2018-06-01: Bloody Banner
- Cutscene: Bloody Banner
- Cast: Neriah Parringer
- Where: Rolance Countryside
- Date: June 1, 2018
- Summary: Refugees flee the capture of Lastonbell. Until an atrocity takes place.
He had left it all behind in Lastonbell. His home, his workshop. Seven decades and more spent in the family his city had lived in for generations. All but the clothes on his back and the scant coin in his pocket.
The creaking wheels of the caravan were all the old grandfather knew now, mingling with the steady clatter of hooves against gravel and dirt and the sad songs of the refugees tucked away in the back. The wagon was one of several in the loose little wagon train. Dozens if not hundreds had cast their lot with those few who owned horses and carts and could get out one step ahead of the men of Hyland. Most of them were women, children, and old men like himself, too tired to work, or to stand in defense of the city.
Now, as he steered the horses down the back roads, the old man pursed his lips with anxiety at the sight of a banner in the path ahead and the glint of dim sunlight off of steel. The flag the approaching soldiers carried was a familiar one - the banner of Hyland.
"Ho the caravan," called the leader of the group - a young woman, he thought. "Stop there, in the name of the King of Hyland."
A cold knot of worry wove itself into the old man's guts, but he tugged the reins to urge the tired horses to a halt. Behind him, murmurs came from within the caravan, anxious and quiet. A couple of the children eased forward to peek furtively over his shoulder. "Please, we mean no trouble," he said, his old voice unsteady. "We only seek respite."
Sliding down from her horse, the lead soldier approached the caravan. Of them all, she was the only one without a helmet, her long, curly black hair pulled into a high ponytail and her pale orchid eyes steady on his face. The uniform fit her - yet she seemed far too delicate and pretty to truly be a soldier, her bearing entirely too silky and graceful. "You come from Lastonbell, then," she asked, hand at her hip.
"W-we do," the old man conceded, recoiling a little at the coolness of her tone. "Please, none of us are warriors here. We haven't come to fight you."
"Get off the wagon," the female "soldier" said with a wave of her hand. "All of you. You're all to be taken into custody. King's orders."
Gasps rippled through the caravan behind him. The old man could hear someone beginning to cry. "B-but we have done nothing wrong!" he protested as he slid down from the wagon, approaching with his hands out. "Please, we are tired... hungry! We only--"
The young woman in the soldier's outfit lowered her eyelids slightly.
"When a soldier of Hyland tells you to do something, you do it," she cut him off. "But if you want the alternative, you can have that, too." She took a step forward.
Steel rasped against steel - and cold fire filled the old man's world as the dark-haired woman drove her sword through his stomach and out his back at a killing angle. As he crumpled around the blade, he coughed wetly, feeling his life gushing out of him even through the shock.
"/Why,/" he rasped, even as his dying ears filled with the growing screams and sounds of riven flesh as the men in the Hyland uniforms descended upon the caravan.
The woman's red-painted lips curled downwards beneath eyes that danced with subtle sparks of red fire as she angled her blade to let the dying old man slide off it. His deadening nerves felt the steel pouring out of him before he hit the ground.
The dark-haired soldier stepped over him. The old man, clinging to his last moments, could see the way she moved - the way the supposed soldiers mowed through the caravan like chaff. The way the horses ran free in fear as the armed men descended upon the helpless and the sinless, the way bodies crumpled to the ground. The way the soldiers' naked blades were stained red in the light, the banner still dancing proudly in the wind above the acts of atrocity committed by its borrowers. Women and children shrieked and sobbed, the scarlet patterns of dead innocents' fresh blood beginning to lace the soil with evidence of the supposed Hylanders' sin. A few bolted and ran.
Most couldn't.
"Why," he managed again, the only breath he could manage before Althena took him.