A/N: Sorry about the last chapter's grammar and stuff. The comp I had to use is severely limited and I was very sick. I will edit it when I can. Anyways, flashback central, ninty nine percent of this chapter is flashback, sorry, it's just how it is... Wrote this to "Dearly Beloved" and "Sancturay" from the KH2 soundtrack. Somehow the somber sad beat really fits Yuan and his childhood. Yep, you read that right, Yuan's childhood, a lot about Yuan is revieled, as promised in the previous chapter.
Defiance: Birth of the Renegades
Chapter 37
Judgment: A Tide of Memory
"I'm lord of nothing... don't make a mockery of the disgraced." Yuan Vor'esse.
The room, merely cramped the day before, was now jammed. The distinction for the words if one had bothered to look them up, was a subtle one. Both related to states of overpopulation in an area lacking space. The only differential factor between them was the degree. It was a subtle measure, more felt in the force of language's most basic component, the word.
Reality, unlike language, was a thing felt and seen. It was uncomfortable, disquieting, and the stark difference between cramped, which had been the common term to describe the conditions in the mess hall had changed to jammed. The members of the shattered anti-Cruxis organization now stood shoulder to shoulder –much to the discomfort of those nearest to the thrashing and bound Armsmaster and his restraining guards- judge and jury and defenders and armed watch dogs, made a tangled knot at the fore front of the proceedings, and the jury and citizens of the Ranch were a larger more incoherent mass in the back. Ceremonial spaces, places, and spans were abolished, in their place stood a mess of mirrors that only reflected one figure.
Despite being stripped of his vestments of office he sat stiff, his eyes now clear of pain. He was a regal figure, his crown of black stone and steel left at his feet, the only apparent hint of his fallen status was the guardsman who had an black onyx tipped weapon pointed at his back.
And his crown -seeped in red, rimmed in black- it lay at his feet, split in twain at the Judgments' order…
Shards of white quartz lay at the foot of each span of polished mirror, the meager light allowed from the slit like windows of the mess hall caught the quartz. The quartz began to glow, with all colors that could be seen by human, half elven, and the more pure elven blood. It painted the man in the mirror a million different hues, etched the runes within the steel mirrors with brilliant surreal halos.
To those present, the colors bled beyond vision, and the runes stole vision, creating a yawning blackness that consumed, isolated. Voices cried out, a dreadful colophony that echoed in perceived emptiness.
Slowly, surreally, light stirred about them. It was a living entity that etched the world about them in familiar hues. Hues became shapes, shapes identifiable things, and they could see. Yet the vision was not their own, the time, the place, none present could remember. Save one.
X
"What is it?"
Warm hands, cold tones, the story of his life. Still, at the touch his eyes fluttered open. Instinct, aching for the warmth and awareness that he knew could exist in living, yet had rarely felt for himself.
"Awake, alive." The guardsman grunted, stepped back and kicked the prone blue haired child. "Damn shame. Those boots, they'd be a good fit for my kid."
"You wanna put your kid's feet in shoes worn by that."
"You could always wash 'em. Animal hide aint easy to find, not with the Tethe'allan dogs slaughtering everything. Even the damned squirrels in the damn trees."
There was a grunt of agreement, and the boy didn't lift his head. He only numbly rubbed his side and looked at the snow covered roadside that had been his bed. The snow never broke, it died before it broke. He was jealous, for it being stronger than he was, than he could ever be. Even now, tears filled his eyes, and he cried, and sniveled, and hurt.
He hated hurting, wished it would all just go away.
"Take them."
They jolted at his words, startled.
"I don't want them." Yuan sniffled, looking up at the guards with smarting eyes. "And if you don't some winno would just knife me for them. I… was going to throw them away anyways."
They looked at him, startled, not believing. Frustration filled his soul, made his face twist with newly budding hate. He reached down and with shaking hands pealed off the leather boots. He threw them at the two humans, whishing he was like his father, strong enought to hurt them, wishing he was like his mother, strong enough a spell caster to blast them away. But he wasn't either of his parents, just a weak half elf. Turning, he bolted, ran away from them on bloody aching feet, the smell of soot still filled his nostrils, the smell of the weeks old fire.
X
Shaking, the cold was unbearable, he crouched, held himself to stave off the numbing death that he'd felt coming for him but hadn't claimed him just yet. He wished it would, that it would just hurry up and finsih what it had started. But no one listened to half elves, not even the angels. He shifted his tunic, a sad set of rags that he'd stollen from some woman's laundry line the summer previous. It was still rumpled, unclean, much like he was.
But then that's how the world wanted it, he wasn't going to fight the world to prove otherwise. You just took the hits and got up for more, and when you couldn't take it, you died. That was his life, pure and simple.
A life going to get more complicated.
Padding out from the street, his practiced eyes seeing a hundred placed to hide from authorities, the boy slipped behind the first human he saw. He never bothered the half elves, they'd know what he was in a trice and he'd get caught and killed, but the humans. Well he could fake an elfiness if he needed to and he hadn't been caught yet.
And that's all that mattered, living and taking in as much as you could, even if all there was to take in was pain.
He barely noticed the human's eyes flick onto him, then away. Was only vaugly aware of the goldne blonde hair, he was focused on his goal. The pouch, the way it bulged there must be tons of Gald within! His eyes watched it's swaying, absently mimed it's swaying. His hands shook with longing. Quick as a snake, he reached out, snatched the pouch and ripped it free. He turned to bolt, but all at once the human spun on his heal and grabbed his shoulder. Yuan's mouth sagged open in shock as the human whirled, caught his wrist, and pulled his back. The pouch fell between them, forgotten. Scared by the mane like hair, and wild flashing blue eyes, he yalped, and tried to wrench his arm free.
No luck, he cursed his half blood and wrenched his arm so voiolently it began to hurt. There was a cry, a guardsman was coming forward. Pale with terror, Yuan moaned, and at that sound the anger in the human's eyes softened.
"Play along," the man hissed. "Do you understand?"
He wanted to nod, but didn't dare. The guardsman was there now, would hear and see everything the way guardsmen did. And he'd punish too. Guardsmen loved to punish.
"Is there a problem here, Mer?"
"No sir." Eyes wide, innocent, the man smiled an almost boy like smile. "None at all."
Scornful eyes fell onto him, and the blue eyed human sighed.
"He's an aide, my Father's orders." The human grimaced. "I was merely punishing him for being a fool and droping the pouch. Boy, pick it up."
Eyes wide, shocked that a human had just lied for him, Yuan couldn't seem to remember how to pick anything up.
"Si... sir?" Yuan squeaked.
"The pouch, you dunce, pick it up. And bring some supper to our estate when you've gathered your wits together." The man's voice was cold, regal, and Yaun could have believed the human was a Lord of some type. The man waited, and at last when Yuan could pick up the pouch he nodded.
"Do you remember your orders, or do I have to draw you a map?"
"N... no... Bring back dinner, right?"
"Excelent, there is something besides fluff between those ears. Well, move along."
Numb, eyes still glazed from shock. Yuan woodenly padded off, more money then he could count on his hands now rested in his hands.
"You sure you can trust him, my lord?"
"He's trustworthy." Yuan heard the human grunt. "And when he isn't being a fool he's useful."
"Hunh, never found a use for them, my Lord, but do as you will." The guardsman was leaving now. He brushed past Yuan, uncaring, but others might care. Other beggers and thieves would see Yuan's luck and take it from him if they could. Clenching his hands around the money, he wondered what he should do with it all, then an idea came to him and he nodded to himself.
