It was massive; a spike of wood with metal rails and clamps and chains that held it, hovering above the ground and ready to be lowered presumably. The bolts alone were the size of any man's fist, yet Caleb had smirked when he'd seen it. Even the camps of lurdens were ridiculous, because no rebel in their right mind would bother trying to steal it, and anything strong enough to destroy would outmatch the lurdens in a heartbeat. "So.. Phobos' latest weapon is.. An overgrown gardening tool?"
"Den échei. He's looking for underground tunnels from the Meridian Plains, into the castle." Drake watched Caleb's eyes dart over the scene, but did not dare ask where Caleb had found this new sarcasm. Partly because Drake already knew, and partly because Caleb didn't need to be teased at the moment, when he'd arrived with his neck in a state and his face guilty and embarrassed. No one bothered to look at wounds -especially on the measly 'murmur boy'- twice in Meridian's rebel base; the scars were tended to, but not spoken of, but Drake knew it would be different on Earth, if only by the way that Caleb hadn't re-emerged until the most of his skin was fresh and clean of cuts.
"But we don't have any tunnels Drake," Caleb's emerald eyes never left the site and Drake's never left Caleb. That's how it had always been, but it was nicer now, to be mulling upon the boy rather than watching him. It had taken the rebellion three years, to graft Caleb into what they wanted, and in months Caleb was more of a boy than Drake ever believed he'd been. And yet Caleb was still the best they had, even if his eyes had been plauged with worry the second he'd taken his hands off of the alleged Book of Secrets, which naturally Caleb had entrusted with only Aldarn - though it'd been a surprise that Caleb had mentioned Will not being aloud near it for some reason that hadn't been particularly clear. But it had implied that he would have trusted it to her.. And that in itself was a miracle. "I wish we did.."
"But if he digs deep enough.." Drake blinked as the first of the raindrops hit his face, but Caleb's green eyes were already tracing the clouds through their cover of shrubbery. "Aftós tha mas vreíte ólous."
An older male nodded and Drake turned to the frowning boy a final time.
"The men are ready Caleb, what's our-" A clattering came from behind, and Drake's eyes bulged while Caleb grimaced at the supposed ally of a passling smuggler. The 'Blunk', had only fallen over but a lurden roared out a battle-cry, and Drake knew the cover was over.
"Go!" Caleb pulled out his blade, and Drake pushed out of the shrubs to yell out and join the sudden masses of rebels. He smashed into a lurden and threw his dagger into another; sliding it out before the body even had time to fall. This was his childhood, and Drake wondered how it had come that Caleb would shudder at the idea of killing. He plunged the knife again, and supposed it was Caleb's heritage to be a perfect fighter, but his new heart was no longer focused on how many kills he got being a reflection of how close he was to winning. The only thing that worried Drake, as steel hit steel and he dragged his blade along another, was that Caleb had been winning. But would it continue?
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Will had been sat, outside with the dark skies clouding over and her legs hanging from the low wall that sat around a house two doors from the Silver Dragon. The moon was trying to find it's way out, and Will had mumbled that she was already late, but Caleb found humor in her having had decided to dwell on that fact rather than rectify. A car drifted by, as Caleb watched from those two doors away, Will's hair vivid and the curves of her cheeks clear with the street lamp shining directly across the road at her, and Caleb couldn't see exactly what she was looking at - some item of interest hidden within the shadows created by her torso, which arched over her petite lap. "It's getting later."
Will's eyes had darted up then, and he didn't miss her hand shooting with it's secret object of wonder into the confines of her pocket; shoved in roughly, so that Caleb hoped that it was nothing delecate. It took her a moment to smile softly, and Caleb knew that she'd have to be tired for the dark sky alone to be seducing such a girl to slow down to this sleepy, almost stand-still state. "Yeah, time makes fool of us all eventually.."
