Chapter 359: Fallen
For hours, Rain sat silently in his cage. A cage that slowly drained the mana of its occupant, ensuring that his already low level of mana would take weeks to recover if he remained inside.
For a time, he could hear Cassiel and Auric, just outside the door and indistinct, talking with each other. But then things grew silent.
He still felt the compulsion, the constant flow of mana anchored just outside the door where Auric stood watch.
Silent enough for him to think. And remember.
The looks on the villagers’ faces.
An old couple in their shelter, who hadn’t watched the exchange. How they called out when he appeared, thinking he was there to save them. Their faces when they realized he’d come to them with his sword in hand, drenched in blood.
Everyone else had tried to beg, or escape, or fight... He remembered the flash of weak spells, claws, makeshift weapons, and cooking blades... bodies with their backs to him and those that stood defiant to the end... all falling beneath Torrent.
Their dead faces haunted him, missing horns that the Executioners he’d thought of as friends and comrades for the last two years had harvested from them. They stared out from the darkness at him in woeful, wrathful, or fearful accusation.
Without orders, he couldn’t do more than sit and weep silently, part of him wishing he could mentally corner himself through those orders into having his heart stop. But even compulsion couldn’t overcome the body’s automatic functions. And the strength of Auric’s compulsion had been enough that even pain had failed to break through.
He spent hours alternating between his guilt and thoughts of how to die. How to kill Auric and those who’d laughed with him. And about how much of a dangerous fool he was.
Some time after he was thrown in the cage, the door hissed open.