Chapter. 14. One Empire, Three Legends (21)
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A person died. It was clearly murdered by someone.
With whispers of a fierce snowstorm engulfing the entire castle, all vassals and servants gathered in the hall on the first floor at their father’s command.
“Emerson Phil. Dona Mala. Kenny Phyllis. “Is it true that there are three people?”
“yes. Each is a kitchen assistant in charge of handyman and laundry.”
“…What is the cause of death?”
“In the case of Emerson Peel, hemorrhage caused by a dagger. It’s in front of the back door of the main castle servant. The verb dona ma. It was found between the women’s quarters and the main castle, and this person, Kenny Phyllis…”
“Continue, Sir Cedric.”
“…Kenny Phyllis’ body was so damaged that it was difficult to determine the cause of death when it was discovered. hmm. Almus Botaire. This way for a moment. “Matriarch, this is a rather unholy corpse, but I think it will be important to make a judgment by seeing it in person.”
Sir Cedric seemed to be choosing his words after observing my brother and sister next to my mother, then called two large servants and covered the body with a cloth. As my father approached him, I heard the sound of a cloth being carefully removed.
“Ke Kenny…. Oof! Wow!
“This…”
If there was one thing that Cedric overlooked, it was that the coachman Botaire was not at all accustomed to such scenes. While my father was sobbing, Botaire was retching and bowed down, so I, who was next to my mother, could see the corpse.
A few months ago, I went on a fall hunting trip with my father. My father laughed when he saw that the servants and dogs were driving the deer and that I was unable to hit the deer that was right in front of me due to my poor bow skills.
What I remembered most that day was the deer. Big, bloodshot eyes. Four legs hanging from a wooden stand. The sharp dagger of the servant who always smiled brightly cut straight through the deer’s stomach, blood and intestines pouring out.
Me and the drivers, who were shocked and unable to speak, smiled brightly when they saw it. Fathers.
Phyllis’ frozen body reminded me of that deer.
Wow!
“Huh, mother?”
“Shh. Let’s stop going in now. “Father and the knights will take care of it.”
“But…”
“Hurry!”
That morning’s incident ended for my siblings and I under our mother’s strict hand.
Three deaths. Three bodies. The blizzard was still raging, and the knights could find no trace of them coming in or leaving.
That meant only one thing.
‘Among our servants or knights… someone killed them.’
Among the familiar faces gathered on the first floor, there is one who has not been shown to us. And that everyone here knew about it.
The intangible anxiety that filled Teldemire Street was floating through the hallways in the form of fear and distrust.
****
“From that day on, my father tried to keep my siblings and I in a safe place. “We stayed in my mother’s room instead of our own, and knights always guarded the door.”
“Are you on guard for the murderer?”
“…Sadly, after that morning, the distinction between those who are murderers and those who are not has become meaningless.”
Aldrich wrapped a blanket around Lucilla’s slightly trembling shoulders and played with the photo in the locket.
“There was a rumor among the servants. All three dead people were suffering from coughing. Just the day before, Emerson had had a minor argument with the head maid because he was spitting and coughing profusely, and Donna had told the other tenants that she found it annoying to have to wash her handkerchiefs. Kenny originally had bad lungs. Although they all had a cough, they were healthy people with no fever or other symptoms. “I can no longer even notice things like that.”
All it takes is half a day for family members who have been together for at least a few months or as long as a dozen years to turn their backs. And all we had was a few words of conversation because we couldn’t stand the silence.
‘The idea was to kill all those with symptoms before the coughing disease spreads further.’
‘…Master, haven’t you been coughing a lot lately?’
‘I was cursed. ‘Now you are paying the price for all the years of insulting and snarling at the temple!’
‘Me Meina! Don’t come any closer! You stayed next to the fallen master every day! Ha, if you take one more step next to me, I’ll stab you!’
‘Mi Mina! Mr. Borte! Why are you like this! No, don’t leave me alone! please! Please open this door! please!!!’
‘….Hey Bert. Do you have the emergency storage key? I need to bring weapons and food. Everyone else is already carrying weapons. If crazy guys set fire to our bed or knights come to cut off our heads, we’ll need a sword. Don’t trust anyone. no one!’
‘mina! It’s an order! Drop your weapons and go to your room! ‘Why on earth are you doing this!’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous! ‘Go back to a place full of those cursed people?’
‘Such foolishness…. There is no such thing as an epidemic!’
