Chapter 5
"Van! Folken was seen at the brothel again just earlier! "
Van heard Merle's high pitched scream while finally having had the chance to enjoy a late dinner, even before she bolted into Dryden's kitchen. Almost choking on the bite of food halfway down his throat, Van barely registered what she had just said.
"You sure?" He asked, shocked and already getting up while chewing his last bite hastily when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't be rash again, Van," Dryden instantly tried to calm him. "Since yesterday night, the soldiers have a pretty good idea of what you look like. Just in case you've already forgotten." His brown eyes were calm, attempting to cool down Van while continuing to speak in a composed manner. "We have to make sure nothing can happen to you. You're too important. That's our top priority at the moment."
Merle glanced back and forth between Van and Dryden. She felt the sudden tension in the air and flattened her ears against her head with a small frown on her face. "Dryden, it's very hospitable that you worry so much about Van on top of everything you've been doing for us, but he knows quite well how to take care of himself. Besides, it's already dark outside so there shouldn't be too big of a threat, don't you think…?"
A sudden bang interrupted her speech when the back of Van's chair hit the floorboards, having been pushed over by his abrupt movement. Merle clearly saw the pulsing vein on his neck and ducked towards the door, ready to escape a sudden outburst, should it be necessary. She knew exactly just what he was capable of if he so desired.
"I'm still going to the brothel to check! I have to, Dryden. Don't you understand? Merle already said it quite well. We appreciate everything you're doing and your concern about my well-being, but that doesn't mean you can tell me what and what not to do!"
Van's deep voice boomed through the room, similar to a thunderous rumble. He was furious; not only because of Dryden's pointless attempt at keeping him inside the house and Folken, who really had terrible timing appearing out of nowhere. He was also furious about his own stupidity and carelessness which he had exhibited previous night.
"I just need to reach Boris' tavern by the shipyard. There is a secret passageway leading into the brothel." That said, Van disappeared into the hallway and, with long fast strides, upstairs into his room. Two daggers were concealed inside his boots while the sword in the corner remained in its place, as it had been for a while. After only a few minutes, Van was back in the hallway and nearly collided with Merle in his hurry while pulling on a brown jacket, not paying adequate enough attention to his surroundings.
"Van, please promise me to be careful. Fiore saw a whole bunch of soldiers patrolling the streets earlier. Allen's men have been more watchful than ever…" She whispered and averted her gaze to the ground. Van's eyes softened as he noticed the worry in her voice and lifted her chin with his long fingers.
"I promise I'll come back to you, just like always." Merle's cheeks flushed lightly as Van smiled at her affectionately. He briefly squeezed her shoulder in a reassuring gesture before passing her.
Heavyhearted, blue eyes followed his steps downstairs while her ever attentive cat-ears heard the soft click of the back door as it closed. Merle joined Dryden who was still sitting in the kitchen. His face was full of concern as he mumbled: "He will get into a load of trouble if he just keeps running off like that."
Sighing heavily, Dryden got up and shambled towards his study with heavy steps. Once there, he took a deep breath, lowered himself on the chair by his study desk and turned his attention to the reports his spies had sent over the course of the day.
Reading about Zaibach's frequent and bizarre activities as of late, caused his stomach to twist.
Dryden was aware of the ultimate plans fabricated by Zaibach's mastermind, Folken, thanks to Van: The complete destruction of Gaea by turning everything to dust and rubble. With that done, Folken hoped for an opportunity to start anew. If he and anybody else managed to survive the mad undertaking, that was. Therefore, Dryden had founded the Abaharaki a few years ago in hopes of somehow saving Gaea. Preventing this insane future was their main and only objective.
Dryden was also positive that without the legendary dragon armor, they wouldn't stand a chance of succeeding with their operation. Still, he had to be at least a bit pleased. The supposedly lost, youngest prince of Fanelia and, by virtue of his heritage, one of the only possible pilots of said dragon armor, had found his way to him on his own. Fate had indeed been in his favor, just this once.
Avoiding further dark thoughts, he picked up an ancient vellum scroll nearby to study it, like so often. It held the only clues hinting at what could be done to prevent the dark days that lie ahead of them. His intelligent, brown eyes focused on the document in his hands.
„In the darkness, the dragon wakes.
To a cold heart, the dragon takes.
With you at my side, the dragon sleeps.
On dragon wings, our wishes leap."
Dryden had been thinking about these words for a long time now. However, what exactly they meant still eluded him. Was it simply a legend or truly going to become reality soon?
Van had already been looking for the damn dragon armor nearly his whole life. Ever since the destruction of Fanelia, he had been hunting for it and even after all this time they had not one reliable report about its possible location. Van was convinced that his brother knew more about its location and that's why he wanted so badly to find him, he said; as if that was his only reason. To prevent Folken from using it.
