19— Revelations

The war had left a loss of words from Lily's mouth, all she felt was pain and pain and so much pain, it reeked and it destroyed all her emotions of happiness.
As she held Mbazi's head in her hands, trying to cradle his already lifeless body, she started to rock herself, wanting to tear the last shred of humanity left in her, she wanted to rip them apart and this anger that she felt was dignified. The war had ended and she had led. Mbazi would have been so proud to know that she had been a good leader, when they spoke about her... Calling her a bad leader of all time, when they doubted her and how she could have been the wrong child from the river, how their words had hurt and sliced her, she never for once thought a war to be so cruel and demeaning.
She was still on her knees when baba mbari ordered her soldiers to take mbazi's body away from her, she couldn't believe it, he was really gone. It flashed before her eyes, all the times they had laughed at each other's jokes, all the times they had trained together, the way they each seemed to wash their faces and how he always spoke about her scar and how it made her beautiful and to stand out. It wasn't fair that he had to die, it didn't even make any sense at all. She found everything about his death wrong, she didn't see anything justified about it. They had won the war but she needed to win this battle as well.
"How did they breach our walls like that?" Lily thundered at the round table, she was seated as the head of the table signifying how much influence she now has in the rest of the clan, not after the blood-shed battle she just won, the respect mounted on her, there was no room for anybody calling her a child or inexperienced because she had put herself on the line and for them.
"We have reason to believe that we might have a rat in our midst" baba mbari said, giving a suspicious eye to everyone that sat at the table.
It started to make sense bit by bit but it didn't quite click yet.
She put her hand on her chin and decided to think a bit on this.
"How do we know if there was a rat or not? It could just be that they were lucky but their luck ran out" one of the elders said.
She looked at everyone in the room and turned in her expression " there's no way that was luck. They haven't been that lucky before, they haven't even been lucky in the first place. Their plans were all too concrete and we were taken by surprise. I know that by being surprised, we let our guards down but this was well planned and executed and if not for the moon goddess by our side... We could have all, I mean all of us, we could have very much been wiped from the face of the place and not a single trace would have been left of us" Lily stood up, she needed to. These people were thinking how much of a coincidence it must have been that the time we fell back a bit, they happened to strike...
No, it was way too good to be true to have that kind of thing happen almost immediately, that was in no way a coincidence of sorts, it was too close together to be considered a coincidence.
"They killed mbazi, I need not remind anybody here how dear he was to me. He was like a brother, my soulmate and my friend. I want to know how they breached our walls, almost unnoticed and so intelligently, it's not possible as a coincidence. I smell a rat and he did something" Lily closed her sentence.
Lily didn't want to seem stern or hard or all those other things but they messed with her family, they had killed him! In the worst way ever, his tongue was ripped out and his lips were seen together, a gruesome sight for her to behold.
She had gone in search of him and had found him on the floor, and these things were done to him with no grace and no empathy, it seemed as though whoever had done it to him, had a serious grievance against him or it could be a grievance against her. She racked her brain so much, she wanted to cry as she stared out into the space where a battle had just been concluded.
She watched as her men dragged the dead like they were some piece of wood, all used up and dried up. She watched as they tied the women and children in sack clothes, to avoid the horrors the nights would bring.
All the their dead were well taken care of, kalyan would forever remember this day as a bloody day, a day that nearly brought them to their knees, this was the day that her skills, her trainings had been tested and doubted but then trusted and she had won. This was a first battle and one that she had won. Mbazi would have loved to see this, he would have loved to see her nearly shout in happiness as having won her first but he wasn't here.
No.
He wasn't here in the slightest, he was six feet under, amongst the others, his eyes were closed and his lips had been cut loose and his tongue seen back the way it should have been. She tried not to weep as they laid him to the ground, she tried to just take a blue rose and drop it neatly on the sand and walk away but she hadn't.
She hadn't found the courage to just do that, to be able to just pick it up, pick up herself and move on as though her heart hadn't already been ripped from her rib cage.
She fell to the ground and a warm summer evening, the day he and a hundred were buried, each surrounded each hole, all formed a circle to say how much they stood by each other and supported each other in times like these. She had fallen to her knees when she dropped the flower petals, so delicate and so fragile, like the body that laid before her in a woven casket. She fell on her knees and she looked up to the sky, at the moon and her eyes felt the pain faster than her lungs expanded for breath. She so much wanted to hold it in because it was so important to try as much as she could to be strong, to appear strong. She felt if she did that then some sort of self assurance would be achieved. She would know that indeed, she was strong but she wasn't.
