Page 29 of Shifter King
RAGE AND COMPASSION
The mood of all present pressed in upon her, and it was only with great focus that Amelia was able to keep her own barriers from collapsing into the sea of their rage as they returned to the camp. Even AaQar and QueQoa boiled. She tightened the bonds over her wrist elmis as well as her forehead and then hugged herself, hands flat against her torso. The Ki Valo Nakar remained silent though she was more aware of its presence than ever before.
Even when they reached the camp, that silence remained, heavy and burdensome as they built up the fire and prepared their meal.
Naatos strode to the edge of the camp, then returned. His stride was even, almost calm. Yet even from here, she could feel the rushing whirring hum of his thoughts. His anger served him well here, undergirded with sorrow and woven with vengeance.
"Whatever is to be done, it must be enough to strike fear in all their hearts without also giving them enough time to mount a response," AaQar said at last. "We can take the city itself so long as we find a way to render their tech useless. But it must be done with precision. No rushing off with teeth and claw."
Naatos growled something under his breath.
The tension burned along Amelia's consciousness. Though she tried to pull up more boundaries and erect more barriers and shields, it still pressed hard against her. She drank as much of the green tea as she could and bound her elmis even tighter. The skin around her wrists and outside the bands turned redder. She counted her breaths and pressed the balls of her feet hard against the ground.
QueQoa raked his hand over the back of his neck as he stared into the fire."They didn't deserve that."
She flinched and pushed the barriers up a little harder, the dull thud in her head intensifying yet again. He hadn't said that out loud. She'd just heard him. Not that it was hard to guess what they were thinking. The sight of those people remained seared in her own mind's eyes. And things were breaking through.
She rested her chin on her palm and stared out into the forest. How much she had wished for there to be other people in this place. Now there were. But the kind who lived here? Her eyes slid shut. What tragedies filled this world.
An uncomfortable weight disturbed her stomach, heavy, unrelenting. She and Naatos had made their bargain. Her gut warned her though that there was no way out of this situation without bloodshed. That look on his face—it chilled her. The rage? She understood it. And as for how she felt about it, not that it made much difference, but—
He was gone.
Not far. Not long.
Almost as if he had called her, she followed.
He stood at the edge of the cliff, not overlooking Dry Deep but looking toward the mountains. The rage bristled off him, aching and rippling as if a storm had broken over him. She pushed up her own inner walls and tried to block it, her elmis stinging all the more. Sorrow underlined all of it. Grief. Perhaps even guilt.
There weren't words for this. Everything she could point out could make it worse. So she stood beside him instead and followed his gaze to a large stone outcropping some fifty feet away. The ground appeared to break away into a gulf of some sort. The top of the outcropping had been worn down, with one jagged portion that looked as if it had been torn away rather than worn. Hints of pyrite glistened in the grey-brown stone.
Little snatches of images pressed into her mind, prickling and stinging. Almost too fast to see. A statue maybe? A dragon with wings spread over a group of wounded people. No. Two dragons. Standing side by side with wings spread. Or three? Maybe four? She hid a wince.
The wind tugged at her hair, pulling it free from the leather binding. Naatos's was always wild, but now it seemed especially unkempt. He set his jaw, a muscle jumping in his cheek, arms folded tight over his chest.
The reptile calls above punctuated the passage of time. A quetzie screeched in its long grating tone, and another answered. Some humming song that sounded like a massive cicada built in crescendos as the golden-red sun beat down upon them.
"They did not deserve to die," Naatos said. "Of all the cadres." He glanced down at her. "You would likely have wanted to join with them."
"They were your friends?" She kept her bound elmis clasped to her torso.
"No. But I respected them. We all did. They believed that as our core duty was to be guardians, that we were called to be more…gentle with our methods. To set the example. They refused to fight even though they trained for it unless there was no other option available. They lived along the southern side of Darmoste mostly, though there were cadre homes as far out as Kistaro. And anyone who had need was welcome. They said that this was the way to best serve Elonumato. And their payment was this fate? To be tortured, man, woman, and child. Drowned slowly, burned and drained, turned into a monument of failure, made to stand for the opposite of what they proclaimed." His eyes seemed paler, icier in this light. "This is what the world does to those who are kind, Amelia. To those who do not bite first."
She dropped her gaze to the grassy knoll they stood on. The little tinge of blue from the rels still clung to her hand. What could she say? It had happened. Why hadn't Elonumato stopped this? Was there ever a good answer for something like this? The tears that burned along the backs of her eyes tried to push themselves forward, but even they did nothing.
The tormented souls of those executed Vawtrians had moved on. Painful as it may have been for them to pass on. Had she been there, she couldn't have stopped their deaths. But would that have been an appropriate time to pull their souls free? To relieve them of their agony and let them pass on to Elonumato's Land? Leonas had said that it was forbidden to take one who was not willing. How could anyone not be willing in the moments that surely followed for those Vawtrians?
"These Abliatos will rue the day that they did this. They will ache with sorrow for the callousness of their ancestors as well as their own. This was not conquest. This was torment and humiliation." His eyes narrowed. "I will not spare those who have been involved in this systematic destruction and oppression. Their blood will flow through the streets of Darmoste, and their corpses will feed the creatures they mutilated."
"I know." She lifted her chin. "I am sorry for them that they have chosen this path, and I am sorry that they were able to do so much and be so cruel. But I stood against you in Libysha for cruelty. I will stand against the Abliatos here for the same."
"They will die painfully."
Dropping her gaze, she hugged herself tighter. "Are you trying to dissuade me, Naatos? Do you want me to tell you 'no,' don't do this?"
"I want to make sure you understand what is about to happen in this place. That I will have their blood and pain, and I will pour out such suffering on these Abliatos that they have never even imagined."
"I may ask that you show mercy in some cases. If there are innocents, I would ask that you not harm them. But against the architects and perpetrators of all that we have seen and more…" She swallowed hard. "I understand. And I will fight with you. What has happened here cannot continue."
