"Your boot is dying."
- Angela of Altena
Seeing Red
~*~*~*~*~
Author's Notes: Because my computer screwed up (again) and did something really weird earlier, and I am far too lazy to correct it, there are no reviewer responses this chapter around. I know, I know, you're sad that you won't get a personalized message from moi like you've so been looking forward to. Try not to cry too much into your pillows at night, please?
Anyways, just know that I love you all so very much! I LOOOOOVE YOOOOUUU!!!
And that is all.
Some look at the time, I looked back into my life
You want to touch me to see what's in my eyes
Why do you make me remember all the hate all its shame
Don't you hate me, sometimes?
- (KoRn) Life Is Peachy … "No Place To Hide"
Chapter 3: Something Akin to Insanity
"I can not believe this."
was the mantra that Jose was muttering to himself over and over again. Sure, he added a couple random words here and there that would make a sailor blush, variating it a bit, but in the end, it came down to that sentence. Because he couldn't. 'Honestly, Goddess, why?' he asked to the sky. What had he ever done to anger the Goddess; tempt fate? Was it because he wasn't religious enough? No, that couldn't be. He went to the Holy Masses every Sunday, even if was overfilled to the top with hypocritical noblemen bejeweled from head to toe and ladies with over-extravagant dresses attempting to sing along with the choir of natural beauty and purging the soul of greed and impurity. And he actually listened to the sermons, unlike those childish fiends known as Koren and Angela…
"YOU'RE IT!"
Speak of the devil. Oh. Was that why the Goddess was angry with him?
Ear-piercing shrieks of laughter reached his old, aching ears of wisdom and fatigue. At least, that's how he liked to think of it. Anyways, the 2 'gremlin children' entered the library full of exuberance, life, and bright, contagious energy. Blegh. Absolutely disgusting.
"You can't catch me!" Angela said in a sing-song voice, running lightly as if on air. She was laughing and teasing, looking behind her at the panting, pale, but oddly determined Koren, with a grin on his face. Grudgingly, Jose admitted (to himself, of course) that the two looked as innocent as snowflakes right then. Angela's bright green eyes, that must've come from her father because Queen Valda had purple-bluish eyes, were luminous as her smile sparkled with happiness, looking like a true child of the Mana Goddess. Koren, who had a peculiar air of darkness and obscurity that constantly shrouded him; the kind that made the entire palace court suspicious and wary and talk about that 'strange boy that Jose took under his wing'. This melancholy aura was always immediately dispelled by the ever jubilant, cheeky Angela who walked as if with balls permanently sewn under the soles of her feet.
However, this train of thought was abruptly stopped to a screeching halt when Angela, not looking at where her feet was leading her, slammed into the small foot table with the prized vase with elaborate designs of lilies, the Queen's favorite, carved into the urn made of ever-lasting, magically-induced crystalline blue ice, fired and heated directly into the finest of the faraway fires in the Valley of Flames.
And this wasn't just any vase. Oh, no. It had to be the one containing the very, very rare Holy Water – the kind that is ONLY used for baptisms and christenings and for very prestigious royal weddings, ONLY in Wendel, ONLY by the Priest of Light, and the purest imported kind out there.
And all she could say was "Oops"???
"Princess Angela," Jose gritted his teeth in frustration and barely-concealed rage. "That, was NOT, by any degree, princess-like, nor clever, let alone common sense."
Goddesses forbid that Angela would be bothered in the slightest by this. She rolled her eyes, tossed her hair exaggeratedly, saying "Well, duh. I never do anything princess-like, clever, or sensible. This isn't news, Jose – I've heard it a thousand times before."
Livid and red-faced, Jose chose not to reply and turned to Koren, the other player in this game of cat-and-mouse. Koren was ashen-faced, looking torn between his only, and very best friend's insolence, and the fury of the one man he had looked up to adoringly all of his life. So he chose to stare fervently at the valuable-no-longer vase, smashed quite neatly in two. The holy water was creeping sluggishly, pulled down by gravity and a very slight mistake in the ancient period of the building of the library, and touched Jose's boots. Even through the thick leather of the footwear, he could feel it eating away at the boot, purifying it and cleansing it of all dirt – and fabric. It was extraordinarily icy-cold; colder than the coldest of the ice fields, but it also burned. Cold fire.
"Your boot is dying." Angela pointed out absent-mindedly.
"I noticed." Jose growled. Angela made a face, but remained silent. Jose stood there, with a dying boot, and two mute children, one too embarrassed and so ashamed to speak, and the other too careless to talk.