He wasn't quite sure what trustworthy meant, but maybe he could give a shot at being it...
X
"Well love, I'm sorry but it had to be done."
"Yggdrasil..." A woman's voice sighed. "While that certianly was the nice thing to do..."
Creeping away form the open window, he nodded. This was the house. He was sure of it. He recognized the man's voice. Satisfied he picked up the chicken from it's place on the slushy ground and trudged to the door. Dead bird in one hand, it's cool blood smeared all along his bare white arm, the other hand fisted around the money pouch, Yuan was at a quandry. He couldn't knock on the door! Not with the chicken and not with the money. Finally he settled on a compromise.
He yelled, and when the man came to answer the look of shock on those human features made Yuan smile. That smile took years from his features, and the hard brital ice from his eyes.
"Your dinner, my lord?"
X
"Daddy!" Squeaking, happy, the green haired chld threw herself across the room and pounced on the blonde haired human's legs. Chuckling, the green haired woman pried the spring shoot geen haired girl from her "daddy's" legs. The woman Yuan had heard ealier padded out of the kitchen and handed the girl to the man named Yggdrasil. She rolled her eyes good naturedly as they embraced, pulling her hair back to reveal a pointed ear.
"Really... humans, you're all so overly affectionatte."
The human ignored that, and smiled at the girl. "Hello, Martel. Miss me, hunny?"
Yuna stared dumbly at the human man and the woman elf. Didn't they know that.. that if they got married and had kids that thier kids would be...
Half elves... any children they had would be half elves. Like Martel, as she looked down at him and asked who he was, he knew... She was a half elf, just like him.
A tainted, evil, half elf... Just like him.
Yggdrasil smiled, was mumbling some explaination, yet Yuan didn't hear a word. Suddenly the girl was set down, and she walked towards him. Not small enough to toddle, not old enough to have her mothers alien grace or aquire her father's sure steady step, she hovered between the three options as she hovered between the worlds of elf and human. She offered a hand and he looked at it, not understanding.
"Hi, I'm Martel!" She chirped, still smiling. When his silence dragged on, she forwned, just a tiny bit. "Oh, I'm sorry... I forgot the second part. What's your name?"
"Ahh I'm Yuan?"
"Yuan?" She mimned the squeak he'd put into his name. "All high pitched like that? Yu-ahhn? Are you part squirel? Daddy says Mommy's part squirel sometimes, that all elves are. Because they like to live in trees and like to hoarde sticks and leaves and..."
"I'm not a squirrel!" Yuan yelled. "I'm a half elf, like you!"
"Children." The green haired woman sighed, then she stepped forward, gracefully seperating them. With a grace that amde him dizzy she planted a kiss on his forehead and took the chicken from his suddenly limp hand. "Thank you for bringing dinner, Yuan, that was very sweet. You can give Chaich the extra gald. And Dear, for that squirrel comment, you are getting the extra burnt peice."
"Now Phaith..." The man squeaked. "Aren't you being a little harsh, it was just a jo-"
The woman's green eyes turned to slits, and the human gulped.
"Whatever you say, Dear."
X
Laying down in fron to the hearth, wrapped in a blanket, Yuan listened to them talk at night. He had listened to them talk so many nights now, so many sleepless nights. He tossed and turned, the strange burning in his gut and hands was so bad he sweated and shook like he had a fevor. Clenching his fists to hide the tell tale violet sparks he curled around the burning hissing bits that sometimes snapped from his fingers.
It hurt, and to his shame he whimpered from the pain.
"Yuan." Martel's mother was there, hearing him. "What's wrong?"
She was there, stroking his back. When had he curled into a ball? He didn't remember, and he shook for not remembering. Hands clasped over his, pulled his hands in front of him. She gasped, the elf's face tainted with unnatural hues in the purple light, as was his. He was faintly aware of the scrape of a chair, of someone else in the room coming to them.
"My Gods..." The human whispered.
"Make it stop, please.." He sobbed. "It.. hurts..."
She held him, then. Cradled him to her breast and he cried, his ears burning, his hands hissing with the hellish purple light. Unafraid, unlike everyone else, unlike the human, the elf held him.
X
"It's natural, for a half elf that is." She grimaced, thinking that he slept she had rested his head in her lap. "As natural as anything can be for them. Unfortunatly it's part of growing up."
"I'm at a loss love, you know I've never understood magic."
Martel's mother chuckled, the hand that had been stroking his head left him for a bit, perhaps to caress the human's cheek. Not daring to open his eyes, he lay, and listened. Enjoying the scent of human and elf, the warmth of the fire against his cold skin.
"Well, you aren't perfect."
"Unlike Mer. Rechinali, your proper husband?"
Martel's mother laughed, and only Yuan's long hard earned self control kept his face from scrunching up in confusion.
"Mer. Retch, you mean?" The woman said as her warm laughter disolved into a few humored chuckles. "Yes... well that's in the past. And I wasn't that fond of Hiemdal that I've spent more than a moments time grieving over our exile. Better freedom than that stagnant sanctuary, and what's life without love? Still... this one you've picked up has got a very rough path ahead."
"And you haven't explained a thing."
"You're a distraction, very hard to explain anything with you about."
"Well excuse me. I could just leave if you'd like..."
"You, will do no such thing!" The woman flared. "Now you get over here right now, mister, and sit!"
"...Arf..."
There was the light sound of flesh striking flesh. His ear twitched at the familar sound and the woman chuckled, stroked it playfully.
"Just like Martel..."
"Hmmm?"
"I'll explain it later, when our master actor is tucked into a real bed."
He supressed the urge to twitch, or grimace, steadfastly he held to his guise of sleep.
"I don't understand."
"Later love... the river won't flow upstream, no matter how he wills it..."
"Typical crytic elven I see." The human grumbled.
The elf laughed, then sobered, pulling the hair away from Yuan's face with a suddenly cool hand. "Imagine a door, a door with all your potential on the other side. Potential isn't a still thng, it moves and throws itself against the door. Life, experience, and experimentation allow you to open the door, a tiny bit, and a little potential slitheres out. Yet, still you can hear it, thrashing, smashing against the door, wanting out. It's like that with magic, we... hear things, parts of nature. But we're equiped with the right type of ears. We can hear it and understand what's happening to us. Humans are both deaf and blind to what we hear."
"So, half elves?"
"Some can hear, some can't, and some have more than hearing. They taste and feel, are a hundred more times attuned to the world, because they can see it from both the human perspective, and the elven perspective... Simutantiously. What makes it worse is stress. A hagard, worried elf might find his tallent building withing him at an unseemly rate. He might cast spell when startled, angry... But if that happened to a half elf... a half elf who doesn't just hear but is so tied into an element that you can't tell where the magic begins and the person ends..."
"Rough... might be an understantment then?"
"Very much so." Martel's mother sighed. "Someone's wrenched the door open, and it's all he can do to keep from drowning."
X
"You mean, this is going to keep happening?" Martel's father howled, pointing to the dishes that Yuan had accidently fried when he'd had yet another fit while cleaning. It had to have been the fifth one this week, and the Yggdrasil's were fast running out of dishes, carpet, and non-scorched walls.
"I think we should definatly move out, soon. If he has these fits while in town he could hurt people, but if he's outside..."
"Not until winter's over, I'm not risking your health, or the health of our son to..."
"It's been rainy these last few days, hasn't it?" Martel's mother noted, her tone bland, her emerald eyes glinting. From his place in the hall Yuan shivered, and wished the squirming warmth in his blood would just go away. "Very... stormy, it's strange for winter in Malli-tokyio, isn't it?"
