Chapter 99: He who holds the horn. (4)

As was expected, silence dominated the underground training area after Gabriel spoke, his hand still gesturing towards the two blades that had been stabbed into the ground. The gazes of the two young girls alternated between the weapons and the bound Kaden, their pupils trembling for different reasons.

Bellona was the first to move, be it because she mustered up her courage or because the anger inside grew too violent to contain. She clutched the handle of Gabriel’s sword and tugged on it desperately. But the weapon refused to move.

It was probably a mixture of her being too weak after being raised as a slave and Gabriel stabbing the sword in too deep, but she couldn’t move the weapon. She tried with all her might, using both hands and even leaning back as she put all her weight into it. But the weapon refused to move for her.

Edith looked on as Bellona struggled with the weapon, her gaze still drifting between the bound man and the weapon waiting to take his life. She was hesitating, a thread of thought shackling her hands.

“Edith. If you remain silent then no one will ever know what you’re thinking.”

Gabriel’s gaze moved away from Bellona as he spoke to Edith with a calm tone, one foot planted firmly against Kaden’s spine so that he couldn’t squirm too much. Edith still hesitated a bit, but eventually mustered up the courage to speak.

“Umm… How do I know that he’s the bad man? Mama said that you have to know the difference between a good and bad man.”

Gabriel’s head couldn’t help but tilt for a moment as Edith questioned him. He didn’t know how long Edith had lived with her parents before they passed and she was turned into a slave, but it can’t have been an insignificant amount of time if she still remembered her teachings. His gaze slid down to Kaden, who was trying to wriggle out from underneath Gabriel’s foot.

Evidence, huh? It wasn’t something Gabriel had ever considered. In the past, he simply moved towards whatever he was ordered to kill, and in this life he simply moved against those he chose to kill. He’d never actually had to convince someone else to kill someone. But oh well, if Edith wanted proof so that she could keep following her late mother’s teachings and maintain her morals, then Gabriel would just have to present it.

“Alright, I’ll go get it.”

Gabriel spoke out loud, seemingly into empty air, yet didn’t move from where he stood. The shadow stretching out underneath him, however, quivered for a slight moment before something disappeared from it. Gabriel gave the shadow a quick glare just before Nergal left it, the excitement he was feeling was almost palpable so Gabriel had to wordlessly remind him to not go overboard.

There was no need to antagonize the Amber Inquisitors here, and Nergal would get to eat his fill later. Luckily, it seemed that Nergal understood his intentions, returning before long and spitting something out in Gabriel’s shadow.

“Karas, Veck.” (Darkness, Release.)

Gabriel muttered the spell, his fingers momentarily twitching as he mentally drew the array. The shadow cast by his fingers rose and swelled, some rolled up papers appearing in his grasp as the darkness receded.

“Bellona, you come here too, Edith raised a good point. If you’re going to strike and kill, always know why you’ll be doing it. It doesn’t matter if its just because you’re following orders or because you want to, just make sure you know why.”

Gabriel knelt down as he spoke, gesturing for Bellona to stop struggling with the weapon. His foot left Kaden’s backside, but it was quickly replaced by his knee so there was no respite for the bound man. Gabriel unfurled the scrolls when Bellona trotted over, placing them on the ground next to Kaden’s head.

“Can you read?”

Perhaps it was to be expected, but neither Bellona nor Edith could speak up after he asked. It really couldn’t be helped, even if they hadn’t been raised as slaves, there was still a good percentage of citizens in this world who couldn’t read.

“Alright, it’s just something you’ll have to learn later. But this picture, you can tell that it’s this man, right? And this insignia, the mark drawn here, you recognize it as the mark of the Imperial Family, right?”

The two children quickly nodded their heads as Gabriel slowly spoke, his finger drawing a line on the paper. At the top was a painting of Kaden while at the bottom the Amber Inquisitors had emblazoned the mark of the Imperial Family. It meant that this was an official report made by the Amber Inquisitors, it was something that would be interred in their archives, an inviolable fact. Since the two understood, Gabriel kept explaining, his finger returning to the top of the paper before it started to slowly move down.

“His first crime, colludi… Working together with a country that wants to harm us. He provided them with information that helped them kill many of the people who work for the country. He also sold many people to the enemy country, the number here is 6071, it’s enough people to fill several villages.”

Slowly but surely, Gabriel listed everything that the Amber Inquisitors had dug up. It was a fair bit more detailed than he expected so it seemed as if either Kaden or some of the people working for him had been ‘convinced’ to open their mouths. Really, it wasn’t looking good for him.

“Some of the people he sold were gifted to the nobles of the enemy country so that he could befriend them, some were sold to mages or alchemists for experiments, some were sold to brothels, places where people sell their body for money, and others were sold as normal slaves. That was what he was planning for you, and everyone around you. All the friends that disappeared one day, they’re among these people.”

As strange as it may be to say, just selling people as slaves wasn’t the best of businesses. No, you had to know how and where to sell them to get the best profit, and sometimes you had to sell at a loss so that you could secure connections for future sales. Kaden clearly knew business well, it was truly booming.

“Now, as for where he got the people he sold, I’m sure you know it well. Some are like you, Bellona, bought from parents who couldn’t afford them. Some are like you, Edith, quietly bought from orphanages after their parents passed away. But some kids were less lucky, they were taken from the streets, stolen from their homes while their parents slept. Some were taken along with their whole families and sold separately, and in some cases they orchestrated attacks on smaller villages so that they could bring in many people at once.”

