Page 16 of Blood Red Woes

Man, if I thought the people in the audience wear their finest, what these four are wearing puts everyone else to shame. Gold. Jewels. The kind of fabric that has patterns inlaid on it. Oversized shoulder pads to make them look more intimidating,robes that flow and aren’t stained in the least. Two men and two women, alternating so that no man or no woman sat side by side.

The moment they sit down, the audience grows less tense. I don’t, though. These people, these four… they can’t be the empresses, so who the hell are they and why are they so important?

The woman all the way on the left judges me heavily with her astute, brown-eyed stare. Her black hair is long, kept in tight braids that start on her scalp, the length of which is adorned with precious jewels and golden strands intertwined with her natural hair. Her skin is a few shades lighter than her hair. The main color she wears is gray, although it is broken up by gold. The way she watches me, warily, tells me all I need to know. I put her around sixty or so.

“You there,” she speaks. “Are you a demon from another land, come to finish us off after the woes?” The way she says it, like she’s so certain of the answer even though she doesn’t know me at all, puts me on edge. In her mind, I’ve already been tried and found guilty of whatever crime they think I committed.

“I’m not a demon,” I say, about to ask what the woes are, but the man beside her shakes his head and stands.

The man, maybe a decade or so younger than the first woman, points at me. He is adorned in reds of all shades, his expression hard and unyielding. His amber eyes dart around the room before landing on me as he dealers, “Look at her. Dressed as she is, speaking as she is—she must be a demon. Pray tell, what accent is that, demon?”

His accusation gets the crowd murmuring, and I roll my eyes.

“Ravenno,” the second woman says, much more laid back than him. “Sit. We are here to see what the newcomer says, not to jump to conclusions with no evidence.” Her tone is even and laid-back, and though her features are sharp, she is at one in her gilded, gaudy ensemble of blues and greens. Her curly hair is alight yellow, its natural waves framing her face and her bright blue eyes. In her mid-forties, she is the age I imagine my mom is, somewhere.

Ravenno, the man in red, clearly does not want to sit, but he huffs and does so anyway. He glares at me while he does it, proving to me just how acidic he can be without saying a single word more.

“Speak,” the blond woman says. “Tell us where you hail, stranger.”

“Uh.” Never was good at public speaking. Would be a good skill to have right about now, with all these eyes on me, judging me, already assuming me guilty. “I’m from a place called Valley Creek—”

“Valley Creek?” The second man breaks his silence with a chuckle. He is the youngest out of the four before me, near forty. He wears all white, save for a lion on his chest, mirroring the guards that escorted me here. His black hair is cut short to his head, and his green gaze is filled with hatred. “What an absurd name. If you are trying to trick us, perhaps think of better answers, demon.”

I can’t hold it in. I say, “What the hell is with this demon shit? I’m not a demon! I came here looking for help. One minute I was in my world, minding my fucking business, and the next thing I know I break this crystal and I’m here. Stuck here. Trapped in this weird place full of empty villages and—”

The woman on the left leans forward. “You have traversed beyond the outskirts of the farmlands surrounding the city?”

“Yeah,” I quip. “How do you think I got here? By the way, what’s up with your storms? They come out of nowhere and man, is it hard to breathe in there.”

I must’ve said something wrong, because all four people—my judges, I guess—exchange looks. Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t havebrought that storm up after all. I just thought, maybe, they’d have an explanation for it or something.

I’ll take anything at this point.

They whisper amongst themselves, and I can’t hear their conversation. I have to stand there and wait for them to finish. I see the man with the lion on his chest shake his head, a stern look on his face. The blond woman appears unperturbed, as if this hardly affects her at all. The man in red, Ravenno, is by far the most upset. The woman on the left is mainly listening to him and whatever he is saying.

Suddenly the blond one stands. She addresses me: “You claim you are no demon, and yet you have walked through a shadowstorm. The only creatures that can survive such a thing are either blighted or demons, therefore you must be one or the other. Which is it? Do you have the blight, or are you a demon?” Though she’s asking me the most insane question with the most insane logic behind it, she sounds so calm.

What she says, though, is news to me. I don’t know what a blight is, but it sounds like some kind of sickness. Maybe that’s what that dog had? Either way, only sick things and demons can survive the shadowstorms—cool name, not going to lie—so why the hell could I walk through it with only a dry mouth?

“Neither,” I say. “I’m not from here. I’m not sick or anything. I have no answers for you except I’m not a demon.” I shrug, exasperated, ready to fall to my knees and beg if necessary. “I just want to go home.”

“To Valley Creek,” the man on the right hisses out.

“Yes. It’s a real place!”

The man harrumphs, clearly not believing me.

“You must understand,” the woman in blue and green speaks, her dress long enough to cover the floor around her in a swirl. She must walk on air, because not an inch of the fabric is dirty. “You are the first we have seen in years. Many have tried towalk through the shadows, and they have all failed. What makes you so special?”

I can’t help it; my gaze drops to my wrist, to the black tattoo that swirls around it and up the backside of my hand. Even though it’s not quite true, I still find myself saying, “Nothing. Nothing makes me special. I don’t know why I can walk through it, but I can, and it doesn’t make me a demon.”

The woman listens to me, and then she turns to meet the eyes of the other three. “I sense no lies from her,” she says.

“Aolia,” the man with the lion symbol says, “you are not Empress Morimento. You cannot sense lies with your power.”

“Perhaps not,” Aolia admits. “But I did study with her for years before the woes spread across Laconia. She taught me well, Hazor.”

Hazor, the man with the lion, groans. “Yes, that’s all well and fine, however your empress has not been seen in Laconia for over a decade. For all we know she is dead. What good do her teachings do us now? We are locked in this city, withering away year after year. There is no trade. What little population is left dwindles. You worship your empress while she abandons us all.” He leans forward and glares at Ravenno and the other woman. “Allof the empresses have abandoned us, left us to our fate.”

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