Dyr helped some of the city guards and other townspeople search the trading vessel to try and help whoever they could still onboard.
“Is anyone hurt? Is anyone here?” Dyr called out, fuelled by the adrenaline pumping in his system from the shocking event he had just witnessed.
Nathin followed behind with a groan. He was probably more interested in looting the corpses than helping anyone.
Mell had taken off.
Dyr searched the remains of what was once the main deck of the ship, trying to find anyone. Anything. Nothing but wood, shattered rocks, broken cargo, and mounds of debris.
What the fuck happened?
Dyr slipped. His small legs flew out from under him, and he landed on his back in a cool, sticky liquid. He raised his hands to see what he had fallen in, only to see that his skin was covered in thick, coagulated blood.
Dyr jumped up in disgust, wiping his hand and looking down to see that what was left of the ship’s deck was completely saturated in a slick paint of blood. Gallons of it.
“Guard! Guard!” Dyr called. Some of the guardsmen searching the ship heard his cries and came looking with flaming torches.
The entire deck shimmered in a deep, horrifying crimson red and chunky black. What Dyr had thought was pieces of destroyed cargo were actually body parts.
Torn arms.
Legs ripped in half.
Human bowels strewn about.
Severed heads with eyes gouged and tongues sliced out.
It was the crew, Dyr realised. Their remains littered the wreckage.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“There must be dozens of ‘em,” Nathin gasped, flicking off a piece of torn skin that was stuck to his shoe.
“What in the Creator’s name happened here?” a guard said.
Dyr’s eyes were wide in terror. The body parts, along with the spilled blood, weren’t fresh. This massacre had happened some time ago.
“What could have done this?” Dyr asked.
More people climbed the ship’s wreckage to see what was happening. Women screamed upon the discovery. Men backed up in fear, praying to the Creator.
“It must have been pirates,” someone said.
A city guard cut the idea down. “We have no pirates in the east. This could be the work of Caldaea! Are we under attack?”
The crowd muttered and argued. The stench of rot and viscera was thick in the misty air.
“Whatever this is, no human could’a done this,” Nathin muttered to Dyr. “No way.”
In the recesses of his mind, Dyr could hear the distant screams of the ship’s crew as they suffered this horrific fate. The cracks of bone, the dripping of blood, the howls of agony.
Dyr could only repeat his question. “What could have done this?”
Act IIIFire in the Sky
Chapter 25 - Consequences
Ten years earlier…
Katryna Bower peeked through the opening between the towering, red, oak doors before her, into the Castle Bower war room. Right behind her was her handmaiden Trish who tried to peer through as well.
At fourteen years of age, the two girls were both quite pretty and adorned long frilly dresses of different colours. Trish’s golden hair was braided in a ponytail while Katryna worse hers out.
“It looks empty,” Katryna whispered. “Come on.”
“M’lady, wait,” Trish murmured with a worried tone, grabbing Katryna’s shoulder. “Are you sure? I don’t think your father-”
“He won’t mind! It’s fine.” The rush to explore a place she wasn’t supposed to go was strong.
“Your mother will mind. You are supposed to be in your room studying.”
Katryna scrunched her face up. She knew the war room was off limits to children, and it was especially taboo to include women in such affairs of state. But she had always wanted to see what was behind those huge red doors.
She looked back in through the crack. She could not make anything out with clarity; only a few candles were lit within.
“Mother never lets me do anything exciting anymore,” Katryna complained. “I’m forbidden from attending festivals and weddings. I’m rarely ever allowed to leave the castle anymore, Trish. She hides me away like some fiend.”
Trish looked at Katryna sympathetically with comforting, forest-green eyes. “I know it’s frustrating, but you must follow the rules your parents set out for you.”
Katryna could see the fear in Trish’s face. She was a girl who was raised a follower, and she was afraid of the repercussions.
Katryna thought back to her race with Willem two years earlier. The thrill of the wind blowing through her hair as she weaved in and out of buildings and crowds, the coolness of the water of Pott’s Creek, and the joy she felt in spending time with her twin brother.
Katryna remembered what she had told Willem that day. “I want to do what I want to do, not what I’m forced to do. And right now, I want to go inside. I have lived in this castle my entire life and have never seen what’s within.”
Trish anxiously looked down the corridor they were in, making sure there were no onlookers to stop them, before nodding. “Alright, but quickly.”
With a grin on her freckled face, Katryna opened the doors to the war room and crept in. Trish was right on her tail like a nervous hound.
The war room was rarely used and, as such, had a musty, old scent to it. It was immense in size, spanning two storeys in height with an enormous, rounded chandelier hanging from the domed ceiling. The walls were trimmed with stunning timber mouldings of various symbols and designs.
Trish walked to the other end of the room and found a lever by the far wall. Katryna
