Within Darkness

Chapter Six: New Binds

She could hear him crying.

It cut through the darkness almost painfully, destroying whatever sad attempt at peace she might have found here. She wanted to rest, to stay still and wait for her friends to come and find her like they always had - but the crying! It tugged on the fragmented remains of her heart, luring her out of her darkness-induced stupor to find him. She would find the crying child, rescue him, and then the two of them would wait for her friends together.

At the thought, the darkness seemed to open up a little for her, as if providing her assistance once she came to the correct conclusion. She moved sluggishly forward, arms and legs heavy. She didn't know where she was going, not really, just that the further she went, the louder the crying became.

In a blinding flash, the darkness shattered around her, causing her to recoil in pain. When her eyes could finally crack open, she found herself in a small circular room with impressively ornate bars before her. Panic gripped her - was she back in a cage? - but as her body twisted in search of the exit, she saw a staircase behind her.

Before she could dwell too deeply on the thought, a child appeared before her. He was pale, with a shock of lemon hair that had seen better days. Nervously, she stepped forward, but there was no moving through the bars, no way to reach him.

"Why me?"

His voice was wispy and delicate, as if it might shatter should he speak too loudly. She opened her mouth to answer, to offer some comfort, but nothing came out but a quiet puff of air.

She stood there for another minute or so before she realized - Lucia. She could make out the red lines across his face from wounds that had not yet healed, and even this short, his hair was unmistakable. She dropped to her knees in front of him, hot tears building in her eyes as she stared at his younger form.

Ten years he had been in the darkness. Alone. Caged for crimes he had not done and could not imagine. The unfairness of it all hit her like a brick, and she tried to reach for him through the bars. Lucia had been abandoned when he was too young to truly understand - was that what had attracted the Mother Dark Bring to his side? She thought to Go and Rosa, to the corruption of their prolonged exposure to the lower-level Dark Bring as she stared at him; what would ten years of a Mother Dark Bring do to a person? To a child?

Elie awoke with a slight start, heart racing. In her ears, she could hear his crying, soft whimpers that lingered well past the point of her awakening. She tried to shift her arm a little, half expecting to be met with the sound of restraints scraping against cold stone, but there was nothing. Her head lolled to the side, blinking past the bleariness of her exhaustion as the world came into focus.

"Good morning, Elie."

Sluggishness gone, Elie sat straight up, eyes wide and staring at the Lucia sitting next to her bed. There was no trace of the child who had haunted her dreams, no whimpering why me or stolen innocence apparent. There was just Lucia, their greatest rival.

"Wh-where am I?" she asked, daring to take her eyes off of him to look around the room. It was unfamiliar, decorated with the familiar purple and silver banners.

Lucia was sitting perfectly still, almost uneasily so. He watched her with an almost bored expression, fingers laced together just under his nose. "You're proving to be more trouble than I imagined," he said finally, leaning back. Elie's eyes narrowed a little, tempted to tell him that she'd continue causing as much trouble as she could until he released her.

But the sounds of his childhood whimpers had not yet faded.

"I thought keeping you chained in the dungeon would be the safest way to ensure you remain with me, but it seems my control of my generals is not what I thought it was," he continued, shaking his head. Elie tried to think of what he meant, but all she received were brief flashes of Iulius in the dark, flipping his hair out of his eyes. "Yet, giving you an inch of freedom led you to believe you could take a mile and escape. So you see, I'm in quite a predicament on what to do with you."

"You could let me go."

His eyes narrowed dangerously, and Elie shrunk back slightly. "I have use for you yet, Etherion child. No, the only solution is the one have done from the beginning." Lucia tapped the choker he wore, a slow smirk coming to his face as he did so that sent chills down her back. Nervously, Elie reached up, finding something cold and solid coiled around her neck as well. "It binds you to me, Elie. Now I will always be aware of where you are. Better yet, should you get too far from me, I can charge it with an electrical attack to render you unable to move."

As he spoke, her fingers grew more desperate around the object, unable to slip beneath it enough to try pulling it, and unable to find any sort of clasp. She could his laugh echoing a little in her ears as she did so, vision going cloudy with a purple haze before she snapped herself out of it.

Being kept close to Lucia was not ideal. It was a horrifying thought, really. But even as he laughed and laughed at her misfortune, the image of his childhood would not leave. How much of him, she wondered, was Lucia? How much was the Dark Bring? It seemed impossible that they could be the same person, but she had seen firsthand what a Dark Bring could do to its user.

More importantly, she had seen that it could be reversed.

Elie stared at him, eyebrows furrowed together. "I don't understand what you want from me," she tried, letting her hands fall back to the bed. There was no point trying to tear the thing off, and she was reluctant to scratch her neck in the process of it.

"You are a threat to my goals. Much more so than Haru Glory." Lucia leaned forward a little. "Etherion is too powerful to be left in that bastards care. And since I can't trust you not to use it against me, I have no other options but to keep you near me." Elie scowled, but she didn't have much of an argument.