Dryden snorted in a rather undignified way while having this thought. He damn well knew that if Van ever found his brother, the man wouldn't be alive long enough to answer any questions. After all, Van's very own brother was responsible for the destruction of Fanelia.
Shaking his head with a slight frown on his face, he read the lines again in an attempt to pull some fresh information out of it which could help them…
"Fin tein a loluca
en dragua selain..."
Hitomi woke from a dreamless slumber and to the sound of a soft melody. Still dreadfully tired, she forced open her laden eyelids and found herself in a dark room. Blinking a few times, her clouded vision gradually became clearer and clearer.
Only ploddingly, she gained back her memory of the last hours. Looking around the room, Hitomi realized, with no small measure of panic, that this intimidating man whose name was Folken had indeed taken her away, had bought her from the Red Madame. Hitomi hadn't thought that her life could become much worse. Now, she wasn't so certain anymore. She laid on a small plank bed and there was only a very simple dresser in one of the corners of the sparsely furnished, small room. Then, a window on the other side caught her attention and as she noticed that there was nothing outside but the dark sky and twinkling stars, she jumped up and stumbled over to it.
"Oh no…," she whispered with a hand on the window frame. Hitomi was high up in the sky and underneath her, far below, the city of Pallas.
Hearing quiet steps outside her door, she turned around. After that, a soft knock followed. When nobody let themselves in, as Hitomi had expected, she opened the door warily and peered outside. In front of her stood the woman with the long, pointed ears and silver-grey hair. The woman's elegant but serious face showed no emotion, her blue eyes regarding Hitomi sternly.
"I am Sora. My Master, General Folken, wishes to see you as soon as you are awake, which you are now."
Sora stepped aside and motioned for Hitomi to leave her room. She swallowed lightly and felt the looming danger all around her while following Sora through the dark hallways of the flying fortress.
"Would you tell me where we are?" Hitomi asked timidly.
Sora glanced at Hitomi over her shoulder, eyes lowered a bit. She clearly noticed the young woman's tense body. Her bright, green eyes were full of fear and Sora already felt sorry for Hitomi because she knew exactly what was ahead of her.
"We are inside one of Zaibach's flying fortresses," she answered finally, her gaze locked on the way in front of her again
The women passed a row of soldiers with stoic faces walking in single file and looking straight ahead and continued on until they met a man clad in red armor.
"Don't tell me that this is the witch who caused the whole turmoil?" He exclaimed in a mocking tone.
Hitomi could only stare at him and flinched when she met his blood red eyes. She scanned his body quickly. It was definitely that of a man but his voice sounded suspiciously like that of a woman; how very confusing and alarming at the same time.
"Dilandau. Get out of our way so I can escort our guest to General Folken without any delay." Sora attempted to avoid him and was about to pass the soldier but the man grabbed her by the arm and pushed her against the wall quite violently.
"You're such a sassy little thing, aren't you? As if you could really bother me. I could kill you with the mere flick of a wrist, do you even realize that?" He grabbed her chin tightly to emphasize his point and pressed her even more against the wall.
"Dilandau!"
A sharp, cold voice interrupted Dilandau's actions, much to his dismay. Eyes shut and with a sadistic grin plastered on his face, he let go of Sora and turned towards the fourth person in the hallway.
"Folken! What a nice coincidence." Dilandau said while his grin widened into a fake grimace. Folken only locked eyes with him briefly and raised his hand. In an instant, the face of the soldier, only moments ago confident and proud, turned into an expression of excruciating pain and a long, piercing cry of pure agony filled the hallway.
Hitomi could only watch all of this in pure horror. What was going on? She didn't understand what Folken was doing. Her eyes lingered on the red soldier as he crumbled into a pitiful heap on the ground, still whimpering in pain.
The cries ebbed at the same time as the hand of the General fell back to his side and approached the women as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
"You need to excuse his bad behavior. Dilandau sometimes is not quite himself..." A sharp glance at the soldier in question caused him to crawl out of sight as fast as he could.
Hitomi's stomach plummeted to her knees when she realized what this man could do to her. She wasn't even a member of his crew. She was just a woman; purchased to do with as he pleased. A cold shiver ran down her spine as the General began to move and Sora followed him silently, without command.
Hitomi wasn't sure which man to fear more now. This soldier in red definitely scared her. He possessed an evil aura and all her alarm bells had gone off instantly when seeing him. Was he now a man or a woman? Then, this grotesque interaction between him and Folken. The General hadn't even touched him, yet the soldier had seemed to suffer under an incredible amount of pain until he had been released from whatever was causing it.
