She is forced to her knees between two stakes that have been driven into the ground. Her arms are stretched out far on either side of her bound to the stakes and the back of her dress torn open. A Nelgatan man stands behind her with a gleaming bald head that has paint smeared across it and a thick beard, a knife gleams in his hand.
I swallow hard as I step back, forgetting for a second that I’m trapped in a vision. This is not something I can escape.
The blood eagle. It’s one of the most gruesome and horrific ways we have of killing people.
“Wait,” Marcello breathes. He had been so quiet I’d almost forgotten that I was not viewing this vision alone. He steps forward, his eyes clouded with concentration. “I recognize her… that’s, that’s my mother. My father keeps a picture of her with him at all times.”
He whips his head toward me, confusion dancing across features that I now see greatly resemble the bedraggled, bound woman. They have the same proud, straight nose and high arched brows. “How can this be her? She died when I was a babe.”
I move forward before my mind can fully process what it is I’m doing as I rest a hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t real,” I whisper. “We aren’t truly here. We’re simply observing what has already transpired.”
I flinch slightly as the knife glides over her back. I do not fear the sight of blood, nor do I balk at the idea of killingin battle. But a senseless killing? Striking down an unarmed opponent? That is something that has never sat well with me, and perhaps one of the reasons why I chose Marcello to be my bloodrite, at least he was a cowardly Imperial. I would not be shedding the blood of anyone of worth.
But perhaps the four winds looked upon my hesitation and saw that as weakness and now I must pay the price, because Marcello yet lives and if the mark inked into my skin is to be believed I won’t be living for much longer.
“What are they doing to her?” Marcello cries as he shoves my hand off his shoulder as he rushes forward, dropping to his knees. He reaches up to cup the woman’s face as she arches her back and screams through her clenched teeth. “Mother, mother it’s me Marcello. I’m here.”
He jumps to his feet, agitated as the men begin peeling the flesh of his mother’s back away, revealing her bloody and exposed bones and sinews. He lunges for the nearest man, his hands outstretched as if he is ready to wring the life out of him, but instead he passes through the man, stumbling on the other side. He stares down at his hands bewildered.
“You can’t stop them. They don’t even see you,” as the words leave my mouth a new cry reaches my ears. This one is the tentative wail of an infant. I whirl just as the woman screams. “No! Leave him!”
My eyes round as I take in a babe held aloft by a dirty hand that is almost larger than the child. This babe can only be a few months old. His cries rip through me as he kicks and wriggles in terror, looking for his mother. A woman who is being brutally killed only a short distance away.
“Smash his head in!” one of the men cries.
“No!” I shout, forgetting my own words to Marcello. However, the woman’s roar of fury and terror drowns me out.
“Not my son,” she gasps out, tears leaving trails down her dirt-stained face. “You shall not harm him.” She throws back her head with a scream as the sound of cracking bone fills the air as the men behind her begin to work to displace her ribs, to force them to take the form of bloody wings behind her. “Don’t let him die! Don’t let… don’t let him…”
Her head droops in exhaustion, but she keeps muttering in a tone so low that I can’t hear it anymore beyond the chanting and the baby’s wails mingling with Marcello’s own weeping.
“Stop it!” he cries dropping to his knees. He raises his hands to cover his ears. “Stop, stop, stop.”
One of the men raises a large rock over his head and I lunge forward, trying to grasp his arm. My own desperation to save the child overcoming my rational thought. My hand passes through him, and the arm drops to the ground, just beside the infant’s head.
“You drunken, lout,” one of the warriors snapped. “You missed.”
I stumble back as the men all begin drawing weapons, each taking a swing at the baby and every time they miss. The baby is still crying. It’s little legs pumping, and remarkably still…alive.
I turn, slowly toward Marcello as the first man cries out, holding up his arm a mark of death inked into his flesh.
This doesn’t seem to deter the other warriors who form a kill circle around the child, raising weapons or fists. I am shaking by the time the visions begin to shift. The location remains the same, but the warriors disappear. Leaving only the babe lying in the snow, crying in hoarse little wails. I look over my shoulder to see that the woman is still there. She’s dead now with the skirt of her dress stained red, her ribs rising out behind her, mingling with torn flesh to make a gruesome sight as if some sort of bringer of death.
Marcello raises his head and lets out a cry when he sees the woman, a cry that is echoed by a new man, entering the remains of the camp. His olive toned skin and golden armor set him apart as an Imperial and the crimson cloak and elaborate helmet he has one set him apart as one of rank. He races forward, skidding to a halt and dropping to his knees in front of the woman.
“Livinia, no! Don’t do this. Don’t leave me.”
I stride toward the baby that is now gasping more than it is crying; his skin is tinted blue from the cold. Even though I know that it won’t help I take off my cloak and lay it over the baby. The material passes straight through.
I look up to see Marcello staring at me with tearstained eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I say as the man in the vision turns, seeming to only just then notice the child. He pushes to his feet and races to the babe’s side and picks him up, pulling his cape around the small boy and offering him warmth where I could not. I push to my feet and hold a hesitant hand out to Marcello. “No one should witness their parent’s death. Let alone twice.”
“Why would your mother show us this?” Marcello demands bitterly. “What would she have to gain from forcing me to live through that?”
I bite down on my lip, unsure how to respond. In truth, I rarely understand the Werma’s ways.
Just then the image shifts. The father and his son are the ones that remain unchanged this time, and instead the setting is what changes. Here it is more forested, it is still quite cold with snow everywhere.