As their enemy, it was sound.

She hated that she had started to understand why Lucia did the things he did.

"Haru won't give up on me," she said finally, shaking her head. "He'll come again and again until I'm out of here."

"Oh, I don't doubt that." Lucia rose to his feet, reaching out with his gloved hands to grab her chin. "The only person capable of removing your new necklace, however, is me. I will ensure your escape is not the joyous occasion you're hoping for."

Something about the word necklace sent a shiver down her back. Without thinking much of it, her hand rose up to her neck again, finding only the strange piece he had affixed to her. Where had her necklace gone?

Where was Haru's necklace?

Elie bit her lip, not entirely sure why she was wondering about Haru's necklace. She had never seen him take it off; why would she have it? "Where did my necklace go?" she finally asked. "The one I had when you took me."

Sieg had told her it wasn't important, but Elie had liked it. It was unique.

"It was removed." Lucia said sharply. "I tied it to Iulius' neck and threw him out of the castle." Elie stared at him in shock, but he did not recant his words. "I have no interest in traitors. He was punished just as he knew he would be."

Her heart ached, but she wasn't quite sure why. Iulius had done something - Lucia had mentioned someone helping her break out - but she couldn't recall what came next, or how Lucia had retrieved her. Everything was a blur, moments in the dark overlapping with the purple tapestries of Demon Card's castle. If she tried to think on it too much, Elie found that she felt weak.

She needed her strength now more than ever. Being chained to Lucia's side would make any attempt at escaping that much more difficult, but it would come with its own set of advantages.

If Elie was going to try and save him from the Mother Dark Bring, she would need to stay close. Observe him. Observe it.

"No argument? No begging of me to release you, to return you to your friends?" Lucia mocked, eyebrows disappearing somewhere in his messy bangs. "My, my. Seems you can learn after all." Elie made a face, arms crossing against her chest. "I'm almost disappointed. I expected more of a fight."

Anger flashed, but she stayed in bed regardless. "Why, so you could keep beating me up?" she snapped. Lucia laughed, long and cruel.

He turned on his heel, still laughing. "Well come on now," he said, turning his maniacal smile towards her. "Or perhaps you'd like to test out just how much pain I can cause?"

Elie was up in a flash, not ready to see for herself just what that meant. Again, her fingers trailed across the cool metal, finding nothing that could indicate a release or even much of anything about it. She wanted to panic at the turn of events, at the reality that her escape just became substantially more complicated than it had been before, but Elie forced herself to push the bad feelings down. If she could accomplish this, make Lucia see the light - so to speak - then Haru would never have to fight him again. They'd have won, without even the chance of death along the way.

She had to do this. So if that meant following his orders and playing nice, so be it. Elie could manage that.

Lucia, of course, was not keen on making her task especially easy. In the days that followed, he rarely spoke to her at all. Instead, he simply expected her to follow him around the castle while he took care of one matter or another. It was strange seeing the bureaucratic side of Demon Card, and stranger still to see Lucia so heavily involved with it. It seemed that while he was not hunting down her friends or terrorizing the population, Lucia's life was rather boring.

There was the matter of the ever growing army he was amassing. Elie had seen it a few times, mostly in the distance while they trained. Lucia wouldn't allow her to go outside, but his castle did not lack in windows, giving her glances occasionally.

When he did speak to her, it was mostly to mock her. Or to tell her to quit asking questions. Once, after a particularly animated series of inquiries, he sent a shock through the collar as warning and Elie promptly decided to make sure he never sent one at full power. Her legs had been wobbly for the rest of the day, and though she struggled to walk at a normal pace, Lucia never once slowed down.

Harder than she thought. But, when he must not have thought she was looking, she would occasionally catch just the slightest hint of something more in his expression. A sort of exhaustion she wouldn't have expected. A reminder, really, that he was no older than Haru was, hardly a grown man at all.

Those moments reminded her to work harder. To find the chink in his armor that would allow her to pull the scared child free.

On the fourth day, her opportunity came.

He sat at the end of a long table, watching as various generals and other top ranking Demon Card members filed out after an especially boring meeting, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. Elie stood nearby, just like she had been every other time. She had come to dread these meetings almost as much as Lucia seemed to, unable to sit down and while she knew she should listen to the specifics of information delivered, she simply didn't have the attention span for it.

"Ah, sir?"

Elie looked up a little in surprise, finding a common foot soldier standing in the doorway. Lucia said nothing, but she saw his head rise as well. "S-Sir, we've received word from Lord Hardner."

"Is that so? And what does our friend have to say to us?"

The man glanced at Elie for a second, and she could have sworn she saw him shaking. "H-he respectfully requests that you stay away."

Lucia chuckled a little. "Let me guess, he thinks he can handle the Rave Master by himself?" The soldier gave a tentative nod. "Then he won't mind me watching to see for myself. Send no message in return, simply resume preparations for our inevitable departure."

The soldier nodded, offering a somewhat shaky salute before he turned on his heel and disappeared through the door. Once he was gone, Elie let out a small sigh of relief.