Hitomi didn't even have the sense to pay attention to the way they were taking. Having seen something like this had squashed all will to entertain an escape for the foreseeable future.
The general tore her from her thoughts as he led her into a large, dark room.
"Come in here, Hitomi".
His deep voice clouded her senses and she instantly felt the icy claws on her mind again. Hitomi's legs moved without her permission, leading her into the dark. Only a few small candles with blue flames in the far corners illuminated the room.
Her feet stopped in the middle of the room where Folken was waiting for her. He looked at her and his rust-red eyes bound her mind to his will.
"You feel the change too, don't you?" He asked almost softly.
"What... what do you mean?" Hitomi wanted to step back and shake herself out of this stupor she was in, but he grabbed her chin and forced her to look only deeper into his eyes.
"You have to look...closely"
His mind bent her will and caused her pupils to widen, almost entirely displacing the bright green iris around it.
"Vi fa-ru les shutai,
en riga-lint..."
Van carefully snuck through the streets. He moved in and with the shadows to avoid the watchful soldiers patrolling past him, just how he had learned to do it a long time ago. Sometimes it seemed like that had been another lifetime entirely.
Slowly but steadily, he approached Boris' tavern, which he had discovered only this morning. Once there, he entered with little hesitation. The tavern was already well frequented, with many fishermen and merchants present who were busy enjoying Asturia's delicious wine.
However, Van had no time for alcohol and slipped through the maze of people towards the inconspicuous-looking, wooden door in the empty side room. He glanced around to assure nobody was watching him and quickly vanished through the door.
There was nobody in the small chamber he had entered and the hatch in the ground was only noticeable for him because he had used it before. Quickly, he pried it open, jumped into the passageway below, and began to jog in order to reach his goal as quickly as he could.
At the thought of meeting the green-eyed woman, Hitomi, again, he felt a slight bit apprehensive. Surely, she would be able to tell what he had dreamed of only a few hours ago just by looking into his face, would she?
The mere thought of it got him uncomfortably hot again. Damn it, he was behaving like an immature teenager and now was definitely no time at all for that!
After the long way through the tunnels, he arrived in the basement which held the brothel's liquor reserves. Hardly there, two female voices drew near, indicating that somebody was approaching. He hastily ducked behind a row of barrels and disappeared into the shadows.
"Did you hear what I just said? He bought her! I don't know what suddenly got into the Red Madame to sell her best woman. What could Hitomi have done to annoy her this much?" Van heard one of the two voices whisper so squeakily it hurt his ears.
"Rumor has it, she helped that Abaharaki rebel escape from here, don't you know? The Red Madame was so angry with her that she sold her to this really intimidating man who's been wanting her for quite a while. It wasn't just anyone either. It was Zaibach's General."
A cold shiver cast along Van's spine. Sold to Zaibach? This was bad. He desperately hoped it was a bad joke...
"Is that really true? Was he that silver-haired man who's been here from time to time? Is that why he always came to see the Red Madame? To try and buy Hitomi?"
While the women were still chatting, Van had to keep himself from jumping out of his cover and demanding more information. He truly could not explain why the fact that the green-eyed woman had been sold off upset him so much. He hardly even knew her at all. Nonetheless, if Folken wanted her this badly, she had to be important. This only caused more hate towards his brother to fill him. His brother, the miserable traitor...
"Yes, that's the one! He must have been negotiating with the Red Madame about Hitomi already before. Until now, she's been far too profitable to sell her, but you know that the Red Madame hates the Abaharaki ..."
While talking, the women had poured wine into a small barrel, which they now carried upstairs. Van sat in his hiding place for a while longer, crouched low and pondering. Coming here had been mostly in vain because his brother was already long gone. Again. On the other hand, he had learned something new after all.
He remained silent for a while before returning by means of the long, dark series of passageways. How could he possibly locate Zaibach now? He had to get to Folken. If Folken wanted Hitomi he needed to get her back, Van had to admit grudgingly. Only then, he could find out the reason for why she was worth Folken's attention.
Besides, Van simply couldn't allow her to remain in the clutches of Zaibach. Therefore, he had to get her out of his brother's possession as fast as possible. The more complicated part of this plan was, how would he be able to find her?
During the whole trip back he was already weighing the possibility of several options but rejected them all.
A/N: Though it's taken a longer time than usual, this was the 5th chapter of the story. Hope you enjoyed it :)
As always, many thanks to wonderful 40four for beta-reading it :)
And to all of you reviewers: Thank you, thank you, thank you! It's already late at night, I had a very hard and long day of work. Therefore I'll write to you personally after you reviewed this chapter, be sure of it :)
But I like to welcome a new face; Tonks. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a review! :)