The Headsman's Child (Patreon)

The Headsman, left hand of the Death Queen, third best osteomancer in the world, Titled of the Obsidian Forest, was a liar, a fool, and worst of all, a hypocrite.

He stepped through the shadow dappled trees in the depths of his forest and stood before an ancient tree that radiated so much lunar, death, and desolation mana that it could kill anyone who approached. 

Even the legendary Alchemist of Elohi, the Moving Hamadryad of the wilderness, and the Springbringer herself would be killed if they spent more than a few hours in its presence. 

Pryderi, the Headsman, placed a hand on its wine-colored bark and let out a soft, quiet, sad sob. 

Here, in the presence of this tree, Pryderi was safe. 

Unobserved. 

Alone. 

His master, the Death Lady – for he was certain she did not have skill to claim the Title of Death Queen, even if she had more than enough raw power – could not touch him here. 

She could not beckon him to her side. She could not bind him to kill children. She could not listen to every word he spoke. 

At least for a time. 

Pryderi was no more immune to the tree’s power than anyone, and in time, his Title would begin to buckle under the strain of this ancient tree’s relentless killing aura. 

Pyderi sat down, spreading his raven wings wide and wrapping them around his pale body like a cloak, then leaned against the tree and closed his eyes. 

Perhaps if he slept, he would feel better.

Perhaps if he slept long enough, his ungated mana would run dry, his Title would wear thin, and the tree would kill him. 

A man could hope.

Before he drifted off, his hand slid among the roots of the tree to a storage ring, and from it, he removed a painting. It was somewhat old, but far from ancient, and its quality was middling at best. 

Had a professor of the arts looked over it, they might call it an average example of realist portrait paintings done in a style popular between two and four centuries ago. 

They could have pointed out how the artist had made errors – the center woman’s eyes didn’t quite line up, one of the hands on the man on the right were disproportionately long compared to the other, so on and so forth.

What they wouldn’t, couldn’t, realize was who this artwork depicted. 

In the center was a woman, tall and slender, with long, straight black hair, brown eyes, and pale skin. Pretty enough, but nothing unique, she could have passed as the child of a baker or tailor, and none would have disputed it. She was laughing in the painting, but even in this poor quality rendering, it wasn’t touching her eyes. The hints of the Death Lady, there, even as she was a nineteen year old child.

To her right was a man, shortest of the group, though not terribly short, with tightly bound dreadlocks, a sharply trimmed goatee, brown eyes, and dark skin. He was handsome, and Pyderi thought the painter must have been starstruck, as the details around his face were the clearest, an imperious authority and confidence that would become the Cataclysm. 

To her left was him. Pale enough that his skin was unnaturally chalk white, with black hair and burning green eyes. He hadn’t triggered his father’s legacy bloodline at the time, so his wings were absent, but the hints that he wasn’t quite human were there in the painting. 

And in the background was the ruins of a castle that had sunk into the moors under Cataclysm’s spells, and the damage that the rebellion’s mad mage had unleashed by awakening three dozen war roots. 

That mission for Orykson had been when things had begun to go wrong, he had just been too much of a fool to see it, and now his hands were too soaked in blood to ever be clean.

The Constellation that hung in the sky above his mana-garden howled its laughter and its sorrow. 

It was a terrible thing, when loyalty and friendship was bound by force. 

Pyderi tucked away the painting into its spatial ring and returned it to the roots of the tree. He tightened his wings around him and closed his eyes to sleep. 

To his surprise, it wasn’t the chains around his soul that woke him to force him to save itself.

There were people in his woods. 

That wasn’t uncommon. The nation of Obsidian Forest was named after said forest, a rich, old, powerful place. There were towns and villages and cities scattered throughout its megaflora, and forest trails were more plentiful in his country than any other on Ddeaer, even Elohi.

But the deep forest, miles from the trails, where the oldest, darkest trees lay, where Pyderi made his home? 

Few dared even cross over the cordon marking the deep forest, where beasts and elementals rampaged, where there were trees that could suck your blood, where the shadows had eyes and teeth, and where there were things, like this tree, that would stand a real chance of killing even one with as much power as the Headsman.

Of the few that dared, few dared to head deeper than a mile or so in. None grew so close to the center of the forest unless they had no other choice. 

And if there were people who had gone this deep, he should investigate. 

He unfurled his wings and leaned on the tree as a brace, rising to his feet with a long sigh.

Pyderi’s skill with spatial transit was limited to the two spells worked into his Arcanist Tower, and he couldn’t afford one of Orykson’s top grade gate keys, so it actually took him several long moments of flight and a chain of short range teleports to cover the distance, but he swooped down, landing before a group of four and taking in the scene.

There was a girl, no older than eight, being pursued by a group of three older men. The venom-green eyes of the Headsman burned brighter as he studied the group and the girl. 

“What is going on here?” he asked.

His voice was almost a whisper, but it cut through the area like a sharp blade cutting through tenebrous silk. 

The three men began to shake and tremble, but the girl snarled and punched him in the groin. 

Pyderi blinked, caught by surprise more than anything, and then looked down at her with faint amusement. 

“Hold on there, child.” 

“Lemme go, take them!” she shouted. “I’ll bite you!”

