Rogue Huntsman
Deep
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"Three thousand lien on the big guy!"
"Are you nuts?!"
"The small one's a martial artist! The big guy stands no chance!"
"I see your three and I raise you to four, only mine's on the small guy."
I wiped down another glass and set that aside, clinking it softly into place with the rest of them as the circle of people before the bar bent and warped to the two individuals wrestling around at the center.
They were comparing sticks, apparently. See who the stronger fighter was.
The five-time reigning champion of the cheerleader's lifting committee, or the shorty who could move his hands really fast and make loud noises.
I'm surprised his belt was black.
Well, then again, he did need to keep those baggy pants up with something. Maybe he should consider a stapler.
A kick was thrown, a punch was landed, the crowd was only getting rowdier, I could only breathe out slowly as I glanced to the digital clock of one of the scroll televisions.
It was closing time.
Which meant… out with the patrons.
I hopped the countertop with a small brush of the hand, swinging my legs over silently before landing without a sound on the floorboards behind the crowd.
The fight was getting more intense, hard muscle striking skin and bone as the two collided through the cracks of swaying people in front of me.
As I stepped forward, the smaller combatant turned his back to me and faced his opponent, swinging his arms violently before leaping and kicking the giant at the center of his chest. The crowd parted just in time to avoid the man's flying form, his body striking wood and sliding several feet.
My patrons moved slightly apart after that as the short guy hopped back, people getting out of the way, save for one.
His back bumped into my chest as he threw his arms into the air in victory, my head moving out of the way of his fist before he realized.
"O-oh, right, closing time…" one of the patrons said, shuffling away to grab his belongings.
Another didn't even speak, just up and dashed out the door.
The rest parted like the god damn red sea as the collection of patrons stepped cleanly away from the one person who stood closest to me.
"You're the owner, right?" the shortstack turned then took a step back, wiping his nose with the back of his hand like it was supposed to mean something.
I only gave a small nod to answer him. Who else do you think would own this joint? Scrawny over there? Or Leeroy?
"Then you're the guy they talk about," the man looked up to me with a fierce fire in his eyes, the muscles in his arms and legs suddenly tensing as I felt his center of balance shift, "They say you're unbeatable. That true?"
"Who talks about?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Unbeatable is a term used by people who can't work to save their lives. They're the kind of people who give up after they've reached their limit, not willing to push further toward whatever bar some other glory-hog already placed above their heads.
I was already beaten by a tiny white fox, so that title was a lie anyway.
"Just talk on the streets and on the net," he continued, closing his small hands into bony fists as he cracked his neck, "You're the only name they give me when I ask who's the strongest in town."
That title probably belonged to Dante's mom for the sole reason of putting up with that monstrosity of pheromones. To make it worse, that sack of sand just got placed in a world that legalized polygamy.
Queue the harems. Hopefully he hides the bodies when he's done.
Or she, depending on who's more protective of who. Kitsune can be the jealous type.
"Now that I've found you," the small stack of testosterone bounced around on the balls of his feet as he cracked his knuckles, "I can put an end to the rumors. I'm here to put the strongest in their place."
He doubled back as a resolve formed in his eyes, flipping to prove a moot point as he somersaulted back onto his hands before flipping across the floor.
Two feet connected before he continued, going for two, then pushed three, then went for four-
Little kicksworth was delaying closing time.
I got behind him on his fifth flip and caught him by the back of the head, killing his momentum with the palm of my hand before I dropped his face into the ground.
Wide eyes suddenly closed in both pain and unconsciousness as I crushed his skull into the solid floorboards, not enough to damage my bar but more than enough to knock him out.
"Next time you want to show off," I picked him up by the back of the neck and carried his dangling form to the door, dropping him outside, "go to a preschool. I hear they don't start combat training until a year in."
Bar fights in my establishment were fine. I'm all for them. But at closing time, when the place was looking to lock up, that's a low blow in any place that sells you good alcohol.
Speaking of that, I stepped back in the door and let the rest of the standing patrons make their way out. This wasn't a full-on brawl, which I'm both disappointed in and partially relieved by, but it wasn't much of a fight either.
As people filtered out the door, I picked up the larger man who took part in the fight and set him outside too, dropping him on top of the ninja sprawled out on the sidewalk.
Then after a few more seconds, the Black Stallion was empty of warm bodies.
Good.
I closed and locked the door, letting the windows tint over in a black overlay to keep out straying eyes before I stepped over the two on the sidewalk and flicked their heads.
"Wake up," I muttered, snapping their brains back into consciousness with a burst of aura before I stood and walked off.
The sounds of groaning were the only indication I needed to know they were still alive.
Kitsuki leaned back as a small digital fox jumped up into her lap, circling atop the girl's legs and thighs for a moment before curling up and closing its eyes.
The kitsune's ears perked up as golden-orange irises softened at the sight of the white fox, delicate hands soon reaching down to pet the digital creature's glowing fur.
