Kapitel 29: The crimson of blood - 3

Their foot froze deep in the mud of the croplands they had excavated. Running away was the only option. Seeing the man on the opposite side of the divide turning invincible, they all scattered in the hope of treasuring their lives.

But he was not ready to leave them so easily.

Holding the arrows in both his hands he took a stance.

"Morpheous no..."

"This is not what I had taught you. Breathe Morpheous breathe!"

Yelled Damianos in a hope that Moprheous would be able to tame the power of the souls, but it was already too late as he had been possessed already. He regretted his decision of letting him know everything.

'I should have trained you well,' though Damianos and slumped on the ground because no angelic power was strong enough to hold Morpheous back.

Pulling his hand back with all his might, Morpheous swung the arrows to the other side. He didn't need a bow. The strength in his arms was enough to kill them one by one.

Soon spread the silence of melancholy all around. Bodies started to fall on the ground one after the other. Morpheous stood there watching them fall like the master of death.

When the last body fell, Morpheous jumped the divide and went to the other side, his eyes locked on the archer who had killed Jerome. The arrow thrown by Morpheous had pierced him exactly at the same spot as Jerome.

He narrowed his blazing blue eyes and pulled the helmet out from the head of the soldier. He wanted to look him in the eye and ask him how he could kill an innocent weaponless peasant. But when he pulled that helmet out, he realized that the soldier was quite young. Probably a boy who would have just crossed eighteen.

Holding onto his breastplate, Morpheous snarled and asked,

"Why did you kill him? Who told you to kill him?"

Lying on the verge of death, that soldier coughed up blood and said,

"I didn't ..."

"You didn't what?", Morpheous growled.

"I ... I wasn't the one who.... who killed him...." he said and counted his last breath in the arms of Morpheous.

And thus dawned in reality.

Morpheous looked around. The entire cropland had been filled with dead bodies. The rain had started to slow down. The color of blood turned the mud red. It looked as if the croplands were bleeding to death.

A turbulent riot started within his heart. The grotesque scene in front of him was unbearable. He looked at his palms and then looked all around, those were the palms of a murderer.

"Noooo..."

Screamed Morpheous and slumped on the ground. Instead of mourning for just his friend, now he had to mourn for all these soldiers. An unsettling gut-wrenching pain started hitting him.

From this side of the divide, he looked at the other and saw Nicholas and Damianos standing helplessly.

Damianos looked at him and realized instantly from the look in his eyes, that he was no more possessed by the power of the souls and he could see that his fear had turned into reality. The guilt had started to create an ineffable gaudiness inside his brain. He wasn't able to think coherently. He was kneeling on the ground helplessly.

Unable to look at him bearing the pain alone, Damianos took a step ahead to cross the divide, but it didn't let him cross it. There was invisible wall in between which he wasn't able to go through. He conjured his power and tried to see if at least his hand could cross, but he ended up hurting himself as the invisible wall stood rock-solid, without budging even an inch.

"Morpheous hold on! Don't break."

"Listen to me, it's not your fault."

But all these words were falling short.

Panting and taking deep breaths, Morpheous held his head between his hands, unable to believe that he was the once who was responsible for this mayhem.

"What have I done?"

"I have turned into a monster!"

"What have you done to me Damianos?" screamed Morpheous and started pounding on the ground.

'Whooooop'

And before anyone could realize, ropes were thrown at Morpheous, and in seconds both his arms had been knotted. Few of the soldiers who had been hiding behind the paddy fields till now realized that this was the right moment to catch the man who had killed their fellow brothers with his bare hands.

"Morpheous turn," screamed Nicholas.

But in the next second, they dragged him and whistled for their horses.

Before Damainos and Nicholas could understand what was happening, those soldiers had tied the rope along with the horse and raced towards the kingdom. His body was getting dragged on the uneven terrain, but he didn't flinch or say a word.

He was silently taking it all as if he deserved it.

"Morpheous!"

All the shouts and cries from the other side of the divide were dampened down by that invisible wall. Damianos used up all his powers, but he couldn't even create a crack in the wall. Feeling all hopeless and restless, Damianos remembered the last words that Morpheous had said,

'What have you done to me Damianos?'

And his face turned ice cold.

Nicholas got up and tried to assure Damianos, "Do not worry. He is Morpheous. Nothing can happen to him. An army of soldiers couldn't bend even his hair. What will those five-six soldiers do? Just wait for a while. He will come back."

But if anyone knew Morpheous better than Morpheous himself, then it was him and he knew that he was not going to fight back now. He was going to drown himself in guilt and surrender. Afterall he was a cursed child, and Damianos knew that it would be difficult to make him understand that what he did was the right thing to do. He had to go to the kingdom to save him because he knew that if Nubeous heard about what Morpheous did to his soldiers then he would agree for nothing less than death for him..

So looking at Nicholas, he said,

"He won't fight back and Nubeous will kill him."

It was then that Nicholas remembered what Balthazaar had told him,

'You need to stop him from meeting Nubeous at any cost before the mid-day. At any cost Nicholas, at any cost!'

The clouds had slowly started to float away.

The sun slowly started stirring the sky with the color of gold.

Nicholas looked up at the sky and then looked at the shadows cast by the trees.

It was going to be mid-day!