The explosion was like a blooming flower, the fiery flashes similar to its petals. Due to the insane speed he was using, Hadjar’s skin ended up torn off like old cloth. Blood soaked his clothes and trickled out from his eyes, ears, and nostrils.
He picked up Elaine, who had become unusually light, and pushed off the ground. At his current speed, a simple push turned into a small explosion that dug up a hole ten inches in diameter. With a single leap, he traversed almost a dozen yards. After another leap, they were outside the village.
Hadjar hugged his sister from behind. Her hair now smelled like blood and smoke, not summer meadows and wildflowers. She shouted something. She called out to Nela. Omarik. Their kids. The other children she had played with. Instead of their answers, they heard only the hushed cries of the people burning alive and the resounding crashes as the houses collapsed. The smoke rising from the fire covered the sky, plunging the lands around them into darkness.
Elaine screamed, cried, and tried to escape from Hadjar’s grip, but he held onto his sister tightly, mentally apologizing for doing so. He also apologized to the villagers who’d died when the soldier had used the artifact that destroyed one’s core of power. He apologized to Elaine, whom he had forced to go through this hell for the sake of his foolish, crazy plan, full of vengeance and malice. It wasn’t a plan that sought justice at all. The villagers had suffered for his selfish desires.
The Princess cried until her tears ran out. She shook with silent sobs, hanging in Hadjar’s hands like a limp doll.
Hadjar’s cloak fluttered. The heat of the fire still burned their faces. The screams had gone silent. Only the crackling of the burning trees made any noise.
Hadjar looked at the orange glow one final time. One day, when his turn to stand before the court of the forefathers comes, he will have to explain what happened to these villagers. Compared to the tens of thousands of lives that he’d ruined during the war, a few hundred innocent souls meant nothing.
Seeing that Elaine had recovered enough that she could stand on her own, Hadjar set her down.
“Let’s go, my Princess,” Hadjar said and turned around.
Before he could even take a single step, hot, sharp metal was suddenly pressed against the right side of his neck. The Princess held her sword at the General’s artery and wasn’t planning to lower it.
“Why are you doing this again, my Princess?”
Chapter 221
“You could have saved them,” Elaine snarled. Her arm was steady and her sword didn’t falter, even when Hadjar’s blood started flowing down her blade. “You could’ve saved them all!”
She wasn’t asking a question, but stating a fact. Hadjar didn’t see the point in denying the obvious. “Yes, I could have.”
“Then why didn’t you save them? Why?”
The blood started flowing even faster, but for Hadjar, a practitioner of such a high level, this wasn’t a problem. Even if Elaine were to cut the artery, it wouldn’t be a mortal wound. In half an hour, the injury would heal.
“You can’t save those, my Princess, who don’t try to save themselves.”
Hadjar had learned this truth during the war. Billions, if not trillions of souls lived in this world, and most of them suffered under the rule of those who were stronger, more talented, and craftier. Some, perhaps, were of the belief that those people needed to be saved. Elaine was one such person.
Hadjar thought it was all pure hypocrisy. As far as he’d learned over the past fifteen years, people did good deeds for strangers only to make amends for sins from their past. Or to feel better, more important, like they’re noble and generous.
“But you saved those children,” Elaine, someone who hadn’t participated in a war, couldn’t understand this. That’s why the white sword of their ancestors was in her hands. She would become a good queen, but Hadjar wouldn’t be able to rule over anyone else for the rest of his life. “During your duel with Oneg.”
“Yes,” the former General nodded, not looking at his sister.
“Why?”
“They are still children. Unable to stand up for themselves.”
It was true. When Hadjar had witnessed children dying in the war, he... Well, it would be yet another sin that he would have to answer for in front of his ancestors.
“Then why did you save me?”
Hadjar flinched. He hadn’t been ready for this question. He couldn’t tell her the truth. Elaine would never believe him. Damn it, even now he wasn’t sure that she completely believed in the existence of the cursed mine.
“The odds of us surviving together seemed higher to me at the time.”
The lie wouldn’t have been enough to fool anyone, but Elaine wasn’t thinking straight at that moment.
“Is that all you feel, mighty General?” Only poison and pity could be heard in the Princess’ voice. “Is that all that remains of the hero? Anguish and weakness?”
What others might’ve called weakness, Hadjar called freedom — the ability to live as he saw fit, to go wherever he liked, to see everything that the world had to offer, the chance to finally be himself. That was his fondest wish.
“Yes,” Hadjar answered.
The sword moved away from his neck. Hadjar felt heat caressing his back. He turned around and saw Elaine’s blue eyes turning orange, full of fire and rage. Flames swirled around her blade as she grew more and more enraged.
Waves of fire spread out in increasingly larger circles around her. A scorching, orange storm raged behind her, and a rising wind buffeted her green clothes. Despite their proximity to the flames, they didn’t burn. The grass began to smolder in the heat, and the smoke from the burning village cleared, revealing the only building still standing — the old stone temple.
A moment later, the streams of fire merged into a gigantic blade. A couple of days ago, a Technique of such power might’ve incinerated Hadjar’s soul.