Pyderi’s eyes flicked over to the three men. Two in their forties, one in his fifties. Third gate mages, all of them, and strong ones. He recognized the signs of palisade-acorns in their mana, strengthening their third gate magic beyond its limits in exchange for the destruction of future potential. 

Most Occultists would sneer at people for using a treasure like that, but Pyderi didn’t. The constant drain of resources and effort it took to keep advancing only ever grew, and third gate power was more than enough for an average person, be they battlemage, farmer, enchanter, or garbage-wrangler. Many didn’t even need third gate power, in truth. 

The hint of powerful mana in the air caught his senses, and he realized what happened. 

One of the spirits that wandered the deep forest was known as Kysgott, an ancient shadow elemental. She wasn’t particularly violent, as such things went, but she was fiercely independent and untamed. Any human who accidentally passed within a mile of her uninvited found themselves transported elsewhere.

If they came hunting for her…

Truthfully, she scared Pyderi a little. Her Title was unformed, but she was older than he was, strong and canny. If they came to blows, he would win, but the price for victory would be high.

This group must have crossed the cordon, stumbled across her path, and been sent deep into the forest as punishment.

Why had they crossed the cordon in the first place, though?

One of the men, who must have had more intelligence than the others, slammed his head to the ground in a bow.

“Honored Grand Spirit, please grant us clemency. We did not know you were so close to the cordon. Please don’t kill us for the girl’s impudence. Take her life if you must, but we would prefer you allow us to return home with her.”

They thought he was a spirit? That was cute. He flexed his wings and looked down at the girl, who was currently wailing on him with punches, kicks, and indeed, had even bitten his arm. 

“Why did you enter the deep woods?” 

“We wer–” one of the men started, and Pyderi silenced him with a look.

“I asked the child,” he said quietly. 

The girl bit his arm again. 

Pyderi decided to wait for her to tire herself out. 

As they waited, one of the men started to speak again. 

Pyderi unveiled his mana, at least to the senses of the men. This girl was too young, her soul too weak to even produce ungated mana yet. The full weight of his power would likely kill or cripple the girl. 

When the power smashed into the men, their bodies started to tremble as instincts long forgotten by the modern world were unearthed, the need to fight, flee, fawn, or freeze before superior power.

It took minutes for the girl’s fight to die, and she collapsed against him in a sobbing mess. He continued to stand there, pinning the men with his power.

Eventually, the tears dried, and the child looked up at him

“Why are you here, child?” Pyderi asked, putting his hand on her head and ruffling her hair gently. She flinched away from the motion, and he froze, retracting his hand.

“Are you going to bite me?” she asked, looking up at him, fear and sadness and determination and, most of all, exhaustion running through her. 

Pyderi studied her, then focused his mana senses. Blood was not something he’d ever had much power with – bone had been his weapon of choice, with decay joining the bones once his bloodline had awoken. 

Still, he was an Occultist. Mana senses grew sharper and stronger with each advancement, notably so when one broke onto a new stage of power. 

He found traces of life and death and lunar, with fainter aspects of solar and telluric and tempest and more, on her ankle, near the fibula bone. Older wounds, with only a tiny bit of energy in them now, mostly healed. The kind of thing that was hard to spot, in a location most could dismiss as a bite from a garden snake.

“I’m not a vampire,” he said, then looked at the men. “Who do you work for? Why the child?”

There were legal methods for vampires to get blood, after all. When none of them spoke, Pyderi realized he’d forgotten to release the pressure on them. A bit embarrassing, frankly. He let up, and one rose. 

“We are servants of Lord Sena. He seeks her blood because she is an oracle, and her blood strengthens his sight. We offer her now to you for that reason, in exchange for our ability to leave.”

Pyderi just let out a tired sigh. Vivian gave him mostly free reign over his territory, so long as he followed certain boundaries.

If she was watching, she wouldn’t understand his actions here, not anymore. He would need to frame it just right. Perhaps if he talked about the future value of an oracle who owed him a favor…

He swept out his hand and summoned his domain weapon, a scythe of bone, with green decay dripping from it. One of the men turned to run.

It was too late. All three fell to the forest floor, dead, the burning green light already beginning to dissolve their bodies, their heads severed from their bodies. Even their spirits, which should have raised as baleful dead, were consumed by the burning green decay, broken down into energy that rushed back into the world. 

Pyderi looked down at the girl and called the scythe back to his hand. 

“It’s not safe to be this deep in the woods,” he said. “Walk with me. I have a gate that can return us to town. Do your parents know you’re alive?” 

She stared at him, then she started to laugh.

“You… You really killed them?” 

“I did,” he said wearily. He started to walk, leaning his scythe against his shoulder. She ran ahead, looping back before she got too far from him. All of her movements were swift and light as if a burden had been lifted from her. 

That was good, that amount of fortitude would help her bounce back. 

“What sort of punishment do you want me to give to the vampire they called Sena?” Pyderi asked. “Death?” 

“No,” she said. “I want him to be afraid. Like I was. Trapped. Hurting.” 

“I can manage that,” he said. 

Probably. He didn’t know of any vampire in the Obsidian Forest strong enough to challenge him, but it was always possible one had risen to power under his nose, and the fight would be the impetus for them to form their title. 

Unlikely, but possible.

Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? He’d die?