and tore each other apart in the night.
The leader flicked the blood from his blade with a snap of the wrist and rested it back on his shoulder, then turned to his men as if nothing had happened.
"Right. Enough dawdling. Load what’s worth something, cut the throats of the rest. We don’t have all night—"
He froze.
Two silhouettes stood at the edge of the square, and no one had heard them come.
The first was slight, silver hair, pale violet eyes. She wore clothes this world had never seen, an impeccably white blouse and a dark suit, absurdly crisp amid the ash and blood.
The second was taller. A maid’s outfit hugged her full figure, black gloves, mauve hair spilling to her hips, and on her lips floated a faint smile, soft and calm, that had no business in a place like this.
"There are still plenty of them alive," the maid observed distractedly. "Shall I take care of it, mistress?"
Freya didn’t answer right away. She looked at the square, the bodies on the ground, the woman finishing bleeding out three steps from her daughters, the blood darkening the cobbles. A scene that should have turned her stomach.
And nothing came. No nausea, no gag reflex, not even that little shiver one feels before horror, only a flat calm, quiet, disturbing in its quietness.
That’s strange. I should be throwing up right now. Or crying. Something. She found none of it in herself. Was I already like this before, or is it this new form doing it to me?
She didn’t have the answer, and it wasn’t the moment to look for it, so she set the question aside with the others. A cool head that doesn’t waver was probably exactly what she needed here, and she still preferred that to falling apart and making a stupid decision.
Her gaze settled on the big one with the saber, the one the others drew aside from without even realizing it.
And there’s the boss. That one, I’m keeping.
"Not yet," she said at last. "Let’s move."
They crossed the square side by side, at the unhurried pace of someone heading home, and one by one, every gaze locked onto them, raiders and villagers alike.
The raider holding Naïa let her drop and straightened, dagger in hand.
"What are these two? You ladies get lost?"
A second came up beside him, eyes narrowed.
"Doubt it. Nobody wanders around here on a night like this."
A third, hood drawn low, looked Freya up and down, a sneer twisting his mouth.
"Get a load of those clothes, boys. Looks like a noble." His tongue slid across his lips. "Never had myself a noble’s body. Maybe tonight’s the night, heheh."
A silence.
Then the air changed.
The cold came first, a brutal bite, as if all the warmth had left the square at once. The flames trembled and bent low, and in the middle of a burning village, the mist of breath began to whiten.
Then came the weight, an invisible pressure that crashed down on the square, crushing, driving the air from lungs. The shadows stretched, all of them turned toward Aria.
A black aura seeped from her in waves, crept across the ground, drank the light around her. Her violet eyes glowed, fixed on the man who had spoken, and in the puddles, the blood shivered and trembled, as if drawn toward her.
"You dared..." Her voice was low, chilling, each word set apart like a blade being honed. "You dared lay your eyes on my mistress."
"UNFORGIVABLE! WRETCHED LESSER BEINGS!!!"
The entire square buckled. The villagers slammed forehead-first to the ground, unable to draw a single breath, and one raider emptied his stomach onto his own boots.
Aria advanced, slow, relentless, no madness on her face, only a bare, cold rage that frightened far more than any scream. Her eyes did not blink and her voice did not rise, which was worse still.
"I am going to tear out your eyes. One by one. Everything that dared land on her, I will take back from you."
Freya, for her part, did not move. Anger gripped her throat, cold and cutting, but above it, a part of her was already calculating. Aria was a hair’s breadth from razing everything at once, the man she wanted along with the rest, and that was out of the question.
"Aria."
A single word, and the demon froze as if struck.
Freya raised an arm and laid it across, in front of her, and the aura crushing the whole village wavered, held back.
"Calm down."
Aria turned her head toward her, ready, for the space of an instant, to beg to be let loose. Then she saw.
Beneath her mistress’s apparent calm, beneath that steady voice, there was exactly the same thing that lived in her. The same fury. The same thirst for blood. Freya wasn’t holding her back out of disapproval, but because she wanted this man for herself.
And that discovery struck Aria like a caress. The madness ebbed away, replaced by something far softer, close to adoration.
Freya let the silence settle a second, then raised her other arm and pointed at the man, the one who had spoken, the one who had coveted her out loud.
"Kill them all," she said, voice low and cutting, jaw tight and gaze icy. "But him..." Her finger did not tremble. "Him, you keep alive for me."
