Hawk
Chapter Four
It was dark, dark gray, and there was a gag in her mouth. She was shackled to a wall; damp wall, cold. She couldn't have been unconscious long as her wrists and ankles didn't hurt. Yet.
In the dim light, she could tell she wasn't alone. To her left and right, others … other women, who were likewise caught and caged. Levy grunted, muffled by the gag, trying to get their attention. Neither moved. They were still out, but their breathing sounded steady enough.
Her eyes adjusted more to the room and the gray darkness lightened. There was a familiar seat in the middle of the large space. She'd spent many days there, watching her Father. Her brother.
Now it belonged to Gavin.
"I must say," he raised his chin, acknowledging that she was awake, "I'm impressed with how well your 'guard' spell is holding against me. Combined with distance, the five I originally took have escaped. You've proven to be better than I hoped, even without the boost you'll be getting now."
Were it not for the women beside her, Levy might have been happier about Gajeel and the others remaining free. And the compliment. It was a compliment, and a traitorous part of herself was buoyed by the simply stated point. But the women were there, so happiness was a thin, fragile line stretched between her heart and her brother's approval.
All she ever wanted was for him to love her and for them to be together and free of this place.
Forget it Levy! Focus!
She jerked her head to indicate her interest in his other prisoners.
"Ah, yes. This time I decided to take not only the strongest, but also those with traits similar to your own. It is my theory that your magic will better respond to and absorb the essence of those closest to you, physically and emotionally."
From what she could tell the only similarity was gender. She looked harder, forcing her eyes to see despite the gloom. Her eyes widened. And guild. It was Erza. Erza was hanging on her right, and Mira – skin shadowed with bruises – on her left.
As if reading her mind, Gavin explained his reasoning. She loved it when people did that. It gave her time to think.
"Similarities add another layer to the spell. All of you possessing similar body chemistry is good for a start. Feeding you men would work magically, but would not have quite the level of benefit that you'll receive from a mage with complimentary physicality."
She rolled her eyes. 'Complimentary physicality'? Has he lost his mind? And, more importantly: FEED? She twisted her wrists in the shackles, but tried to be discreet about it. He didn't notice, caught in his monologuing. Not that it mattered, since she wasn't able to rotate her wrist enough for anything useful.
She grunted in frustration. He didn't notice that, either.
"But it's so much deeper than that, with you. All three of you are defined by painful childhoods and life-altering losses. You then matured, together, in the same environment. All three of you are kind and caring top-to-bottom, but each possessed of a fierce core. A hard, burning spirit, that ignites when need demands."
She scoffed at that, but the sound came out as a choking moan. He laughed. Happily.
He had some serious emotional problems.
"Well, your levels of fierceness and triggers for that fierceness are different, I grant you, but still there in all three." He continued his list, "Determined. Stubborn. Leaders. And there are the smaller things, such as the sibling pairs-"
"Hgeh?"
"The shifter and her two blood relations, the red-head and her fire and ice underlings, and you and your two fawning puppies," he explained. "All three of you the head of your little three-person families. You and your two guildmates have distinctive appearances and personalities; people do not often forget about you once they have met you."
The more he spoke, the more she was moved by his words. Never would she have compared herself to two of the strongest Fairy Tail mages – two of the strongest mages in Fiore! – but he spoke each word with conviction, and each word filled her with golden brilliance.
She was so caught up in what he was saying that she missed how he was saying it. The tones. The movements. Missed the pen dangling from his fingertips. (Father's pen. Father's pen. Father's pen.)Missed the crawl of magic on the women beside her.
When she realized, it was too late.
There was a slight tingle at her throat, where he had grabbed her in the courtyard. Runes, no doubt. Penned with the relic of their father's magic. Stolen when Gavin murdered him. Runes of beguilement. She was finding it difficult to look away from him because of how glorious she felt when he was within her field of vision. Like sunlight on wet skin, she was basking in the warmth of him.
She felt a sharp pierce of half-a-dozen needles penetrate her arms. The glory faded, replaced with illness, weakness; she wanted to faint.
"Unghn!" she struggled, but to no avail. Whipping her head right and left, she could discern narrow tubes connecting her arms to the arms of her friends.
Blood. Blood, blood, blood! Layers and layers, just as he said. Blood taken. From Mother. From Father. From them to … to … to...
"Arhhrgh! Ahg … Ughra!" she screamed. She whimpered. She cried. She thrashed.
Gavin stood and walked to her with measured steps. His calm, unshaken by her actions. "And, while we strengthen your general power by use of your extraordinary companions, we must also enhance that which makes you worthy of your god-hood. And that which makes you mine."
He held up a maroon ball. Opaque, but shimmering with a film of charms. Hundreds of charms. They almost blinded her. Despite her mania, she recognized three of the charms: Longevity, possession, and dependence.
She began to shake. "Ungo. Ungo. Ungo! Leez, Gaan! Leez. Ungo!"
Fabric tore, and she screamed. Skin tore, and she screamed. Her ribs creaked and broke open, and she made a sound that could not be described. She could feel Gavin's hands inside her. Pushing aside organs. For much too long, her lungs could not take in air. Agony, somehow she could still comprehend agony, sliced through her as he surely manipulated the tissue that formed her heart.
