Chapter Ten
The sky was a muddy, murky black - there appeared to be no moon, no light, only that of the empty gleam that shone like a mysterious light from the ocean in the enemy’s eyes. It was greed, and hunger, for blood.
He went through the practiced motions, time and time again - stabbing at the darkness, feeling cold liquid seep into his hands. Over and over again, their screams relentless. Peter behind him, his scared and shaky breaths clouding in the cold night air.
After pulling his sword from a dust-covered carcass, Steve turned to Peter, eyes drifting north. Peter nodded, and slunk away. He would go to the rooftops, where he could find a better vantage point.
Until then, it was just Steve.
And from the bleak, heaving mass, he could see something beginning to merge. The ghostly mercenaries began to melt together- limb by limb, fusing like a skeleton collecting its bones from the other graves. Horrified, he froze as the corpse he had just drawn his sword from grew from the ground, snarling from deep within its throat, and blending with the hulking creature that was beginning to form. He shielded his eyes, sword poised in front of him - ready to act -
“Son of shield.” A low, gravelly voice scratched the back of his mind.
He lowered his hand. What should have been a huge monster was now a cape-slung figure, wearing a mask of ornate silver. It had risen, like a creature of the underworld, from the shadows. Only, it was not what he had expected.
“Stand down.”
Steve gritted his teeth, narrowing his eyes against the din. Flashes of steel and silver danced in front of his eyes, until he could no longer determine what was real and what was not, and hot needles stabbed into his head, a thousand pinpricks-his knees buckled, body ready to give into the pain-
“Stand down. Yours is not the soul I seek, but I will claim it if you do not stand down.”
Steve breathed through his nose, harsh and heavy, squeezing his eyes shut. “Why-are you-tormenting these villages?” He panted, gripping his weapon tighter. He needed Peter beside him. “Why do you seek a soul?”
“For the same reason as every mortal on this earth.”
Through his blurred vision, he could see the figure pause, tilt its masked head. “Only, not for something so pitiful as revenge. For the bond made by water, blood must be paid.”
Made by water… Blood..
Words moved around frantically in Steve’s head as he tried to discern the meaning behind the figure’s twisted words. Why is it that they always speak in tongues, and not say their real meaning?
“You are no mortal.” Steve breathed, struggling to get through each word. Peter struggled on the ground next to him, succumbing to the same blinding pain. He could hear the smirk through its voice.
“Perhaps not. Allow me to show you.”
All of a sudden, there were no more needles, no more piercing agony.
Breath heaved like a wave from Steve’s chest, relief flooding - peace, at last, he could feel no more pain - this was the end of his struggling, and now death would grant him release -
“The world is not as simple as you think it, split into factions of shield, and hydra - the foe and the friend - the lover and the enemy. It has never been that way. People drift between good and evil, unaware of the line they so innocently crossed every day. One day you may stray into the path of something you never thought you would choose.”
Something was welling up in Steve’s mind, emerging from depths as coal black as the space behind his eyelids. A hand, reaching from a well, fingernails grasping stupidly at the filthy mortar of the walls, trying to stay afloat. Another hand, emerging to meet it, a beacon in the darkness. Grasping, pulling up, the figure of a woman whose hair clung to her in matted sheets, soaked to the bone.
She resembled you, through and through, so much so that a pang of emotion rang in Steve’s chest. The woman was drawn up into the arms of a man, whose face Steve did not know, and slumped there as if lifeless.
“When a life is saved, there is a debt to pay. This is the unwritten rule so many seem to have forgotten.”
The outer walls of a castle appeared, the scene of winter flooded with colour. Two young girls played in the snow, faces alight with the rawness of the freezing air. Steve blinked - he knew this memory. It was you, a younger you, and your cousin Hope. You were just a child.
A man, the same man who had saved your mother from drawing, watched from the parapets as you and Hope danced around each other like fireflies. The scene flickered again, and as quickly as the sparks disappeared from a fire, you had grown older. The plumpness of childhood was still on your face, but you were regal as you sat beside your uncle at a banquet table, Hope opposite you. He knew the look in your eyes even as a child, the calculated yet fierce control you maintained; the adults listened as you spoke, enraptured. A way of talking, far beyond your years - without knowing what you were saying, he wanted to listen.
Hope looked into her lap, dark hair falling about her face. The man sitting beside her eyed you burningly, before drifting his gaze back to his place.
“Female power, as captivating as it may be, is the work of satanic rituals and witchcraft of the age of the devil. I saw the witch in her from a young age.”
Steve’s face burned with anger- you were no witch, only a woman, making the best of what life had given her.
You were playing the harpsichord, older now, fingers gliding effortlessly across the keys, as everyone watched you, enraptured.
“I was not the only one. She had not the meekness of her cousin, of a woman befitting her station, low though it was. She was not demure, but bold, full of temerity. I had the gift of seeing it grow stronger still, a dark future."
Darkness grew around the castle. A guard stood beside you and your cousin’s bed as you huddled close to one another.
“The lands were threatened by an organisation of the people, bent on restoring power to themselves, overthrowing the odious imperiality of the country. They attacked the castle each night, whilst the shades of danger drawing closer to her family grew tighter, each plunder and death a nail in the coffin of their fate. I was asked, a second time, to save a life.”
Your mother, tears streaming down her face illuminated by candlelight, clung to your father and implored the man in front of them, almost sinking to her knees with grief.
“But it was not a life I wanted to save. I had to promise them my protection, but at a price I would not name. They were desperate, so they agreed to my unstated terms.”
The man was now at your side constantly, in dark colours so that he might blend in with his surroundings, shielding you from the conversation of your elders, and from the bettering of your education. Confined to your room, you now stitched and paced, waiting.
“You were keeping her in one place - so that you could kill them, and prevent her from becoming the witch you so abhorred,” Steve spat. “I hope you burn in hell.”
The figure tilted its head. The storybook-like scenes were now gone, and an acrid smoke hung in the air, like the disembodied souls of the mercenaries around him. The moon was covered by a shade of cloud, and mysterious shadows danced on the ground.
“I did not kill them, as you so vehemently accuse. Their death was not caused by me - I had the intention of confining the girl, but not her parents, who had come to be my friends, whom I cared for deeply. I could not besmirch the name of the woman I so loved by allowing her daughter to become a Thing of the devil.”
A hollow dread was now building like bile in the pit of Steve’s stomach, as he realised what had truly taken place. He had been wrong all along.
“They were killed, eventually, by the vagabonds that threatened the castle. It was a time I truly regret. To bury the woman I should have married, is a great shame indeed.”
“What, then? You decided to keep Y/N locked away for eternity? An impossible task.”
“Ah, so we agree on one thing. The witch was not to be confined. But I was sent away, soon after their deaths, by the Lord Pym. He had learned of my love for the girl’s mother, and, thinking I destroyed them both in a fury of passion, had done away with me. I did not see any of them again.”
Steve’s lips moved, confused by what he had heard. Where there was compassion in the figure’s voice, as he spoke of your mother, there was bitterness laced in his gravelly he spoke of Lord Pym’s exile of him. Where there was love, there was hate. But why did he want your soul?
“Child, although you have seen death, you don’t know what it is to want someone dead. For their soul to perish, more than mere cold-blooded killing is required.”
Steve struggled on the ground, but there was a vice-like grip on his shoulders.
“She must die, and you will be the one to do it.”
Breath didn’t come. He sat, motionless, staring into the creature’s eyes. “Never.” He hissed. “I will never do it.”
“Then I will make you - for a boy such as you, it will not be hard-”
Just as he reached, resisting the vice-hold, for his sword, a clear, bell-like voice rang out into the night.