She had fallen to her knees in anguish, looked at the sky's full moon that mocked her glory and felt every urge, every emotion, every pain that passed through everyone that stood there and she'd a year, she felt every anger that passed through the warriors that lost a brother or a sister. She hated them for dying, she hated the gates for destroying it so and making sure it happened before she even blinked an eye to the acknowledgement that they were gone forever.
She looked at her own, her soulmate being dropped in a hole and she laughed. She held back angry tears that managed to spill a bit as it was long past its rim on her eyes, she laughed and then she screamed because it just felt right.
It was true that she hated everyone that died but it was also true that now, she wanted revenge and she knew just the person to get it from.
****
King Alok knew that he was almost never going to get out of this alive, he knew that much was true about it. He needed the war,he needed the self righteous validation and the justice for the jungle justice that was bestowed on him but those imbeciles.so it wasn't any surprise there when he was captured by these morons and kept in a dungeon.
He laughed at everything now, more like the way he laughs everyday since he got captured after the war. He was a warrior and a king. These people were beneath him in all ramifications, they didn't know what it was like to have a son, even though Chad had been one of his most difficult children, he loved him very much. It couldn't compare to the things he did but he loved Chad and Chad knew it so well, hence the manipulations that he was so late to see but even while he saw through it all... He still carried out his wishes because he was his son and nobody had the right to kill him except him.
But here he was...
Yes, here he was.
In a cell that smelled of centipedes and millipedes, that spoke hushed tones coming from the ghosts of the last prisoners. The days the room was warm, he made friends with the rats who liked to nibble on his toes for dinner despite having more than a bit for breakfast out of his own breakfast. It didn't take two and two to know that since he had nobody waiting for him at his kingdom, that it was a forgotten case. They must have heard about his capture by now, that was if they weren't captured themselves. They could have been captured or they could have captured his throne and treated him as dead. It would be no sooner than a new king would be appointed or in the worst case scenario, be elected and then killed and the throne be thrown about by fools who called themselves elders but feel within them, they all longed for power.
Oh well, not him by the way. You see him? He was going to die here by the same hands of the people who put a staff through his son's face and decapitated him and left him there to rot without a proper burial, that was the most they could do for him but they chose not to because deep under than thick dark skin, there within it layed a monster that only wanted to devour but not him, he wanted justice. This wasn't the plan but this was the hand he was dealt with.
He laughed and accepted.
****
Lily was prepared to kill the man who had ordered the men to execute and to kill, it was an eight wonder that she had even captured him at all, it was almost as if he wanted to be captured but that was not in her mind. She went through to the basement doors, three guards stood guard at the heavy oak doors, she had fire blazing in her eyes. She was going to rip him to shreds and have his insides fed to his corpse and thrown in the river to sanctify their land of the evil that he was. One knowing look from Lily and the guards knew better than to keep their already closed mouths even more closed.
She brushed past them, she was on a kill mission and a knife hidden just behind her clothing, she was here to not just get information, she was here to destroy the life of this man and to get justice for every soul he ever took on kaayan land. She was going to enact her revenge and she was going to do it now. Now while it was sizzling on the fires and brimstones that rained on her soul from the anguish and the grief and the horrid dreams that hunted her sleep.
****
King Alok, better Alok now, since he was nowhere near a king more like a prisoner and sport from the war, spoilt sport even because he posed no threat and he had no saviors, only himself.
He sat on the ground, his legs outstretched as a rat gently nibbled on his far gone toe, he was a source of food for them. It was good to know that he was still needed, even if it wasn't his kind. The rat scurried away with the forceful click that hit the ground, shaking the Earth's core as he knew that kind of step carried weight on its shoulders. If the person was coming here, it wasn't to say hello.
He heard the click, clack of the boots and when they stopped in front of his cell, he looked up at who it was... He need not let his guest utter a word, he was ready for the afterlife as a glint of a knife shone in the tiny bits of sunlight that managed to warm up his cold, damp and moist prison.
"Hello... Lily." A smile had crossed his lips and he didn't even know when.