Doomed from the Beginning

19. The Demon Overlord

“Be careful, there is someone else!” Vinasaka looked around himself cautiously before his gaze fell on Sansara who kept on chanting healing spells without stopping. Honestly this was no use until now, since her spell was counterattacked by the person who just died but since he was gone, it seemed as if she was actually showing signs of progress.

“Is she…,” Vinasaka began but Sansara completed as he gladly looked up at him with a hint of hope, “...Reacting!”

“That’s good, that’s good! Now we just need to find the culprit!” Vinasaka cursed under  his breath, silently worried about the death that just happened and without a doubt Sansara was also troubled by the sudden passing away of the man so he muttered, “So he was just a pawn!”

But since the man had died now, her magic must have stabled as a result of which the memory maze of time must have been cleared up. Just as he thought, the old woman from before, dragged herself in front of the chamber, “My L-lord…,” but it was not how they had expected to see her. She was all drenched in blood as if somebody had spilled it on her but on clearer inspection, it was found that the wound was her own. She bled from her stomach and throat. No wonder she was not alive anymore but…

“A walking dead…” For Sansara, though it was the first time he had seen something like that, he still seemed to have known about it. Her eyes were the worst, it looked like it could come out any moment. She was pathetically trying to walk towards them. At first it even looked like she was in her senses when she kept stammering and calling them talking a long time just to walk a single step but all of a sudden Sansara’s eyes widened when she almost crawled at double the pace straight towards Sansara or actually, Zaharia. 

Vinasaka didn’t even blink when he brought out his sharp longsword Lyca and held it vertically touching the ground in front of Sansara as if putting up a barrier but to his surprise, clang and it was the sound of two swords clashing as Sansara had also at the same time used his free hand to strike a barrier with pegasus, the snow blade horizontally. Both of them glanced at each other when Vinasaka had actually let out a smirk, “Not bad!”

When they looked at the woman, it was a strange feeling. It was hard for Vinasaka to actually see the look on her face from where he was standing but Sansara could see it very well. Due to the double barrier set up in front of her, she didn’t seem to be able to actually invade but she kept trying from where she was. Although her movements were messy, unclear of what motives she behold, her eyes, they looked like she had something to say, they looked like she was desperately trying to hold herself back. Sansara noticed a tear rolling down her eyes, as she kept screaming without making any sense and as he continued to look, Vinasaka asked, “What’s wrong? Do you sense something?”

“She….is not completely dead, isn’t it?” Sansara looked up at Vinasaka to confirm when Lyca appeared as a cat and started sniffing the woman and jumped on Vinasaka’s shoulder.

“Looks like it,” Vinasaka was about to inspect more when suddenly the door crashed open and with a deafening sound a bunch of men started pouring in, all looking more or less like the old woman but definitely dead.

Vinasaka was rapid in his actions. The barrier was held by Sansara and Lyca went back to its sword form as if on cue and murmured as he saw Sansara was about to join, “Don’t need to…”

“But they are all...the palace guards!” Definitely, they were palace guards who were missing earlier. It was very easily detectable from their monotonous uniforms but what Sansara had actually meant was that since they were all palace guards that confirms that they were all mages and not simple humans. There was no end to them as they kept coming in and soon the room was full of those walking corpses and there were even more howling outside. Sansara, for a minute, stopped his healing magic and from the barrier peeked down as he saw the entire palace was being currently surrounded by them.

All this while Vinasaka had been slashing them with his sword left and right, but since they were already dead, they would just get up again and continue to become even more deformed.They did not attack the woman who was still held back by the barrier and was still trying to somehow reach the queen but Sansara had very carefully laid the queen in the bed guarding both of them inside the barrier. He saw Vinasaka entering the barrier too and asked, “What is it? Are they too strong?” he was about to take over from him when he heard Vinasaka hissing, “Just a pain in the a*s,” and the next moment he saw Vinasaka, he was smirking while holding up Lyca horizontally to his eye level as he ran two fingers along the blade of the sword as if enchanting it with a spell and the blade started shining. As he reached the tip, he stepped out and slashed it forward, ‘Disperse’.

That was it. That one s***h and that one word, none of those corpses were there any longer. The entire room was back to being like before. It looked like a silver wave that gradually became wider engulfing everything on its way. The intensity of the spell was so strong that Sansara thought it's not just the room but anything around the radius of probably 10 km had been wiped out. Just as thought, it was indeed the case when he looked down the window again. He couldn’t help but stare blankly at Vinasaka who simply shrugged it off but didn’t pull off the barrier. Upon noticing Sansara finally realized that the old woman was still there. 

He had two reactions to this- first, how meticulous was the spell that even if it was such a huge scale, Vinasaka could control it completely at will without any effort at all, and second, he wasn’t completely heartless as he thought him when he first saw him. At that moment Sansara had a feeling of somewhat guilt to have been prejudiced at first and also remorse regarding how others treated him. When he was busy calculating all this in his head, a faint moan could be heard in the room. When he turned around, he found that it was in fact the queen who was gradually regaining her consciousness. Both Vinasaka and Sansara ran beside her to support her but in the middle of trying to hold her to help her sit, Vinasaka’s hand froze mid-air and he hesitated a moment before pulling it back.

No he shouldn’t be here….he shouldn’t be near her!

He gradually took a step back...then two. Noticing his behaviour, Sansara who was currently supporting the queen asked, “Where are you going?”

He was indeed planning on leaving but her highness was already awake. She blinked several times, before she stared blankly at the huge figure in front of her whose face was unreadable and he himself was frozen to his spot.

Her lips parted slowly as if to speak and Vinasaka seemed to take in a huge gulp as he continued to wait for her to speak but all she said was, “....Who…” 

Okay, that was even more of a shock for him!

She looked back at Sansara and positioned herself away from him and asked the same question again.

“Who are you people…” but soon she squinted as she looked at the old woman screaming and trying to hold down something in the air. As her vision cleared, she finally saw that there was an enchantment barrier. Without thinking twice, she hurried out of the bed, but stumbled and fell on her knees. Both of them wanted to go help her but she was already dragging herself towards the woman. Her entire face flustered as if she could cry anytime, she said, “Put it down...put the barrier down!”

“I am sorry, I can’t. It’s too dangerous,” Sansara said with his head low.

Hearing him, she said once more, sternly this time, “DIDN’T HEAR ME? I SAID PUT IT DOWN!”

“You highness, calm…,” she didn’t let Sansara finish when she tried to cast her own spell to nullify the barrier but it only brought down her vitality once more as she almost lost support but somehow used her hand to stabilise herself.

Finally Vinasaka spoke, “She is not in her senses. She may harm you.” His voice was extremely careful and gentle as if he was measuring each and every word before saying to avoid stepping on a landmine. But the queen buried her face in a palm of her hand, her expressions really ugly, when she suddenly snapped, “At this point the ones I should be wary of are you two, not her! She is the only person I know, the only person who has been with me all these while.” At the end, her voice was not aggrieved but trembling to somewhat unstable as she broke out in quiet sobs. 

No matter in what circumstances she said those words, no matter the fact that she doesn’t recognise her brother, the only thing that Vinasaka could think of at that point which at the same time left him with a loss of words was that she was speaking the truth. It wasn’t wrong that all this time she was left alone solely by herself. Even if her brother was here, very much in the same world, he never once dared to come in front of her, not even to check whether she needed him.

She was crying, couldn’t hold it back as she said again but this time it sounded rather pathetic, “Please put ..it down...please!”