"You don't think..." Martel's father gasped. "No, he's just a child, even adult magi can't just... screw with the weather!"
Martel's mother sighed, wound her arm around her human lover's waist and sighed. Looking at the mess Yuan had just made.
"He might, if he can he's definatly going to be one of the most powerful magi this world's seen in a melenia. Still, we daren't take the chan-"
As they had talked, Yuan had slowly back peddled for the door. Horror shining in his sapphire eyes. With shaking hands he reached for the handle, the door was open, and he slipped out. Not bothering to hear, having heard enough. He ran, shoving his way past a guardsman that tried to stop him in the middle of the street. His feet found the familiar paths he had walked a mere two weeks ago, the hidden paths in the allys and filth, he knew them well. He'd use them, to disappear.
X
Martel found him, he didn't even lift his head when he heard her approuch, merely pulled the hair out of his eyes and sighed. He'd have to steal anouther knife and cut his hair again, it was getting way too long.
"Yuan?"
He didn't turn, hugged the thick fuzzy cloak that had been made from the ruined remains of one of Mr. Yggdrasil's capes. He wanted to banish the cold, butt he warm inside him was making it both hot and cold. The slithering warmth was making him sweat, and the sweat was feezing to his skin, making him even more miserable. He shuddered, stared at the slums before him. Once he had loved this place. This high place he'd spent many nights, hot and cold, comforting himself that he was better then the rest of the street trash if for no better reason he could see them and they couldn't see him on the ruined roof he'd staked out as his own. A warm hand closed over his shoulder, he shivered at the touch, and she yalped, jerked back.
"I'm sorry Marel, but I think you should just go home and leave me alone." Yuan whispered, feeling the storm under his skin run through the red courdors of his viens. "I... keep hurting people. I don't want to, but that's all I do."
He could smell scorched leather, scorched fur, but didn't turn. Not even when Martel whimpered.
"Please, just..." Tears cloged his throat, he shuddered. "Leave me alone. It's safer. You won't have to die like everyone else did."
"No."
Now he turned, and though tears stood in her young eyes and untried face. She met his gaze. then lsowly, walked towards him, he wanted to hop to his feet, to run, but there was rusty bits of frame poking out nearby. If he moved the horrible power would leap through him, to it, it would shock them both. He didn't dare. Moaning, he closed his eyes, tried to pull the horrible power inside, but it crackled along his hands.
Ignoring that, ignoring the fact he was a monster, Martel embraced him. Held him. He shuddered, then cried out in agony as lighting seeped from his fingers and blasted the ground at thier feet.
X
"His name's Mithos." The girl noted, pointing out her little brother like he was important or something. Rolling his eyes, Yuan rubbed his gloved hands together, pleased that the tingling in his gut and heart wasn't bad today. Maybe he'd have a normal day, like everyone else! Staring at the bundle in white, those large bubious eyes and whisps of golden curl of the half elf all but thrust into his face, Yuan grimaced.
Normal, there wasn't such a thing as normal when you traveled with the Yggdrasil's.
"He's awful small."
"Babies always are." Martel told him, matter of factly, cuddling her brother to her chest.
Ignoring Martel and her anoying bratty brother, Yuan watched the older Yggdrasil's on the other side of the clearing. He frowned, wondering over the strange smelling tea that husband was making for wife, and what 'wasting disease' meant.
It couldn't be a good thing, that was for sure.
"Daddy's just making medicine for Mommy." Martel told him, wondering perhaps, what he found so interesting about that. Daddy always made medicine for Mommy when it got cold out. There was nothing new to her, it was how it always was.
But Yuan, a little more worldly than Martel, knew that that's not how it was for everyone else. So he worried, but kept his worry to himself.
X
"So, she's dead." Yuan said, hating the numb cold of his tone. He'd been expecting it, and he held Martel, even as Martel's father held the howling Mithos.
"It happens, when the elves left Welgaia, they exposed themselves to the evils of our world. Disease, is the most dangerous for them. In... Heimdall, they say that they keep a shard of Welgaia, to keep the disease at bay, but..." The human's voice broke, and Yuan nodded. Not understanding, he'd just accept.
"She left, because of me."
Faintly remembering, faintly understanding, Yuan shook his head.
"She'd have left anyways."
The human looked at him, his red rimmed eyes wide in shock.
"If I lived forever, I'd want to see everything, the good and the bad." Yuan told the human. "And, what little I know of her... She'd have wanted the same thing too."
"Only eleven years to life and too wise."
Jerking at the human's sad tone, Yuan looked at the rock instead. The unmarked, featureless rock that served to cover a grave. Better that then to see the pity, the grief, to have to feel these things.
Not feeling, it kept the storms at bay, and he had to do his best not to feel, not now anyways, not until they were safe.
But as he closed his eyes and held the sobbing Martel he knew, when the feeling came, it would come with the fury of a hundred stroms. He could taste them, feel them, building in the back of his soul.
X
It rained for a week, a whole seven days, without end, without break, the lightning demolished the tallest eldest trees, and the people of the village Sylune never had the sense to ask themselves what was the cause. They endured the howling winds, and jagged lightening without complaint, for strange weather was fast to fade. Natural power of any sort would soon deminish, consumed by the warr that was so distant yet so near. Sick, nearly dying, Yuan had becoem something of a ghost resident of the town. having taken a shed on the town's outskirts of his own, he avoided the humans during the day. Only coming up to those who he sensed had need and did jobs for them in exchange for food, tools, or clothing.
It was little wonder that they hated and feared him, not understanding his strange ways and even stranger moods. He'd ignored the continued offers of the Yggdrasils to move in with them, though he did visit them from time to time. His guise of being busy and craving solitude served to hide the real reason he avoided those around him.
The storms in his soul had yet to abait, and it would be a long three years before they did so enough that he could endure the touch of another, the presence of a friend. So he remained in solitude, filling his endless empty hours with tasks to drive away the hellish silence.
X
Holding the broken blade in one hand, he offered his sizziling free hand to those he protected. Shaking, the blonde haired boy ignored the hints of lightning and grasped the older half elf's hand. Martel's hand closed over her brother's, and Yuan grinned wearily at them. Nearby a horse plowed into it's nearest kin in order to get away, it's rider dead at it's feet. The still living bandit's hand sawed at thie riegns of his beast, and Yuan charged, past the dead, the living, wadded thorugh the massacure that seemed nessicary when capturing a whole town by the blade. He was indifferent to the horror in Martel's eyes, the terror in Mithos', indifferent to the dead man he had to step over to lead them away.
The power had come at his call, at last. No longer did it control him, rather he and it were melded together. It was both a blaphsomy and devine, and it's mark... Armor, flesh, they were a melted mixed mass that only occasionally spasmed were all it had left behind. If he'd had more time, and the inclination, not even that would have lingered. Only ashes, and perhaps not even that much would he have left behind...
Extascy and horror, terror and passion, power... All this was his, his legacy. and he would use it all to keep them safe, his two friends, for they were all he had left in a world that hated him for the very blood that pounded through his viens.
X
"Human..." He spat, tossing the soaked auburn haired man to the snow.
The human in question groaned, and looked at him with black brown eyes.
"Ewww!" Cringing away, Mithos stared at the hated human with wide eyes. "He's bleeding red, Yuan!"
Raising an eyebrow at the child's ignorance Yuan snorted. "All things bleed red, Mithos."
"Oh."
"Ung, you're both being savages! Don't just stand there, help him!"
