Right of the Victor
Chapter 11

Terror, death, and flames. The three of those are never desirable, but all of them were present as I looked out over the dancing flames jumping across burnt corpses and wood. The smell, the sights, the heat against my skin…All of it was enough to bring me to my knees, unsure how this had happened but starkly aware that it couldn’t be fixed. Audent, Allazo, Vargos, and all the rest were certainly dead. Only one figure aside from me stood in the flames. He was taller than I, carrying a sword in his right hand while his face was unclear through the clouds of smoke. As he gradually approached and became clearer, my breath caught in my throat. I knew who this was. Who wouldn’t? Scrambling backwards, I tried to turn and run. Cowardly, yes, but the only path to survival. There was nothing ahead of me, yet I was stopped by something. Colliding with an invisible barrier, my vision blinked out suddenly and plunged me into deep blackness.

Of all thing to expect, the least probable one was that I would wake up perfectly fine again. Even awake, I kept my eyes shut, scared to see what awaited me. That didn’t mean I couldn’t feel, however. I was swaying, some sort of fabric holding me up. Was this one of the hammocks? Those were gone, so that couldn’t be it. Mind a mess of mixed emotion and chaos, I sat up and looked around eventually, nearly losing my balance. Wooden walls and pillars with hammocks swinging from them were everywhere, half filled with men or women. Were these not the same people I had just seen dead, in this same room that I’d watched burning to the ground? Standing shakily, I walked out of the room and into the common area, faced immediately by a hundred eyes. I didn’t care about most of them. The only people worth talking to at the moment would be Audent and Allazo, who I didn’t see anywhere nearby. Had they left? That was strange. I had to settle for pulling aside a random other member, a young woman I’d known on a name basis for a while but nothing more.

“Lyra. Where is Audent?” I spoke to the woman, surprise registering on her face when I called her by name. In my time as one of the Torris, I had been known to rarely address anyone aside from the people in charge. It was a poor reputation, but one that I wouldn’t bother changing.

“She’s still here. Waiting for you to wake up, probably,” Lyra stood from the bench she’d been at, staring directly at my eyes in a strange way that made me wonder what she was thinking. “Took you long enough, by the way.”

“How long?” I asked in a rushed manner, even though I thought I’d been told this already.

“Someone looks like they need to calm down,” She retorted mockingly with a smirk, “It’s been a couple of hours.”

I paused, unsure if I trusted that. I’d been told it was over two days, but everything felt wrong. While I was no stranger to hallucinations, it now seemed impossible to tell reality from falsehood. Totally lost in all the things that had gone on, I backed away from Lyra, spinning on one heel to speedily go towards Audent’s personal rooms.

I’d never directly gone to these specific rooms before, because I’d never needed to. Nobody was permitted through the eternally locked door at the front, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t knock. Rapping my fist loudly against the wood, I waited impatiently until it was answered by a tired-looking face that shifted into almost a smile when she saw me.

“Didn’t expect a rat at my door at this hour,” Audent stepped out of the room, “Are you well?”

“What the hell…” I was simply happy to see her alive after the terrifying visions I’d experienced prior to this, “What happened?”

It was a vague and random question, but I didn’t know what else to say. This situation was certainly not an average one, and I couldn’t do the average things.

“You passed out in the common area, and we brought you to a hammock and left you there. Simple enough.” She calmly gave me an answer, narrowing her eyes before continuing.

“What’s got you so panicked about it?”

After a harsh internal debate, my smarter side won out and I explained the vision I’d had in answer to Audent’s question. She watched and listened in concern, although whether that was for me or for the possible implications of this was unclear. There had been people in the past who claimed to have visions portraying the future, and they weren’t always wrong. While it wasn’t likely I was one of those, there was a chance. A chance that was nonzero; a chance that was too high for my liking. The supernatural aspect aside, the destruction of our home would be the worst way for all this to go.

“It’d be idiotic to stay here. Markus Accipiter and the Larua are both against us,” I said, connecting dots in my mind. If the man with the gunpowder hated us now, there would be nothing to stop him from blowing us to pieces. Especially if he had the rest of the Larua as allies. They certainly would agree that the Torris needed to be ended.

“Well, I’m afraid we haven’t got anywhere else to go,” Audent grimaced. She knew I was right, and usually would be thinking up some great way out as soon as possible. Yet due to the heavy grief I knew still pulled on her heart, I wasn’t sure she was going to do anything at all.

“Except we do have somewhere else,” I said suddenly, “I own a house. It’s big enough for at least a hundred people to stay in.”

A hundred people wouldn’t be enough, but it would at least get some of the Torris into a safer location. It would also be incredibly cramped, but that was better than staying in a location that could be torn apart at any moment. The visions of flames and corpses still stuck to my mind, and I wouldn’t let that become a reality.

“That’s not going to be enough, is it?” she replied.

“No, but it’s better than nothing. I can bring a hundred people there so long as they stay inside most of the time and don’t run loose in the noble provinces.” I crossed my arms. Surely Audent wouldn’t refuse an offer to save lives. She may be depressed, but that was no reason to bring others to their graves.

“That’s great, dear, but how do you plan to choose which ones can and can’t come? It’s not going to go down well with whoever isn’t coming,” Some of her old condescending tone towards me slid into her voice, pointing out the most obvious of flaws in my plan. Not having a good answer for that in the moment, I didn’t reply, shutting my mouth and glancing away awkwardly.

“I’ll figure it out.”

“You better do that fast, or we’ll have to replace something else.” Dismissing me with that, she pushed closed her door again, shutting me out with a firm click of a lock. I still couldn’t understand why she was putting all this up to me, or why she’d seemed to have given up. Yes, we’d all lost Vargos, but he wasn’t the only person in the world. I stormed away from the door, head whirling and looking for a solution.