"Mama, why do people hate me?"
The young Relveth sat in the corner of the hut, his mother sewing something in the chair next to him. Elyssiel looked up from the embroidery to focus on her son, an expression of pity on her face.
"Child, it's alright," she softly said, trying to sound reassuring, "people don't hate you, they just… they don't understand you, don't know how special you are." She watched as Relveth's gaze fell to the floor, his arms clenched around his legs. Setting her work aside on a nearby table, Elyssiel crouched and sat down next to Relveth, a hand coursing through his hair.
"W-when I walk into the village, some of the kids call me 'Kathar scum' and 'grey-skin', tell me to go back to somewhere I've never been," Relveth murmured, "what did I do, why?"
Elyssiel let out a sigh, as if trying to come up with an explanation for her son. "Well," she finally started, "we're… different from other elves, and some people are afraid of what they don't know. They see gray skin and think we're monsters, fear makes people do stupid things."
She gave Relveth a hug, resting her head on his shoulder. "If they really got to understand, they'd know the real you, the wonderful you I know…"
"So sorry about this again, but it's standard protocol."
The voice forced Relveth's attention back to the present, the Kathar looking to the guardsman next to him. Relveth couldn't remember if his name was Otto or something similar, but the man had so far been the one Kreiguard that didn't actively threaten to kill him, and at least showed some decency when he took the Kathar prisoner. Relveth's memory of arriving at this fortress was a quick blur, having only happened within the past half hour and yet he could barely piece it together. All he saw now were the legion of Kreiguard troops standing in formation as their commander, apparently named Kreiburg, gave a speech to the crowd that prompted shouts of victory.
Relveth knew it was going to happen, there was no way they wouldn't see him as shouts of "Zum Kreiguard" filled the pavilion with noise and Relveth's heart with dread, as the rally eventually died down, as the crowd eventually peeled away and began to wander back for celebrations. Yet, his heart was still pounding in his chest with the fear of what was to happen next. He saw what these people were like, remembering how they had called those like him "voidling scum" and how they'd even knocked Relveth into the sewers beforehand.
'Please, just pass by,' Relveth thought to himself in vain, 'please, just go…'
Some had begun to head off for whatever drinking tavern they were interested in when one man stopped, when one man turned to Relveth, when one man stared down the Kathar as if he was burning a hole into his soul.
Commander Kreiburg's stopping drew the others to take notice of Relveth, and soon the entire mob of green-colored militants swarmed closer to gawk at their prize, as if Relveth were some circus freak in a cage being viewed by children.
"Back up, give the prisoner some space," Kreiburg commanded, as Relveth shrunk down in response to the pressuring crowd. They stared at him with a mixture of contempt, curiosity, and hatred before Kreiburg continued with, "were you a combatant, Kathar?"
"His mates abandoned him, I fished him out and took him prisoner," Otto answered for Relveth, "he's a doctor of sorts."
Kreiburg raised an eyebrow at the word 'doctor', with Relveth sure for just a moment that the commander would show some leniency. His heart, however, would sink as the crowd started chiming in and pressuring down on the Kathar.
"He healed some vampire bastard that stunned me!"
"Can't be having any of that."
"Have we considered trying to imprison it and see if it's wanting for blood?"
"Kathar scum!"
"Halt, gents!" Kreiburg ordered, "back up three feet from the prisoner." Relveth watched the Kreiguard troops take a few steps back, still persistent in their glares and insults directed at Relveth. Kreiburg turned back around to the grey-skinned medic, wearing an expression of curiosity rather than immediate hatred. "A healer, hmm…"
"Permission to bury my axe in his skull, sir?!"
"Aye, I want a go at him too!"
"I'll make him cough up his fucking teeth!"
Even as Kreiburg adamantly insisted that Relveth would live, terror overtook every last sense of Relveth's conscience, the battalion of soldiers appearing almost as a pack of wolves ready to tear at the sheep.
"He didn't actively fight, sir," Otto stated, his voice filled with determination. Despite this, the mob continued, the few among them hesitant to join in being drowned out or ignored.
"Did he deal any blows?!"