‘Dozens of people have already died because of it! Even if you don’t have it, you already have it! ….My hometown is less than a day’s drive from here. I’m going back. If I just eat the food in this warehouse and last until spring, I can go home to my younger siblings! no no! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! If you are going to kill me, you too! Let’s see if we can survive until spring without anything to eat!’
‘Boo fire! ‘The food warehouse is on fire!’
‘The knight burned Mina, who was suffering from a coughing disease, alive!’
‘The Count is trying to kill us all!!!’
The servants scattered throughout the castle among those who were close to each other, and soon began killing those closest to them first.
‘Gagging! Lord Summerson… Why?’
‘I’m sorry, Captain. The Teldemire family is already finished. Killing and burning everyone who is sick. The castle is isolated due to an infectious disease and a sudden snowstorm! Now I know clearly what that means! To kill and burn everyone who breathed the same air in this damn castle! God isolated the castle to end this damn situation right here! It’s a mission! As a knight and as a human being! ‘I will not allow this terrible epidemic to spread to the village!’
The knights’ beliefs were polluted and corrupted, leading them in strange directions.
4 days. It was only 4 days. Before the killer of the first three people could be found, another murder occurred, and the smell of blood drove people into a corner and madness. Every morning, a poker was put into the eye of someone who greeted him, a knight who swore allegiance to the same lord exchanged swords, and everywhere was burning and thick smoke filled the castle.
“The screams of a person on fire, the desperate spirit of a stabbed maid, the muttering of an unknown prayer, the sounds of cutting one’s own body… Neria and I hid in our mother’s room and shivered all day. The doors that no one had managed were frozen tightly, and acrid smoke filled the castle, making me delirious. Everyone was going crazy. After the first murder, I couldn’t see my father’s face, and the knights who guarded the door began to disappear one by one. Sir Cedric struck the neck of the knight who was trying to break through the door, leaving us as the only line of defense left to protect my mother and my siblings.”
“Gwok. Ghostly old man. “I want to ask you something.”
During Aldrich’s story, which filled the carriage like a cold flame, Notum raised his hand and asked a question.
“The ghost teacher is a child. He was only in the room with his mother. A vivid story as if you had seen it with your own eyes. What do we do?”
=========
– Jokass: Wow. I couldn’t breathe and I was listening. Come to think of it, I see. How could a kid who was only in his room know everything about what was going on outside?
– Noru Drug: Ugh…. It’s cold… You’re so cold, but honey… Shall we sleep together today? It’s because it’s cold… Because they don’t eat it… It’s definitely not because they’re scared…
– Jokass: It’s sick. See you later.
Tiring-!
[Player ‘Jokass’ has left the chat room.]
– Noroo Drug: AC. I have to go catch it again. People get tired.
Tiring-!
[Player ‘Noru Drug’ has left the chat room.]
– takealook: They’re having a good time.
– Heungan Mandu: So how did Aldrich really know all that?
– Speed Wagon: Let’s listen. Because Notum happened to ask a good question.
=========
It rattled. It rattled.
There was silence in the carriage as it drove through the dark night.
Aldrich, who poured alcohol over the dusty memories, turned his red face to Notum.
“okay. You guessed it very well. If I were just a child, there is no way I would have been able to remember and tell the story so vividly, as if I had seen it before my eyes. “How did this happen?”
“…Grrr. The teacher is a warlock. “Is it possible that the teacher is the culprit behind it all?”
Aldrich, who was looking at Notum cautiously at his question, shook his head with a sigh.
“It’s unfortunate, but it was a little off. Notum. Although I played a very important role in that series of events, I was not the culprit. “If I had to be honest, I would say it was the most important living sacrifice.”
“Geuwooum. “Then how?”
“…It was a dream. dream. Like Emerson’s dream the day before he died, images of the smoky castle flashed through my mind one by one as I lay down with the fever that had begun to boil again. Nanny Mayna is locked in a room and burned alive by servants. A friendly stable manager is tied naked to the back of a horse and disappears into a snowstorm, and people are watching and giggling. Users going crazy. Knights going crazy! Even the father goes crazy! All those scenes passed before my eyes. A nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from constantly tormented me as a child. and. Finally, the end of the nightmare. “I awoke from a long sleep to the sight of Sir Cedric chopping up a dead knight at the door.”