Through it all, she retained consciousness. Eventually her ribs were closed. Her skin knit whole. Cloth covered her.
Then, with the wave of a hand (Father's pen), he blessed her with sleep.
When Levy woke, she was assaulted by daylight. The pain, all of the pain was gone. She was horizontal. A bed. She rolled to her side. Light was coming through a large window, shaded by sheer white curtains.
"Home." Home. Home. She was still home.
A place where I do not cry.
Sitting up was uncomfortable, but she had to look. Had to see. The lower half of the walls were splashed with bright, beautiful colors. She had been … five? Yes, five when she did that. It was a surprise when her father left the paint alone.
But maybe not a surprise, in hindsight. If, as Gavin claimed, Father meant to make her into a … a god of creation and language, perhaps he considered a certain amount of individual personality necessary. He had, on occasion, allowed her to play outside. For almost a year, she had a puppy. A puppy named Apple. She wasn't sure why she had given him such a name; he had gray fur and black eyes.
She had loved him.
Father had forced her to put him down.
Erza. Mira.
Levy's blood rushed to her head, and her ears buzzed. She did not want to remember such things. Did not want to be in a place that reeked of nightmarish nostalgia.
The door creaked, and she shifted so that she could watch Gavin walk in with a tray of foodstuff. His skin was ruddier, and his smile somewhat sweeter.
This same thing, the image of him in her doorway. Her brother with a tray and a smile. So many times in their childhoods, she had seen this very image. They were happy memories that defined the worst of memories. Defined their stations in the world as they knew it: In the dungeon, Levy cleaned him after he was whipped; in her room, Gavin woke her with breakfast the following morning to chase away the nightmares.
Above ground, Father required a semblance of familial closeness. There were all those important people to put on a happy face for. But in this room – in her room , where her brother would leave her letters sealed with blue wax – closeness was genuine.
Was.
"Good morning, dove. You should be hungry. Please, eat."He sounded … boisterous. And revolting.
Levy slapped her hands over her ears. She pushed back until she fell off of the bed and backed into a corner. Too much. Too soon. He wasn't giving her the time she needed to catch up.
"Erza. Mira. Erza. Mira. Erza. Mira." She whispered the names that light and memory were working to drive from her. Gavin was trying to pull her from her present and stitch her back into the past, where he could own her and control her. She had to regain herself.
She focused on her body, remembering well the wounds he gave her, but finding no lingering pain. The same was true of the needle marks on her arms. Or rather the lack of needle marks.
Her throat tingled. Beguilement runes still in place. And deep within her flesh, magic rolled. Boiled. Some of it hers. Some of it foreign. But it was merging, she could feel the tension of the combining. It was becoming something new.
She quivered with energy. An ache was growing in her thighs and ankles. She wanted to move. Wanted to run. Needed to run.
"Food," Gavin was saying as she examined herself, "will help stabilize the connection between your magic and your body." He sat the tray on her bed. She looked up, unable to ignore him and that golden glorious feeling she got when he was near. He tilted his head to study her.
"What?" she snapped. She was fighting a desire to not just run, but run to him. Her fingers twitched. Her body on the verge of exploding with contradictions in will and power and emotion.
"Your skin is too red. Something will have to be done about that. It might fade as your body finds its equilibrium. If not," he tapped is lips with a fingertip, and she saw he still held Father's pen, "we could cover you in runes. That would make a striking impression when you begin walking Earthland in your god form. You aren't at all intimidating, and any god acting as my subordinate needs to capture the reverence of humanity at first sight. Runic tattoos would evoke a feeling of otherworldliness..." he took a moment to ponder before snapping his fingers. "Yes. I like it."
Not that she considered him all that sane before, but he was tilting pretty hard on the bipolar marry-go-round. Whether it made him more or less terrifying, she hadn't yet decided.
"Tattoos."
"Correct. It can be a defining feature. Gods need those sorts of things." He looked around, "Shouldn't do it here. The study would be best. I've a large desk there that should help."
"Study? Father's study?" She did not want to go there. Father hurt Gavin in the dungeon. Father hurt her in the study.
His gaze narrowed, "My study."
She sucked in a breath and a familiar form of obedience moved her lips. "Yes, Gavin."
He grinned, "I rather enjoy that. Say it again."
She did not want to, but as she clenched her teeth to refuse, a fire burned in her lungs and that obedience pressed on her. The sounds, each phoneme combining as words, born by her tongue and lips. "Yes, Gavin."
Once more, she was filled with golden pleasure.
"Again."
Her struggle was shorter, the euphoria longer. "Yes, Gavin."
"Again."
"Yes, Gavin."
"Good. Now, eat. Then we will cover you in words, just as you are filled with them."
Author's Note: So. Four. I still have NO idea what I'm doing. Seriously. As of the end of chapter three, I think I'm just … writing and hoping that my fingers and the pen I'm holding know what they're doing. (And that my fingers and keys translate that knowledge when when I go from paper to LibreWriter...)
Sorry for any errors. Sorry for any confusion. Just sorry in general, I think.
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