Frowning, Yuan looked up from the dying human's form. He stared at the girl who would later become his beloved.
"Why?"
X
"Mercy, is an art. As surely as is swords play or magic." Martel grumbled. "and it's one all three of you thick headed idiots need to pick up!"
"Are we being saved, or scolded?" Kratos grumbled at the green haired half elf who was dangling the keys of thier cell right out of his reach. The tattered remains of red uniform hung about his frame, a testiment to the past glories of the once nobel mercenary band he'd traveled with, fitting, as the man had sunk to brigand hood after his company had been slaughtered some months past.
"Just smile an nod, it's what I do." Mithos advised the human with a grin.
Despite the chill of the winter air, and Martel's ill humor -which was doing much to warm the later- Yuan chuckled.
"You shouldn't have said that, now we're going to be here for an hour."
Sputtering, the green haired woman seemed to swell with rage. Mithos cringed back in terror, Kratos rose an eyebrow and fingered the hilt of his stolen sword.
Yuan, well he'd weathered worse storms than this. He'd made worse storms. So he lay on his side of the cold steel and smiled and nodded while Martel lost her cool and yelled. Slanted eyes glittering with amusement, the ice blooded half elf enjoyed the free show, for Martel's rage, much like Martel's mercy, was a very pleasent thing to watch.
Hell, watching Martel was a pleasure all around. And one that he indulged in every chance he got. As Martel whirled on Mithos, and gave her the first of a three part tounge lashing Kratos flicked an eye onto the younger half elf.
"A suggestion." Kratos murmured, having watched the young half elf from the corner of his eye he recognized the play of thought and lust that were teasing Yuan's mind. Having wooed enough women in his life to recognize the game Yuan was playing, the human understood his blue haired companions thoughts very well. "Tongue in mouth, Mer. Yuan."
"I wasn't drooling." He hissed.
"Yes, you were. And if you hurt that girl I'll cut your head off, with a dull knife."
Yuan snorted, such a thing was impossible. But when seeing the anger in Kratos' eyes Yuan grew just a touch worried. Maybe such a thing was possible. If it was, it certainly would be messy... And why would the man care, he didn't like Martel, did he?
Kratos, who had up to that point only been a annoyance and competent hunter in the half elf's mind was elivated to a more dangerous place in the half elf's subconcious heirarchy.
Competition.
X
Thier war within the Kharlan war was vicious. First starting in the most obvious place. Combat.
Small disagreements would flare into bitter fist fights. Insults were as common as currenct in a nobleman's house. In true combat they adamently refused to cover the other's backs, both were wounded in cases of not so accidental 'firendly fire'. Had they access to real weapons, if they'd had a time away from real danger, they'd have killed each other.
Yet they never were safe, never secure, and so their war never ended the way it should have. It slowly was abandoned, as time and spying proved to the parinoid half elf that Kratos had no interest in Martel. He was polite, chillingly so, but it never went further than that. Somehow, sometime, between one fight and another, it was wholy abandoned. Need and true fear bound them together, till one day they were guarding each other's backs, a platoon of Tethe'allan inquisitors (fancy terms for half elf murders) had taken Mithos and Martel hostage and Yuan and Kratos had to get them free.
"You idiot!" Yuan roared, dropping his swallow he summoned a bolt of mana and killed the archer in a blazing roar of sky fire.
Dazzed, unbelieving, Kratos reched up with numb hands to touch the arrow that had somehow lodged into his sword arm. The blade slipped from his fingers, pain glazed those night hued eyes.
"Had to, he'd of got you in the back..."
"And my back's for your blade, eh?" Yuan softened the tone, it was safe to do so. That archer had been the last of them.
"Heh..." Kratos smiled. "'course."
Of course... yet the words, the threat, were hollow. As were the curses that Yuan had yelled at the human during the fight. The mocking offers that Kratos join his own, that he abandon the half elves on thier crazy journey to save the world and join the murders.
They'd have taken him, Yuan knew that. The humans would see Kratos as one of thier own. He winced, both in sympathy and sickness, understanding and fear, as Kratos pulled the arrow out of his arm then merely switched his sword from one hand to the other.
"Hopefully your wife can fix this." Kratos grunted.
"She can." Yuan promised, ever since she got that unicorn horn from Duke Fal- whatever his name was... er is?"
"Is, he got the assassins, he's still kicking. Old warriors like that, they don't go down quietly."
"Like certian hot headed warriors present?"
"Be very very happy I'm feeling lightheaded." Kratos hissed. "That I'm suffering from wounds and sleep deprivation, and a migraine, or I'd kill you."
Smirking, Yuan decided that he could do it, just once. He grinned, at the somber human, and laughed. "Suuure Kratos."
"And stop sounding like that damnded brat." The mercenary snarled.
"We have a saying." Yuan told the human, steping forward he slung an arm under the man's shoulder. Suppoting the sagging human who was a hell of a lot heavier than he looked. "Dragging out words like that, we call it pulling a Mithos."
"Then refrain from doing so, in the future." Kratos hissed.
"Whatever you say." Yuan chuckled. "Just don't take too many arrows for me. Martel will fix you up, but she's going to give you hell for throwing yourself in the way of an arrow."
"Considering..." Kratos gasped, his eyes closing to mere slits of pain. "That I was covering you... My punishment should be light."
Before Yuan could wonder at what his punishment was going to be -for not guarding his back well enough so that Kratos felt the need to throw himself in the way of the arrow- the human chuckled.
"It... would of... got you in the back.. of the head. Little damage I... suppose..."
"If you weren't hurt, I'd shock you for that." Yuan snapped, jarring the auburn haired man a bit, he picked up the pace. If Kratos was sluring his words and gasping them as if they were an efffort, then the half elf knew things were bad. Kratos would rather die than appear weak, and he was all but showing off his weakness for the world to see.
Hopefully they'd get Martel free before the human died, because though his love was powerful, she was't strong enough to bring the dead to life. No one was.
X
"Maverick, you bastard!" Unsheathing his blade Kratos strode forward. Glaring bloody daggers at the man who'd trainted him, then betrayed them all. The guards were upon him in a flash. He was unarmed and sennt to his knees by a well placed blow to the kidneys in an eyeblink.
"My Lord," Maverick bowed to the King of Tethe'alla, his face split into a grin. He nudged the dazed Mithos forward, so that the boy sprawled at the king's slippered feet. "I present you with the last summoner, street trash born of Sylvarant, a perfect weapon for our war. With little effort we may retrain him to our purposes."
Nodding, the aged King smiled. "Your thought is well, Mav, but what of the others?"
"Execution, my leige?"
"Excelent thiking, cold blooded, and thurough, you will make a good King after my passing."
They jerked in shock, and Mav grinned at them. His black eyes triumphant. So that's where the man had gotton his money, how he'd gotten them out of the Tethe'allan prison with little difficulty, in these halls he'd become so well trained. He'd been the Kings son. Rough hands clasped over his bound wrists. From the other side of the chamber Martel cried out in pain at her rough handeling and was back handed by one of the Knights for her cries.
"Halt," The king tilted his crown, looked at Kratos with interest in his ancient black eyes. "I know this one... he seems familiar."
"He is Kratos, son of Kanion."
"His father's son?"
"A blood thirsty fighter, decent rival... but little more than that."
The king stood, strode past Mithos, past Maverick, his eyes intent on the fallen mercenary's. The old man knelt so that his own eyes were level with the mercenary's. Long fingers fondled the young man's face, then ruffled his hair.
"Kanion, was a distant relative of mine. A lord who cast his lot and fortune upon the battle field. How did his gamble fare?"
