Thus He Falls
The sorceress chooses her knight.
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Shit...what now?
This was supposed to be easy. Go to Timber, capture the president, show up Leonfart in the process, deliver Deling to Rinoa, become her hero and win her back. It had almost worked, too, until Chicken-Wuss had to open his fat mouth. Seifer tightened his grip on Deling and backed a little farther into the room, hoping he wouldn't feel the wall at his back.
As soon as he got out of this, Chicken-Wuss was a dead man.
Suddenly, the air began to buzz, almost as if the individual molecules were rearranging themselves. The hair at the back of his neck stood on end and Seifer could almost taste the acrid scent of powerful magic. It was cloying, overwhelming his senses, like standing next to a woman wearing too much perfume. He shook his head in an attempt to clear his mind, but his muscles froze as a woman stepped around the corner of the dais.
She was beautiful and frightening in a way he couldn't quite define. Seifer's breath caught in his throat. Sorceress. The beaked mask hid her eyes, but he could see the wine-purple of her lips. Her dress seemed more like skin than cloth, expanding and constricting with every breath. Her skin shone alabaster white and Seifer imagined he could almost see her heart beating beneath. The magic still hung heavy in the air, clouding his mind and dulling his senses.
She parted her lips to speak and her voice was like the pealing of bells: sweet and pure and heart wrenching with just a trace of dissonance underlying it all. He barely heard her words for the sound of her voice. It conjured visions of a gray ocean pounding at a rocky beach, crying gulls and smell of salt and seaweed and chased away the textbook warnings that a sorceress needed only her voice to bewitch and enchant.
Seifer found his grip on Deling slipping but the old man no longer seemed important. All that mattered now was the sorceress and the sound of her voice and the motion of her hands as she froze Instructor Trepe in mid-stride. Deling broke away and Seifer did not watch him scurry away to safety like a rat. He watched the sorceress instead, watched her lips move and there were wings now to replace the ocean, great black wings of sooty feathers rising up out of the corners of his eyes, wings that blocked out everything but her.
"Come with me to a place of no return. Bid your childhood farewell."
come to me my sweet golden child and live the fantasy you've imagined for so long
"...yes…"
An exhaled breath, more sigh than word, and he made his decision. Seifer lifted his chin and walked face-first into his romantic dream.
