Chapter 1 #2
“Stop!” I screamed, but the sound disappeared into the escalating violence. “Gods, please stop this!”
But they were beyond hearing now. The crowd had become a pack of animals, and I was trapped in the center of their madness.
Another villager grabbed Elena’s fallen shears and drove them into Melos’s back.
The blacksmith roared and spun, catching his attacker by the throat and squeezing until the bones snapped.
It should have sickened me, and in a way, it did. But for the first time since this whole nightmare had started, Syagros turned away from me. With a bellowing cry, he launched himself at a nearby villager, his anger at me forgotten.
I had no idea why this was happening, but it didn’t matter. No one was watching me anymore. They were all focused on each other. This was my chance, and I wouldn’t waste it.
I twisted my wrists against the rope binding me to the wooden post. It would be difficult to break free, but not impossible. Syagros had been rough when he’d bound me, but he’d never intended me to be unwatched.
As I worked on the rope, the midwife picked up the log that had burned her and impaled our innkeeper with it.
A nymph shrieked about stolen lovers and raked her branch-fingers across a human woman’s face.
A dryad used her fingers to disembowel a screaming man.
Glistening coils of intestines spilled onto the forest floor while she giggled like a child.
How was this real? How had a trial become a massacre?
These people were farmers and crafters, mothers and fathers.
They weren’t warriors or criminals. They had lived together peacefully for decades.
They shared meals, helped with each other’s children, worked side by side through every season.
It was almost perverse to use their insanity for my own freedom, but I had no choice.
I found a sharp splinter on the post and rubbed the rope against it desperately. The coarse fibers slowly frayed and weakened with each frantic scrape. My shoulders screamed from the awkward angle, but I gritted my teeth and ignored it.
Bodies hit the ground with heavy thuds. The air filled with a metallic stench so thick I could taste it. The peaceful village clearing became a slaughterhouse, illuminated by the hellish light of my burning life’s work.
Our village was lost to this incomprehensible insanity. Throughout it all, I’d remained forgotten in the center of the massacre. I stood there, invisible as my neighbors murdered each other with farm tools and household implements. And I made good use of the time.
With one final pull, the weakened rope snapped and my hands came free. I flexed my fingers, hardly believing I was no longer bound to the post.
Just like that, the strange spell that had kept me safe finally broke. Syagros shoved aside the man he’d just killed, his elegant clothes now soaked with gore. “Die with your cursed threads, barren whore!”
I scrambled backward desperately, my newly freed hands shaking with exhaustion. It was not enough. Surrounded by the chaos, I had nowhere to go. He lunged forward and tackled me to the ground, his weight crushing me against the filthy grass.
As he reached for my throat to strangle me, I tried to claw at his face. My human fingernails were a paltry weapon against his satyr skin. And then, I remembered. I’d been the one who’d cared for him when his people had dragged him into Agrion, wounded. I knew exactly where his wounds had been.
Praying to all the gods that this would work, I drove my fist into his left side. He grunted and doubled over, his grip on me loosening. That moment of weakness was all I needed. I grabbed his left horn with both hands and twisted with every ounce of strength I had.
Desperation gave me power I didn’t know I had. It snapped off with a wet cracking sound, and Syagros screamed, a sound more animal than satyr. He staggered backward, clutching the stump.
I scrambled to my feet, brandishing his broken horn like a dagger. “Come and get me! Come on, if you’re not afraid to die.”
I’d expected him to pounce on me like he had before. He was far too arrogant to consider me a threat, and that was another weakness I could exploit. But perhaps I’d been just as foolish, because what he actually did took me completely by surprise.
With a snarl, Syagros lowered his head like a maddened beast. In his fury, he charged at me with his remaining horn. I’d never seen a satyr fight like this. I wasn’t ready for it.
I tried to dodge, but I was too exhausted and moved too slowly. His horn caught me in the side, punching through skin and muscle with a wet tearing sound. The impact drove me backward, his weight crashing down on top of me as we both hit the gore-slick ground.
Agony exploded through me, so intense I almost blacked out on the spot. This was it. This was how I would die. But even as darkness crept into the edges of my vision, my rage burned hotter than the pain.
I refused to die alone. I tightened my hold on the horn I’d torn from his head. With the last of my strength, I drove it deep into his throat.
Syagros let out a shocked grunt. Blood poured from the wound as he choked, his hands clawing at his ruined throat. He tried to speak, but only wet gasps emerged, growing weaker with each attempt.
“See you in the afterlife, you son of a diseased goat,” I snarled, twisting the horn deeper into his flesh.
He jerked back, and his remaining horn slid out of my body. It hurt so much, but I didn’t even care anymore. The knowledge of my triumph tasted much too sweet.
He tried to speak, but the words barely made it past his lips. “You... cursed...”
I smiled and watched the life drain out of his arrogant face with a glee I didn’t bother to hide. “This is for every day you made me feel worthless.”
Slowly, his struggles began to grow weaker. After what seemed like forever, he went still. His weight settled fully onto me, pinning me beneath his corpse.
Around us, the madness finally burned itself out.
The clearing fell unnaturally quiet except for the crackling of dying fires.
Blood pooled underneath me, warm and thick, soaking through my clothes and into the earth that had witnessed my shame.
Each breath came harder than the last, shallow and ragged, sending fresh waves of agony through me.
Strangely, the physical pain didn’t bother me. If anything, all the pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place. Maybe this was always how it was supposed to end. My body could never give me the one thing that made a woman valuable. Why, then, was I even bothering to live?
My sisters had bled and grown round with children while I remained empty, barren as winter fields.
I’d run away from them, perhaps hoping that if I tried hard enough, I’d find some reason to exist. I’d been a fool.
The herbs had bought me time, but they couldn’t change what I was. A broken thing pretending to be whole.
The world began to blur at the edges, the sounds growing distant and muffled. The pain was beginning to fade away into numbness. “It’s better this way,” I murmured, even if there was no one there to hear me.
I’d been dead inside for years anyway. A ghost haunting my own life, pretending my empty womb didn’t make me less than whole. Now my body was finally catching up to what had always been true.
Darkness pressed in from all sides, soft and welcoming. I stopped fighting it.
My vision went dark, and I sank into nothing.