"As all warrior's fare, ancient one." Kratos hissed. "A shallow grave, glories upon his ears, and his son's blade within his heart."
The old man shuddered, his face pale, his hands shaking, he took a step back from the bloody faced mercenary.
"He killed my mother, he made me watch. So crazed with pain and hate he didn't even feel my knife hit home. He died, as he deserved to die, his carrion cast to the earth to be little more than feed for the low scavengers of the world."
Face twisting into a snarl, the aged king of Tethe'alla raised his hand and struck the mercenary.
"Get this filth, out of here. All of it. Know this, Kanion's ward, in the pathetic land of Sylvarant they may tollerate slander against the lords but in Tethe'alla such comments are punishable by death."
"Truth is never slanderous, my leige."
"Then hold to your truth of 'demons' and 'demon seed stones' as much as you like, and may it ward the executioners blade."
X
Muzzled and chained like a common dog, Mithos had watched with wild terrorfied eyes as Yuan and Martel had been dragged to the executioners platform. Kratos hadn't been therre, rumor was whispered that he had begged the King of Tethe'alla for his life and had been given the executioners duty for that day.
To prove his loyalty, his worth, he would have to kill two half elves.
"An easy task," sneared one noble man in Yuan's hearing. "After all, what worth did half elves have?"
Shaking with rage, Yuan lifted his head. Glared bloody daggers at the crimson clad mercenary who strod before them. The symbols of the elite Tethe'allan guard had been hastily embroidered into his black sparrow tail cape. Yuan would have snarled a few choice coments, save he'd been gaged.
"You will trade your honorable broad sword for the axe, a crude weapon for a crude killing. This is your charge, the death of these two animals, your families honor will be restored." Some obnoxious dressed fop sneared to the auburn haired human. "Do you accept?"
"I keep my broadsword." Kratos growled, clutching the flamberge with a possesiveness of a loving father.
"Umm... this is outside the cerimony Mer. Aurio-"
"To hell with cerimony." So saying, Kratos smashed his blade into the page's guts, wrenched the weapon out, then leapt forward to kill the sole guard on the platform. The croud around the scofal went beserk, riot would keep the elite guards of the Teteh'allan army from storming the place and carrying out the execution themselves. Grinning, the mercenray cut Martel free, then unbount Yuan.
"Fooled you, didn't I?"
"Not for a second." Martel assure him.
"Like hell you did!" Yuan snarled, then seeing the glint of an arrow from the croud tackled the mercenary. An arrow hissed in the place the man's head would have been.
Laughing like an idiot, drunk on victory and bloodlust, Kratos lifted his blade to Mithos.
"Now boy!"
And the streets of Tethe'alla, once dry as Triet, denied the mana from Undine for months upon months by the voracious hunger of their magi-tech war machines were blessed with rain as Undine herself appeared.
"First good cleaning the cities had in centuries I imagine." Kratos noted blandly, watching as the crowd struggled to keep from drowning. A few brave souls had clung tot he platform, were trying to pull themselves up. Callously Kratos walked amongst the groaping hands and cut them off. Shuddering in horror, Martel clung to Yuan. The blue haired half elf, sickened by the blood shed, closed his eyes. But his ears, those would never close. And he would remember, and be damned for that remembering.
X
Time passed, like quicksilver sky fire, it blazed by and the war slowly crawled to a hault. As cults were exposed, corrupted leaders put in thier place. Tthe elves and humans grugingly came to realize the truth, and join thier 'corrupted birthen' in fighting off the few scouting parties of the Underworld. They'd found the entry point nestled in the dead roots of the Kharlan Tree, and they'd sealed it at great cost. An army born of rightousness dead, an aliance born of desperation, fadding.
Old grudges were fast in reaserting themselves, the war had stopped for now, but the Great Trees decline was absolute.
"They killed it." Martel sobbed, stroking the withered flank of the Kharlan tree.
"Life is but a Season, a cycle of seasons, perhaps... this was how it was meant to end..." Kratos murmured. "If so, I've played my part. Enough is enough."
"You're just.. going to give up!" Mithos flared.
"Yes, I am. I will see to the wellfare of my own, my firends." Kratos inclined his head to indicate them all. "Then I will leave. If you save the world, fine, if you don't or can not, then I will accept that as well."
"After all those people have died, to save the world..." Mithos hounded.
"Don't ever, preach to me boy." Kratos flared. "'Never', is that clear! Never. This is too great for one man, one group, to solve. The tree is life..." Kratos' tone softened. "And this death, by this final death, is all life doomed."
X
Mithos never acepted that, nor did Martel, though Yuan had to admit thier hellish journeys without Kratos to mend what they could were futile things. They found the mercenary indulging in a life of ease in the new Sylune, built in the Hero's honor, he'd dropped by and been humored to hear that Yuan and Martel were to be married.
"Finally."
There was a touch of grey to the man's hair, the barest slivers of silver, and Yuan wondered then. Wondered if perhaps Kratos' deliberate cruel abandonment of them was two fold in it's purpose. To abandon hope and to leave them so that his death by old age would make sure that they didn't abandon hope.
"I do not understand you, Kratos."
"You aren't supposed to." The human countered.
"How many years has it been, since we've last seen one another?" Yuan pressed.
"Three." Kratos answer was non-chalant. He took a sip from his goblet, rolled his wrist and seemed fascinated by the liquid's sluggish stirrings within the glass.
"Yet you do not rise to greet me, I could walk by-"
"You didn't, did you?"
Before Yuan could press, or demand an answer for the man's cryptic reposnse, Martel was there. She saw Kratos and smiled, embraced the human as she would her closest friend. Kratos smiled, gently returned the embrace, and he pulled back.
"I know Yuan, child. He would becoem very jealous if we were to do that often."
"Don't "child" me, Kratos Aurion!"
The mercenary chuckled, bowed, then returned to his seat.
"Where's Mi-"
"KRATOS!"
The chair was thrown back, Kratos tossed to the floor, and the goblet went flying as Mithos tackled the auburn haired man. Some strange secret thing seemed to slither into the man's guarded eyes, even as he smiled and patted the blonde haired Yggdrasil's head.
"Still... doing 'that' I see." Kratos gasped, his eyes a little glazed.
Martel laughed and pulled her younger brother off of the human.
"He hasn't changed a bit since the demon war, I'm afraid."
And the secret, whatever it was, seemed to find life in Martel's sad wise eyes.
X
"You've been avioding us." Yuan hounded the human, and Kratos good naturedly endured the hounding as they wound thier way through Isillite's market.
"Yes, but you haven't guessed why."
"I heard you turn Mithos down, when he asked you to join us in the barony that the new king of Tethe-."
"It's just a show place, wild, untamed, no one actually gave you any power you know."
Yuan grunted, nodded his head. And when the human made to try to ditch him for the fifth time in one afternoon the half elf caught the human's shoulder with a hand and turned him around. They met each other's gaze, and only then did Yuan know that if he asked, he'd get the truth, just this once.
"Why are you avoiding us?"
"Martel asked me to. We discussed it, and is seemed the most logical course."
"What? Why wou-?"
"Because of Mithos." The human sighed, reached up and plucked the half elf's hand from his cloaked shoulder. "Yuan, half elves age and mature at different rates than both thier parent spieces, correct?"
"Of course."
"It's a stragne thing, based off of need than logic?"
Thinking of his fast maturity, Yuan nodded. "More want than need, I wanted to be an adult, Martel also wanted it, if nothing else to be able to protect Mithos..."
