Children of the Holy Emperor

By the time Aslan and Bart had returned to the village square, it was already getting dark. Night comes quickly in the mountains.

“We need to start gathering herbs from the morning tomorrow. We should have at least some results to show to Jerome, so be prepared to hit the mountain early.”

Bart was staring pensively toward the top of the mountain.

Good grief, what an emotionless man.

“So should we rest for now? While I find you a place to stay, you can stay in my cabin.”

As Aslan, who was leading the way to his dwelling, stopped in his tracks, spotting a figure approaching them.

It was a thin woman with a staggered gait, her face not clearly visible due to the fading light. However, seeing her oddly twisted left arm, Aslan realized who she was.

Marta. Jerome’s pitiful wife who suffered daily ab*se.

Upon a closer look, she had a face that suggested she might have been extraordinarily beautiful in her youth, but her harsh life in the village and Jerome’s violence had aged her beyond her years.

The dark circles under her eyes and her somber expression made her look like a long-term patient who had just recovered from an illness.

In a thin trembling voice, she asked Aslan, “Hey, Aslan. Have you seen my Kaien?”

“Ah, I’m sorry, Marta. I haven’t seen him.”

“He went out with Jerome. Didn’t you hear anything when you came to our house today?”

Aslan seemed to understand why she was anxious. She must be thinking that Jerome has taken Kaien somewhere and is beating him again. Aslan didn’t care what happened to the miscreant Kian, but he felt sorry for Marta, who was worried about her son. As he shook his head apologetically, she bit her lip as if about to cry and walked away from them, staggering.

Aslan, unable to take his eyes off her for a while, murmured, “Poor woman. She was brought here in her youth by Jerome and ended up living with him. She’s been beaten her whole life. When Jerome loses his temper, it’s really no joke. She can’t even leave because of her son, her only child…”

However, Bart, who had been staring at the retreating figure of Marta for a while, made an inexplicable remark.

“She’s not worried about her son.”

“…?”

“You’re in danger too, Aslan.” Bart turned to him and threw an unexpected question. “Have you ever made an enemy of a boy named Kaien?”

“…What?”

Aslan blinked.

An enemy? Wasn’t that guy just universally hated by everyone?

Come to think of it, didn’t he always give Aslan a particularly nasty glare as he walked by?

“I’m not sure. Why do you ask all of a sudden….”

Aslan, who was asking in confusion, suddenly shut his mouth because of the chilling sensation that overcame him. It seemed as if Bart’s eyes were emitting a strange glow in the darkness. His pupils, which he had thought were a clear gray, now flowed with a strange silvery metallic gleam.

“If you really need to go up that mountain tomorrow, you should be careful and avoid the usual routes.”

“……”

There was not even the slightest intention for him to argue back, like asking, ‘On what grounds do you, a newcomer to this village say such things?’

It was a strange sensation.

The spine-chilling feeling of standing in front of someone who seemed to see through everything about him. A nauseating feeling settled deep in his core, as though he’d received an order he could not possibly deny.

So the boy could only swallow and nod in agreement.

The next morning, the two of them woke up at the crack of dawn and set off for the mountain.

A little bothered by what Bart had said the day before, Aslan decided to explore beyond the abandoned fields, a place he usually didn’t go. As he led Bart through the village square and up the trail to the fields, he felt unusually piercing stares.

“……?”

When the puzzled Aslan turned around, the men who had been staring at them turned their heads and pretended to be busy with their own work. Most of them were part of Jerome’s bandit crew that had come from Rohan.

‘…What’s going on?’

Although they didn’t say anything to them and were only staring, it felt suspicious, but he had no choice but to ignore it. Trying his best to ignore the uneasy premonition, Aslan quickened his pace. He needed to hustle to fill his gathering quota while exploring a new area.

As he climbed the unfamiliar mountain trail, Aslan was a bit worried. He had just started working with a new companion, and if his harvest was less than usual, Jerome might be angry enough to kill him to death.

However, that was merely an unfounded fear.

Bart was like a ghost when it came to finding herbs. Strangely, whenever he stared intently at a place, the vicinity would reveal a habitat of valuable medicinal herbs.

Did he have a good sense of smell, even the scent of herbs? Just like a hunting dog?

Aslan, who had been prepared to scour the whole mountain, gaped in disbelief.

The problem was that he was barely any help with the gathering itself. That’s because whenever Bart tried to touch the herbs, his heavy shackles and iron chains crushed all the herbs nearby.

And it wasn’t just the herbs that suffered. Any slight movement of Bart’s hand would leave a deep bruise on his skin due to the thick cuffs. Looking at the quickly scratched marks and densely bruised wrists, Aslan clicked his tongue.

“I’ll gather the herbs, you just sit over there.”

At his words, Bart slumped down under the shadow of a tree with a gloomy look. It was a little funny to see someone who didn’t even blink an eye when Jerome was killing people in front of him or when a blind hammer was flying around his hand, look so deflated.

‘Anyway, how on earth his wrist was fine before?’

Fortunately, because the time to find the herbs had been significantly reduced, it seemed that Aslan could gather enough quantity even on his own. With a little more leisure, Aslan initiated a conversation with Bart while busying his hands.

“Bart, you mentioned before that you studied plagues, right? Did you belong to a certain school of thought?”

