Blood and Gold: Chapter 27

[jiminee]

 Yeah it's a bit early, but since I made y'all suffer last time I think you deserve it c: 
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Etho finds Zisteau herding most of the underground up towards the tunnel that leads to the palace, explaining in a loud voice that its entrance is blocked. Zisteau stops when he sees Etho.

“You got out? Where are the others?”
“Everyone’s still up there. Nebris is trapped. I came to get help. It’s possible to get out – the rubble blocking the tunnel is pretty loose and I was able to slip through.”
“Where did Aurey, Vechs and Blame go?”
“Into the palace,” Etho says. “Aurey blasted the door open with her explosive. I don’t know what they’re doing. It would be best to hurry.”

Etho follows Zisteau up into the tunnel, noticing Generik and Bdubs and Guude following him. None of them seem badly injured.
Several people begin pulling away at the fallen-in bricks and rubble to make the entrance up to the vault wider. Etho slips through, along with members of the Underground. Soon the small vault begins to fill.
Everyone is gone except Nebris, still trapped under the large stone. Etho calls over a couple of the members of the Underground who’ve come through the hole in the floor to help him free Nebris.

He’s not sure why Nebris has become his priority but he wants to see his teammate freed. Two men come to Etho’s aid – men he knows as Pakratt and Arkas, he has spoken to them a few times before in the Underground. Both aid Etho in heaving the stone off Nebris’ torso.
“Thanks.” Pakratt and Arkas grab Nebris’ hands and pull him to his feet. Nebris groans as he stands up. “My leg is pretty hurt.”
“Can you walk?” Etho asks in concern.
“Yeah, but it hurts. I’ll be fine though. Let’s go overthrow the prince.”
“Hold on.”
Zisteau is delegating orders to those in the vault. “Go straight through the door. Don’t kill anyone you find, just go straight to the prince. Keep him under control. Our strength is in our numbers.”
The Underground begins to stream through the opened vault door. Even though Etho has been in the Underground for so long, he is still surprised at how many of them there are.

After some hesitation, he offers his hand to Nebris to help him step over the chunks of the collapsed stone. Nebris mumbles a thank you and winces as he limps over towards the door.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
“Yes! I’m fine, Etho. Now let’s go take down a monarchy.”
Etho watches him go, his gait slowly improving as he seems to lose the pain, and after a second follows him in the horde through the door and down the murky hallway towards the stairs at the end.

The palace is quieter than Etho expects it to be. At the top of the stars is a small room, which the members of the Underground quickly exit. Zisteau yells for everyone to split up and search for the prince.
Etho doesn’t know what he’s looking for; he’s never seen the prince. Over the years he has heard a handful of accounts of the prince’s appearance; a middle aged man with prematurely greyed hair, faded green eyes, a smile that comes out rarely. He’s heard rumours, too; the prince’s face has hardly been seen in sixteen years, and even before that he was a recluse. Maybe he was born into a position that did not suit his nature.

Etho does not mean to follow Nebris but it happens anyway; Nebris turns into a hallway along with most of the rest of the Underground, and the group splits, moving towards opposite ends of the hallway. Etho finds himself moving down with Nebris and the rest of the group towards a tall pair of gilded doors that mark the end of the hallway. A few corridors meet the hallway on both sides and the group once again thins, splitting up as Zisteau suggested.

And so Etho finds himself walking alongside only Nebris towards the doors.
“So we’re stuck together again,” Nebris comments quietly as they walk.
“Seems this happens a lot, doesn’t it?”
Nebris nods. “Good thing you don’t annoy me as much as you used to.” Etho catches a small smile at the corner of the man’s mouth, and it makes his own mouth twinge.
As they approach the doors, Etho hears a commotion, and he can see the door is slightly open. He recognises voices – Aurey and Blame’s – and begins to move faster, and so does Nebris. Neither exchange words but a slight glance, the smile gone from Nebris’ face as quickly as it appeared there.
Thinking, Etho pulls out his dagger and Nebris follows suit, then pushes forward, getting to the door before Etho.

Nebris loses confidence at the sight in the room behind the doors. It is quite clearly a throne room, the throne itself sitting on a dais in the centre. Just below the dais is Vechs, unmoving on the carpet, a long sword through his chest.

Nebris brings a hand up to his mouth, feeling almost dizzy as he surveys the rest of the room. The source of the noise he heard is at the side of the room, pressed to a wall: Blame, his dagger to the throat of what Nebris at first thinks to be Aurey. A second glance shows that Aurey herself is pleading with Blame, and the man he has pinned is her twin, or something like it. The crown on his head, however, is what prompts Nebris to leap toward the altercation, dagger drawn.

“Blame?”
Blame turns, his own dagger at the man’s throat still. Nebris hears behind him the sound of his companions finding Vechs.
“What’s going on?” Nebris asks.
“He’s the prince,” Blame says. “Aurey’s brother. I have to kill him.”
“Oh no you won’t.” Nebris catches Blame’s free wrist, with a crushing grip. “We have to bring him to Zisteau, and then I will kill him.”
“He murdered Vechs!” Blame says, and there’s a horrible tone to his voice. Nebris considers the agony he may be in.
“You can’t kill him,” Aurey says. “Please, Blame.”

