Chapter Thirty-One – Dreamless Sleep
Guess what? This is going to be so much longer than New Rules New Ruler. Oh and the chapter titles are having less and less relevance. Really they're just decoration at the top of the page by now. Take the previous two chapters, for example. They could just as easily have been the other way around and it would have made as much sense. ^_^ Oh well. Onwards and upwards… Nagi finally gets his revenge here, but we're not done with Rammi yet. I kept expecting this chapter to be nastier than it is, but it's still deserving of it's R, IMO.
Have you ever screamed so hard your throat bled? So hard you couldn't stop coughing and the white tissues absorb scarlet roses in sprinkles and blotches? So hard you couldn't speak for a week?
Nagi lay on the bed, throat a pulpy mass of pain. An iron collar ran from his slender neck to the iron bedstead. The sheets were black silk, leaving his naked body contrasting and exposed. His eyes glowed like sapphires in dark purple rims. The stone walls kept the sound in, and he knew his absence would not be remarked upon. He was dead.
"You took your time, didn't you? You wanted to be so utterly certain," a smooth voice purred. It was the voice of thousands of years of aristocracy bred in velvet and stone, smooth and unyielding. Cultured decadence dripped off every word. If the bed Nagi lay on could speak, it would have a voice just like that, so it seemed only appropriate that its owner did.
"I'm not scared," Nagi said truthfully, each word shredding his tender throat.
"The fearless don't scream," the voice commented, amused by Nagi's newfound defiance. "Don't worry, I'm not going to kill you.
"I'm not scared of dying," Nagi said bluntly, then admitted, "I just don't want to."
"Clever boy." A shadow detached itself from the liquid black of the corners and glided to sit on the bed. Nagi frowned. "I'm a descendant of the Marquis de Sade, you know," the voice purred. "Though perhaps you might already have guessed."
Nagi said nothing, just frowned up at the darkness. It was literal, thick and unyielding. The harder Nagi stared, the less he could see. He hadn't been afraid of the dark since he ran away from home, but this was solid and enveloping. He shrank back, cowering amongst the sheets.
"You're an illusionist," Nagi sighed, remembering. "That's why no one ever saw you come in or go out." It was that realisation that had led him to this point. There had only been three illusionists on the database, one an American teenaged boy, one an African middle aged woman and the third a German man of indiscriminate age who had recently returned from a long trip abroad.
"Partly," the darkness gave an elegant shrug. "Most people don't see anything here, because they don't look."
"I noticed," Nagi murmured.
"You did well to find me," the young man shed some of the darkness and Nagi could see sharply intelligent grey eyes watching him steadily. "No one else has ever figured it out. That's why I brought you down here, so I can keep you from going to the authorities. If you told them who I was there are enough members of staff who suffered as you have to ensure my death."
"How long have you been here?" Nagi asked curiously. "Your record seemed… long. You seem very youthful for you age."
A peal of delighted laughter rippled through the chamber. "Dear boy! I am an illusionist, or have you forgotten so soon? Everything is mere trickery."
"So, how old are you?" As the shadows peeled away Nagi's fear went with them and he sat up to face the languidly feline European.
"I am as old as Herr Hertz. Psychic talents tend to run in families, though he has no idea of who I really am. He thought I died when we were but boys."
"You are Hertz-san's brother?"
"Twin. Only the man who brought me in ever saw the similarity, and I killed him before he could reveal it."
"I feel very privileged," Nagi said candidly. "But surely, you have nothing to fear. If others should endanger your life your brother would protect you?"
"The Ancient ones do not approve of putting family ties before Estet. And my dear brother so desperately seeks their approval. My only amnesty lies in my talent, for illusionists are rare." The man shook his head. "That might keep me alive as it has that obnoxious whore Schuldig, but I have made many enemies. If you were to reveal me to them I would earn a knife to the back some dark night."
"They're willing to risk their lives to take yours," Nagi murmured.
"Are you?" the man asked, smugly aware of the impending answer.
"I don't want to die," Nagi repeated his earlier sentiment, "but I am barely trained and strong emotions tend to make my powers go haywire." He held the man's eyes, the challenge implicit in his words. "I am very powerful, and the occasional accident may be overlooked, especially if the unfortunate has many enemies."
