11

The world around is painted in saturated reds like an intense fire, and that same firestorm seems to exist within her, burning. But burning feels good, burning makes the girl want to smile. Her memories and worries promise turn to ashes, and when nothing matters anymore, the only thing that matters is where to bury her claws. It is liberating.

Titania turns to the dark silhouettes writhing in the distance. The girl moves forward and the silhouettes move back. Titania wiggles her fingers, and the metal claws tinkles. She leans forward run to the silhouettes and charge at them until they become nothing, but a sound breaks through from the red and causes her to slow down.

Night Slash looks down and finds the brown cat near her feet. The animal meows again, its large, dark eyes fixed on her. Titania hesitates, slowly directs her claws at the feline and...

The gauntlet disappears. Titania's fingers caress the animal's head, which closes its eyes and purrs. New colors are added to the surrounding background and the world gradually ceases to be a convulsive jumble of hatred. The girl's smile disappears, because at the same time as the fire leaves, the silhouettes recover their original shapes and reveal themselves to be the frightened peasants. The tiredness, which had also been drowned out by the euphoria, now resurfaces with double the strength and causes Titania to gasp and hunch over. Her head aches and she feels her veins throb threatening to burst..

The armor disappears, leaving Titania in rags and still looking like a demon. The children among the peasants hide behind their parents and ask in trembling voices if the monster will eat them all.

The girl turns her back on the crowd and the cat, and runs into the woods to disappear. By chance she finds an old, abandoned house on a patch of mud. She enters the house and drops to her knees. She wants to scream, but her mouth is dry despite the fresh blood that paints the lips. Titania's gaze darkens, she slumps forward and her head crashes and cracks the rotten wooden planks.

On the window frame behind the assassin's back sits the brown cat, which grows and loses much of its fur. Camui appears naked, although he still has a pair of feline ears and a tail. The boy will need that extra degree of agility to go where he hid his clothes.

...

The sun rises over the horizon, putting an end to a chaotic night. The peasants load their meager belongings onto wheelbarrows to migrate to greener pastures. Fernard's kingdom is no longer a land worth caring for or protecting.

A white wooden carriage waits at the entrance to the castle's broken bridge. The last guards loyal to the princess, placed some boards to enable the passage and move the remains of the royal coffers to the carriage, from whose window the princess Foralena can be seen standing upright on the seat, her eyes wide and fixed on nothing, perhaps still unable to process that in one night she lost her parents and the only man she considered worthy to be her husband.

Ivy, passed near the bridge and attentive to the gossip of the maids, learns that the soldiers will take Foralena to the tower her father built to imprison her there, until a man brave enough to free her and become king appears. The idea may sound cruel, but it is the only way those leaderless soldiers can honor Fernard IV's last words.

The chariot, like a swan among pigeons, stands out as it travels in the middle of the emigrant caravan. Like the humbler peasants, Princess Foralena marches in search of a new place to call home.

Ivy advances through what is now a ghost town. She sees mischievous figures moving in and out of the houses, looters in search of any abandoned valuables. From the windows of the few homes still occupied, the faces of those too old, or too infirm, or too fearful to participate in the migration appear.

"Camui, I hope you know what you're doing" the witch murmurs with an obvious tinge of concern in her voice.

Ivy crosses an alley located between a group of corrals and an old wall almost swallowed by the sides of the swamp, moment in which a group of five men surrounds her, two from behind and three in front. The group is made up of deserting soldiers and peasants who have graduated to thieves. One of the men gives her a yellowish smile and points a knife at her.

"Hand over everything of value you have, doll. Or better yet, take off that cloak, go on... A pretty girl like you sure knows how to please a bunch of boys like us"

After hearing the threat, Ivy closes her eyes, smiles and sighs.

An incandescent glow illuminates the alley and five screams are heard. Ivy appears from the alleyway with the bottom of her wooden staff stepping on it, and some of the faces on the end of the staff smoking. Her countenance is stoic.

The witch walks out of the village to cross the slimy bed, and stand at the edge of the hole where the giant statue stood a few hours ago. The witch peers into the hole and glimpses thick cracks in the cliff, fissures large enough for a person to move through.

"Interesting"

...

"Come back before sunset and don't go too far! It's dangerous!"

That was the last thing his mother shouted to the 9-year-old boy, before he ran off into the flora, chasing dragonflies and birds in an ancient forest, jumping between the roots of leafy trees from whose tops the sunlight filtered like palpable beams. The child, intoxicated by the melting pot of scents, the fresh air, and the feel of the grass under his bare feet, wanders farther than advisable and falls through a concealed crack in the ground.

In the bowels of the earth, the child wakes up and lifts his face, to immediately burst into tears. The suffocating isolation hurts as much as his broken legs. He doesn't even notice when the druid's mark appears on his small hand. Repeatedly he cries out, "Mommy! Where are you, Mommy?!"

The child crawls between the fissures seeking to return home, and then when hunger and thirst begin to bite, he crawls around longing for food and drink. The druid's mark opens openings through which water from mysterious rivers and fruits from unknown subterranean realms fall. But no matter how much the child forces his gift, the mark never succeeds in delivering to him the whole, free world from which he comes, and which as time passes more and more is lost.

Days turned into months, months into years, and years into centuries. The child kept by the gifts of his mark, was forgotten and he too forgot his mother's face. In spite of everything, he still remembered and wanted the sunbeams, and perhaps that desire was what kept him alive.

Upstairs, Fernard the enlightened one arrived, and cleared the forest to build his kingdom. The boy felt hungry and thirsty again, and that feeling made the earth mushy to fight against the formidable fortresses. The monarchs grew angry, shook their fists, and lit their golden crowns, not knowing that they were competing against the meager forces of a druid child.

And the mud devoured the crops and the men. And the child continued to crawl in the darkness, disorienting and chasing a light that he is only able to evoke with his imagination.