The Empire of Death: Part Two

The skull flashed red, and the mana tester dropped the quill he’d been holding. A blade flashed into his hand from nowhere, and he swung for Ignatius’ neck. 

“What happened?!” Ignatius asked, his breath coming quick and shallow. 

Rather than answer, the man whipped a blade from seemingly nowhere. While most of Ignatius’ brain panicked, a part of him wondered. The tester was a space mage? That would make sense, to store his mana samples and scrolls and the table.

That was only a small part of his brain, though. A much larger portion was focused on the sword swinging at his head. He ducked aside from the blow, seized the chair with one hand, and brought it crashing on top of the tester’s head. 

Ignatius was a farmer, and he’d worked the fields from age ten. He might be a touch underfed, but he was strong. The traveling mana tester, on the other hand, had the foppish build of nobility. 

When the chair connected, the mana tester dropped like a stone, blood leaking from his head. Ignatius had only a second to consider that he may have just killed a human when the skull flashed a deeper red, and words hissed from its light. 

“Deviant…”

The word spiraled through the room, a whisper that was as soft as a spider’s silk, yet loud enough to be heard throughout the castle.

“Deviant…” 

People began to clatter to their feet outside, and panic gripped Ignatius’ heart. He grabbed the sword and brought it down with a great swing atop the skull. It shattered, and there was a triumphant laugh, the words sounding almost like ‘freedom’, before the red light faded. 

The door slammed, and Ignatius thanked the man’s paranoia in locking his door between clients. Still, the iron bolt wouldn’t last forever, so Ignatius moved. He grabbed the scroll from atop the writing desk, grabbed the three others that were in the sun section, and then looked for the scrolls marked with the same first letter, ‘s’, hoping that they’d be the storm magic scrolls. 

He stuffed the priceless artifacts down his shirt, then swung the sword at the glass of the god-king window. Once, twice, thrice he struck, and he prepared for a fourth when the door blew open. It would have to be enough. Ignatius leapt from the window, the sharp glass of the slightly too-small hole tearing at his shirt and pants and digging into his skin. 

And then he was through. He ran across the lawn of the baron’s castle, even as people began to shout. Ignatius focused, doing his best to think. The small house he had been provided as a part of his serfdom was days of walking away. If he cut through Shadehallow Wood, maybe he could make it in a day, but that would rely on him successfully navigating the haunted wood. 

Did he need to go home, though? Most everything, he’d stored away at the inn in Elbrish, the town outside of the baron’s castle. If he could just slip in, he could grab the handful of his leftover coins and personal belongings, tie them up in his mother’s one good blanket, and leave. 

But… where to go after that? 

Ignatius didn’t know much about being declared a deviant, but if it was anything like heresy against the god-king, then there would only be one punishment: execution. Considering that the mana tester had gone for a lethal blow, that seemed far too likely.  

The last time a heretic had been hunted, she had been from the next barony over, and yet every landlord, merchant, freeman, and serf from across his whole home had known. Sketches of the woman’s face, done in charcoal, had been passed around to even the serfs, and a reward had been offered.

There had been entirely too many people at the testing to dare and hope he wouldn’t be sketched and passed around the same way. Besides, he wasn’t even certain if he’d killed the mana tester.

But it meant this barony, and any surrounding baronies wouldn’t be safe. And that was at the very least. It was possible the news would spread even further. After all, he had no reference for how bad having a deviant soul was. Did it mean he was evil? Ignatius didn’t feel evil, but at the same time, he had just disobeyed what seemed to be a decree from the god-king. That was about as evil as he could be. 

Focus. He needed a plan. If the Eternal Empire wasn’t safe, what about the other nations? 

The north had its frozen barbarians. They were said to intermarry with dragons, as well as worship them, and that allowed them to wield great command over ice. Some rumors said they’d even frozen an entire army of the god-king. If he managed to make it to the vast, jagged mountain range that sawed off the icy men’s land from the Empire’s civilizing influence, then could he escape? 

Maybe. It was possible the barbarians would welcome someone who was outcast by the Empire, but it was also possible that they’d simply see him as a spy and kill him. What else…

Across the southern sea was the kingdom of Retrik. Not quite an ally to the Eternal Empire, as they refused to pay the very reasonable tributes for the glory of the Empire, but not an enemy either. 

For the first time in his life, Ignatius wondered if those tributes truly were reasonable, and if the northerners truly were so barbaric. After all, he’d been sentenced to death for little more than existing. 

It didn’t matter if the Empire was a liar or not. Stowaways were almost universally executed if they got caught. Northerners might kill him as a spy. His own people would kill him if he stayed. It was just a matter of picking which – Enforcer! 