It was a story he had heard from an apothecary he knew before, Seymour. According to him, among pharmacists, there were some who were interested in the plague itself, so they formed a Plague Society and conducted activities.

The Plague Society had several traditional schools of thought, and the most radical one was said to have undergone a heresy controversy a few years ago, leading to the execution of all its members.

The Demon’s Plague Society. Aslan speculated that Bart might have gotten that mark because he was associated with that radical school of thought.

“Were you part of the Demon’s Plague Society?”

“Not the Demon’s Plague Society, officially, it’s full name is Kshantara Plague Society.”

Bart replied in a nonchalant tone. He was staring blankly at something with his chin on his knee, but considering his lack of focus, it seemed more like he was lost in thought rather than observing something.

“The Society has always had its share of heretical controversies, but I don’t think there’s a single society that would get away after digging through all their plague research records in the first place. What brought them down was the internal rift among their members.”

According to him, the decisive evidence presented at the trial came from research papers from within the society. it was not uncommon for radical debates to take place within the organization, and two members who had fallen out and had a grudge against each other accused each other.

Well, what a stupid turn of events.

“It was a society that did a lot of good work, and in the end, all the valuable research records were burned. It’s a shame.”

It seemed somewhat nostalgic, but apparently, he wasn’t a member of that society.

“After that incident, most of the Plague Societies went underground. It would probably take quite some time for them to come back to the surface.”

“Hmm, I see.”

After that, they continued to exchange various stories. Mostly about the herbs they were gathering, and as Jerome expected, Bart was proven to be quite a valuable asset as an apothecary. Even Aslan, who thought he had learned properly from Seymour for a long time, felt that he paled in comparison to the knowledge Bart had about herbs.

“The first pharmacist I learned from was more of a traditionalist. He dedicated his life to revealing the effects and cultivation methods of herbs.”

Bart explained in a quiet tone, “It seems that the apothecary who taught you was taught by the Adelheid school, which focuses more on connecting symptoms of the plague and the efficacy of medicine concisely, rather than the knowledge of herbs themselves.”

He said that it’s also a great school of thought, largely consisting of young apothecarists in the capital. Seymour must have been a better apothecary than he thought.

As the conversation drifted, and before he knew it, it turned into stories of Aslan’s past.

Bart listened attentively to Aslan’s monologue, especially interested in the story about deer traps commonly used in Rohan. He even murmured admiration at the story of how he’d taught himself to use aura after picking up the basics here and there.

Then, as Aslan was pouring out a tense situation where he was on the run from Rohan’s suppression troops,

“Aslan.”

Bart suddenly interrupted his speech and called his name.

“We need to return to the village now.”

What? They hadn’t gathered enough yet?

The midday sun hadn’t even reached its zenith yet. However, Aslan quickly gathered his herbs and tools and stood up because Bart, who had gotten up and was looking towards the village, looked serious.

For some reason, there was an undeniable force in the words he said with a serious face. 

Moreover, while immersed in the story and busying his hands without rest, they had gathered more than expected.

When they hurriedly moved and reached the village square, a fair number of people were gathered, buzzing.

They were gathered around something, muttering. As Aslan approached, they hardened their faces and glared at him.

“Aslan.”

Jerome, who was standing in the middle of the square, called out to him.

“You returned sooner than usual. Did you happen to go near the waterfall today?”

Aslan swallowed hard. The waterfall to the east of the village was a place he often visited to collect silk butterfly grass. There were small traps set up nearby, so he likely should have checked there at some point today.

“I came back early because I needed to check the traps near the waterfall. Today, I wandered behind the fields in the north.”

“I see.”

As Jerome dryly replied and looked around, a few men nodded. Among them, Aslan could identify the faces of those who were particularly observant of him before they climbed the mountain this morning.

‘What’s this?’

An ominous feeling crept up on him.

Jerome, who had been scrutinizing Aslan’s face, moved and issued orders to the men in the square.

“Scour the area around the falls for signs of the spies. Report back to me on any suspicious behavior today.”

“Yes!”

“Yes, boss.”

As the majority of the men in the square dispersed, Aslan could finally discern what they had been buzzing about.

It was a corpse. A conspicuously flamboyant member of Jerome’s raiding party.

His name was Conrad, if he remembered correctly. He recalled the man boisterously declaring he would raid Asein’s regular supplies just yesterday, heavily intoxicated. The man was dead, a dagger stuck in his back, his eyes wide open. One of his ankles was broken and twisted at a weird angle, and all his nails were missing, as if he had been tortur*d.

A spy.

Jerome had definitely said there was a spy.

His body shivered as if cold water had been poured down his spine. He stood in the square, trying to gather his thoughts, when Kaien, Jerome’s son who hadn’t yet left the scene, hobbled over to him. His usually fierce saembagan1 eyes were exceptionally bright.

Step by step. Eventually, Kaien, who had hobbled right next to Aslan, twisted his mouth into a smirk, and whispered into Aslan’s ear.

“…you’re a sharp-eyed bast*rd.”

Sambaegan is a Korean term used to describe eyes that have the sclera (white area) visible on the left, right, and bottom. You may have heard eyes like this referred to by their Japanese name, sanpaku, in the past. Traditionally, sambaegan were thought to represent a physical, physiological, or spiritual unbalance. These days, however, they’re recognized for what they are—mysterious, unique, and just as beautiful as any other. Eg: BTS’s Taehyung. (cr. Koreaboo). []