Hey, guys! Welcome back to RFL 2: Into the Dark! School's finally out, so...hopefully my update schedule will smooth out at last! Woo! Anyway, let's get to the reviews, shall we?
Thanks so much to Loftcat27 (Heh, thanks! I wanted the incantations to be at least...somewhat clever XD), Demi clayton, and WinterCrystal1009 (It's dangerous to go alone! Should've brought a sword. ;) And well, you haven't spammed me yet, so...I assume this update is soon enough XD Ah, I love cultivating hate and violence with cliffhangers :) Truly an author's best friend) for reviewing!
With that, on with the chapter!
Chapter 14: "Savior" of Fear
Pain was the first sensation that Jack could feel upon awakening. Pain in his head, pain in his wrists, pain in his arms, pain in his back...for what felt like a long time, nothing could distract him from the fact that most of his body quite simply hurt.
That is, until he started to wonder why.
What the hell happened…? he thought groggily as he opened his eyes, only to be met with nothing but darkness. Where am I…?
Soon, he became aware of the fact that, despite having just been unconscious, he was not currently lying down. As a matter of fact, he could feel nothing touching him aside from what felt like thick metal clamped around his wrists, which were currently situated above his head. Other than that, it was as if his body was completely…
His eyes widened. ...suspended in the air, he thought, anxiety beginning to rise. I'm hanging by my wrists...my chained wrists...where the hell am I!?
Jack quickly allowed his eyes to glow blue, granting him a bit of sight even in the total darkness he seemed to currently reside within. The young sprite immediately looked up to find that, sure enough, he was hanging from the ceiling by his wrists, which were bound by heavy shackles connected to chains that appeared to have been configured into something like a pulley system. Briefly, he attempted to turn the shackles to ice, but, as he had idly suspected, they seemed to completely resist his magic. Instead of lamenting over this failure, however, he turned his attention back to the chains' arrangement.
Something to lower me with…? he silently questioned, only growing more nervous as he thought. Which means that there is most likely something below me that I'd rather not be forcefully plunged into…
The boy then apprehensively glanced downwards to find the answer to his internal question. While he thankfully couldn't see any sort of ravenous creature or sharp metal spikes beneath him waiting to tear his body apart, he did notice a deep-looking pool of water. In the darkness, even with Jack's somewhat enhanced vision, the water appeared almost black, and was eerily still, barely rippling at all.
Jack gulped. He had never been the strongest of swimmers, but he had serious doubts that even one used to the water would fare very well when dropped into it like a stone with their arms bound above their head. Aside from spontaneously sprouting gills, he doubted very much could be done to properly prepare for such a situation.
Suddenly, Jack was pulled from his grim thoughts by a dark yet vaguely familiar chuckle sounding what seemed like a few feet in front of him. He looked up in surprise, eyes widening, though he dared not speak, lest his voice crack and fail him.
In his anxiousness to ascertain his current position, Jack had failed to notice the dark figure sitting at the end of the room. However, once its glowing yellow eyes flashed open, it became far more noticeable.
"Hello there, Jack," the figure began smugly, its voice a disturbing mixture between Arios' and something decidedly far more inhuman. "Tell me...did you sleep well?"
Jack's eyes narrowed into glowing blue slits. "Fearling," he hissed, forcing his voice to stay steady despite the thick curtain of artificial fear that seemed to coat the very room, threatening to overwhelm him.
It would be of no use to lose my composure now… he silently acknowledged, though he could already feel intense anxiety pushing at his mind. As...dire as this situation is, I can't let myself panic...if anything, I need to learn what the hell is going on...
"I must admit, this is a surprise…" he cautiously said aloud. "I was under the impression that there were none of you left conscious."
"That would seem to be the case," the Fearling replied smoothly. "Though I admit, I knew nothing of the Nightmare King's fall before I overheard you telling the councilmembers all about it...I have been lying dormant for quite a long time, you see."
"And you didn't suffer the same fate because...why, exactly?" Jack asked stiffly, still careful to keep his voice relatively level. "Perhaps because you inhabit a vessel?"