“Just wait. We can’t kill him, not yet.” Nebris pulls lengths of rope out of his bag. “Here, help me tie him up so we can take him to Zisteau.”
Nebris hasn’t even thought about Vechs yet, he’s tried not to, but while Blame binds the prince’s hands, the temptation to turn around is strong. The image of Vechs on the ground is burned into his mind, but it feels almost like a hallucination.
Nebris turns around. Vechs is still there, more object than person in his stillness. Etho kneels beside him, and Nebris turns back around.
“Why did you kill him?” He stares straight into the prince’s green eyes.
“He got in my way.”

“Huh,” Nebris looks the prince up and down. “You’re Aurey’s brother. I guess you killed your father for the crown or something, because you’re certainly not old enough to be Einar. Anyway, I’m sure Aurey will explain everything.”
“I’m sorry,” Aurey says. “I just couldn’t tell anyone.”
“You figured that all out?” Blame asks, knotting rope around the prince’s arms.
“You can tell a lot about people just by looking at them,” Nebris says under his breath. “What’s his name, anyway?”
“My name is Kara,” the prince spits.
“Thanks for being nice and compliant. Anyway, Blame, I think Zisteau is somewhere down the other end of the palace.” Nebris hesitates. “I’ll take him there. I’ll get everyone to clear out, too.” He knows Blame will want time with Vechs’ body, alone.

“Thanks.” Blame passes an end of the rope to Nebris.
“Aurey,” Nebris says, “Take out your dagger.”
Aurey nods, pulling her dagger from her bag and holding it shakily. With a firm grip on the rope and the dagger in his other hand, Nebris leads Kara towards the entrance of the room.
“Come on,” he says to Etho. “We have to take this prince to Zisteau.”
The two understand and stand up, moving close to Nebris. The party corrals the prince through the doors, and Etho shuts them again, leaving Blame behind with Vechs.

Blame kneels down again and touches Vechs’ arm. His skin is cold. The sword is still through him, and Blame reaches out to touch its hilt. A sick feeling shoots through him and he retracts his hand, wondering what to do. He can’t leave Vechs’ body in the throne room.
Gathering courage again, Blame grips the hilt with both hands, and pulls it from Vechs’ chest. He doesn’t realise his eyes are closed until he opens them, and the bloody sword is in his hands, dripping.
He drops it with distaste and then turns to Vechs again. Now the gash in his chest is sickeningly bright, but Blame steps forward and picks up his limp body with strength he didn’t know he had.

Nebris keeps the bright point of his dagger at Kara’s back, pushing him forward by a light touch. Aurey, and Etho flank him with their own daggers drawn for extra protection. All four are silent.
Nebris feels Kara move a split second before pain bursts through his injured leg, and he buckles in agony, letting out a sharp cry. The others turn and grab the prince before he can escape.
“He blyxing kicked me,” Nebris says through his teeth. He stands to take the rope again and Kara struggles, then stamps on the ground three times with his boot.
Nebris doesn’t have time to question the action as he is busy trying to keep the prince under control. He jabs his dagger at the man’s back, and Kara flinches away from the pain.
“Don’t try anything like that again,” Nebris hisses. “Next time it will be worse.”
“Nebris,” Aurey says in a shaky voice. “Don’t move.”
“Why not?”
“Just don’t move!”

Aurey sees the scorpion on Nebris’ arm and nearly freezes into a statue. She’d known something was up when Kara had stamped.
Seeing the creature brings memories to Aureylian’s mind, ones of her brother as a child. He’d developed a fascination with the desert scorpions, and most of all, their ability to kill. He might have worked out before anybody that their venom could be extracted.
He’d danced with death, playing with the scorpions, but somehow he was never stung. Aureylian watched his fascination from a frightened distance.
Before that she’d always understood her twin. The scorpions were just the beginning of Kara pulling away from her, changing, becoming a different boy as Aureylian stayed the same.

“There is a scorpion on your arm.”
Nebris looks down slowly and sees it. It’s larger than he expected, and its tail is raised in a curve, sharp stinger at the ready.
“It’s not deadly, is it?”
“Nebris,” Aureylian says, “They are the most blyxing deadly thing around. Get it off your arm.”
The adrenaline and blood of the past hour seems to slow and stop, centering around the terrifying quiet that surrounds the small group. Nebris gingerly grabs the creature with his forefingers and tosses it to the ground and it scuttles off across the soft carpet.
“It’s just a bug,” Nebris says calmly. “Nothing to be afraid of.” He doesn’t think the creature could have killed him, even with Aureylian’s claim of its deadliness.
Kara turns to smile at him, a taunt strained through teeth, and Nebris has to hold back everything inside him that wants to kill the man right there. Nebris knows Zisteau will let him kill the prince, but he will have to wait.

Blame doesn’t want to see anyone, doesn’t want anyone to see him with Vechs, doesn’t want to speak. He doesn’t even know where he’s going but he carries the body, which is easy despite its weight. He can’t think much about anything but the death in his hands.
On his hands.
I told him to go find Aureylian. I let him out of my sight into a dangerous palace and after everything I was trying to prevent…
And after everything.
I’ve never felt more afraid in my life.