"Who cares, it's a damn Kathar!"
"He healed the vampire that stunned me!"
One among them walked over and lifted Relveth up, the man's attention on his commander's instructions.
"Unbind it," Kreiburg ordered, with Otto nodding his head before walking over with a knife, cutting the restraints that bound Relveth's hands.
"He tried to hinder us, healing the fucker who almost killed us!"
"There's nothing to be done, cut its ears and throw it back."
"Let us return him to the sewers with a message."
Relveth's breathing accelerated, panic beginning to control him even before he felt the hand of Commander Kreiburg lift him by his hair. Relveth found himself dragged along until they were outside the keep, those Battalion wolves following their alpha.
"P-please, wait!" Relveth pleaded, "I'm an actual doctor, training and everything, I..."
"You're going to be alright," Relveth had said, "just hold on, d-don't worry, you'll make it home."
That's when they came, the Typhonus soldiers that Relveth assumed were just passing by him to fight the actual Dread Kathar. However, he watched as they approached him with a burning hatred in their eyes, and before Relveth could react, they tore him away from Faust and started to throw punches and kicks on the defenseless Kathar medic.
"Go back to the sewers where you belong, grey-skin filth!"
"Kathar scum!"
Kreiburg tossed Relveth to the ground, a staircase to the sewer entrance just behind him as the crowd fixed itself a few feet away from the commander.
"Form ranks, gentlemen!" Kreiburg ordered, "form firing squads!"
A row of Kreiguard raised their Puretek rifles in response, taking aim at the Kathar and preparing to fire, barely a hint of emotion or sympathy for the prisoner on their faces.
Relveth knew he was mundane, he was pretty sure the Puretek wouldn't hurt him, right? And yet, what scared him the most was how ready they seemed to execute him the same way one would put down a mad criminal or diseased animal.
What had he done to them?
"I'll nab it right in the fucking eye!"
"Doctor or not, you are not a creature worthy of drawing breath!"
"Cut its ears and send it back to its den, at least that way its kind will not take it back."
Kreiburg continued giving orders for the squadron to prepare firing while Relveth fumbled for words, all the while backing up from this Puretek firing squad. "I-I served in the Dread War on the Regalian side!" he exclaimed, his voice shaky and pitched with fear, "I saved Regalian lives!"
Relveth saw one dwarf glare him down, a Puretek raised to his shoulder. "I do not care who you are or what you have done," the dwarf said, "you're a Kathar! And you will die on this day!"
Continuing to scuttle away, Relveth felt tears streaming down his face and panic making it almost impossible to breathe. Suddenly, he watched as Kreiburg raised a hand, holding a large knife in the other hand as he approached the Kathar.
"Stand down, gents!" The commander ordered, before turning to focus on Relveth. "Remember what you've seen today."
"Show some honor to the honorless, eh!"
"Kathar killed my father, give me an ear!"
"You cannot allow such an abomination to leave unscathed, it'd have us all ripped apart if it could."
Before Relveth could get a consistent plea for mercy out, he felt Kreiburg pick him up by his neck, bringing the knife to his ear. A pain shot through Relveth's entire body like he'd never known before, the Kathar screaming as the commander eventually cut through both the ears. He was now sobbing and wheezing as the commander leaned in.
"Consider this mercy," Kreiburg muttered, "you'd be dead if you landed a blow on one of my men." He then threw Relveth into the sewer entrance, watching as the Kathar tumbled down the steps before hitting a wall on the stair flight.
"Zum Kreiguard!"
"Zum Kreiguard!"
"Zum Kreiguard!"
Relveth stumbled down the staircase leading into the sewers, trying desperately to escape the militants standing outside with their blades and rifles. The insults and chants were slowly drowned out as Relveth went deeper, until there was only the dripping of water droplets pattering against cold stone. He still let out wheezes and felt his entire body shaking as he eventually made it to the bottom, resting against the grimy stone wall of a sewer tunnel. As he sat there in the damp cold tunnel, shaking hands clutched against his bleeding ears, Relveth realized why it didn't matter what he did- he was nothing to the world but what he was born to be.
Kathar scum.
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