Ch 1 : The Tragedy

"You want Erax resin?"

said a skinny guy with brown hair. he had hissed when a cyan colored hair girl cornered him by the Treasury. "Are you crazy? That is restricted. Only healers could purchase those. it is poisonous"

"I know what it is," that girl said.

"I need it."

"Why should I help you? the Viscount will burn me alive if he finds out."

"Because I will give you what you want," she said, and hated how steady her voice was.

"You have been asking the other girls, right?"

"But now, I am offering you the exact thing you asked them about."

He stared at her red eyes, her fair skin, her cyan braid.

"How many nights?" he asked.

"Seven" she said..

"And you bring me the resin in a clay jar, unmarked, to the laundry chute. No one sees."

He swallowed. "Whoa there, seven nights. You swear?"

"I swear by whatever is left of Agilrach, 3 upfront and the rest after i got them from you" she said.

"Fine." he said while hurriedly drags her inside the wine cellar.

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*clog*

He locked the door. hastily undress her top while kissing her lips with urge.

after Heldia got undressed, he put his left hand on her right chest, covering something fluffy part of hers.

*squeezes*

"Mmmpffff..!!"

he put his lips to block hers from saying something while pushes the back of her heads with his left hand towards him.

*rustle*

*rustle*

he then pulls down his whole pants, and soon, her undie, without removing her long purple skirt.

*boing*

a wooden club suddenly emerged below his stomach, in upwards motion. turns out it was his.

he grabs his wooden club and turns Heldia backward, and inserts his club into her Cave of Temptation.

*thwack!!*

a clapping sound could be heard, as he lunges Heldia, cornering her, deep inside.

*thwack*

*thwack*

"Ahhh.. Fuck it" he said

"Mmmmppffff...!!" Heldia tried to speak with closed lips.

Then...

*splurts*

a white resin could be seen flowed down her Cave, dripping into her thighs while his club still inside.

his hips slowed. his hands held her fluffy pillow below her neck, left and right.

*squeezes*

and he increased his pace, quicker.

"Not.. enough.. more!!" he said.

Heldia looked backward, and said "Hey.. That already counts.. as One.. Why.. mmpppfff--"

"Shut up.. i need.. more.." he said while moving his squeezing left hand towards her mouth.

he then continued doing that sequence, 7 times in a row, until it was almost early morning.

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The year was 3115 by the Apixus Calendar and the wind that came down from the north still carried ash, even ten years after the fire.

In the lower scullery of the Galum estate, Heldia von Agilrach scrubbed.

"You missed a spot, ghost eyes," a voice said behind her.

Heldia did not look up. She knew that voice. Rooga.

She kept scrubbing the stone. Her hands were red from lye, her fair skin blotched from cold. Her long cyan hair, braided thick down her back with a curly pony at the end that refused to be tamed, was tied back with twine. When she lifted her head, her bright red eyes caught the lamplight.

"Did you hear me?" Rooga said, kicking the bucket. Water sloshed over her knees. "I said you missed a spot."

"I heard you, young master Rooga," she said quietly. Her voice was even. She had learned that evenness like a sword form. "I will clean it again."

"Good," he said, and he leaned down, too close. "You should always clean properly. Father says cleanliness is next to obedience. Do you know what obedience is, Heldia?"

"Yes, young master," she said.

"Say it."

"Obedience is doing as I am told without question," she recited.

He laughed. "See? You can learn. For a northern peasant."

He walked away, his boots leaving fresh mud on the floor she had just cleaned. Heldia watched the mud spread, then dipped her brush again and cleaned it a second time. She counted her breaths. One, two, three, four. The mana circulation her father had once described to her brother, a river under the skin.

She was nineteen this winter. If you passed her in the market with her head covered you would think she was some angelic statue that had been left out too long and had learned how to breathe. That was why they stared. That was why they hurt.

She was the second daughter of a house that no longer existed. The Agilrach Dukedom had governed six villages in the north, a hard land where barley grew short and swords grew long, and they had been renowned for their swordsmanship more than for their gold.

The other maids whispered about it when they thought she could not hear.

"Is it true her house had six villages?" one had whispered last month.

"Six villages and now six graves," another had answered. "Or less."

Heldia remembered the day it ended as a weight in her lungs, not as a story.

That day, Year 3105 of Apixus Calendar, August 18th,

She had been nine. Her twin little sisters Irina von Agilrach and Erina von Agilrach had been six. It was late summer and the sky over Agur Mountain had been wrong since early morning. Gloom pressed low over Fortress City of Rachen, her hometown.

"Mother, can we go to the mountain?" Heldia had asked, tugging on Kylene ein Falsid's sleeve. Kylene had been mending a torn doublet, her brown hair pinned up.

Kylene ein Falsid had frowned at the sky. "Not far, Heldia. Stay where you can see the smoke from the chimneys. And take your little sisters instead, I got a few things to do."

"Boo!! You always busy, Mother.. I do not want to take them," Heldia had said. "They are slow."

"Take them or don't go at all, and also i hold you responsible for them" Kylene said.

"That is what it means to be the older sister. Promise me."

"Fine, I promise," Heldia said, though at nine she had thought responsible meant getting to give orders.

They had gone to the vicinity near Agur Mountain, not that far behind Rachen. There was an abandoned cave there, shallow and dry.

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"Listen," Heldia told the twins, trying to sound like their father Magamus von Agilrach when he drilled his men. "This cave is a castle. You two are the guards. You must find white rocks to defend it. Ten white rocks each."

Irina, bolder despite being born minutes later, put her hands on her hips. "Why do we have to stay here? You always get to explore."

"Because I am older and because I said so," Heldia said.

"That is not a reason," Irina said.

"It is a reason because I am nine and you are six," Heldia said. "And because if you come with me you will step on a snake."

Erina, tugged Irina's sleeve. "There is a good white one there. Look."

"Fine," Irina said, still glaring at Heldia. "But if we find ten first, we get to be duchess and you have to be the horse."

"Deal," Heldia said, and she smiled despite herself. "Stay in the castle. That is an order from your commander."

"Yes, commander," Erina said solemnly, and saluted with a rock.

Heldia walked up the small rise behind the cave, just enough to see over the scrub and see her hometown. The wind stopped. The birds stopped. Then the sky tore.

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*BOOM!!*

There was a loud sound that was not thunder.

"Father?" Heldia whispered to the empty air.

Fire engulfed Rachen. Not a house fire. All of it at once, as if the town had been lit from below. Smoke rose in a black pillar that turned the gloom yellow

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to be continued..

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