"You may have gotten away with that in the past, but telekinetics are common here," the man sneered.
"I have a role to play," Nagi said confidently.
"What, in the summoning? I hardly think so." He snorted with derision.
Nagi reached around his neck and felt the lock on the chain. It was small and complex, too awkward to be manipulated without being seen. This didn't bother Nagi. The collar wrenched itself apart and slammed into the wall, chipping the ancient stone.
"I am powerful," Nagi reiterated. The man tried to move, but Nagi had his body in a vice-like grip. "You see, I could have killed you any time, but I wanted people to know you suffered. I wanted people to see your humiliation."
"You couldn't kill me," the man shook his head. "You froze up. Every time you froze inside, you let me do what I liked because you were trapped inside your own head. You weren't even aware you were still here."
"Oh, I was aware. I've been more men's fucktoy than just you. I hate this world for what it has made me, and it has made me into a tool of revenge. I hate my father for taking me the way you did, I hate each stranger on the streets of Tokyo, and I hate you. My father isn't here. Those strangers aren't here. I am a tool of revenge…" Nagi raised an eyebrow.
"No one will find us down here," the man said. "If you want a public humiliation you'll find this chamber sorely lacking for viewers."
Nagi shrugged. His naked body uncoiled and stalked around the room, exuding an air of sensuality that no child should. A male Lolita, in many ways, Nagi strode through the cold air to pick up the twisted metal collar.
"Rape is hard to get over. It scars a person for life. But you learn to live with the scars, after a while. I'm a child, but I have an adult's mind. I grew up many, many years ago, and I have an adult's thirst for justice."
"Revenge isn't justice."
"So?"
Nagi stood directly in front of the man. Shadows spread across the room. Water filled it, fire filled it, tar filled it, blood filled it. Everything was an illusion except the last. Nagi drew the blood from the man's veins with delicate ease, soaking it through the pores to turn the offender scarlet.
As the blood trained away the man lost control of his talent. At first illusions swept through the institute in alarming colours and shapes, twisted creatures and monstrous forms writhed through walls and distorted through ceilings. Schuldig was the first to compare it to an acid trip, but he wasn't the last. As the man grew weaker the illusions grew fainter.
Nagi frowned at the limp body. He didn't look anything like Hertz. Well, there was a resemblance, but it was like Hertz was a son, or even grandson, who took after this man. Nagi dismissed the illusionist's claims as a lie, though he couldn't think of a reason for such a strange falsehood.
* * *
When the body was finally found it was unrecognisable. Nagi had done him that favour. It was spread across most of the room, skinned and eyeless. His private parts were nowhere to be found.
Only two men knew of Nagi's guilt. Another assumed and a few guessed, but neither Crawford nor Schuldig had any intention of revealing the boy's secret. Nagi's confidence had rocketed and his will to live had been strengthened immensely. Schuldig mentioned the death to Jei one day, and that night Nagi woke to see a redhead sitting cross legged at the end of his bed, poking him with a knife to wake him.
"If you touch me you'll die. Painfully," Nagi warned.
Jei laughed. He drew the knife through his forearm. "There is no pain," he smiled. "My name is Jei, and I want you to help me hurt the God that puts us all through this torture."
"I don't believe in God," Nagi sighed. He'd heard about this nutjob.
"We are victims. We ought to take revenge on those that make us so."
Nagi couldn't argue with that.
Finally! I was really coming to hate that Nagi arc, but I couldn't think of a suitable perpetrator. That wasn't quite the way I would have liked to end it, but I needed to have set up more earlier to close that arc as I'd have liked. I may revise some earlier chapters at some point to round it off a little more neatly, but for now it's over. Coming up: Schu/Farf action, since someone did ask, Brad and Nagi meet properly, Rammi gets dealt with and a bunch of other stuff I haven't decided yet. ::eye roll:: by this point in New Rule s New Ruler I knew how it would end in relatively good detail, here I'm still making it up as I go along, and I think it's starting to show. I know how it will end, but I don't know how I'm going to get to that point yet, and it's causing some nasty writer's block.