Arex was done testing the motor functions of Yang's gauntlets, so she took them off Kit once the girl got bored of them.
Instead of making the girl sit silently on a stool, though, the phoenix coded a quick program to generate a small rendition of a fox for the girl.
She figured it'd keep Kit's attention off Arex herself as the girl worked.
But, if she were being honest, Arex kinda liked Kit sitting up on the workstation. It kept her in sight, for one thing, but it also made sure Kit always had something within reach.
The phoenix had already caught the kitsune reaching for things when she was situated in her chair, so this was a good solution for that.
That, and she may or may not just like glancing to the kitsune herself.
With the fox to distract her, Arex was finally able to see how the girl interacted with her surroundings without being met with a soft golden-orange gaze in return.
Gazes like that always made it feel weird to stare, so Arex usually found herself looking away in those moments.
But as Kit softly scratched the small fox's ears and rubbed under its chin, Arex found herself taking in everything she could about the kitsune.
Even when idle, the girl's tails were flowing back and forth in an elegant trance of entwining fur. Each appendage brushed up against one another as they swayed at different intervals, their thin tips curling and flicking with every sway, giving the bushel of tails a lively motion to them.
A strong part of Arex wanted to know exactly where the tails came out of Kit's body, but she didn't want to go that far with the girl. That may have been too much to ask for.
But the forger did notice Kitsuki's preference in leggings, and on top of that, painfully noticed Kit's preference to forgo any kind of legwear when she slept.
They aligned to just one thing. Kit didn't like her tails feeling confined, which meant she could give them free range of motion at night and during the day.
Ultimately, she didn't avidly try to hide them. It seemed like Kit didn't want to.
Arex would be lying if she said she didn't want to know why.
As the phoenix finished priming Yang's gauntlets, finally done with fitting the final panels into place, her eyes caught Kitsuki's fox ears twitching all of a sudden.
Something new was filtering into her hearing.
Only a few seconds passed before the crack of a hammer on an anvil echoed through the room, sounding out dully from the opposite side of the grand forge. Arex's irises quickly snapped to the side, hearing another one fall soon after.
After the third fall, she turned back to Kitsuki only for her eyes to widen when meeting the concerned and confused golden-orange gaze of her partner.
"Sounds like someone else is working, too," Arex spoke quietly, hoping the worry would go away in Kitsuki's eyes.
It did.
"If you're wondering how good the soundproofing is in a room like this," Arex said, pulling up a new set of blueprints as she slid all of the tools Ember Celica needed out of the way, "You wouldn't be able to hear thunder if it cracked above the forge's release vents."
Kitsuki's eyes widened at that.
"Really?"
"Mhmm," Arex nodded in return, hiding a small smile. She knew Kit would like hearing that.
"Is it okay if students stay overnight in the forge room?" the girl signed quickly, eyes fixated on Arex for an equally quick answer.
"They're fine with it. As far as I know, this room is one of the few Beacon facilities to stay open indefinitely unless maintenance was needed. The infirmary is another one."
This place beat the dorm room's closet any day of the week.
"Is it… alright… if I bring my partner?" Kitsuki's shoulders rose as she signed that, dropping her chin slightly to droop her fox ears out of sight.
She looked meek when she asked that, sheepish in every sense of the word. She'd come here during a storm, but she wouldn't do it alone.
Arex felt a small heatwave hit her front when she mentally recoiled at Kitsuki's words, but she thanked whatever wits she actually had that she didn't drop the metal pieces she was currently organizing.
"I'm…" Arex slowly stated, breathing out with each word, "fine… with staying the night here. So, if you need me, just ask."
Kitsuki's shoulders relaxed as the girl nodded her head, ears springing back up like a weight suddenly fell from her head, "Thank you. I've never really been good with storms, so it helps to have a way to avoid them."
"I'm usually here anyway," Arex sighed, shaking the redness from her pale cheeks as she read through Ray's blueprint, the hammering in the background getting faster and more consistent, "It won't really be a bother. You're good company too. Quiet, and… helpful."
Kit smiled as Arex turned her head slightly away, slowing down in her working for a moment as the kitsune glanced to her.
The fox girl only smiled more when Arex's eyes quickly regarded Kit's hands as soon as they started moving.
It was becoming a routine for the phoenix now, to just return her gaze to Kit's front in conversation.
"I like being your company."
Arex went back to work after that, Kit easily noticing the rising blush. The kitsune read that as a good sign, something more earnest and genuine than just words. That, and Kit also noticed a mild rise in temperature in the room as a whole.
The phoenix's aura seemed to flare with emotion, and that was quickly piquing Kitsuki's interest in how else the aura reacted to the owner's feelings.
It… caught her attention. A lot like Arex's eyes when her mood changed.
The hammering in the background only continued to get louder as the two worked, increasing in slams per minute as the intensity of whatever project the other student was working on seemed to increase gradually.
It wasn't long before Arex sighed and opened up her playlist on the built-in scroll of her workstation, sliding the whole window over to Kitsuki to pick out a song.
