The loud, methodical clack of the gun heels sounded like thunder in the empty grand amphitheatre of Ithavol tower.
"Oh Jeanne, I am always in awe of your obedience"
She stopped dead in front of him, staring with mindless passivity at the tall Lumen. A part of her wondered why she did so, wasn't that quite odd for her?
Balder chuckled and turned his back on her to inspect the oppressive model of the Trinity of Realities that dominated the room. A thought buzzed insistently in the back of her head that he should not be so arrogant as to turn his back on her.
But why?
She looked down at her beloved set of guns as he kept pacing about, heels clacking almost as loud as hers had a minute ago.
"My little pets tell me you're a terrible team player, Jeanne. Why is that? Could it be your Umbra side shining through, your kind has always been incapable of working together after all."
He circled her, face still amiable and smile firmly in place despite the ill concealed venom of his words.
"Or is it a personal quirk, like your many many others? Your memories are rife with anger, anxiety and a dazzling spectacle of other less than savory things."
Her eyes followed his motions around her and she glanced down at the dangling cat charms of her guns. Those were special, for reasons that she could not recall but the last time an angel had gotten into their heads to toy with the small charms, they were swiftly beheaded.
"I find it quite amusing how this works, that you're so wily while away from me but not even a peep here. Where is the ferocious hunter, the legendary Jeanne d'Arc that so valiantly defended her clan, hmm?"
Without hesitation or any fear, he yanked out one of her guns and chucked it in the air like a juggler's ball, just to catch it back again and repeat the motion.
"Tell me you can feel it too!" He kept tossing her gun as if it was worth no more than a cheap human trinket and the grating feeling intensified like a sea at the onset of a storm."We are on the cusp of the Festival of Resurrection and I could not be happier!"
"Well…" Balder halted his careless tossing, catching the priceless weapon with expert dexterity and leveled it at her forehead. " Except for one little detail, isn't that right?"
The cool metal touched her forehead with the barest of pressure. She took no heed of his posturing and threats (were they really that empty?), instead focusing on the still swinging charm hanging from the hold.
Balder regarded her with insufferable haughtiness over the barrel of her beloved weapon still resting in the square center of her forehead.
"No matter," the shot would open a gaping hole in her forehead that would land her in eternal damnation faster than she could blink but the imminent danger of it all failed to register. "My dear, sweet child will show up when we need her I'm sure. And when that happens, I want you to welcome my darling Cereza back."
Cereza
The plume of the kitty hat was barely in her line of sight but it's blue and bright colours seemed to attract her full attention. The charms the charms the charms
Cereza?
She blinked hard as the gun finally drew away, the droning of the sage a subtle backdrop to the building inferno in her head.
Cereza
"Oh?" Something was happening around her, with the sage, with the room but she missed it completely. What had he said? What did that mean. "Did I say the magic words, Ali Baba? Iftaḥ yā simsim?"
Cereza!
"Hello, Jeanne!" Cereza said, while skipping closer to her friend. The halls were blissfully deserted at that time and no one seemed to be inclined to give them any grief on their way to the more secluded sections of the Grand Library. "Aww, you kept the kitty charm I gave you!"
"Good morning, Cereza. Of course I did, you gave it to me" She replied, giving her companion a small smile and touching the little figure at her belt. It hadn't been the easiest day with her mother, the all powerful, mighty and revered Elder, breathing down her neck to master advanced forms of defensive magic well before her other peers but she always managed to make her day brighter.
She wanted nothing more than to be around her friend (…*friend*) and maybe get to teach her some new, nice things about the Umbra and magic. The joy in Cereza's eyes when she had access to books and learning made the brightest of full moons seem paltry in comparison.
Jeanne had taken all of those things for granted for many years, had taken her position and luxuries as absolute but in truth, they could very well evaporate without warning and then she'd be just as on the bottom rung as the outcasts and their more ill fitting members.
Being a princess was a privilege and one that, the more she spent around Cereza, the more she felt she had not earned. Had she been given the same opportunities, Jeanne had the humility of knowing Cereza would far outstrip the coddled, nurtured, honed princess.
All in all, she was best realizing her fortune and making sure her head always managed to fit indoors.
"What did you manage to sneak in?" She was basically hopping on the tips of her toes, dancing around her like a fleeting butterfly that could not decide which colourful flower she was going to visit next.
"I think you'll like this one" Jeanne said, grabbing a chair from their usual desk deep in the recesses of the library. Theirs was the only section that looked to be regularly used and around them the dusty furniture and books encased in thick layers of spider silk and gross dirt multiplied as far as the eye could see.
"It's actually a really good compendium on edible fungi of the Iberian Peninsula and I th-"
"Why does it say 'Common law proceedings' then?" She interrupted, pointing at the smooth leather tome and Jeanne stared down at her book.
Fuck.
It was the wrong book and now they had a stupid, boring law book instead of the interesting natural philosophy book she had found in the more popular sections of the library. Worst of all, their section was unused, to the best of their knowledge, but it was most likely because the only thing it housed were real estate records and medical reports of their many births.
