Created Thursday 10 November 2022
Two or three months later, Ishamel is doing bad mentally after getting really fucked with by that ice boy, degrading over the several months between this chapter and the last into a very paranoid and angry state. He talks to himself as if someone else was there, and it sounds like whatever it is frightens him and he tries to disagree with it. A few days earlier, he and Khazhek nearly got into a very physical fight. He’s made Naya feel scared (difficult), Eŕe wary (also difficult (specifically for family)), and pretty much everyone has noticed by this point. He barely can tell what really happened and what didn’t, and he’s reading the worst out of very normal situations. Khazhek has a very loud and public argument with Kherin, where Rozik tries to step in. Khazhek says some pretty brutal words in anger and stomps away in a rage.
The night of the argument as Khazhek is hanging out alone in his room being an insomniac, he hears what sounds like a struggle from the hall. He grabs his sword and goes to check what it is. The halls are quiet, but something feels off in the castle's mood. He turns a corner and finds Rosik half on the floor, bleeding out from his chest. He’s still alive but barely, so Khazhek rushes over and asks what happened. Rosik tells him to get to the grand hall and quick and that he loves Khazhek and he’ll always be his brother with gasping breath. As he fades, Khazhek rushes towards the great hall with tears in his eyes. His heart is slamming and as he gets closer to the hall, he feels more and more afraid. He pushes in through the door.
On the floor he sees his father, even closer to death than Rosik was. Another second and he’d absolutely be dead. Kherin says to not be afraid and that he loves him before he tries to warn him away as he crouches next to him, but he can’t catch his breath enough to. As he fades, Khazhek hears the clattering of metal on stone far in front of him. Khazhek looks up and standing at the top of the steps, where they keep the family sword, is Ishamel, half in flickering shadow and covered in blood, his dirty mundane sword in his offhand, staring at the other hand as if it betrayed him. As Khazhek looks at him, he looks back and Khazhek feels his heart drop, full of disbelief as he realizes what this means. He swears Ishamel’s eyes flash bright unnatural yellow, bright despite the shadow, before his twin steps closer, moving towards Khazhek and the illusion brought by the flickering fire is gone.
Khazhek asks him what he had done, and Ishamel answers with, “They were standing in my way. You would have done the same.” to which Khazhek immediately denies, and asks him what he even means. Ishamel shouts about how he deserves to be king, about how they weren’t using the power properly, that something had corrupted them into weak and worthless leaders. About how now that no one is in his way, he can finally do what he knows needs to be done. He’s walking faster towards Khazhek, sword in hand, and says that he can finally kill Khazhek with no one there to stop him, and end the curse on their family.
He immediately lunges towards his twin, who falls back and clutches that blade between claws, the two struggling next to their father’s corpse, before Khazhek finally shoves the other away, Ishamel leans down and says “You were never his son, never my brother.” Once he can jump to his feet, Khazhek immediately starts backing away. Khazhek is panicking, terrified, wanting to wake up and for this all to be just a nightmare because, boy howdy, it sure feels like one. Ishamel lunges at him and Khazhek, his sword left on the ground next to Kherin, has to fight him off with claws.
This goes back and forth for a bit before Ishamel knocks Khazhek back. Khazhek rolls backwards and grabs the sword as Ishamel follows up with a downward slash, the two swords clashing. Khazhek pushes his brother away as he stands, and the two fight. It isn’t fast. Khazhek is yet again fighting his twin (and now his only living brother) who currently wants to murder him. They struggle and get turned all around, Khazhek being slowly pushed towards the stairs.