Jose was trying to think of what to do. The situation was really, in all actuality, ridiculously funny, but Koren was too stoic and serious and Angela was too rebellious to realize it. It took all of Jose's will not to release his tremendous effort to stop shaking his shoulders and laugh it up.
After a hefty amount of silence, Jose coughed. "Well, we will think up a punishment for you later, Angela. As none of the traditional ones seem to have an effect on you."
"Yeah." Angela said vaguely, twirling a lavender lock around her fingers.
Jose turned to Koren, who seemed to have lightened up, having figured out that Jose was not quite as angry anymore. "Erm…you can go now, Koren. Angela won't be back for quite a few hours, so you best find something else to amuse you."
"Wait, what? Angela's having extra lessons without me?" Koren's bright smile dimmed instanteously. "Th..that's not fair!"
"What's not fair, Koren? The Queen specifically ordered for Angela to have separate lessons for the rest of the year, and see how it goes. I believe the whole reason you two – behave – the way you do in my studies are because you work together as a team. Which usually would not be disapproved in my eyes at all, but the manner in which you two operate is highly unbecoming of a future ruler such as Princess Angela and a courtier such as yourself."
Angela wrinkled her nose. "A courtier?"
But Koren had completely ignored Jose's ramblings. "Since when did we decide to let Angela get extra lessons? She doesn't even deserve her marks!"
"HEY!" Angela raised her nose up to the air and crossed her arms, assuming her 'better than thou' look. "You're the one who lets me! If you don't want me to, then don't tell me the answers!"
"Koren, I am flattered that you enjoy the class time we spend together so much, especially considering that you never seem to be working and merely having fun spewing saliva-cached wads of parchment."
"I do. More than her, anyways." Koren motioned with a brief flick of his head sideways at the princess next to him. This obviously enraged Angela more than Koren realized, poor soul.
"DON'T." Smack. "-TALK." Kick. "-TO ME." Punch. "-LIKE." Slap. "-THAT." Tackle. Wait, is there a sound effect for tackle?
(A/N: POW! BAM! KAJOOLAZOO! SNEEKITY SNEEKITY SNEE! ….what? Oh, right. No author notes in the middle of a fic. Shame!)
Jose threw his hands up in exasperation. What was the point of talking to two raucous children that got into fights every 15 minutes and would eventually prove to the bane of Altena's existence?
"I'M THE FREAKIN' DAUGHTER OF THE QUEEN OF ALTENA, AND YOU BETTER NOT EVER INSULT ME SO CRUDELY THAT WAY AGAIN, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY!"
Oh yes, that.
"Children!" Rena cried anxiously. This was how the young woman had found the trio 20 minutes later – Jose was on a chair stretched out and smoking a pipe languidly, while Koren and Angela were carrying out combat on each other viciously in a way only the young and mighty could get away with – biting, scratching, kicking, shoving, pulling out lovely lavender hair, screaming and stretching out nonnative, round ears in retaliation. [1]
"Sir Jose! With all due respect, have you done nothing to attempt to becalm this?" Rena shouted over the screaming and yelling. As a reply, Jose simply gave an indifferent shrug.
"Princess Angela! Master Koren! Please, bring an end to this now!" People were unused to Rena's stern, loud, bossy side, as the girl was as meek and docile as anything, but such people like Koren or Angela wouldn't give a rabite's foot about that. As proven when Rena reached into the tussle to pull the two apart, but leaped back with a loud "YOWCH!" and a throbbing hand bitten by Angela's sharp teeth.
Jose administered a very primitive medication process to a bitter Rena with torn cloth ripped from the satiny, shiny blue cloth from Rena's sleeve, but didn't do much aside from that until yet another innocent bystander was injured.
It all happened very quickly; the two brawlers had been skirmishing primarily in one spot, but suddenly began to move and roll about. They had been nearing yet ANOTHER foot table containing another vase, thankfully not as valuable as the first one, but still, made of some of the finest crystalline that was scattered about deep in Gemstone Valley. Jose looked up just as he tied the primeval bandage on Rena's hand with a tight, neat knot, to see the end table be shoved by two bodies, the glittering green emerald vase tipped over and falling…then Victor appeared, seemingly out of nowhere like a godsend savior, and smartly catching it with two hands. Until Koren and Angela rolled further and shoved Victor back; the boy stumbled clumsily backwards. Jose expected an untimely demise of the vase and both the boy – as an ingrown teenager with the look of someone that had grown too fast in too short a time, thusly producing a slightly pinched look, Victor was armed with a pair of ungainly, inadequately graceful large feet. Jose closed his eyes in resignation, waiting for that heart stopping shattering of glass, but instead, heard a large THUD and a sickeningly painful-sounding CRACK, and some tormenting groans.