Aldrich woke up drenched in cold sweat to the sound of thick smoke and screaming. I was in despair when I heard the sound of pounding on the tightly locked doorknob. That sound didn’t mean he woke up from a nightmare, but that his nightmare had come true.
The final scene of the dream. The scene where Cedric, who hacked up his fellow knights, laughs eerily as he looks at the door where they are, was played out exactly as it was in reality.
****
Knock knock.
“countess. “Can I come in for a moment?”
“…Sir Cedric. “Please step aside.”
“….”
Knock knock knock.
“Lady Mare. That’s me. Article by Cedric Basis. He has been your help since you were a girl and has always had your back. This is Knight Cedric. Don’t you remember? It was like this that day too. Trouble has occurred in the family, and I desperately have to escape the burning castle, carrying you, who doesn’t know what to do…” ”
I clearly warned you, Cedric Basis! As the hostess of the Teldemire family, I hereby command you. “Get away from the door now!”
“…..”
Cedric’s words stopped at his mother’s angry voice, and he heard the knight’s footsteps retreating as he approached the door.
And the sound of a sword being drawn.
Quad deuk!
“Aaaah!”
Instead of cutting the black door, which was full of teeth and covered in blood and grease, he broke it, and the knight’s gloved hand came through the broken door and easily opened the door.
Covered in blood, he was transferred from his mother to Neria. And then he turned his gaze towards me.
“Sir Cedric….”
“Countess. No Mare. Did you know that? Ever since I swore allegiance to you on that hill. As my article, of course everything. That I even gave my heart to you. That day was just like today. The family embroiled in rebellion was on fire, and I, who had already sworn to give everything to you, jumped into the fire without hesitation. This is how you live and grow into a beautiful woman. “It makes my heart so happy to see them have two children.”
Cedric looked like he was out of his mind as he called out to his mother or Neria and brought the tip of his sword to them one after another.
“…Actually, I’m not happy. It was wrong from the beginning. Everything is so clear. “I regret realizing only now what I should have done and what I should not have done.”
Crash. Crash.
With every step Cedric took, the armor vibrated and blood leaked through the armor. The mother, who read the clear murderous intent, blocked the two children’s path, stepped back, and whispered quietly.
“Aldrich. “Take Neria and go to your father.”
“mother?”
“right now!”
Grumble!
“Kkkkkkkkkk!”
It happened in the blink of an eye without me even having time to think. My mother, standing in front of my siblings, lifted a hot brazier with her bare hands and threw it at Sir Cedric. While Cedric, covered in burning charcoal and ash, hesitated, her hand violently pushed my back.
“Oh mom!”
Aldrich and Neria saw Cedric clutching his face and moaning, and his mother blocking the door.
A knight with an ugly face glaring at his mother.
Mother’s determined face.
His younger brother’s small hand held in his.
My mother turned to the stairs leading downstairs, opposite my father’s study.
“Mom, it’s okay. Cedric will come after me, so you can go to your father. Understand? Stables on the first floor. If you hide in the straw bale in the stable, Mom will come find you. “Now go!”
At the sound of his mother’s cracked voice, Aldrich ran down the smoky hallway.
I could hear the angry knight yelling and my mother screaming from behind. Aldrich, who held his younger brother, did not stop walking.
The once beautiful hallway was filled with stale smoke and the smell of burning flesh.
****
“Heo, heo, heo!”
I felt dizzy and out of breath. Every time I inhaled the smoke, the hallway seemed to flow and return like candle wax, and the short hallway leading to my father’s study seemed to extend all the way to the horizon.
‘dream. ‘It’s a scene we all saw in our dreams.’
The mother’s screams and the hallway expanding. An illusion of blood pouring out like a tidal wave, filling the hallway. In the place where countless famous paintings used to be, bizarre arms and legs were swallowed as if they had become one with the wall.
Aldrich was seeing dreams and reality overlap in his flickering consciousness. The dream was now moving in step with reality.
“young master? “If you’re here at this hour, you’re such a fucking useless child!”
‘You have to avoid to the left.’
Quaaaang!
When Mina, whose skin has melted, appears holding a kitchen knife soaked in blood, a chandelier will fall on her head. The blade grazed her shoulder, but Mina was pierced from the top of her head by a large chandelier.
Clink, clink, clink!
By the time her dented servant girl rolled down the stairs and cried three times.
“Oooh… Master? Missyi?”
