- SCREAMS -

Everything that happened after that night would no longer be able to justifiably be confined within this story. It would be nothing more than the epilogue in the chronicles of a Nassaryottic community. One of many in Pelagia.

It was never my intention to write such a chronicle. In truth, I don’t believe writing it, is something I have the right to do in the first place. I just wanted to write about my Setha Kabi. Even now, after so many years, I haven’t figured out what I loved and what I hated about his faith.

The only thing I wanted, truly, was to write down what happened – as best as I could.

It seems however, this was not to be. It seems life itself wanted to write the closing to my story. And by doing so, provided the rarest of things. An ending. A much needed resolution.

So, let me just briefly inform you. Setha Kabi did, indeed, keep the oath he’d given that night to Ereva and the Weeper. He never let his people, his Nassaryotts, slip away from his hands ever again. He held them tight, until their final moments. Until death, both theirs and his own.

When word came to Riviella that the revolution had finally been declared, way up in the mountains; our town’s Nassaryotts were plagued by fear. Some of them refused to leave their homes. Others sold everything they had and got ready to leave forever. Others proposed they should get out, go to friends and family, mix in with the Pelagians. The community was truly shaking. A little more and the scatter of salvation would finally begin.

But he was there. Wrapping them with a thousand chains, confused and terrified, Setha Kabi kept them put. With smoke and mirrors. With hopes and scares. With truths and lies. So they wouldn’t scatter, they wouldn’t leave him. That’s all that mattered.

And there they found them. All of them. The Dolvetians. And they killed everyone.

And the deaf Communarch, and the old women, and the mothers, and their children with the pimples, and the strollers, and those who wanted to work afternoons, and Yian Haki, and Miel, and Setha Kabi himself.

All were lost.

Two thousand souls.

Of two thousand souls, only a couple were saved. Those who dared to ignore Setha Kabi, and broke the chains. They hid themselves in friendly houses, and then escaped. Leaving Riviella behind, they climbed the mountains and joined the Revolution.

Other than them, no one.

When the revolutionaries entered the town, I was among them. We found the district burned to the ground. We never learned who gave the order. But what had happened, we could see. In just a few hours, the entire community had been wiped out. With its Communal, its little Stoas, its fortunes that were gathered bit by bit, with so many sacrifices. Nothing was left.

Our town, holding her breath, heard the screams and cries raised in the Nassaryottics. Their swan song.

The ultimate triumph of Setha Kabi.