The pair of skeletons marched toward him, each of their own short arming blades already in hand. His sword was longer, but he’d bet these skeletons had more skill from the ghosts housed within their skulls, more strength from the looping threads of power that the god-king imbued in them, and more reinforcements already on the way. 

Framing it like that, Ignatius reasoned he didn’t need or want to beat them. He just wanted to escape with his scrolls. The sword would be nice if he could keep it, but the scrolls were more valuable, and his life was more valuable still.

He lifted the sword, dashed to one side, and chucked it at the pair even as they turned to focus on him. Throwing swords with any accuracy was near impossible, but he didn't throw it like a spear. He threw it like he was throwing an oversized metal stick. It clashed into the skeletons, knocking both to the ground. They were already picking themselves back up, but he’d known it wouldn’t destroy them, and had started to run.

He sprinted down the hill and threw himself over the long wooden fence and into the cow paddock of someone, thanking the god-emperor that there weren’t any bulls in here, only a few heffers and older cows. The animals looked startled as he rushed across the ground, then out onto the street. 

It was already getting to be too late. The skeleton forms of the Enforcers had risen and were walking around, shifting down the streets of the town. Ignatius turned and ducked into an alleyway, then turned and put his foot on the low window ledge, before climbing up onto the roof. The thatch was old and worn, and he nearly fell through, but he managed to grab ahold of the beam and crawl forward, then leap to another rooftop. 

He wasn’t sure if it was the strength of desperation, or if some other force, opposed to the god-king had helped him, but he managed to snatch onto another roof and started to run. People shouted on the streets below, and the Enforcers were gathering once again, but Ignatius paid them no heed. He raced from roof to roof, fueled by panic and fear and rage and a thousand other emotions. A spell fell from his shirt, the vellum landing in the mud, but Ignatius couldn’t spare the mental effort to feel anything about the loss of his ill-gotten gains.

There! 

He dove through the open shutters of the inn where he’d left a handful of his things, and immediately dashed to his small room. There wasn’t a lock, this establishment too poor for such things, so he threw open the door and took his mother’s blanket from the bed. Ignatius untucked his shirt and let the scrolls dump onto it, then quickly dashed around, cursing his past self for not leaving everything in a neat bundle. 

Beneath him, he could hear the clacking of the Enforcers pushing into the inn, and the stammering of the innkeeper and her daughter. Ignatius spat out the foulest curse he knew, blaspheming the god-king as he did so, and tied his clothes into a bundle. He peeked out the window, hoping that there wouldn’t be any Enforcers down there, but their glowing purple skulls met his gaze evenly. One of them drew back a bow, and he ducked his head back in, then turned and seized the straw mattress. He wedged it under the door to buy himself an instant, then leapt out the window, aiming for the open shutters across the street. 

He landed amidst the upstairs of a potter’s shop and the potter let out a screech. Ignatius ignored her, racing to the open shutters on the other side of the building and dropping his bundle, then swiftly scaling down the side, grabbing his bundle, and racing off again. The Enforcers would be on his tail, so he zigged and zagged through the streets, taking a chaotic pattern, rushing through people’s small farms and practically trampling over anyone who got in his way. 

By the time he made it to the edge of the town, he’d bought enough of a lead on the Enforcers that they were no longer in sight, and he paused to look around, desperate for anything that might be able to help, and his gaze landed on the form of a merchant, midway through packing his cart. Ignatius shoved himself in the shadows, then the instant the man’s back was turned, crammed himself into a large barrel that was partially filled with salt, but was otherwise empty. He thanked his lucky stars that he hadn’t needed to go through multiple barrels, else he’d have been caught. 

He pulled the lid back over himself and was plunged into darkness, but even without his sight, he could still hear. The merchant was putting more things in the cart, and then the distinctive clattering of bones. He held his breath and tried to still the flows of his mana. 

Ignatius had never learned a proper veiling technique before, but he wasn’t stupid, merely uneducated. He knew that still, gentle, stable mana was harder to feel in his own senses than when people were actively using it. He wasn’t sure if that would apply to mage mana like it did to mageless magic, but he tried his best. 

Then he heard the voice of one of the Enforcers. Their skill with speech was deeply limited by the ghost used to create them, and the mana-tether to the god-king or his servants, so through the barrel, Ignatius couldn’t make out what the skeleton said. Thankfully, the merchant’s voice was louder and clearer, well educated and practiced. 

“Ah, my hudau stones? Yes, I’ve quite the collection of shells, imported from Retrik. Would the god-king be– no, no, I understand. Sorry to bother you.” 

Then the clattering of the Enforcers as they left. Ignatius let out a breath of relief and closed his eyes. Keeping his mana still was hard. For now, the best thing to do would be to sleep, but sleep lightly. When the merchant was a ways out of the city, Ignatius could leave. 

Then… he didn’t know. Nowhere in the Empire was safe. He supposed he’d head north, or maybe south.