In a castle teetering on the cliffside, as if about to embrace its end, a child takes its first breath and cries. William looks at the infant and vocalizes an observation. “It’s interesting how babies always cry when they are born, as if they are aware of the hardships that await them.”
Lawrence retorts, “Or rather, the child is just traumatized by their birth.”
“Isn’t that what I just implied, or are the finer details lost on you?” William jabs back with a hiss.
Lawrence bites the hook. “As a man of alchemy, I do not believe in the supernatural.”
William responds, “You do know that in order to breathe life into this vessel, I had to graft the souls of both a squid and a prisoner together. Quite the achievement, if you couldn’t tell. I don’t see why you refer to what isn’t understood by numbers and measurements…”
Lawrence shouts, “William! I am not in the mood for it.”
William asks, “Lawrence, what should her name be?”
Lawrence snorts, “I couldn’t care less. Name it whatever you want.”
“Hello, Camila,” William says.
Camila’s wailing comes to an abrupt end as she stares into William’s sullen green eyes.
“Hello, Camila,” she says in a tone grafted together much like her very soul and body. William kisses Camila on the forehead. Camila’s smile morphs into a blank stare as William thinks about the crime against nature that is her origin. Fear steadily rises on Camila’s face.
Sister Laila is discussing what to feed the children the next morning with Father Viktor. Then there are footsteps, each one an eternity longer than the next, as Laila wonders what anyone could possibly want at this hour. There’s a steady knock on the door, as if some entity is asking to be let in. As Sister Laila opens the door, she sees a man cradling a newborn.
“Brother,” she gasps after taking a minute to recognize the man before her.
“Sister,” he utters softly, staring down at her. Under his somber face, the weight of shame on his heart shrouds his joy at seeing his younger sister. “I know you never wished to see my face again, but I cannot in good conscience let this child become the abomination of the Equinox Church!” The conviction in his voice almost shocks Laila from her anger. “And I couldn’t take her to the Arbiters because they would do things too gruesome for me to describe!”
Laila’s angry expression breaks into one of confusion and sympathy. “William, what would you have me do?”
“Take her far away from here to Father,” William says. Before she could retort, a voice interrupts them.
“What’s this about the Equinox Church? Is this the child with the connection to the divine?” Father Viktor says as he steps out of the shadows.
William stutters, his face growing pale, “How… How did you know?”
Father Viktor expresses a sullen smile. “Like many things, that’s for me to know and for you to question,” he responds.
John and Camila are eating at the table. The rays of sunlight create a soft ambiance. Camila looks at John as she wipes blood from the raw meat from her mouth. She feels a pang of shame and looks at John. “I had a dream last night. It was about a baby that had been created by grafting the body, mind, and soul of a squid together. But the strangest thing is that when the man named it, it was mine.”
John’s milk bursts out of his mouth, and he begins laughing. “Camila, this is a new development. I’ve never known you to be prone to fantasy.”
Camila softly punches John’s shoulder, becoming flustered, but she can't help but laugh at her brother’s antics.
A concerned look takes over Camila’s face. “John, whatever happened to Seraphina and Evelyn? I had another dream—a dream I had before. In that dream, the night after, I told you Evelyn had been taking her anger out on me.” Camila becomes uncomfortable as she carefully says her next thoughts. “In that dream, I saw you bludgeon the girls' heads with rocks after deluding Seraphina into thinking you’d confess your feelings for her. You and William then dragged the bodies to the pig pens under the cover of night.”
John gives no indication of discomfort; he only listens while eating his bread. “John, I saw the teeth yesterday while I was feeding the pigs.”
John tells Camila, “Yes, I killed them, Camila.”
The despair Camila felt in the depths of her soul is painted clearly and plainly upon her face. She says, her voice seeming reduced to a whimper, “Why?”
“It was justice—justice for them beating you to a pulp because the object of Evelyn’s desire confessed his feelings to you. Do you have any idea what it was like seeing you come home bruised up, knowing that whatever pain it caused me, yours was tenfold—not just for the body but for the heart? But my rage was so deep it possessed me, and then an idea popped into my head: Why don’t I just get rid of them? And so I did what I set out to do, what had to be done.”
“I know why you didn’t fight back. You felt that they were right because they were seemingly normal and you were a monster. Everybody is a monster, Camila, because everybody has something they stand for and something they will inevitably stand against. Be it pride, compassion, their reputation, their self-worth—and that night, I stood against them and so I dealt with it.”
Camila looks at John with both hatred and appreciation fighting for a position on her face in an elegant duel. “You may have made my suffering stop, but it will always be there. Your actions have turned me into a monster.” Camila stands up, walking away with her face obscured by shadows, in the waning daylight.
The tense silence is broken by three hard knocks on the door.
"Oridian family—John, Camila, Laila, Caspian, open the door!"
Camila looks at John. “Oridian—we don’t have last names,” she whispers. “And anyways, isn’t that the judge’s last name?”
“Just don’t make a sound. William confessed everything.”
They hear a woman shout, “We ought to hang the whole family!”
Camila, panicking, asks John, “What do we do?”
John looks at Camila. “No, it’s what I must do, Camila, for the good of the family.”
“Hurry up!” the voice says sternly.
John opens the door. Laila and Caspian walk into the main room of the cottage, where Camila and John sit before the door. John gets up to answer it, and before he can open it, the door is kicked in, and the mob drags the whole family to the town square. There, they see the judge, beaten, broken, and dead.
Laila falls into despair and utters, “Father?” as she begins sobbing. She asks John, “What’s happening?”
John says, “Justice.”
In the village square, they begin executing Camila’s family one by one. First, the fathers. Camila’s and Laila’s whimpers are interrupted by the sound of Caspian’s head hitting the ground and the axe wedging itself in the wooden block. Camila’s whimpering breaks into a scream. Then the mother. Once again, Camila’s screams are broken by the head hitting the ground.
When it’s finally John’s turn, they drag him to the wooden plank. The father of the girls John killed when he was younger asks, “Any grievances?”
John gives him a look with a hint of understanding. “Do what you must,” he says.
When the father of the girls john killed raises his axe, the light begins to bend and contort around him. The man starts to morph and shift; his torso turns all the way around, his skin begins to melt, and he starts screaming in pain as tentacles sprout from different parts of his body.
All the villagers come to a stop, break into a frenzy, and begin morphing and transforming. They grow different body parts and morph into strange creatures as the Beyond reaches through the veil that guards the physical plane.
The villagers begin shouting. Camila is panicking, but then she starts to listen, and whatever creature or entity is speaking through the villagers' incoherent shouts is addressing her.
“They always felt this way,” the voices of the villagers string together.
Camila looks to John, who is calmly assessing the situation, but he does not let the situation overtake him. He tries to shake Camila out of her shock, but she’s unresponsive. John tells her to wait right there, runs to the barracks, and grabs swords, a bow, and two horses.
When he returns, Camila is still in shock. John slaps her, screaming at her to get up. Camila is jolted out of her catatonic state. She abruptly gets up and follows John’s lead, and they ride off into the night.
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