Throughout the fight, they talk at each other, Ishamel taunting Khazhek and saying some pretty mean shit about how Khazhek is why their mom is dead, about how he wasn’t really any of their brother, about how he’s a monster who deserves to be put down... Khazhek is trying to talk Ishamel down, trying to end the fight, begging him to stop, begging for it to all be a dream, but he knows it isn’t. They get locked up together, swords pushing against each other. Khazhek has his claws gripped on Ishamel’s blade and Ishamel has his hand around the grip of Khazhek’s. The doors burst open behind them and as they do, Ishamel suddenly pushes Khazhek, taking the sword from him and slicing both of his hands open again. He looks over his shoulder and sees Eŕe, Rakiz, the captain of the guard, and two other guards running in. Eŕe immediately looks to Kherin’s body and rushes over, kneeling and stunned, as Rakiz asks what the hell is going on. Ishamel looks at Khazhek. He grins.
His face gets serious as he turns back: “He killed the king and Rosik! He murdered them!”
Khazhek’s face drops into horror. He immediately yells out, “No, he’s lying! You have to believe me!” Ishamel tells the guards to seize Khazhek as he backs away. The two guards, confused and unsure but knowing that this means Ishamel is now king, move towards Khazhek, him backing away and begging them to believe him. Rakiz is trying to get Ishamel to explain more about what happened and what he saw, but Ishamel is now turned around and marching towards the hall, the old and wounded captain of the guard struggling to keep up with his pace, claiming that he found Rosik dead in the hall and when he came in here, found Khazhek standing over his father’s corpse.
Eŕe is still stunned, but now staring at Ishamel as he marches away. The guards and Khazhek go up the stairs, him telling them they’re making a mistake, to believe him, please, that he wouldn’t. Near the top step, he stumbles and falls backwards. His hand lands on what feels like the hilt of a sword, and before he can react, a searing pain blooms through his arm. Time slows like before again, but this time he doesn’t feel frozen and numb like before—he’s frozen in fear. As the power of the Amaran family sword flows through him, he feels all of his wounds reopen.
The whispers he hears tell him he needs to run, that he needs to hide, that he needs to get away. His panicking mind nearly agrees, but then he forces those voices to quiet down. To himself, as the guards step closer, as he feels the skin touching the sword crack like burning wood, glowing flame peeking from beneath,1 he tells himself no, he can’t run, not yet. He has to fight. Ishamel has to be stopped before he hurts anyone else, before he harms his sister or Ere or who knows who else. He convinces himself of this, and as he believes it, his hand wraps around his sword as he shuts his eyes as tight as possible. Eŕe, in slow motion, turns his head towards this, but before he can, Khazhek opens his eyes.
As he does, they are full of fire and nothing else. As he does, an explosion rips from his heart and into the room, one that knocks the two guards to the floor, hurt but not wounded, that shatters the windows, that forces Eŕe to hide his eyes from the sudden bright flash. When he can see, he sees his nephew fully surrounded by fire, a dark silhouette with wings and eyes of flame. Ishamel, nearly knocked to the floor too, turns and sees his brother step forth. The crack is travelling up his arm at this point. He has the family sword in hand, keeping his grip strong despite the pain. Eŕe sees this, but he barely comprehends before suddenly Khazhek rushes across the room fast enough to kick up a strong breeze, and he’s right next to his brother. Eŕe sees him move past somehow, sees every moment despite it all happening in a second, and sees the cracks growing. Khazhek should have already dropped the sword. It’d be as instinctual as any normal person pulling their hand away from hot iron, but here he is, holding a blade that is tearing his soul apart.
He and Ishamel get into combat that Eŕe can only just visually track—they’re both moving as fast as he’s seen only full-blooded maligned move. He rushes into the hall behind them, unsure of what to do as their battle continues. Rakiz and the two other guards try to follow the twins, but he stops them because he knows that if they get in the way, they’re just dead. The fight keeps going. The normal mortals can’t see anything but blurs and flashes of light, but Eŕe sees every detail, even if it isn’t fully consciously.
Khazhek moves to knock Ishamel’s sword away once more, but he stops when he feels a pain bloom in his chest. He looks down.
Ishamel has driven Khazhek’s own blade into his heart. Khazhek looks at his brother, who looks just as shocked as he feels. Ishamel pulls back, bringing the sword with him before dropping it, taking a step back, barely able to breathe and completely unable to talk. It looks like he just woke up from a night terror. Khazhek finally drops the family sword, trying to find his balance. Khazhek stumbles back and forth as his world spins around him. He thumps against a wall, looking back up and staring at Ishamel, saying “I... when I... am back... I will... finish... this...” as he slides to the floor and fades away.
