The Festival of the Dead

Chapter 12: What Are They Worth to You?

WARNING: This chapter contains some gore at the end, mostly just implied, nothing too graphic

The small Avnas was continuing to squirm on his bed, plagued by pains and unable to sleep. Eventually, he passed into unconsciousness. I had been sick for a very long time, nobody knew what was wrong with me. The sisters were surprised to hear Avnas in their minds, speaking directly to them. He appeared to be doing commentary for parts of the memory.

After the boy went to sleep, the world jumped to morning, Avnas being woken up by yet more pains before the sun had even reached him. A man came into the small cottage, thin as well though not quite as bad as the boy, and placed a small plate of food in front of him. He eagerly started eating, the man smiled at the boy's appetite and left. Shortly after he left, Avnas stopped eating the food on his plate. The portion was measly but still, over half remained. He went over to his bed of reeds, pushing the improvised bedding aside and revealed a small box that was placed in the dirt. He pulled it out and opened the top. Inside, the box was almost filled to the brim with fruits, grains, nuts, and vegetable roots. The boy smiled to himself and pushed the remaining untouched food into the box. Food was very scarce, there were only twenty people in the entire village, the man who came in earlier was one of the village's better-fed hunters.

Avnas left the building he had slept in and headed to one of the fields, he worked on the primitive farm, hardly pausing throughout the day in his work. Dinner was served, the hunters had caught a field-bird, and were serving the tribe, Avnas ate all of his serving very quickly. No point in trying to save meat, it would rot by the end of the week.

Luna had decided to refer to the child as Babnas, getting tired of trying to make distinction between the two versions of the man. Babnas walked back to his home, laying down on the reeds once more. Just in case either of you are wondering, a small child is living alone because no one in the village knew what I was sick with, not that it changes much, there were, like, two kinds of medicine, and one was leeches, and they already tried that. Once again, Babnas fell asleep clutching his stomach.

They watched Babnas go about his days quickly, each day finishing in about fifteen minutes, for convenience sake. Some days the boy worked, some days he helped the hunters, occasionally stopping when the pain came back. He never seemed to spend any extended time with any of the villagers. The princesses hadn't even seen any indication as to which of the adults were his parents. They didn't want the 'healthy' adults to be staying around the sick boy any longer than necessary. If they stopped and thought about it, they would have realized that they would have already been sick if I was contagious, I did work with the food all day, after all.

A few months passed, there was a drought and the crops were starting to die. Without even the small boost in food, the village would quickly starve. Avnas sat on his bed, knees up to his chin. The pains had been worse this night. They were always the worst when he came.

Who? Thought Celestia and Luna together.

The god of Drought.

A man walked through the doorway, blocking the moonlight behind him. "Greetings once again, young dealer." He said the last part dripping with sarcastic honey, taunting the boy.

"Bring the water back." Even at a young age, Avnas had developed a stern voice for serious situations.

"What do you have that I would want?" He asked, twirling a piece of fabric from his cloak in his hand.

Avnas brought him the basket of food. "I know you don't care about the food, you can set it on fire for all I care, I just figured you would enjoy knowing that I didn't get to eat it."

The man laughed at the ingenuity of the boy's offering. "Oh ho! You are a clever one! Tell you what, this time, in return for bringing the water back to this god-forsaken land, I'll only take half as much." Like he had much left to take. added Avnas, venom dripping from his very thoughts.

"Fine." Babnas didn't seem to be able to say any more, clenching his eyes shut and looking away, tears pooling near his eyes.

The man placed a hand over the boy's stomach and, with a soft glow, his hand passed right through the tight skin and ribs, into his insides. He screamed in pain, the skin was fine but the man certainly wasn't being particularly careful in bothering anything else. The princesses wanted to look away, to not have to see the sight, but they knew that there wouldn't be any point in asking Avnas to be brought here if they turned away at the most important part. The man was digging his hand in, looking like he was trying to find something specific. Bullshit. He knew what was left, he was just wasting time.

The princesses hated everything about the situation before them. They hated the man, abusing his power, threatening a child, leaving him starved and even then refusing to show mercy. They hated the people, for not catching this phenomenon happening to one of their own and leaving him by himself. Most importantly, they hated the fact that things like this were happening in worlds that they couldn't stop it in. What if things like this happened in Equestria? How would we know?

There was a horrible, wet snapping noise. Babnas screamed louder than any of the others before and slumped onto the man, blacking-out in pain. He drew his hand out, completely clean, there wasn't a drop of blood to be seen from the entire ordeal.

Except from the small, reddish lump in the man's hand.

"He took pieces of you as payment!?" Luna was raving, completely in a blood-rage towards the mental-image of the man. Celestia wasn't yelling, but was wearing a stare that could make a granite-wall flee for the hills.

That he did, sometimes bits of liver, sometimes half-a-kidney, towards the end, he was running out of things to take so he basically just took whatever meat there was.

"That's monstrous!" Celestia had joined her sister in the rage. "He had the means to help you whenever he wanted but refused unless you let him take you apart? Doesn't he have a soul?"

The man set Babnas down on his bed, turning towards the doorway. "You can expect a decent harvest this year, nothing to get excited about." And with that, he walked out.

Babnas laid there, still unconscious. After a few minutes, another man walked into the room, wearing a robe that reached the floor.

"That's... impossible." Celestia found herself muttering along with her sister, her fortitude already broken from earlier.

Shabriri walked over to the boy, cradling him in his arms. He laid a wrapped hand over the boys stomach, hand eliciting a soft glow. Every few seconds, he sighed deeply, apparently finding more and more to dislike with the boy's condition. After casting some small spell, he produced a small flash in front of Avnas' face, waking him up.

Still in no condition to move, Avnas simply looked at the man. He had a kind face and was looking at him with concern. "Who are you?" He muttered, still distrustful of the man but not wanting to offend a possible second organ-harvester with an eye on him.

"I'm Shabriri, Sha-bri-ri." He sounded it out for the child in his arms. "Can you say it?"

"Shabriri."

"Good, if you can get my name right, you can't be in that bad of shape."

They shared a laugh at that, Avnas warming-up to the man. "Why are your eyes all white? Did they get hurt from something?"

"Yes they did, a long time ago. They hurt really, really bad for a while but then after a while they stopped hurting so much."

"I wish my pain went away but every time I start getting used to the pain all the time, that bad-guy comes back and tells me that I gotta hurt some more!"

"Would you like to come with me? I could make it so that he won't hurt you anymore, I'll even make sure that he doesn't do anything with the water while you're gone."

Babnas' face was lit-up with glee. "You'd do that!? You're the nicest adult I've ever met! So the pain will never get worse?"

"Even better. I can make all the pain go-away forever. You won't have to ever deal with those pains again."

The princesses knew what was happening, they couldn't help but shed some tears for the little-boy before them, filled with joy at his suffering ending after the torture that he went through every day.

"NO WAY! You can do that?"

"Indeed I can. So, what do you say? Want to come along?"

"Sure! Let's go!"

Babnas walked away, holding Shabriri's hand, swinging it as he walked. Back in the house, the princesses saw a brief shimmer of Shabriri's magic, revealing the body of Avnas, eyes glazed-over. With another small shimmer, his eyes closed and the body was adjusted onto the bed so that it looked for all-the-world like a normal little boy, dreaming of the world he was going to at that very moment.