"Victor!" Angela squealed, immediately halting in mid-air while performing the act of trying to rip Koren's ears off. She scrambled off from the straddle hold on Koren to timidly crawl on her hands and knees towards the boy. "Are you okay?" She whispered anxiously.
"Not quite – Princess." Victor hissed breathlessly, gasping each word out in pain. Koren stood uneasily to the side while Rena scrambled off her hindquarters even faster than Angela had to kneel by Victor's side and gather his head onto her lap. Jose slowly rose up to see what had happened to his apprentice, and unsurprisingly, Victor's leg was in an awkward, uncomfortable position, while his ankle was swelling up quickly with a nasty purplish color.
"This has gone far enough." Jose assumed his regal, commanding air, quickly barking out orders. "Rena, help Victor up and take him to the infirmary." Rena nodded, and slowly, Victor got up, wincing at every movement, and slung his arm around Rena's small frame. Together, the two of them walked out of the library, Victor hopping on one foot gracelessly. Jose and Angela and Victor watched the pair walk out, and then the man turned to the two shorter people in the room. "You two –" Jose began thunderously. In one of the few times of her life, Angela shrunk with every syllable Jose uttered. Despite himself, the image of seeing the haughty, arrogant Angela shrink to submissiveness made the elderly man feel guilty. Koren did not look guilty, or ashamed, or cold and emotionless – he blankly stared ahead seemingly at nothing at all. It was an expression Jose had never seen before on the boy, but made sense as to how people always spoke kindly to Jose about his benevolent actions of taking in such a simpleton of a boy, and Jose would ask them what on earth they were talking about, because Koren always maintained a look of intelligence and eagerness at learning with Jose.
Jose sighed. "Your lessons will be postponed until tomorrow, Angela. And Koren, you would be wise to take along an extra quill for when Angela forgets."
Angela squealed with giddiness, and Koren let a smile break through his dull façade. "Thank you, Lord Jose." Koren swept into an elegant bow that made the most rich, polished noblemen blush with embarrassment, while Angela latched onto Jose's leg and hugged it tightly. [2] "Be warned, however," Jose said in a cautioning voice, "if this ever, ever happens again…"
"We know, we know, Jose!" Angela said, resuming her pompous attitude predictably quickly. She raced out of the library while Koren made a final elegant bow and solemnly walked out behind the hyperactive princess with such dignity for an adolescent it made Jose chuckle.
"That was perfect, Angie. Every bit of it. Well, except for that ear-pulling thing. We certainly didn't discuss that."
"Oh, I improvised a bit for that part. Besides, you were saying your lines FAR too convincingly. It made me angry; I thought you really meant it!"
"That was what we were trying to get come across. Honestly, Angela…"
"Shut up. It was a good show, anyways. Wicked fun. But my scalp is sore!"
"Quite whining, it'll grow back."
"Don't make me kick you again."
"Alright, alright."
"And what about what happened with Victor?! We never talked anything about injuring him!"
"Oh, yes, well, hmm…it worked out in our favor, didn't it?"
"We could've done without it, Kor!"
"Perhaps, but what's done is done."
"Ooh! That's it, I'm going to go the infirmary and see how Vicky is coping!"
"Is that supposed to offend me or something?"
"It usually does!" With that, the dainty princess of Altena stomped angrily away in the dark stone corridor, leaving behind a very red-faced skinny blonde who had never actually blushed in his life before.
There was a silence, and he also turned to walk away into the opposite direction.
"He deserved it." Koren muttered sourly.
[1] In my fic, Koren is nonnative to Altena. (He was wandering around in a snowstorm, afterall. That could mean ANYTHING! :P) His exact history will be explained later on.
[2] Remind you of anybody? *dooweedoowahCarliedeewahmookookookachoo*
Next chappie: Koren finds something shocking about the Queen, and Angie finds that magic lessons with Jose suck serious rabite booty.
Closing A/N: You guys rock serious arse. 7 is my lucky number! I knew I couldn't delay this chapter any longer after that! ^^ Now then, how about clicking that little button over there? Heheheh, yes… No, WAIT, NOT THE X! Aw crap! _
Fun Fact: There are no fun facts this time.