In a way, Kaden was fairly clever in how he handled it. He never used the same method in succession, and he always spaced it out slightly so that it wasn’t all centered around his estate. But everyone left behind clues, and as people started to talk, clues became evidence, and evidence became a blade to your neck.

“This right here, Edith, this is how you know he is a bad man.”

The low sound of Gabriel tapping the parchment accompanied his words, each tap representing a different one of Kaden’s sins. Naturally, Edith and Bellona couldn’t read so for all they knew Gabriel could just be making it up as he went, lying through his teeth.

But in the end, that was how the world was. It was all about who you chose to trust when presented with some information. Of course, going out to gather your own information would always be the best option, but these girls couldn’t do that so they had no choice but to place their trust somewhere. The question was simply whether it would or wouldn’t be Gabriel.

Gabriel straightened his legs again and stood up, a pained groan escaping Kaden as Gabriel’s knee scraped against his spine for a moment. Once again, he pointed at the two blades.

“Now, the choice is yours. Trust what I have said and take them, claim control of your own lives and cut out the root of your misery. Or don’t trust my words and live on not knowing what could have been.”

After he finished speaking, Gabriel simply looked at the two girls. A calm gaze, ingrained confidence lurking deep within his pupils. The girls looked at Kaden, then the paper, then the weapons. Once again, Gabriel could see their pupils tremble. Once again, Edith spoke up, clenching her small fists until her knuckles turned white.

“If… If I do it, will it feel better?”

One of her clenched fists touched her chest, her expression warping. When his crimes were listed out like that it probably reminded her of her time as a slave, the pain and misery. There were still marks around one of her feet from when Terese freed her, from when she had been flung around so violently that her foot dislocated and slipped out of her chains.

She hadn’t told anyone, but it still hurt. She could still feel the metal around her feet, the warmth of her blood as it trailed across her skin. It hurt every night, and when it didn’t hurt she cried because of what she saw in her dreams. If she cut out the root of that misery, would it feel better?

“No.”

But sadly, Gabriel’s answer was less than comforting.

“Once it’s done, you will feel miserable. The fact that you have taken a life will come bearing down on you and your chest will feel clogged. But in time, you will come to accept what you have done, what you felt that you needed to do. And one day, you will look back on it and decide if it was worth it or not, if you did what you felt was right. Only then will you know.”

Gabriel could somewhat understand what Edith was feeling. But it was only somewhat. In the end, they were different people, they came from different lives. So Gabriel could only draw from his own understanding, the final truth would be something only Edith would know.

Edith was silent for a moment after Gabriel spoke, Bellona already tugging on the weapon again, still unable to pull it from the ground. In the end, it seemed that Edith came to a conclusion, moving over to the other blade.

She placed a pair of trembling hands on the hilt and tugged at it with all her might, but she too was unable to extract the blade. She pulled with all her might, but the weapon refused to budge.

And Gabriel simply watched. He didn’t pull out the weapons for them, he didn’t kill Kaden for them, he didn’t offer his help. He simply gave them the chance, and then he just watched.

The two girls struggled futilely for a bit longer, drawing in ragged and heavy breaths. They looked up at Gabriel, but he remained unmoving, his foot locking Kaden in place as he watched them.

After a few more minutes of trying, the two exchanged looks and seemed to come up with an idea. Edith left her blade and moved over to Bellona, joining her in trying to pull out the first blade. They were just weak children, scarred and weakened by their rough lives.

But together they were able to pull out the first blade, which was far too large and heavy for either one of them to handle on their own. They had reclaimed one of the blades, and that alone should be enough. But no, they went over to the second sword, and together they pulled it from the dirt.

In the end, they booth stood there, holding a sword too large and heavy for them to even lift it more than a few centimeters. But they held it. They had pulled them from the dirt, and they held it with their own hands.

They dragged the blades as they approached Kaden, who was grunting and struggling to escape. But Gabriel locked him down, crushing down on his spine until the pain made the world in front of Kaden’s eyes spin.

And then the two girls ‘attacked’ him with the swords they had drawn. It was almost laughable to call it an attack, barely raising the weapon to let it fall down or putting their entire weight behind it to stab forward. But still, the blades were exceedingly sharp so it was more than enough to leave wounds on Kaden’s body.

One wound became two, which became four, which became eight. Blood poured out as the two girls hacked away at their misfortune, as they poured out their anger and sorrow with each move. They started to cry before they knew it, tears and snot falling from their faces as they kept attacking.

They could just barely see Gabriel beyond their tears, his body blurry and distorted in their visions. But strangely enough… They found comfort in it, in him. They couldn’t make out his expression, but they could tell that he was looking at them. He gave them the weapons, he gave them the choice, and then he just looked at them quietly. It was… Comforting, the freedom, the belief. They had no basis for it, but they were both convinced that he, even in this macabre scene, would be wearing a slightly soft expression, as if encouraging them on.

Ah, he probably wasn’t someone that could be called a good person, most people would probably strongly protest if they tried to call him something like that. But to them… Would it be wrong if they decided to at least internally consider him a good person because he gave them the choice, the freedom?

And so, they hacked away at their misfortune, cut out their misery and sorrow, as they poured their pain onto Kaden so that they could leave it all with him in the grave.