"Mithos hasn't aged a day since that time three years ago. If he follows the natural pattern's of his life, he'll live for a few decades trapped in the body of an adolecent. His mind, will be trapped thinking as an adolecent thinks... It will take decades, perhaps centuries for him to be able to process thinks as an adult does. I'll be dead before that happens, probably before he even ends his boiological "childhood". Now, imagine what the death of a father figure does to a child's development, and then think about how Mithos sees me, and what would happen if he saw me die."
Yuan said nothing as the horrible implications of maddness -for that's what Mithos' grief might lead to- in one as powerful as Mithos Yggdrasil came to his mind.
"It shouldn't have to end this way." Yuan whispered.
"It already has, I'll oversee the wedding -of course- then dissapear once more. As I said before, my part in this is done. I've asked... Noishe to go to Mithos when I'm dead, that way, when he finds out he won't have to be alone."
Biting his lip, Yuan let out a small sigh. "Of course, you know you've saddled me with the damn bird as well for a few centuries. We won't turn Mithos out, not until he's ready to go out on his own..."
"A time in the distant future should not be dwelled upon, until the distance is crossed."
"For that," Yuan mockingly punched the human on his shoulder. "I may retract my offer." Surprise, rare in the icy mercenary, graced the human's features. Kratos rose a 'brow and Yuan chuckled. "As best man, you serving as that, I mean."
Surprise melded into pain, a dull guilt, but Kratos nodded. "I'd be honored."
X
"She... was pregnant, you know." Yuan murmured, staring at the unmarked stone that Kratos had placed over Martel's shallow grave. "We were, expecting a child. A girl..."
His voice broke, and strong arms closed over him, held him up.
"Yuan, I know you want to break, but I need help. Mithos... He's catatonic."
Jerking out of his haze of grief, Yuan stared at the pale human. He couldn't hate them all. Couldn't hate Kratos. But Mithos would, he'd hate them all. Because that's how children saw, in extreams. If one was bad, they all must be, and despite everything Mithos was a child.
"You should... leave... I'll tend to him."
Kratos jerked in surprise, then nodded. Bowed to Yuan's experience with a sigh.
"What are you going to do?"
"Take care of him, away from everyone else. If he does snap..." Yuan's voice grew sick. "I want him away from everyone so that when he destroys himself-" Yuan couldn't continue, but Kratos nodded, understanding.
"To save the legend, we must sacrifice our heros..." Kratos quoted, his expression twisting with disgust.
"That we must." Yuan sighed. "What, about yourself?"
"You assume I had a life to return to, Yuan. That's a broad assumption, I'd thought you wiser than that."
And with only that criptic pronouncement as farewell Kratos abandoned his last friends to thier fate.
X
Lifting the eternal blade, Mithos cocked his head to the side. Considered the writhing form of Kratos Aurion.
Bloody wings had thrust out of the man's back, the swept around the human, the crimson stone in the human's chest gleamed like flame. Silently screaming, the human twisted, suddenly he went still, and Yuan's darkest hope was known to him in that moment.
Gods, let him have died, the pain... it had been too much. Let him die.
Slowly, Kratos lifted his head. His brown eyes now black. There was no pupil, no irius, only a black scar on a field of blood shot white. Gasping, the once man crawled to his feet, shoved the sobbing spirit of light away from him. Using only his hands, his nails, he gouged small holes in the side of the temples walls, and litterally climbed to his feet. He looked to Mithos, for only a second, then stared at Yuan. Blood trickled past his lips, the parted, yet no sound came from them.
No sound would come from the man for another fifty years.
Yet the word he'd mouthed was clear, it was etched into the half elf's mind with fire.
Run.
Yet he couldn't run, slender hands slid around him. Luna's embrace, her blessing, folded over him. Like moonlight enfolds then banishes the nights darkest shadosws. He writhed, and her devine hands tightened thier grip, tightened until it was all he could do to breathe...
The child walked towards him, the step of a monarch had somehow replaced the child-magi's own. Suddenly there was light, retina searing illuminance, and when his vision cleared Yuan no longer looked upon a child.
But a man, only slightly taller than he, with golden hair and storm hued eyes.
The Eternal was lifted, and Yuan's heart, his soul screamed in terror, but in that grip, the grip of a God, facing the power that preceded all the Gods, what could he -a mere mortal- do?
Save scream. Scream as the gates of hell were opened at his feet, and the demons of his past and present reached up with gleaming claws to devour his sanity.
X
He was an observer, shutting out the world because the world reached for him with bloody hands and clawed at his newly healed soul. He'd taken residence in Welgaia's castle, it was vast enough that Mithos couldn't find him if he really tried. And immortality aside, Mithso was still the braty, whiny, lazy kid he'd been, even after getting those wings of his. So Yuan existed, cringed in the psedo shadows that existed in heaven, crept from room to room like some fallen goul.
The only person he'd even spoken to -and "speak" of course was something of a misdeneamor now when applied to the newly appointed Derris fa Sith- was Kratos. They'd set up the trava board and play a few games, thier games could last days, weeks even.
With neither man willing to rush games litteraly would take that long. Between rounds dust would gather around the bases of the least used pieces. Still, what was the point of speed, with time aplenty, what was the point of rushing anything? He'd spent countless hours in the library, reading ancient elvish script until he'd gotten into the habit of casually talking in ancient elvish. When Kraots caught him doing that, the Seraph had disappeared and came back with a cart load of modern books.
"Are they any good?" Yuan had asked, still speaking with the elvish inflection (under emphasising the "o" sound and lazily rolling the "r"), even though he spoke the more modern tongue.
"I don't know, I haven't even read one of them yet." The Seraph admitted.
"What'd you do, loot a library?" Yuan teased, starteld that he remembered how. "Rather low for an ex-brigand, isn't it?"
"No, I bought it."
"You what?" Yuan gasped.
"I sold that abnoxious gold plate armor in the waiting room, and bought the library." Kratos explained slowly. The ex-human's expression clearly stating that he was wondering if there was something seriously wrong with his friend.
"Mithos is going to explode, he liked that armor." Yuan reminded the human shaped Seraph.
Kratos bared his teeth in something that wasn't quite a smile, and nodded. "I know."
X
Kratos found his solace amongst the newly "made" worlds, while Yuan remained a ghost of Derris Kharlan. He'd walked the glistening pearl halls, studied the marble spires, until it all bored him. He found himself yawning, and craving the world of greens and browns. He ached for a sky that was blue an not jet streaked with starlets of white. He'd gotton so bored he'd summoned a lightning storm and had to pay for damages after trashing one of those perfect white buildings that sparradically came up in the white paved plain that was Derris Kharlan.
Mithos' summons -sparatic things that he'd regularly ignored unless Kratos dragged him to the meeting chamber- were almost a relief. He'd made it his new hobby to count the number of failed chosens (AKA new angels) and ahd come with a strange snag in his calcualtions. Unless whole families were being dragged to the alters and set to go through the ritual -all at once- or Mithos was aging people in the Chosen's lines, drawing them from past and present, and future times, there were more angels than there should have been.
He'd ask Mithos, after the job was done, what was going on.
X
He stroked the green locks of the child he was supposed to kill. Swallow and knife were strapped to his back and belt, it would be an easy thing now that she slept.
"What's your name?"
"Yuan."
"That's a silly name."
Indeed it was. The name of a fallen hero, a broken soul. It was his own. Perhaps one that his parent had given him, perhaps not, he hadn't told her yet that he wasn't sure as to who had given it to him. So much like Martel, he stroked her hair, pulled it back and studied the child's face. The jarring inconsitancys between the girl's continance and Martel's could be smoothed away, with power or delusion, it was his choice.