A lot of soldiers who reported to Lucia did not survive the encounter.

"Who's Hardner?" she asked, unable to help herself. Lucia turned towards her, no doubt giving her the same bored expression he had been giving the soldier.

"One of my allies. A powerful one, though I'm sure he has his own motivations."

She hadn't really expected an answer beyond mind your business. Elie's eyebrows rose a little in surprise, thinking back to what he had said earlier. "Is he going after Haru and the others?"

"I believe he was for a while, until he learned that you were with me. Now he waits for the Rave Master to come to him so he can execute him."

Before, the threat of Haru's demise would have sent her reeling. But Lucia made those threats frequently. To her, to his generals, to Lady Joker. Elie was certain of her friends strength, certain that whatever power this Hardner had would still not be enough to defeat him. Now, however, she felt so icy panic at the thought. There was only the certainty that Haru would not be defeated.

"Is that where we're going?" she asked, leaning forward a little. "You said 'inevitable departure.'"

Lucia turned away, hands stroking the Dark Bring resting against his chest. He never took it off. None of the people who wielded a Dark Bring ever took them off. "Not thinking of escaping again, are you?" he sneered. "Would you like me to give another taste of what will happen should you try?" The shiver that zigzagged down her back was involuntary, and Elie gave him her very best glare rather than respond. He laughed, but it wasn't the usual cruel mocking laugh she had come to know.

It was almost…thoughtful.

For a moment, she considered pressing more. But something told her that Lucia would not make such a threat without intending to follow through, she instead she watched. His expression had shifted to a more concerned one, eyebrows furrowing together. Occasionally his lips moved wordlessly, and just as curiosity was becoming too strong to resist -

"The girl is lying, then."

Elie jumped at the ferocity, expecting a shock to follow. Nothing came.

"Bringing her that close makes her an easy target. I'm not going to risk -"

His words cut short, and Elie watched with wide eyes as Lucia seemed to convulse in his chair, yellow eyes popping open as he ground his teeth against whatever it was that was happening. She stepped back, looking around to see if there was someone nearby sending out some sort of psychic attack, but there was nothing. Only Lucia, hand clenched against the Mother Dark Bring while his body spasmed onto the floor.

It was over shortly after. He huffed from the floor, still shaking from whatever it was that had assaulted him. "Y-yes, Mother." The words were soft and strained, as if they caused him just as much pain to say them as what he had just endured.

Elie watched, one hand covering her mouth. The Mother Dark Bring had attacked him? "Are you okay?" she asked, stepping forward. He lifted an arm in her direction, somewhat weakly waving her away. She stopped, but the worry had not left entirely. "What was that?"

"Nothing that concerns you," Lucia snapped, sounding more like himself this time. She wanted to press, to ask all the questions she never had time for before, but she decided to wait. He would be much more likely to attack her if she pushed her luck while he was injured, or recovering. Only when he finally got back to his feet, leaning heavily against the table, did she continue.

"What attacked you?" she said, stepping forward again. "Was that the Sinclaire? I heard it talking to you once, you know."

His head snapped up, and Elie froze once more, mouth still open with another question but not daring to vocalize it. "I displeased Mother. She reacted accordingly. It doesn't concern you." He turned towards her again, eyes wild with arms still shaking.

But etched into his expression, there was a panic Elie didn't recognize. Something more, something he didn't want her to see. This was it, she realized. The chance he had been waiting for, to break through. "Why do you let that - that thing boss you around?" she asked, heart racing in her chest. "Haven't you ever thought that maybe it's just using you?"

She didn't see him rise, didn't even see his hand as it shot towards her throat until it was already there. He hadn't even left her enough room to gasp in surprise.

"You know nothing," he hissed, yanking her a little closer. Elie felt her eyes bulging a little from the pressure, panic settling in as her body desperately attempting to find air. Lucia held her like that for a second longer before he suddenly released her, just enough that she could take in a frantic few gulps of air.

"I-I know that you were alone." Her voice was rough from his grip, straining past his fingers. Lucia's eyes narrowed, but he did not resume the assault as she might have guessed. "And th-that the Sinclaire found you." Still struggling to catch up with what he already done, Elie did not anticipate him removing his hand from her neck with a rough shove. She had no time to try and catch herself before she fell to the ground with a thump, wheezing. Elie felt his foot fall more than saw it herself, flinching away from him.

This was her only chance at reaching him. If she failed now, there would be no second conversation. She had to be strong. Find the courage within to hold her hand out and help their greatest enemy. Weakly, she pushed herself up, breathing still coming out in short, rough bursts. Last chance.

"I know what - what Dark Brings do to people who are alone and scared. It doesn't have to - to be like this. Let me help, Lucia."

Author's Note: Hello again! I am so sorry for the several-month long delay here. Life got a bit rough there for a while, but things have mostly calmed down so I should (hopefully) not be gone again for so long.

Either way, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. The next few will be faster paced, but I like how this one turned out as a way to set the stage.