The Tale of Tales

Chapter 22

Erza used all her strength to struggle and try to break free but even with all her great strength and fighting ability she was no match for twenty men who held her down. Her wrists and ankles were in locked into tight, painful shackles as they chained her to a post that stood on top of a pile of straw. All around her stood people who gave her looks of judgement while in the far back she could hear her grandmother and Reverend Makarov screaming from their cells for them to let her go and that they were making a huge mistake. She wondered if this is what it was like when her mother was crucified by these people.

All too soon Reverend Hades approached her carrying a lit torch, his eyes filled with pure contempt yet at the same time it held some form of twisted glee. As if he was excited that she was about to be burned to death. If there was ever any proof that the devil could live in man, Reverend Hades was all the proof you needed. True he claimed to be a man of God but the things he had done would no doubt hurt and enrage the good Lord. He was the very personification of a wolf in sheep's clothing if ever there was any in all the land in Fiore. But the problem with that was wolves like that wore their sheep suits very well and only a few people could see past their disguises.

"The time has come Erza." He said. "You shall no longer plague our village with your witchcraft however you can save your soul by confessing your sins now."

"I have committed many sins in my life but none of them had anything to do with witchcraft or taking the lives of innocent people." She said.

"Then may God have mercy on your soul."

"I could say the same thing for you. You're lucky these ignorant fools follow you otherwise it would be you about to burn because you're the real monster here."

"Funny those are the exact same words your mother said to me just before I sent her to hell." He said grinning. "And you'll soon be joining her."

When she realized that there was no escape Erza decided to face death with courage and dignity. She wouldn't go out screaming and crying, that would only give the monster pleasure. She would keep silent and pray that her death would be quick and painless and also that her poor grandmother would not suffer from grief.

Finally he lit the straw with his torch. She closed her eyes and tried to picture herself reliving a time where she was most happy. That was back when she was nine, before Jellal had been taken. She and her grandmother had gone on a picnic in the forest with Reverend Makarov and she had managed to convince her to allow Jellal to join them. It was the happiest day of her life because she had spent the whole day with the three people she loved the most. She was so glad that she would die thinking of this instead of how scared she was. There was only one thing about this that brought her joy. At least she would be with Jellal again.

Just then she heard a loud screech followed by a howl. Opening her eyes she saw a wolf come charging through the crowd tossing people in his way aside one by one. His destination was right toward her. Reverend Hades and many other brave men tried to shoot, stab, or capture the beast but it cleverly overpowered them and dodged their weapons with an incredible agility. No doubt he was one of the cursed race but he fought in a way that Erza had never seen in any of the ones she had faced.

She watched in horror as the creature lunged for Reverend Hades and began to maul his face and it didn't stop until it heard Erza cough from the smoke. It got up from Reverend Hades and continued it's way to her. At last he reached her and their eyes met. He had such big eyes. Such big green eyes that looked fairly human and on one of those eyes she saw a red tattoo of blood.

She didn't know what to do or what to say. At the moment she was chained up to a post while trying to avoid suffocating from smoke and burning from the flames but she was also trying to figure out just what this wolf was planning to do to her.
The wolf then raised his mighty claws as if it was about to give her the killing blow only to instead break the chains and shackles holding her and pull her from the fires. As it happened Erza found herself feeling so very confused. The wolf, one of the cursed race had just saved her life. Was this real? Was this some hallucination she was having just before she died? She didn't know.

The wolf faced her again and once again their eyes met. She had seen the eyes of a wolf who was part of the cursed race many times before but there was something very different about this one's eyes. The eyes she had seen in the others were always filled with hunger, blood lust, greed, insanity, and rage but these eyes were filled with sorrow, shame, misery, regret, guilt, and sadness. There was so much sadness in those eyes, like this poor creature had been through nothing but pain and suffering all his life. For once it actually made her pity a wolf.

However what she found most intriguing was that there was something awfully familiar about those eyes and she knew that she had seen them somewhere before but she just couldn't figure out when and where. She felt like that she was not gazing into the eyes of a wolf but into the eyes of a man she had known once a long time ago.

"What big eyes you have." She said not sure what else to say.

Suddenly the amount of smoke she had inhaled during her time in the fire started to kick in. First she began to cough excessively followed by a dizzy and feverish feeling. She found it harder and harder to stand up, she tried to walk it off but her legs were numb. The world around her was spinning then slowly descending into darkness. She was soon falling toward the ground only to land in a pair of strong arms that held her close and that last thing she remembered before losing consciousness completely was a man's voice saying.

"You're even more beautiful than I remembered."