"Very observant of you," the dark creature replied. "Yes...under the Nightmare King's command, only the oh-so-special Onyx had the privilege of inhabiting a body...after all, when tied to physical forms of our own, his direct control over us is less great. He preferred to keep us subservient, which most did not mind, but then, I always found myself possessing a bit more ambition than the common masses."
Jack arched a dark eyebrow. "So then...you're a deserter," he assumed.
The Fearling shrugged. "I prefer the term 'savior.'" He grinned, his teeth just a bit too sharp to look entirely normal on the snow sprite he possessed. "After all, being the only Fearling left standing after you Guardians so soundly vanquished the Nightmare Army...I am now the King's greatest asset."
The boy's eyes narrowed once again. There's his plan… he thought. I should keep probing… "You plan to return to him, then. Help him rise again."
"In short, yes," the Fearling flippantly replied. "I must say, your arrival here was quite fortuitous for me...I was beginning to tire of feeding off the Fear of a few vaguely paranoid sprites. Imagine my delight when you and that crippled archer caused said paranoia to spike up even further!"
Suddenly, Arios' strange and, indeed, paranoid behavior from before began making much more sense than it had previously. The thought that he had seemed far too distrustful, even for someone hiding from the outside world, had lingered at the back of Jack's mind ever since his first interaction with the young man.
Back during his own days on the run, Jack had learned to trust no one, but also to keep said distrust to himself, lest he look too suspicious. It had quickly become apparent that the more intelligent course of action was to act calm, collected, and, at times, almost amicable whenever forced into social situations. Such behavior effectively disguised the fact that he was someone with something to hide.
Arios, meanwhile, had almost appeared to actively encourage others to share in his apparent alarm, and seemed rather adept at the practice as well. It had come off as strange before, but with a Fear-hungry monster at the helm, influencing the man's every decision, Arios' behavior now made perfect sense.
"So let me get this straight," Jack began quietly, forcefully pushing away the last remnants of his headache and unease so that he might be allowed to piece everything together properly. "You are a Fearling that, however long ago, left the Nightmare King and possessed Arios Fletcher. You said you've been lying dormant for a long time...is it safe to assume that my arrival awakened you?"
The Fearling grinned. "Indeed," he confirmed. "The sheer amount of Fear that coursed through the city when you got here was simply irresistible…" If possible, the creature's grin grew wider. "Not to mention the abundant wealth of Fear you yourself seem to carry."
Jack visibly flinched, recalling his earlier panic at discovering that he was underground, as well as several other of his more longstanding insecurities. Now, such simple fears seemed almost trivial compared to what he now knew he faced.
"A-Anyway…" he said quickly, struggling to get his thoughts back on track. He needed to focus if he was going to gather information properly...if he could ever manage to get back to the other Guardians, knowledge of this Fearling's plans would be invaluable to them. "You've now awakened, and...plan to bring back the Nightmare King, despite deserting him before?"
"My so-called 'desertion' was not exactly...planned, so to speak," the Fearling answered with a casual shrug. "I was merely attracted to the terror of a young man trapped in a burning, crumbling building alongside the charred corpse of his mother!" He laughed openly at Jack's look of horror. "Yes, I first entered Arios' body no less than six years ago, during one of the fateful attacks that I'm sure you're quite familiar with. Truth be told, I had initially intended to take the boy's body and use it to prove that I could serve the Nightmare King just as well as Onyx could...but that damned doctor just had to brave the flames to rescue his beloved son...ugh. Such affection sickens me, though I suppose his success does deserve some admiration, foolish as the attempt was.
"But I'm digressing far too much...to answer your question, yes, I plan on bringing the Nightmare King back out of his recently-induced slumber. As I've said before, I'm the only Fearling left awake, and as such, I'm destined to be the savior of my kind." He chuckled. "And of course...such a status will no doubt earn me the privileges that Onyx once held. Respect, power, access to much more Fear...perhaps I'll even be granted permission to use a name, just as she was!"
Jack, meanwhile, was hardly listening to the Fearling's continued rambling. His mind whirled with visions of his own past encounter with the fires that destroyed countless homes and taken even more lives. Due to the Fletchers' story, it seemed as though not every raid had been quite as wholly fatal as the one he experienced had been. Some sprites in other villages had managed to keep their lives long enough to flee.
