Chapter 60: I was not afraid at all
"But... But... I told you that I am just an ordinary bell boy," Aric pleaded again. His face was filled with shock and fear. One could easily understand the fear of the young boy who had just come out for his first adventure.
"What if you are? What if you are not?" Tory said as she slowly approached Aric, who was panicking with every step. In desperation, Aric went down to his knees and said,
"Please... Spare me... I have a young brother and a sister to tend to at home. I just came out to feed my family. Please spare me. I beg you." Aric said with a voice croaking under his tears that had welled up in his eyes.
"Tory... Just finish him off... His pleading is now becoming pathetic... A man should stand up to his fate," George, who was being tended to by the woman and the other man, said. He didn’t even have an ounce of mercy in his voice. He spoke as if Aric was some ant that needed to be swatted away.
Tory, getting the support, quickened her pace and then pulled her hand backward to stab at Aric. But before she could thrust it at Aric, she fell face-first to the ground. And Tory wasn’t the only one. The other two, who were attending to George, did the same. If one noticed their heads, they would see a small circular burnt spot that allowed one to look through.
George was the only one who was fine and looked dumbfounded. Aric, meanwhile, who was on his knees, got up and brushed off the nonexistent dirt on his knees. It was a self-cleaning nano suit, what did you expect?
George didn’t understand what had happened and pulled his sheathed sword, looking around. He didn’t touch the bodies of his friends that lay dead because he knew they were dead. Their deaths didn’t seem to shake him at all, but the fact that he had not been assassinated yet with whatever that was did.
"Who is it? Come out, you bastard... Killing someone from behind. What kind of coward are you?" George spilled out as he stood up instantly and looked at the open space outside the cave.
"Well... Well... Killing people at this hour wasn’t on my bingo card today," Aric said from behind. These words made George more alert as he turned his eyes to look at Aric, expecting him to hold Tory’s dagger and thrust at him, but Aric looked immensely calm and collected, while being unarmed. This threw George off.
At first, watching the fear in Aric’s eyes, he didn’t consider him a threat at all. Then Aric spoke up, and his quick mind thought the youngling would want to seek revenge on him, but this wasn’t it either.
There was just a cold look in his eyes. He had seen that look multiple times before because it was the same look he had seen in the mirror after Elowen had betrayed him years ago. He was a man of proper morality before, but the betrayal changed him fundamentally, and he had coped with it by becoming another version of Elowen herself.