Journey of the Son of Ares

It took a few days for Cade to make a complete recovery. She went to pay for the collateral damage in town, and after that was done, it was time to leave.

Cade carried both of their bags while, Aurelius slowly walked beside her, using a pair of crutches. His hat had been lost, so he had gotten a new one. A flat, black hat with wide rims, that shadowed his face completely. In addition, Cade had bought him a smooth navy blue scarf that he could conceal the other half of his face with, leaving only his eyes visible. Eyes, which probably looked as dark as the depths of the Great Ocean.

Traveling was pretty peaceful. There was no running this time. Only walking and sitting in carriages.

There were few coachmen that provided long trips for strangers, though, so they needed to take multiple trips a day, which was a little infuriating. Still, it wasn't that bad.

All of Aurelius' wounds hadn't quite closed yet, though, so what made the trip worse was that his body ached at every shake of the carriage.

Cade seemed to notice his expression twitching at the pain and asked, "Do you want to stop to rest somewhere? We don't have to make the trip while you're still recovering."

Aurelius leaned the back of his against the wooden interior of the carriage. "No. I'd like to get to Aleyah's place as soon as possible. The longer I stay in town, the bigger the chance that someone else will come after me."

"You sure?" Cade asked, tilting her head. "I'm not sure if those black and white hunters were people who just saw you going around. I don't think they were after the bounty as much as they were under someone's orders. They seemed to know exactly who you are. For a duo as strong as them, 1000 gold shouldn't be enough to go against the son of Ares. Lots of easier ways to make money."

Aurelius looked at Cade, his face limp with mental exhaustion. "Under whose orders?"

"I don't know," Cade answered. "Probably under the Boeria branch manager's orders. Maybe he realized who you were and saw an opportunity to boost his reputation."

"I see." Aurelius closed his eyes and let out a sigh. "I don't get it, though. Why would such young and talented girls be bounty hunters? Are you sure we had to kill them?"

"Yes, I had to kill them. They tried killing us first. It doesn't matter how they got into their line of work. They knew full well what they were doing. They were strong enough to have a choice in the matter as well. There are no excuses for them."

An expected answer. Aurelius pursed his lips. Sometimes Cade's coldness was annoying. She was the rational justification that Aurelius couldn't grasp, let alone commit to. In a way, he was envious. Things would've been so easy if his mind worked like hers. Maybe it would take him being more like her in order to become what he wanted.

Aurelius breathed a little deeper before a relaxing sensation started to overtake him, and he managed to fall asleep.

***

Cade shook him, shook him and shook...

"I'm awake! I'm awake," Aurelius said, waving his hand before closing his eyes again, prompting Cade to shake him awake again.

"Come on. We have to go through the city on foot. There's a traffic jam," Cade said.

Aurelius groaned before painfully standing up, putting on his hat and scarf, taking his crutches, and exiting the carriage. Cade paid the coachman, and then they stepped into the stream of people.

It was noon, and the sun shone straight into Aurelius' eyes. It wasn't the most pleasant awakening experience he'd ever had. That one time with the spider crawling into his mouth while he slept in the Thropes probably took the top spot.

He shuddered at the thought and looked around as he tried his best to avoided being bumped.

The streets were overflowing with people, while carriages tried to make their way out from the middle of it all.

"Where are we?" Aurelius asked while he walked behind Cade, who paved the way through the mass.

He tried figuring it out by the architecture, but there was nothing special about it. The place was a bit similar to Wescaster with its gray brick buildings that had flat roofs. The buildings just weren't quite as tall as the ones over there.

"Boeria!" Cade yelled as she kept moving.

Aurelius' consciousness jumped a little, and the remaining sleepiness in his system faded. He pressed his hat down and tightened his scarf.

He looked down at his feet while they moved. "What's with the crowd?"

"I'm not sure. Even the coachman didn't know, and he's here a lot, so this must be a special occasion," Cade said, her voice loud.

"What do you—"

"Huh? Hey, over there. It seems people are gathering just around the corner," Cade said. Aurelius quickly glanced up to see where she was pointing before putting his gaze down and moving on.

"Are we going to go look? Or should we move the other way to get away from the crowd?" he asked.

"Let's go see, since our trip has already been disturbed," Cade said, changing the direction a little and continuing to shove people aside.

Aurelius kept his gaze down and followed. When they made the big turn, Cade stopped for a while. There were sounds of... sobbing? Aurelius glanced up a little just so he could see her. "What is it?"

