Asher watched as Ptolema dragged Irik into the wooded area around them. He despises the thought of her being alone with Irik, a monster - a beast!

"Shall we get started on Prissy's task she has asked us to do?" Droian laughs as he walks toward their bags, which were lying near a large oak tree. The leaves were bright red compared to all of the trees around it. In fact, it seems to be the only dead tree around them.

"I'll set up camp and you can go find water and wood and stuff," Asher said while trying to calm his voice. He hopes Droian had not noticed him looking at the tree in fear. He only bowed his head slightly and walked off into the woods beyond.

Once his friend had left and was ur of sight, Asher ran over to the tree. He examines the bark and the roots that emerge from the earth itself. A little trickle of rain brushed his ear as he examined the roots, they were a blood red color and almost seemingly to move around, but slow enough not for Asher to think anything of it. There are more dangerous creatures in these woods than a living tree. Then the rain hit him again, a thicker droplet than the last one. He wiped it off his face to find that the rain droplet is red. Blood red. Asher almost puked at the thought of seeing and dealing with the blood rain a few days ago.

They had hidden under a rock, but the blood rain was blown by the wind into them, making blood splatter all over them. The way the blood hit the rocks that night, the way it sounded while making thick lakes of blood, the way it dropped from the sky as if had been freshly sliced from a human's veins. The entire time, Asher hated it. He had been through the battle fields, and has killed more people thought imaginable, but the blood rain brought back the deepest of memories he has tried to keep hidden for so long. He wanted to cry that night.

Again, a drop of blood hit his face. As he looks to the sky, he sees no clouds, none at all. But the leaves, he saw the leaves.

The leaves were bleeding. Asher grabs all of their supplies and runs to another cleared area not too far from the last, but far enough that the horrors of that wretched blood tree will not haunt them. There, he set up camp, and waited for the others to come and find him.

****

Droian grabbed another piece of wood, shoved it on-top of his, already overflowing, arms. He can barely see over the wood he has picked up but yet he did not want to freeze tonight so, again, he grabs another piece and shoves it on top of the stack.

After grabbing a few more pieces of wood to shove into his arms, Droian decides he better get back to camp before his arms fall off from the woods' weight. As he walks back, he realizes he does not see Asher or their stuff. So Droian looks around through the woods to find Asher pale as night sitting by a bush with all their stuff tucked around him. Droian slammed the wood down beside his friend's white-fleshed body. He jumped as the wood made a loud thump on the ground.

"You look as if you've seen a ghost," Droian jokes.

"Okay okay, stop playing around," Asher answers with a scratchy tone.

"Aye, I ain't the one sleeping on the job."

"Look, it's been a rough few hours."

"Mhmmmmmmmm. Anyways, we need to get the witch's body back to my dad soon. It won't take long before word gets out that someone killed a blood witch. Witches are very dramatic and love drama."

Asher looked up at Droian with pain dwelling in his eyes, "Does your dad ever care about you?"

Droian stood, stunned. His mouth hung lose as the question settled into his brain. His dad loved him only because he is his only son and he might rule one day. So Droian lies, "Yeah, he does."

"You're lying."

"Am not!"

"Whenever you lie, you put your thumbs in your back pocket." Asher pointed to Droian's back pocket.

He had not even noticed he had done so until he looked himself. His thumbs were indeed stuffed into his back pocket.

"So tell me the truth, please," Asher pushes the question again.

"Why?"

"My parents died a long time ago, you know that. But what I want to know is: Is it better for good parents to be dead or bad parents be alive?

Droian thought about it, he winced at every memory he had with his father. None were good.

"He absolutely hates me," Droian starts, "He won't tell me a thing! If my father sent our armies off to war, I would be that last person to know. You know he always says I'll be a horrible king if I'm not like him. He beats me whenever I talk good about magic or ask why he hates it. My mom doesn't do anything except sit on her throne and look pretty. I haven't heard a damned word come out of her mouth since before I was six. Now, she just dozes off and stared at the wall. Nothing more, nothing less. It's honestly freaky how calm and steadily she can sit just staring at a wall. She stares at the wall when my father beats me. He beat me so hard one time, my blood flung off the whip and splattered onto her face. She still just sat there, staring at the wall in silence."

Asher drank every detail he could. Every word Droian says, Asher's eyes sparkled in reply.

"One day my father said I was getting too fat so he only fed me an ounce of bread and water once a week for an entire year. Remember the time you asked why I was so skinny, that's why.

"Another time, after he fasted me that year, my father said I needed more muscle, so he sent me to work out for eighteen hours a day for one year. That's why I got ripped that one year. I also learned to fight, shoot, hunt, etc while I worked out. That was why I surprised you on how good my skills were when you got back from war that one time.

"I believe this was last year, but my father had asked me if I wanted kids. Of course I said yes, only because I knew that was the answer he wanted. Somehow-somehow!- that damned man knew I was lying and had me fuck all the maids. Only one had a child. My father took the child from the maid, and burned it. He burned my first child alive. Then, he killed the maid. He stabbed her fifty-seven times in the chest. After he was through, he took her finger bones, made them into a necklace and gave it to me for my "real" first child. I still have the necklace in my cabinets in my room."

Asher waited to see if Droian was done, and he was. Droian knows that Asher knew none of this. Maybe that is why he told him, so he could have the relief of telling someone, anyone. Droian hates the burden his father has set on his shoulders. He wants this burden gone, and rid of his anger and hatred. That's all he wants, forever.

The earth explodes around them. Dirt flies into their eyes as fire surrounds them in a circle. The flames grow taller than either of them.

Droian rubs the dirt off his face with the palms of his hands only to see Irik growling at them, his canines dripping with blood.