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It felt like Xander had been in the cells for ages before he heard a door open and then the echoing footsteps and clanking metal of armor in the distance as someone entered the dungeon.
Someone was coming, he realized as he rushed to the front of the cell. Did someone realize this was a terrible misunderstanding?
The footsteps and armor then became many and what little hope he had gotten at that moment crumpled. Surely it only needed one person to escort him out?
His neighbor across the hall stirred. He hadn’t spoken to Xander since he told him to stop rattling around in his cell and refuse to engage in more conversation.
“Oh,” he said tiredly, his odd accent more pronounced now that he wasn’t trying to hide it with a local one, “this isn’t good.”
Xander rolled his eyes. Way to point out the obvious, neighbor.
The footsteps got louder as their owners approached the hallway containing Xander and his neighbor’s cells.
Stepping into view was Sir Jasper and a small entourage of knights.
“Greetings, Darkspawn,” smirked Sir Jasper as he bowed mockingly, “it had occurred to us that we were missing someone important.”
Xander responded by shuffling away from the cell bars. The man in the other cell wisely stayed quiet.
Sir Jasper motioned to one of the guards who then stepped forward to unlock the cell door. Two of his fellows entered the cell and grabbed hold of Xander before he could do anything. His wrists were immediately shackled together and then bound with rope as if no one was taking their chances with a teenage boy who is allegedly a monster in disguise.
Xander wanted to shout and scream that this was all a misunderstanding but the chances of anyone believing him was non-existent. Not even the hooded man in the cell across from his can be bothered to try to stand up for him.
(And besides, a little voice in the back of his head whispered, what if he truly was evil and destined to destroy the world? Wouldn’t it be best to save the world now before his nature as the Darkspawn reared its head?)
He was nudged (rather, pushed) towards the cell exit and he obediently moved without fuss.
“Excellent, Darkspawn,” said Sir Jasper, “you might lower your sentence if you do what you are told.”
The man in the other cell quietly scoffed in disbelief, reflecting Xander’s defeated thoughts.
Nonetheless Xander passively followed after Sir Jasper and his knights. They led him through several passageways that were familiar at first until they took a turn he recalled he hadn’t passed through before when he was taken to the dungeons what felt so long ago.
To his confusion, he had been taken outside of the city walls. He stared numbly at the valley before him.
What is this? Why is he out here and not, he supposed, to the city square where everyone would watch his execution?
“Did you think it would be something simple?” Sir Jasper raised an eyebrow at the bewildered prisoner and then added before Xander could say anything, “No, we have something…more effective planned.”
He turned back to the landscape, “On your feet, Darkspawn. We have a day’s journey ahead of us.”
And so the group marched through the wilderness. The local wild life had the sense to keep away which meant there were no monsters to fight off the path to break up the monotony.
At one point exhaustion started to creep in but Xander was afraid to complain. For all he knew, Sir Jasper could just kill him in the middle of the woods for his insolence and no one would stop him.
Sometime after that, night had set in and the Heliodorians efficiently set up camp. There were a few grumblings as Xander was a source of very little help, as if he should be able to do things perfectly with his hands tied.
Once that was finished, everyone but Xander gathered around the campfire. Xander, knowing he was not welcome or deserved his captors’ hospitality, had planted himself by a nearby tree where everyone could see him and succumbed to exhaustion.
No one woke him up when dinner was ready.
He was woken up at dawn and endured snide remarks for his failure to take a turn keeping watch (‘Just what we expected from the Darkspawn,’ sneered Sir Jasper.) before given a cold piece of meat from last night’s dinner. Xander shuddered but continued to eat it, knowing he needed the energy for whatever was waiting for him that day.
It was mid-morning when the group reached familiar surroundings. Xander stopped and quietly gasped.
There were soldiers milling about the area. They were chatting, pouring over maps, cleaning up camp fires, adding graffiti to the ruins that dotted the valley, assembling siege weapons -
“What is this?” Xander asked, horrified. He looked up at Sir Jasper, who was indifferent to the Darkspawn’s reaction, “Sir Jasper, what-“
“Enough, Darkspawn. Your pitiful attempts at mind control will not work here.”
“I just –“
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Sir Jasper promised as he condescendingly patted Xander’s head.
There was a caravan of finished trebuchets and ready soldiers traversing the path Xander had used many times in the past. Sir Jasper pulled on his captive’s arm to get him to move as well until the boy burst into hysterics.
“What are you doing?! You…you can’t!”
“There’s no use changing our minds now, Darkspawn,” said the general, unmoved by Xander’s words.
A sob burst out of Xander’s lips as he reluctantly followed after the blond man. They were going to…!
