Chapter 41: Heading Back
The closer Riven drew to Ashfang Village, the more the sounds of battle seemed to merge together into a single overwhelming wall of noise, as war horns echoed through the evening air while the screams of wounded men carried across the snow alongside the sounds of steel clashing against steel and the occasional crack of collapsing huts somewhere deeper within the settlement.
At first, he focused only on running.
However, the longer he listened, the more a strange feeling began to creep into his chest.
Because he had heard these sounds before.
’This chaos.... It’s the same as that night.’
Riven thought, as although the voices were different and the place was different, the rhythm of the chaos itself felt almost identical to the night his father and brother were killed.
Riven remembered that night with perfect clarity.
He remembered the exact way his mother had held him against her chest inside the hut, the exact pressure of her trembling fingers against his back, and the screams that had echoed outside his hut that night.
Back then, he had been too small to understand the precise horror of what was unfolding around him, however now, as he ran through the outskirts of Ashfang Village while the settlement burned around him, the same pattern repeated itself with such cruel precision that for a moment it felt less like a new tragedy and more like a memory that had somehow escaped his mind and taken physical shape around him.
Only this time, he was no longer trapped inside a hut.
This time, he was not being held in his mother’s arms.
This time, he was not waiting helplessly for the monsters outside to come for him.
As this time, he was running towards them instead.
*Step* *Step* *Step*
Soon, Riven found himself entering the proper outskirts of Ashfang Village, as the true scale of the disaster finally became apparent to him.
Smoke drifted through the narrow paths between huts while scattered battles unfolded across different corners of the settlement without any clear line separating the two sides, making it difficult to tell where one skirmish ended and another began, as wherever his eyes wandered, another struggle seemed to be taking place.
To his right, an Ashfang warrior staggered backward through the snow with blood pouring from a wound in his stomach while a Yellowtail raider relentlessly pursued him with an axe raised overhead, whereas farther down the same road, a woman was being dragged away by her hair while a laughing Yellowtail warrior periodically stopped to stomp on her face whenever she resisted too fiercely.
Yet despite the gruesome scenes unfolding around him, Riven never slowed his pace or allowed himself to become distracted by the suffering taking place throughout the village, because every moment spent watching somebody else’s tragedy was another moment Hagrid might be killed by someone else, and the possibility of arriving too late to settle that score felt far more unbearable to him than anything he witnessed around him.
As a result, he simply tightened his grip around the wooden sword in his hand and continued running deeper into the village, forcing himself to ignore everything except the destination ahead.
However, just as he turned into one of the wider roads leading toward Hagrid’s side of Ashfang, his footsteps slowed despite himself, as his eyes caught on to a body that was lying in the middle of the path.
At first, Riven almost ignored it, because he had already ran past several bodies by now, however, as his subconscious registered the size of the body to be no larger than himself, he could not help but look at it twice, only to realize that it was one of the privileged group recruits training under Garron.
’Tony?’
He wondered, as he recalled the boy’s name that he had once heard in passing, as although he had never once talked to the boy, watching him lay here in cold blood with the same wooden sword in hand that Riven was currently carrying, still sent a shiver down Riven’s spine.
’So he actually tried to fight....’
Riven realized, as the sight told him everything he needed to know.
The boy had tried to fight.
Perhaps he had remembered Garron’s lesson about range, timing, and channeling Aether into the weapon.
Perhaps he had believed that the wooden sword in his hand made him more than a child.
Perhaps he had simply panicked when death approached and swung at the first enemy that came near him.
Whatever the reason, the result lay before Riven now, because several weeks of training had not been enough to turn him into a warrior, and the moment he challenged a grown fighter on a real battlefield, the difference between practice and war had been carved into his throat.
For several seconds, Riven stared at the corpse without moving.
Then his grip tightened around his own wooden sword, as suddenly the weapon began to feel cheaper and lighter than before, as though it was no longer a serious tool for self preservation but rather a child’s toy pretending to be something dangerous.
Yet despite that realization, he did not throw it away.
Instead, he stepped around the corpse and continued forward, because no matter how useless the weapon seemed in the face of everything unfolding around him, it was still the only thing he had.
And tonight, even something useless was better than carrying nothing at all.
"Please Minerva, let the cripple still be alive...."
Riven prayed, as he weaved through the skirmishes unfolding around him while ensuring that he neither lingered near any ongoing fight nor drew the attention of any Yellowtail warriors, because although revenge consumed his thoughts, he still understood that dying before reaching Hagrid would make everything he had endured until now meaningless.
As a result, he ran with a level of focus that bordered on obsession, slipping through narrow paths between huts, crossing side roads whenever the opportunity presented itself, and constantly adjusting his route whenever armed warriors appeared ahead, as at this moment, there was only a single destination that mattered to him and a single man that he wished to find.
Several times he came dangerously close to being dragged into the fighting regardless.
Once, an Ashfang warrior stumbled directly into his path while clutching a wound across his chest, forcing Riven to quickly sidestep before continuing onward, while on another occasion, a Yellowtail raider sprinted past him so closely that he could smell the blood covering the man’s furs, causing his heart to nearly leap from his chest.
However, despite the chaos surrounding him, he never slowed down.
Because with every passing second, the possibility that somebody else might reach Hagrid first continued to grow larger inside his mind, driving him forward with an urgency that made it feel as though his entire life depended upon reaching that house before it was too late.
Then finally, through the smoke, firelight, and confusion consuming Ashfang Village, the familiar outline of Hagrid’s dwelling appeared in the distance.
And the moment Riven saw it, years of humiliation, helplessness, grief, and hatred surged violently to the surface, as without realizing it, his grip around the wooden sword tightened until his knuckles turned white while his breathing became noticeably heavier.
Because after all these years, he was finally close enough to look Hagrid in the eyes before passing judgment.