But at what cost?
"Hey, are you listening?" the Fearling suddenly asked irritably, snapping Jack out of his thoughts. When Jack started slightly and looked back over at him, the dark creature rolled his yellow eyes in contempt. "Honestly...the first person I get to discuss my history with, and you can't even be bothered to pay attention. Don't test me, boy...you should be happy I'm still talking and not progressing to the next part of my plan already."
In that moment, Jack quickly decided that he did not want to find out what "the next part of the plan" might be.
Still, he cleared his throat and said warily, "I...assume that you're only telling me all this because you don't intend on letting me live." It was hardly a question.
The Fearling, however, surprised the young Guardian by merely laughing and shaking his head. "While it's true that I don't intend on letting you see the light of day again any time soon, why would I want to kill you...?" he asked in an almost jovial tone, though his eyes glittered with malice. "...when I can simply use you instead?"
Jack's nerves were immediately set on edge by this eerie statement. "Er…'use me?'" he repeated apprehensively. "For...what?"
"For Fear, of course!" the demon replied with a cruel smirk. "As I said before, you harbor plenty of it...it won't take much effort to draw it out of you. You, my friend, are going to be my personal Fear supply. I was content to feed off of Arios' fears and some of the others' anxieties for years...but now that I have a chance to grow my power further and get out from under this damn desert, I'm going to need much, MUCH more Fear. And to do that..." He smiled. "I need to break you."
The Fearling waited a moment for Jack to respond, but the boy had been struck speechless at the idea of being used essentially as a power source for the creature in front of him. He said he was going to draw Fear out of me…break me... the boy thought nervously. And unless I'm somehow mistaken, that… He gulped. ...that means torture…
When Jack did not speak, the demon tapped his chin lightly as though in thought. "Now...while your Fear might be more than enough for me alone, I doubt it could fuel the entire Nightmare Army. Which means...I might have to go along with the plan I've been toying with for a long time."
Jack didn't like the sound of that. "Which...is…?" he asked hesitantly.
The Fearling practically beamed, showing Jack his slightly pointed teeth once more. "I'm so glad you asked...have you, by chance, been wondering why I put so much effort into cultivating distrust in the hearts of many of the sprites down here?" he asked. "Of course, feeding off their Fear for the time being is part of it...but I'd like to think that I'm capable of dreaming a bit bigger than that. Though...I am certainly fortunate that all the pieces have already been put in place for my use. You see, rumors that snow sprites wanted to revolt against the Tsar have already been spread across the land as part of the Nightmare King's original plan to ostracize them…"
Jack's eyes widened. "N-No…"
The monster grinned. "...so why not make such a revolution a reality? Just imagine the Fear that will come alongside a war with holders of arguably the most powerful magic in the tsardom...it will be absolutely delicious!"
Jack's immediate instinct was to lash out at the Fearling, to protest, to freeze him, to kick at him, to do something besides just hang there and react. However, he just barely managed to stop himself from doing so, foreseeing the laughs he would surely elicit from the creature should he attempt to fight in his sorry state.
Instead, the young sprite merely took a deep breath, narrowed his still-glowing eyes, and spoke with as much confidence as he could muster. "The Guardians will stop you."
His enemy smiled. "I'd like to see them try." The Fearling finally stood, stretching a bit, then once again fixing Jack with his condescending yellow gaze. "Now, as fun as this has been, Guardian, I'm afraid our discussion is finished for now. In fact...all this talking has left me famished." His eyes glinted cruelly as he stepped to the side, reaching up and grasping a lever on the wall. "...mind helping me remedy that?"
Before Jack could utter so much as a syllable, the Fearling pulled the lever, causing the chains attached to his shackles to rattle loudly. Then, without warning, they went slack, causing the boy to plunge into the pool of water beneath him without granting him any chance to hold his breath.
As such, it didn't take long for the decidedly too-hot water to fill his lungs.
Ooh boy...things are getting real now. Hope you guys enjoyed, and be sure to tell me what you think! I'll see you next time!
For now, Sapphire316, out.