The driver, looking like a monster with yellow blisters all over his body, will appear and grab his ankles.
“Hehehe…. Such a young master. There are a lot of wood chips and broken debris everywhere, and those thin slippers won’t work. It would be much better if you put in a sturdy and safe horseshoe. There’s only eight pieces of navigators on my feet …. Huh …
Suddenly!
By the time the yellow blisters burst and the little spiders crawling out from inside crawled up his ankles and up to his knees.
“You’re safe.”
“Ah father!”
“dad!”
okay. At this exact spot, my father appeared and cut off the coachman’s head.
I couldn’t tell if this hell was fantasy or reality. Just seeing my father again made me feel hopeful.
“Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“There is a passage under the castle that no one knows about. This place was created just in case. The exit may be blocked because of the snow… but at least we can hold out until everyone here kills each other and there is no one left.”
After wiping the sword on his bloody robe, my father strode forward. Aldrich did not follow right away but paused for a moment at the sight.
eye. My father’s eyes were strange. At that moment, as if the two pupils were moving separately, I saw the illusion of the open iris moving around inside the eye like a living creature.
“Do I really have to go underground?”
“then. Are you planning on dying here? If you want to go crazy and die, then at least hand over Neria. “You can’t break the family line.”
“Oh no.”
Aldrich shook his head at that frosty voice. Because of the heat. I can only see things because of the heat. In our castle there are no hallways made of flesh, no eight-eyed maids, no circular staircases twisted like intestines. The heat and the smoke made me dizzy.
Shake!
Deep inside the stable. Aldrich kept repeating this to himself as he went down the stone steps beneath the boards his father had lifted. Because there was nothing he and Neria could do. The endless stairs leading down were so ominous and scary, but Aldrich had no choice but to follow in his father’s footsteps.
My father went down the underground passage without a single light without losing a single step.
Step by step. Step by step. Step by step. Step by step.
“slowly. Come down carefully. Don’t get hurt. Yes, so that it is not damaged to the point of dust. good. You’re all here. ”
“father? “This isn’t a passageway, is it?”
“No, it’s a passage. Inside, not outside. “It is a passage leading to the deepest part of this world.”
A room without a single light made of natural rock. In the middle of the stone wall, there was a stone structure with a faint red glow.
The father, who introduced the small stone room with open arms as if in ecstasy, approached Aldrich with aristocratic steps and stabbed the sword into Aldrich’s chest. I can’t imagine the hand of a father killing his son. It was a natural movement, like picking up fruit and eating it while taking a walk.
Phew!
“Ugh! Huh….”
“Shhh. Yes, it hurts a lot. Hot as a flame and cool as winter. It will pass soon. “It’ll be soon.”
The moment the word [altar] crossed my mind, I felt a hot skewer digging into my stomach. It was so painful that I couldn’t even scream, and no matter what I tried, my legs were so weak that I couldn’t do anything.
“Oh brother! Oppa! Argh!”
“Shh. Neria. You have to be quiet. I still need to learn more etiquette. In this precious place, keep your body and mind in order. “As lightly as a butterfly flapping its wings.”
I could hear Neria crying and the stone structures rattling. Aldrich could not raise his head, but the vision in his mind clearly illuminated a room filled with gloomy light. The maddened father laid Neria down on the altar, and when Neria, seeing the hair-like rope, resisted desperately, her father’s clumsy hand struck her delicate stomach, knocking her out. and. And…
“…Mom?”
In a gloomy and blurry video. Aldrich cried out involuntarily at the silhouette reflected in the entrance of the stone room.
Suddenly!
Tuk. Degurr….
“Stupid. “Don’t hurt me.”
And without any warning, my father’s head fell off.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
“mom?”
His mother, barefoot and without a single wound, came and picked him up as he fell. Following his steps, blood began to well up, and disgusting flesh and bones began to grow on the gray stone wall.
“My son. Did you hear what Mom said? I also met my father. “He brought his younger brother to the stable as well.”
It was unmistakably my mother’s face. Even after giving birth to two children, she still has a pretty and beautiful face.
But his vision reflected something completely different.
“oh. After all, he is my son. “I knew he had good eyes, but… Do you ‘see’ Mom? Aldrich?”
He nodded.
What caught his eye was not an illusion.
Aldrich nodded towards the tower-like being made of white bones that swallowed torn souls with each breath.
“Feel so good.”
The mother met those eyes and smiled brightly.
****