"You don't—" Cade stopped herself. "Ah, don't look. Let's just go." She turned to Aurelius and gestured for them to go the other way.

"Huh?" Aurelius let his curiosity win and shifted his gaze a little higher, so that he could see what it was. "What are—"

He paused, his face twitching, but his eyes staying still. Finally, he averted his gaze and felt chills run through his ribs. It was like cold, demonic claws were scraping his torso.

'What did I see? What did I see? What? What? What? What? What? What? Was that. That. No. It...'

"Let's—" Cade's cold hand grasped his wrist suddenly, prompting him to shake and pull away. "Rey!" she yelled as he started making his way closer.

As he got closer, he noticed that the stones on the ground were no longer visible. It was all just vomit. But that didn't stop him. He had to be sure about what he saw. It couldn't be that he was imagining something like that. Even imagining something like that was a crime. An offense against humanity. He had to confirm that he hadn't committed such a crime.

Though he wasn't sure which was worse—him imagining it, or someone having brought such a horrific thing to reality?

The sounds of people sobbing, shrieking, and vomiting started to be so common that it all drowned out.

He pushed people out of the way and strode forth. He had to bear witness. If such a thing was real, he had to know. And if it was, he had to punish it.

When he finally made it to the front, where the authorities had set up fences and signs, he lifted his gaze from his feet and bore witness.

He stopped breathing. At that moment, Aurelius was sure he had never and would never see anything so atrocious ever again in his life. It couldn't get worse than this.

That was because it was a human. And what makes a human.

A square, a circle, and the thing itself. All human.

It took a while to really process the sight. The sight of the ordinary gray brick building that had a fresh corpse nailed to it.

The corpse was that of a man who was not even fifty. He had thin brown hair, and his face was clean-shaven. He also had a toned physique that was semi-impressive for someone his age. That was irrelevant, though. What really grabbed attention were the spikes that had gone through the man's body. They were everywhere, sticking the man into a position with his arms and legs spread. Through the hands, elbows, shoulders, hips, knees, feet, and even through the neck, so that the man's head was held up, and he could face the crowd with a blank, everyday look. It was as if he were still alive and listening to a boring story.

One of the most frightening details was that the man seemed to have been unsuspecting, even right before he was killed. He had probably not been aware of his impending death until it had already happened. Just like that, his consciousness had been erased from the world.

It didn't end there, however. That was just the beginning.

Surrounding the one corpse. There was part of another, and another, and another. They were arms. Arms cleanly severed at the shoulder and nailed to the wall in such a way that the complete work, which was composed of dozens of arms, made a circle. And surrounding that was a square. A square made up of legs.

Aurelius' jaw tightened even more than it already had unconsciously done, but he couldn't express it. Just gritting his teeth wasn't enough to express the emotion brewing inside of him. The sheer disgust at how someone could play with human lives and desecrate corpses in such a manner.

How could something so filthy be allowed to exist in this world?

Aurelius brought his hands up to his eyes and dug his nails into the insides of his eyes for a moment. Then he saw the text. The text written onto the bare upper body of the corpse in the middle.

'Killers' was written on the forearm. On the forearms. It was the same on both hands.

Then Aurelius looked at the shoulders and chest. On the left shoulder, there was the letter U. On the chest, there was the letter R. On the right shoulder, there was the letter I. 'URI'. Aurelius directed his gaze up as his wide eyes consumed the image, committing every piece to memory. The text on the forehead was clear. 'Spirit'.

The last one that Aurelius noticed was the writing on the stomach. And right when he thought, his eyes couldn't go any wider, he saw it. 'Golden One'.

Aurelius spun his head around as his consciousness shook, and his eyes darted around. It was then that he started to hear the surrounding chatter.

"That's... Numen... the leader..."

"The branches... conflict..."

"No... statement... the authorities..."

"He's Felix... how is... someone..."

Aurelius's gaze whet back to it for one last time as he noticed something more he had missed. A text above it all, written with all capital letters made up of large, rough strokes. It was crimson. Written with blood, like all of it.

"The... Idea of a Human?" Aurelius read out loud, his voice hissing through his clenched teeth.

He wanted to throw up, but he couldn't. For some reason, it seemed like too little of a reaction. It meant nothing in the face of something like this. He twitched as he felt a touch on his shoulder. He turned around to see Cade, who had a deep frown imprinted on her face.

Then he felt the right reaction, and his head stopped spinning for just a second before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and his eyelids fluttered before he fainted into Cade's arms.