Agree to the deal
“You’ll stay up here, away from everyone else,” Mister Gannon confirmed.
“Yes,” Forban confirmed, “I’m a monster, what else can I do?”
“You’re not…” you began to protest.
“Yes I am! Look at me! This is my fate. It doesn’t need to be yours. Tutor, I don’t want you to get hurt like my nanny did. She…she…and those people…I’m poison. My touch is death.”
You couldn’t lift your head. You stared at the ground in shame, and nodded.
“Are we agreed then?” Mister Gannon asked, getting up. “I would rather not stay here for too long.”
The young master’s uncle started walking down the stone steps and you reluctantly followed.
You looked back for a moment to see young master’s large eyes and quivering mouth. He was sad, but there was nothing to be done.
“I will visit you,” you called out to your son. “I’ll keep my distance, but I will visit you.”
“Good bye, Tutor.”
“Yes, you best keep an eye on him,” Mister Gannon whispered once you were well out of earshot of Forban. “If he becomes wild, the destruction…”
“Wild?”
“The stories about the demon children are frightening.”
“But he’s not like that.”
Mister Gannon whipped around, and put his face much too close to yours and looked at you intently, “How many people will have to die before you wake up?”
You felt a pressure in your chest as you were rendered speechless by the weight of what he had just said. You had to face facts. The young master was dangerous.
The bodyguard that had come with you disappeared. You didn’t encounter him on the way back to town and he was nowhere to be found.
Mister Gannon and you went to the magistrate to solidify an agreement that allowed you to occupy a room in one of the Gannon properties in town and provided you with a modest living allowance.
You were able to buy a few things and settle into the room that night. It was pleasant and comfortable.
After a couple of days you went back to the Kyn chapel to tell young master that things were going well, but he wasn’t there.
You searched the grounds wildly until you found him laying face down in the stream. He wasn’t moving.
He was dead.
You fell to your knees and started to sob. You thought, maybe he had become despondent; maybe he made an extreme decision considering his difficult situation. A part of you wondered if it was for the best, and you felt a deep guilt for allowing such a horrible thought to enter your mind.
Once you calmed yourself, you got up and started to walk toward the chapel, thinking that perhaps he had left a letter for you.
But then you saw, out of the corner of your eye, hidden behind some rocks and dirt, the charred remains of the bodyguard that had run away the moment he saw the young master. Apparently the man had returned and taken matters into his own hands.
You walked over to his body, kicked it so that it was on its back, and spat in his lifeless face.
“Monsters!” you screamed. “The imperials are monsters. We should have put you all in the ground the moment you showed your ugly faces, or all died taking as many of you with us as we could! We should have made you pay! Instead, we laid down like dogs for the sake of peace. No more!”
You pulled the young master’s body out of the stream, found a sharp knife, and cut him open. You’d seen it done before. The Kyn were invested in understanding nature and the body, of course they were. You dissected him expertly and precisely.
“I have an hypothesis,” you said as if you were speaking to the young master as his tutor, “and if I’m right…my anger will finally be satisfied. That rage inside me, that I’ve been pushing down for so long will finally be released.”
When you saw it, you started to laugh. Your educated guess was correct! The demon was a creature that found it’s way into humans under specific conditions.
How interesting!
How exciting!
“Hello, young master,” you said as a long, thin worm started to wrap around your finger. “Enter me and I will bathe you in fire. I will cultivate your power. We will become war.”
The End