Cobblestone came into view once they passed through the cliffs and it was like he never left. Villagers milled about, going through the daily motion of their lives. They were oblivious as to what was to come.
Flint, who just stepped through the village gate with his horse for his weekly trading of village-made wares in Heliodor, stopped when he noticed who had arrived.
“Xander?” he said, “Is that you? How wonderful! It’s been days since you’ve left us and we were getting worr-“
An arrow planted itself between his eyes and he fell to the ground.
“Know this, Darkspawn,” Sir Jasper declared as cannons, trebuchets, catapults and marksmen spread out around the perimeter of Cobblestone, “your days of hiding are over. Your minions are to be rewarded as the traitors to Yggdrasil they are.”
“They aren’t my minions!” shouted Xander.
“Typical dark creature behavior,” sighed Sir Jasper as he shook his head, “always denouncing their followers when it suits them. No matter. They’ll get what they deserve in the end.”
He unsheathed his sword and raised it above his head, “On my count, men, we wipe this blight off the face of Erdrea!”
“For the love of Yggdrasil,” pleaded Xander as he whirled around to face the Heliodorians, “don’t do this!”
“Ignore him! Now…One!”
Soldiers manning the cannons scrambled to load them.
“Two!” “Stop it!”
The catapults were lowered and loaded.
“Thr-“ Sir Jasper was tackled to the ground by a screaming Xander. It took several men to pull the sobbing boy off Sir Jasper who got up, brushed the dust off his armor, and picked up his sword.
He grinned at the restrained and sobbing Xander as he raised the sword again and then lowered it to point it at Cobblestone.
“Three.”
The cannons, catapults, and trebuchets released their ammo and a cacophony of explosions, collapsing wood, terrified horse whinnies, screams, and shouting ensued.
“Stop it! Please!”
Sir Jasper signaled and the marksmen on the cliffs released their arrows into the panicking villagers below.
“They did nothing to deserve this!”
Another round of cannons was fired despite the Darkspawn’s pleas. He shut his eyes from the horror before him and bowed his head but he had no way to hide his ears.
“Don’t you dare look away!” scolded Sir Jasper as the anguished cry of young Cole’s mother drifted by, “Look upon what your existence has wrought!”
Someone pulled on Xander’s hair to raise his head up and another raised his eye lids up and painfully pressed them in place.
What was left of Cobblestone was on fire now. The church collapsed just as someone ran inside. Xander unwillingly recognized who the odd shapes on the ground once were by their clothes.
It was like a scene from hell.
And it was all his fault.
The village would’ve survived if he didn’t leave home and unwittingly alerted King Carnelian of his existence. He should’ve stayed and lived the rest of his days unaware of his destiny as a farmer. He would’ve been a husband and father and unknowingly pass down his cursed blood line to the next generation. His children and their children would have stayed ignorant of their inherited destiny and not travel far.
Instead, Xander went out and sought his fortune and destiny only to learn the truth of himself and unleashed chaos onto what had been his only world.
A cannonball flattened his mother’s house and he sagged in the grip of his captors, causing whoever was keeping his eyes open to let go, “M-mum…”
Sir Jasper said something but Xander wasn’t listening anymore. Heliodor had won.
Heliodor had proven its point.
He truly was the Darkspawn.
After an eternity of smoke, shouting orders, and explosions, it all became blessedly hushed and still.
“Release him,” ordered Sir Jasper and the Darkspawn collapsed onto the ground, defeated. He had run out of tears for the loss of everything he had ever known an hour into Cobblestone’s destruction but continued to wail. His head ached from dehydration and his unending grief hadn’t helped at all.
The Darkspawn grew silent a few hours ago after what remained of Cobblestone got destroyed even further when someone on the cliffs discovered the Tor. Sir Jasper declared it to be a temple to the Darkspawn and the Darkspawn himself did nothing to correct him. No one would believe him anyway.
“You have two choices, Darkspawn,” said Sir Jasper, “One, you could return with us to Heliodor and be brought back to the dungeons where you will reside for the rest of yours days, however many that would be. Or two…”
He raised a hand and pointed to the ruins of Cobblestone.
“You join them here.”
The Darkspawn raised his head and his dulled eyes stared unseeing at the general direction of his homeland’s graveyard.
“Home,” he croaked. He unsteadily got up onto his feet and walked under the gate that now lead to nowhere.
He headed to a large tree that had split in many pieces from cannon fire. He picked up a scrap of shredded and burnt red cloth and stuffed into his pocket.
He was heading home when he vaguely registered the distant orders of Sir Jasper and ignored it. Whatever it was wasn’t his concern anymore.
He didn’t make it home.