Ishamel stares at his twin’s corpse. Eŕe, once he’s sure this is over, runs over to Khazhek’s body, trying to pull it into his arms and get him to respond, but he's already dead. Ere sobs, his body shaking as all this finally catches up to him before he looks up at Ishamel. He can’t look his uncle in his eyes. He turns, and he hurries back to his room, heart thumping in his ears. Neither notice Naya running around the corner, but they both hear her scream. Ere feels her as she collides with him, sobbing. The two stay there, cradling Khazhek’s body.
A bit later, probably a few days after everyone ‘recovers’, they’re making plans for the funerals. Everyone assumes they’re going to burn the three bodies together as that is custom, especially for family members, but Ishamel speaks up and states that they should throw Khazhek’s body in the river instead. Naya and Eŕe immediately get mad and challenge this, but Ishamel points out (the lie) that Khazhek is a traitor who murdered the king and crown prince, and also that he’s the king now so he gets to have the ultimate word on this. The two don’t give it up, but Ishamel gets his way via brute force. Kherin and Rozik burn on the funeral pyre, and two servants drag Khazhek’s body into the depths of the nearby river.
After this, we see Eŕe and Naya trying to cope and Ishamel promising them things he never delivers on. We see Ishamel become more paranoid, gradually restricting the rights of any maligned offspring. Eventually, he makes it a law that all maligned offspring are to be captured. He sets up bands of hunting parties to go around and do so, but they quickly become brutal and kill many, half-maligned or no. The former hunter clade splits up because of this. Those who support what is quickly becoming a genocide become Ishamel’s generals and advisors while the rest go to live in solitude around the kingdom. People hide family and friends that they know to have maligned blood, but the hunters find them anyways.2
These hunting parties are ruthless. Some threaten villages, extorting them to give up their loved ones and community members, while others go and just full on attack random communities to root them out. A lot of maligned and half maligned who are just living their lives and existing get exposed, captured, and killed.
Eŕe knows about this so he's constantly trying to get Ishamel to stop, but Ishamel sees it as necessary evil. Ishamel doesn’t seem to know or to want to know how far his generals are taking it, but when people try to tell him he threatens to exile them, so mostly he remains ignorant to his own genocide.
Khar becomes his top general through skill in capturing maligned, but he is also one of the most brutal leaders of the hunting bands. He tries to assault both Naya and Eŕe, but Eŕe physically beats his ass or threatens to every time and stops it before it gets bad. Ishamel threatens Khar with exile or imprisonment when told, but never actually punishes him.
Naya is an emotional wreck. She barely ever leaves her room, she barely ever feels safe at home, she doesn’t know if she should believe Ishamel or Eŕe who believes that it wasn’t Khazhek but thinks it might’ve been some other maligned who convinced Ishamel of something bad or what. She’s unsure and scared and confused and barely holding together with depression and anxiety, with no one able to help her.
Eŕe can barely focus. He barely knows what to do at this point. He’s seen his family get ripped apart, two of his nephews killed, the third becoming an insane tyrant, and his niece is isolating herself from everyone and everything.
Meridan just fully leaves at some point, disgusted by everything that’s going on. Eŕe wants to join him, but he can’t. Ishamel won’t let Naya leave with him, and Naya can barely even leave her room.
Meanwhile, Khazhek is being tormented by the abyss, trying his hardest to hold on to himself. It’s trying to break him, to tear him down, to convince him he’s a monster, everything. The evil voices are tormenting him in hell and he can’t escape. It’s an experience exactly like a nightmare, like his night terrors, but constant and worse. He never wakes up from them, but he’s able to take control of the dreams and forcibly fight off manifestations of monstrous ideals of himself with enough effort. At some point, he defeats a nightmare of his brother and somehow breaks himself free.