Jeanne frowned harshly at the offending volume and Cereza giggle, which earned her a heated look her way. Realizing her friend had goofed, she plucked the book from her hands and set it down on the polished table with a grand gesture as if it was the most interesting of manuscripts.
"It's ok! I don't know what's this book about but it sounds interesting." At her serious nod, Jeanne chortled and sat down as Cereza waved her over enthusiastically.
"It's a book about laws, all the stupid things you can and can't do and their corresponding punishment." She said with a dismissive hand. Sheba, was it the most boring book she had the misfortune of being forced to study.
Cereza cracked it open and settled her hand against the page to aid her reading. "It says here you can't wear hmm red or purple gems to weddings?" She turned to her and Jeanne shrugged. She wasn't the best law student and Matriarch Zia's relentless monotone did not make her want to be any better.
Not to be be daunted by the bone dry page, she kept leafing the book in search of something interesting to read.
Jeanne leaned back on her chair and half looked at where her friend was landing. After some moments of quiet contemplation and low humming, Cereza lifted her head from the pages and pursed her lips.
"What's the worse punishment an Umbra can suffer?"
Jeanne, who up until that moment had been unconsciously studying how lovely Cereza's long hair was, was caught by complete surprise but the intense look on her face told her it was a really serious question.
"Well…" She started, scratching at her short platinum hair. "I guess you could say death is the worst cause well, you die."
Cereza nodded, that indeed made sense. "But mother says that the worst thing that can happen to an Umbra is for her to lose her freedom and that's why…"
She trailed off, realizing belatedly that her mother had been making a point about Rosa more than about crime and punishment. To her credit, Cereza took it in stride and nodded again, as she often did in thanks for an explanation.
"I can see that, to be fair. Imagine spending all day, every day without being in control of your fate."
And at that, Jeanne nodded right back.
The roaring in her head hit an explosive point and as the unseen but ever present shackles seared deep in her bones, her fists moved on their own accord.
Balder had been too close and too cocky to realize a thunderous punch was about to hit him and for the first time in a long while, Jeanne felt pure, unbridled satisfaction at the loud crunch her fist made on his face.
He skid across the floor, taking half the tiles with him. Balder hadn't yet stopped careening and Jeanne was upon him with all 900 lbs of feline fury.
Her claws tore through easily hurt human flesh but her teeth clamped into hard muscle and fur. Balder quickly shook her off and went on a brutal offensive.
Once upon a time, Jeanne had prided herself on having honed her natural disposition for anger into a sharp, well calculated blade. But now, only the raw primal roar of her deep seated ire flowed from her and she was bent on burning the world with it.
If she had to turn herself into ashes, so be it.
Even Balder, a man whose temper was as stable as the rocks on the mountain, was meeting her brute force with just as much finesse.
He bit into her lower back and hurled her into the hard stone, leaving a large crater in her awake.
Despite her wounds, she tried to get from under the rubble as fast as she could and she managed to rise to her knees.
Jeanne could feel the shackles suffocating, searing, choking her. She should be reacting, grabbing her guns, charging him…
Something!
Blood dropped from her shoulder onto shattered rock and tile and she mustered the will to attempt motion once again.
The glimmering spear sliced through the air with a near soundless displacement and impaled her clean through the back, pinning her to the ground.
Her panic rose sharply for a moment and she pawed at the spear with feeble hands. Why resist? No matter how hard she looked, she could find no satisfactory answer and her fight or flight instinct tamed back into a complacent passivity.
"Jeanne, Jeanne, Jeanne… so that's where you hide your terrible temper." The pain was nearly unbearable and breathing was a chore nearly too insurmountable as fat droplets of blood ran down the blade buried into the ground. His heels sounded vaguely near her head but the world was dangerously muted.
"I should have expected no less from the pride of the Umbra."
He was finally back in her field of vision, his gaudy boots not two feet from her face and she wondered in a breezy passing if he was going to stoop so low as to kick her when she was this helpless.
"But if you think you're so clever that I don't know full well that you have the location of your precious Umbran treasure squirreled away in that dysfunctional little head of yours."
All of her muscles tensed like rocks and the shimmer from the glowing ropes on her skin nearly blinded her as she was forced to stare right into the stern oh so very familiar blue eyes of the last Lumen.
"I was surprised to encounter such pure devotion for her! I didn't think you could produce emotions so positive, Jeanne." He enthused, smiling around the deep gashes on his face but that did nothing to hide the steel in his eyes. "But that is exactly what betrays you. I need you alive and coherent more than I need the precise location of my darling Cereza or else I'd invade the little dark space that you hold so dear in your memories and extract it."
His arm shot out and he grabbed the spear unceremoniously, making pain radiate all over her body. "With or without you still there at the end, do you understand?"
The extraction was slow and deliberate, the metal sliding through her ribs and organs with excruciating agony. If he wanted a reply from her, he didn't show it as he glided out the room in a wave of light and brilliant feathers, leaving her behind to crawl somewhere she could heal before heaven's ugly helpers flocked the room.
What he wasn't counting on was that in the little dark space, lived the only memory that offered a handhold of sanity in the luminous flood of his influence.
The golden seal glowed bright in front of her iris for a second before fading into the darkness of the room but there was still life to be found on the grey eyes behind it.