A shiver ran through Aria, and a smile came to her, cold, almost hungry, as if keeping this man alive were the sweetest of promises.
"With pleasure, mistress."
She took a step, a single one, and the ground shuddered. For a heartbeat, nothing moved.
Then her shadow tore open. The tentacles surged out, not all at once but in a cascade, one then two then ten, each splitting the air with a low hiss before plunging into the ground, and the cobblestones exploded in every direction.
The first raider looked up and had just enough time to see the point bearing down on him. It caught him full in the chest, hoisted him toward the sky, limbs dangling, then flung him back to the ground.
[ Corpse of a being slain by the Dungeon Lord detected. Mana may be harvested by the Dungeon Heart. ]
Freya blinked.
... Excuse me?
"RUN!"
Too late. A tentacle snatched one by the ankle, swept him off mid-stride, and smashed him against a wall with a wet crack, while another ran through a back and came out through a stomach.
Freya, though, was already elsewhere in her mind. Wait. The bodies give mana? She stared at the notification, then at the corpses piling up. How does that work, exactly? System, is there a limit?
The answer appeared at once, as clinical as the rest.
[ The mana of one slain by the Dungeon Lord or their creatures remains harvestable for twelve hours. ]
Twelve hours. And why twelve?
[ That is how long the mana stays intact within a lifeless body before dispersing and returning to the world. ]
... Charming. She let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh, while a third raider pivoted toward Aria, axe raised, roaring, and struck with all his strength. The steel shattered, and him right after. So I’ve got twelve hours to haul this whole crowd back to the dungeon before it spoils. A shiver ran through her, one she had the decency to feel a little ashamed of, just a little. Fifteen or so fresh corpses. It’s cynical to a rare degree, but god, is it efficient.
She noted one last detail in passing: Aria’s aura had just buckled an entire village, and she had felt nothing, not even a weight on her shoulders. It was another of those mysteries she filed away with the others, for a more fitting moment.
One of the raiders, instead of trying his luck toward the forest like the others, threw himself straight at Freya and collapsed at her knees, hands clasped, his face twisted with terror.
"You! You’re human, you are! Please, my lady, tell it to stop! Tell that thing to stop! I’ll do anything you want, anything, I—"
Freya looked down at him and recognized one of the men who had laughed the loudest a few minutes earlier.
"Sorry." She wasn’t sorry. "I’m the one who gave the order."
By the time he understood, a tentacle had already carried him off.
A little further away, the man pinning the girl to the ground dropped everything to flee, but he didn’t make two steps before being snatched up mid-air. The boot vanished from the teenager’s back, and without trying to understand why, she crawled, half rose, fell again, crawled again, until her sister’s arms closed around her. The two stayed there, welded together and trembling, at the heart of a storm that mowed down everything around them without ever touching them.
It lasted only a few seconds. When the silence fell, all that remained was a forest of suspended bodies, dripping slowly in the glow of the fires.
Almost.
The leader was still standing. Against all odds, he had drawn, and his blade trembled against the tentacle that had marked him, sparks crackling along the steel, his boots plowing the ground inch by inch.
Aria tilted her head, a disappointed pout on her lips.
"Well now. Even filth knows how to parry."
The man didn’t answer. He had seen, he had understood there was no way out, so he made the only sensible choice left to him: he broke contact with a twist of the wrist and bolted with all his strength, without a glance back.
Freya didn’t budge.
"Go. Catch him. I want that one alive too, I’ve got questions for him."
Aria cast a glance toward the man she had pinned to the ground, the one who had coveted her mistress, as if to make sure he wouldn’t be taken from her.
"He’s yours, that one," Freya said, almost amused. "Go."
The demon bowed, the smile still hanging on her lips, then she vanished on the runaway’s trail.
Silence fell over the square, a real silence this time, disturbed only by the crackle of the flames and the drip-drip of the suspended bodies.
Freya turned toward the villagers.
Fifty pairs of eyes stared at her. No one had moved, no one dared, and in those gazes she read something that unsettled her more than she’d have expected. It wasn’t gratitude, but terror, and not toward the tentacled monster that had just vanished into the night. Toward her. The woman in the suit who had stopped it with a gesture and condemned men with a word.
Somewhere in the crowd, a strangled voice murmured.
"It’s her... she’s the one who commands the thing..."
Right. Freya took a deep breath, brushed off a sleeve that didn’t need it, and reached for her finest polite smile. Now... how do I explain all this to fifty traumatized people?
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