Lazily he reached up, teased the girl's pointed ear. In sleep, they twitched, it was a trait neither he nor Martel had.
She wasn't his, not his or Martel's. Yet she could have been.
Should have been.
"I don't quite buy reincarnation, little one." He told the sleeping girl. "The concept it too neat and pat. Let's just ascribe this all to chance and let the matter slide, hmm?"
She grumbled, smacked his leg with a hand, as if to shut him up.
Chuckling, Yuan lay on the sands of Triet. Sand that was neither hot nor cold to his dead touch. He started at the sky and cursed it for it's darkness. It was the same, the sky of Derris Kharlan, and Sylarant. Suddenly he jolted in pain, jerked away from the source, and Rene whined and groaped about in a sleepy slowed way. Shaking, eyes wide in horror, the Seraph tugged his tunic, pulled it up enough so he could see. Half expecting to spy a scorch mark in the shape of the child's hand upon his waist, his skin was unmarked, the flesh untarnished.
Gods... he hastily pulled his unic back down and stared at the girl in horror.
Not for the girl herself, she wasn't a horrible thing, rather the horror was directed at himself. He'd taken the lack of sustiance for granted all these years, occasionally aching to taste but little more than that. He'd endured the inability to sleep as best he could -forever craving oblivion yet understanding it was no longer his to reclaim- and had taken the enhanced hearing as a mixed blessing that had allowed him to avoid those who wished to find him...
But this, 'this' was too much. To not touch, to not be touched, for an eternity.
"C..cold..." She shook, her eyes fluttering open, still glazed, she crawled towards him. Her suffering, even dimmed by her sleepiness, was too much for him to bare. Slowly he scooped her up in his arms, cringing in pain, but forbaring to cry out and make a show of the agony his comapssion was costing him.
Eventually she stilled, and when he was sure that she had slipped back into slumber he reached out with a foot and slowly dragged the girl's blanket towards him. It took effort, and he was burned at least a hundred times as thier flesh met, but he got her wound up in the thing. Satisfied, he held her through the night, then set her on the earth when he sensed her waking.
Best not to confuse the matter, he decided. Ignoring the look of saddness on he face when she precieed him to have avoided her through the night. Best she didn't make any... unseemly attachments.
X
"She ha' some fit, yer lor' ship." The Desian grunted. "Frie' two o' my best guar's."
"A shame." Yuan said coldly. "She summoned fire, you said?"
"Yes." The Desian sulked, obiously expecting something from him. A damages fee covered? Perhaps a replacement soldier for the two lost? If so, he could look elsewere.
"Excelent, dismissed."
"But my.."
"I said, 'dismissed'." Yuan rasped, his wings appeared then, and the desian fled, tail between his legs. Yuan chuckled, folded the unnatural extremities to his sides and flicked his gaze on the cringing Rene. "Just two?"
Rene was confused by the Seraph's suddenly jovel turn of voice. She thought it over, ruled out mood swings -as that was a woman's ailment- and frowned.
"What?" She squeaked.
"Only two? At your age it should have been five. Shoot for five next time, it's good practice."
"Umm... alright?" Rene squeaked.
"Don't worry..." The Seraph patted the girl's head. "It's just a stage, you'll be over it in a few years."
"Years?" Rene squeaked her protest.
"Years," Yuan assured, his lips curling into a wry grin. "It will be a trying time, but you won't be alone. That much I can promise. I won't leave you to weather this trial alone."
X
There was a slight rap on the door, considering the mood he was in he counted the knocker as very brave. Groaning, rubbing his temples, Yuan lifted a hand from it's past time of soothing and arcanely made the door slide open. Rene slipped in, her newly made and still glossy vest, pant, and coat combination caught the magi light and seared starlets of white hue into his skull. Groaning, Yuan called that the final straw and covered his head with his hands.
Chuckling, Rene walked across the room, his skull helpfully shifted the tempo of it's throbbing with the soft sound. There was a click, and Yuan liftd his eyes hopefully. Damn, Rene wasn't setting a cross bow to his skull and pressing the trigger, she'd only left an addition to his desk.
He blinked, lifted his head and raked a shking hand truogh his tangled locks. Licking his lips, he tried to speak.
"Rene, Mer Delina, what in the Godless worlds is th-"
"Tea, green tea with some additives. I told Feruon you were sick with a headache and she made some up."
"I can't drink." Yuan rasped. "I'll just hack it up in an hour or two."
"I imagine it wouldn't taste good." The newly appointed Second noted. "But the 'fumes' are what will make you feel better, not the drink itself."
Snatching the cup, he dragged it over the length of wood that served as his desk. He hastily set it under his chin and while not quite daring to drink managed to nerve a deep breath. The stuffy pressure behind his norstrils and skull disipated, a tiny bit.
Closing his eyes, he sighed, went through a deep breathing exercise and found that his agony was disipating.
"Do you want a promotion?" He asked.
"Your job? No thanks." Rene wrinkled her nose in distatse. "I don't know what I'd hate about it more; having to thrash Z'eh so he won't attack the other sub-commanders, having to deal with appointing the other commanders, the paperwork, the continuous martial training that you drill into the lot of the more magically inclined fighters here... or the headaches caused by dealing with a mouthy Second."
"That last one isn't quite that bad." Yuan grunted. "As I know exactly where she got that mouth from, I find myself able to pardon it."
"Oh gee, thanks." Rene growled. She lazily tossed some paperwork on the desk.
The desk he'd just cleared off... Snarling her ached only to push the offending papers off the edge of the worlds' higherst cliff. Since that was rather far away -Hima was something of a weeks flight in the best of weather for him- he'd have settled for the edge of his desk. Save Rene reached out and plopped the cup on the papers.
Damn, in order to get to the cup he'd have to reach across the desk. Damn it, it wasn't fair! Still, need prompted him, he took the cup and glimpsed at the papers. Reports, he moaned, recognizing the mark of the Armsmaster on the upper left corner of some.
"Shoot me now Rene, please?" He whimpered.
"Grow up, I suffer through the whole bloody summer, you can deal with all of three few weeks."
"But it's monsoon season!" Yuan whined.
As if to agree, there was a loud clap of thunder, and the Seraph whimpered as the power that was calling to him so seductivly all but screamed. The howling power died down, the rubmle of thunder rolled across the sky, and his headache peaked in time with the loudest vibrations.
"Oh Gods... I want to die..." Yuan moaned. "It there's a crisis, I'll be hiding, under my desk."
So saying, Yuan crawled under his desk, taking the cup with him so Rene wouldn't try to use it to coax him out of hiding.
"Yuan Vor'esse!" Rene flared.
"I'm not coming out." Yuan snarled.
"Are you two or two thousand!" Rene snarled, reaching down to grab at his cape and drag him out. Like Hell she was! Snarling, the angel summoned a shield of light and gently buffeted his commander so she fell on her backside.
"check in with me in a week, but until this damned season is over, the answer is two!" Yuan growled, Hidden within his snug cocoon of light mana and the crock of his desk, Yuan craddled the cup in his shaking hands. "Now go away!"
She went so far as to kick the desk in frusteration, he watched her feet make a slow circuit around his sanctuary, his blue eyes glinting. One of those feet slipped in an inch he'd shock it, use self defense as an excuse...
"Not until you do your damned job, I remember exactly what hell you put me through when I was si-"
"You had a hang over!" Yuan roared, and winced as the pain in his skull flared again, this time in rythem with his yelling.