It was sarcasm, and Caleb smiled, but more so in the lack of emphasism or spark that Will usually carried flatly into her words. It had almost sounded as if she were serious, and Caleb's fingers wrapped around the spine of the book as he stepped quietly toward her; taking the care to place it furthest from her when he too pushed himself on the wall next to her. And now all he needed, was something else to say. "W-"
"Is it.. Does it hurt alot?" The joke he'd practiced at least twice in his head, tumbled into ruins and ashes as his neck began to burn offensively, and he willed his hand not to fly up and try futiley to hide the mess he was in. It was hard, Caleb realized, to have someone stare at you with concern. Rebels only stared at him because he was a sin, and Aldarn had never truly worried for Caleb properly. But Will was staring into his eyes now, with swirling cappucino that swam with the concern he'd rather not drink up, and if only to avoid her gaze, his eyes found it mesmerizing for Will's further hand to fly up and cross to her left, and for clumsy fingers to push her hair behind her ear, still waiting for him to speak, but flustered by the silence. "I just-"
"It's fine if I don't think about it." And it was fine, though it was more to do with Will and the others' thinking about it that made his neck sting in four parallel lines. "Does it bother you?"
He'd meant himself and his neck, but Will's hidden treasure pulled out of her pocket, and Caleb realized it was her own hand that she'd been staring at. It looked worse than his somehow, that Will's tiny hand was slitted from her knuckles down, almost to her wrist in harshly torn skin that opposed his own neater lines. The Mogriff had slipped away from Caleb, but he could remember now that she'd kicked it away from herself, and it was a wonder she hadn't even screamed when her flesh tore. "It's not so bad I guess.. I wasn't exactly gonna die.."
"Yeah." Caleb doubted that she'd want to hear of exactly how they inject the sour poison under the skin or how she would most certainly not have lived if the beast had got it's claws in past her elbow. So instead he stared, up at the streetlamp as Will looked down at her hands, until he couldn't ignore her anymore and clasped his palm over the tears. It was only when he felt the twisted skin that he thought of how Yan Lin had implied Will was 'wrong' and how the Mage's waters were not above healing women. "I think I can get it fixed.. I'm going to do mine tomorrow.."
And there it was again, that something as Will's eyes flashed down from his face, and Caleb forced himself to look at something he didn't like, yet somehow loved at the same time. Will didn't let the pain show on her face, and as the familiar words that weren't for Will clawed at Caleb's throat, he recalled calling her beautiful in a spring.. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea after all.
"I'll take some back.. For you.." Her eyes flashed darker in conusion and lack of street-light, when her hair fell over her face, and Caleb forgot the offer to walk her home if she needed it; taking large steps back toward the Dragon without an offer of goodbye.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Each of the rebels were falling, single body by body, but Lord Cedric's eyes misted with hate and he knew exactly who's silhouette was dashing and pushing past lurdens' bodies, and Cedric knew that Caleb was far too good a fighter to be allowed to remain alive. It would be more amusing though, Cedric noted with a smirk and a click of his fingers, if Caleb were to slay the guardian girls himself before Cedric devoured every inch of the squalid child's life. Disgust would promote him to dispose o the boy's body quickly, but resentment made Cedric want to peel off every inch of Caleb's skin, and salt him alive before finally making a mercy killing as the murmurer begged for death and was burned with his brothers and sisters. All of them, would be Cedric's preference, but if Cedric was to be killed by Phobos after Elyon was done, he would like to have murdered a fragment of Phobos' soul first. One murmurer, seventy murmurers. Cedric would so like to do it and grinned with idealism as his slim hands slid over the golden shine of a thick, heavy horn, taking care to lick his lips before pressing the cold metal against them.
One thing, which would have seethed Cedric to his very core, would have come if his eyes had just come across a young boy being thrust into the water; out-numbered by three, allowing the murmur child to miss the calling blow of the Horn of Hypnos.
Den échei - No.
Aftós tha mas vreíte ólous - He'll find and kill us all.