"I was 'sick'." Rene hissed. "And you made me take on Z'eh in a sword fight, then I had to take on his traniees, then..."
"So I was a sadistic bastard, it's a vice!" Yuan roared. "You're my Second, and you're not allowed to..."
"-To have a social life!" Rene flared.
"-No, you're not allowed to act like a child when it's clear that adult guildance is needed to run this organization!" Yuan snapped.
"Well that puts you out of the running, doesn't it?" Came the girl's acid slicked response.
Wincing, Yuan let silence be his rebuttle, and he heard Rene take a deep breath. The tension between them was still too fresh, thier mutual anger and her disillusionment at finding out he wasn't perfect, it was a potentially dangerous combination. It made a schism between them when what they needed was a unified front. Still, honesty was what was needed, to keep lying to her like that... Yuan didn't have the heart for it. So the pain was there for them both, the anger, and he being older handled it better than the the child he'd taken as his own. And child she was, he winced, cursed himself for forgetting.
"If I appologize and offer to come out so you can read the reports to me, do you promsie not to kick my face in?" Yuan asked, his tone slow, soothing.
"No lighting spells?" Rene countered wearily.
"I can't even see straight." The Seraph confided in a small voice, dropping his pose of power and command he'd worn for so many long months. "My hands won't stop shaking, I doubt I could hurt an ant in this state."
Sighing, Rene nodded, then forgetting that he couldn't see cleared her throat.
"I think... I owe you the appology. It's just... with everything... But that's not an excuse, I'm sorry for being such an insensitive brat."
"Accepted." Yuan offered, his pointed ear twitched as he heard her take a seat in the chair he'd left out for whatever visitor would dare his temper during the monsoon season. "Pain.. a forign thing to me, make me short with you, and indifferent to my tasks that I should take more seriously... for that, I appologize."
There was a long pause, a long silence.
"Accepted?" He hazarded.
"Can't you be gushier than that?" Rene whined. "You have to admit, that was a really lame and stilted apology."
Despite his pain, his anger, he managed a tired laugh. "Better than the "moths" comment, right?"
Remembeing that incident, when after springing a trap set up fro some invading bandits Rene had caught Yuan muttering that tired cliche "like moths to the flame" line, the Second laughed.
"Anything's better than that."
"My pride, it hurts as much as my head does now." The Seraph whined, with a tired gesture he banished the light shield and crawled out from under his desk. "Gods, I hope this season ends soon..."
Grunting, Rene nodded, perhaps thinking of how moody Vryce had gotten lately. She'd spurned Z'eh's advances, and if rumor held true was quietly courting the somewhat fussy magi. While not the ideal mate in Yuan's mind -he found Vryce to be somewhat boring- it was better than the alternative.
Hell, he wouldn't protest Rene taking a 'cat' out for dinner if it was between the cat and Z'eh...
"Damn..." Yuan blinked, watched numbly as Rene tried to save some of the papers from the tea she'd accidently knocked over. "I'll get you some more tea and ask Z'eh for a copy of the rep-"
"Don't bother, when's the man done anything other than whine about someone in his reports? The last one was pure bunk, some anti-Yashin rant." Yuan waved a hand. "Just throw it away."
"He mentioned a sword." Rene frowned, studied the runny green stained paper intently.
"I'll write him back and tell him he can keep the loot, that was part of our initial agreement after all."
"Loot?"
"Loot." Yuan shrugged. "He's a bandit, I was a thief, we speak a somewhat common language."
"Hunh." Gingerly rollingthe stained paper into a ball, the Second threw it into the trash bin by Yuan's desk, and smirked. "Common, I doubt that."
X
"Yuan, behin-" Turning, the Seraph's mind still ringing from the memory ofthe howling alarm filled maze they'd just treaded throgh, he opened an hand and released some power. Lightning illuminated the girl's features, for a heartbeat, he stared in horror at those black pit eyes, then she was sent flying back. Pweor licked around his fingers, he was paralized, the bolts power had killed.
He had killed, a child, an inno-
Small hands grabbed him, shoved him. He staggered under the attack, andthe Soul Eater cut the space between himself and his saviour. Bryan staggered back, purple eyes wide in shock as he stared at the thin line that appeared on his armored fore arm. Magi-tech blessed steel had parted under the armsmaster's attack as if it hadn't even been there...
Whipping his swallow up, Yuan strived to tangle the weapon master's blade, as he had on thier first meeting those many years ago. And it was the Seraph who came out of the routine disarmed, as the weapon he sought to tangle bit into his swallow and reached for him with drooling fangs...
In desperation the Seraph called upon his inate powers of magic. Another lighting bolt flew from his fingers and Z'eh staggered back from the hit. The mortal's red blood flying, his twitching form hitting the steel floor and sliding back under the force of the attack.
Motion, out of the corner of his eye caught his attention,Yuan turned, but it was Bryan who attacked first. The boy shook off his shock and opened fire with a mother of pearl bolt.
The girl's form shuddered, her empty eyes filled with light, with color, and in that slow eternity that was the span it took to die, life faded from those violet eyes into unblinking death.
Violet eyes... shaking, Yuan watched in numb horror as the demonic shadows fell away, as the boy fell to his knees crying out in pain as he realized too late.
To save his Lord, Bryan Collens had thoughtlessly attacked. Thoughtlessly killed his own flesh and blood. By his hand, for no other could be blamed, the boy had just been forced to kill his sister. Seeing the echoes of his own grief, his own loss, Yuan staggered away from the boy, limped over the downed armsmaster who had somehow survived the Seraphs' attack, and went to the insigator of this chaos.
Hellfire eye, ever burning, it locked on him, and it growled. The Devil's Arm growled upon him, and the Seraph glared back at it. Matching a devils hate with his own poor wasted mortal own.
It snarled in hate and reached to seduce, and then screamed as he immursed it in enough light mana to garantee that the floor by it would disolved under the onslaught. It shrieked and writhed, and at last slid into slumber, it's sole eye sliding shut under the burning light of a Seraph's fully bared power.
Reaching down, holding the now harmelss blade, Yuan staggered away from the shattered tiles and disolving part of the floor. There was much to do, so much... He had to consider, to destroy this thing... the bodies... he'd have to dispose of those as well. The Devil's Arm might be able to coax the fallen into a state of undeath. That couldn't be allowed...
But, perhaps most importatnly. he had a soul to over see. A young mind to keep from falling into the same hell he himself endured. He held teh child, and when the boy seemed more secure leaned down and hissed into the boy's pointed ear.
"Bryan... when they ask, who fired that shot, you are going to tell them I did it."
Not understaning, the boy looked almost ready to protest.
"That's an order, I killed her, not you. Is that clear, Private?"
"Yes.. my..."
"I am lord of nothing..." Yuan snapped bitterly. "Don't make a mockery of that which is already disgraced."
Shaking, unwilling to lift his hand from where it had fallen, upon his sister's shoulder, the young half elf clearly did not understand. The confusion wasn't in his manner, or voice -he was beyond talking now, giving into his grief in full- rather it had been expressed in the twilight of his eyes. Just a glint, a flash of confusion to be swallowed by a tide of guilt. The Seraph gently reached down, lead the boy away from the girl with the time seemed right, and offered the child the meanger comfort of his shoulder and touch as it seemed needed. It was onl when he heard the guards comming -that he reached down and with fingers that had endured the centuries yet had not lost a whit of thier cunning- that he gently lifted the cross bow off the boy's belt.