"This'll help drown out any noise. I wasn't expecting anyone else to be here, to be honest," Arex said, watching for a moment as Kitsuki tapped her chin in expressive thought and scrolled up and down in the given playlist.
She spent a few minutes deciding, furrowing her brows and tails in thought before finally selecting one.
Lucy began to play. A song that slowly closed Arex's eyes as Kit gradually raised it in volume.
"That's the only Skillet song I have," Arex commented idly, shaking away the emotions that came with it as she opened her eyes again, "Did you pick it because of the name?"
Kit shook her head no, "I picked it because it was alone, and I wanted to listen to it."
Arex could only smile softly at that, "Fair enough."
The phoenix worked further into her project Ray had assigned her, slowly beginning to piece together a set of processors for a likely weapon he had in mind.
There weren't many reasons why you'd build processors like these.
He needed an efficient conduit for energy, and these would supply that. The only question about them was why the boy needed someone like Arex to build them.
She may have been intricate with her hands and careful with her works, but this didn't exactly require anything overly special.
Just a high heat temperature and consistency rate.
As Arex worked, the hammering almost sounded like two hammers were striking at the same time, then three, then four, and it wasn't until five sounded like they were pounding away when Arex looked up in confusion.
Were there more students in here?
She glanced to the side as Kit continued to play with her pet fox, scratching under its chin and giggling silently when it purred in her lap.
The hammering grew even more intense as a few seconds ticked by before everything went quiet and, just as the playlist switched songs to Just Breathe, a loud crack and a sudden explosion sounded out from the opposite side of the forge room.
"What was-"
Arex's eyes widened as Kit's ears folded from the concussive blowback, the two flinching as a figure flew through the air at the far side of the room and crashed into the rounded wall in the distance.
Golden-orange and bright yellow widened as a boy lay embedded in the stone wall, grumbling to himself as smoke bristled from the cloth of his shirt and pants.
His beanie all but flaming.
The boy pushed himself from the wall and fell to his feet, fixing the beanie on his head first before brushing crumbling stones and dust from his attire as he looked around and started walking back to his forge.
It was Ray… the very person Arex was currently working on a project for.
When his piercing amethyst eyes fell on their workstation, Arex's back suddenly stiffened and she broke eye contact.
But it wasn't her he was most focused on.
As he walked, he seemed to glue his eyes to Kitsuki's curiously staring golden-orange ones. She watched him walk sideways for a moment as he narrowed his gaze and stared at her in question, two parts confused and one part suspicious.
There was something going on in his irises that went unanswered by the two at Arex's claimed workstation, and it wasn't about to be answered anytime soon.
All they managed to see was a subtle pulse in his eyes before he returned to his side of the room with furrowed brows.
He looked like he wanted something, but didn't want to confront them yet. Either that, or he wasn't expecting to see the kitsune in the forge room.
"Have, uh, you two met?" Arex asked slowly, turning her gaze back to Kitsuki only for that gaze to widen again in worry.
Kit had her tails pulled up in front of her with her arms wrapped firmly around their tightly coiled bundle, shaking slightly in her seat atop the workstation.
"The flying boy wouldn't stop staring at me…"
Arex watched the kitsune sign out her phrase with shaky hands, the sight only hammering in the ever present endearing factor to her white-tailed partner.
"I'm not surprised," Arex replied thoughtlessly, only stopping mid-thought after what she said.
"Y-you're not?" Kit asked, peering over the curl of her fox tails at Arex beyond her fur.
"I-I mean, it's just, um, h-he probably wasn't expecting to see us in the forge room with him!" Arex replied with a convincingly nervous smile, "He was probably just coming to terms that he wasn't alone in here anymore."
Nailed it.
After all, who could blame him? Arex couldn't stop staring at Kitsuki too the first time she saw her.
Wait, what?
"A-anyway, where was I?" Arex asked herself, fixing her eyes back onto the blueprint floating in front of her as she put her hands back to work.
Kitsuki could only blink silently for a few moments as she continued to watch Arex in confusion.
She didn't even know who that was.
I made my way down the street, a full day having passed now since the docks incident as I reached into my pocket and brought a black scroll to my ear.
It started to ring as soon as I held it up to the side of my head.
"Find it?" I asked as soon as the line opened up, pulling the lip of my hat down as I silently roamed the deserted streets of Vale.
"Niro! Wonderful to hear your voice. How'd you know it was me?" Roman's voice sounded out through my scroll's speaker, caller ID blocked and unlisted, "My hackers haven't been slacking, have they?"
"You're the only one who ever calls at two in the morning," I replied evenly, uncaring enough to actually explain the fact that I could sense the signals even trying to touch the scroll in my pocket.
Or the fact that I could read and track them from sensory ability alone.
"Well, isn't that obvious? You're the only one who reliably picks up at this time. Besides, I wouldn't put it passed your info-broker to call you at a time like this," Roman replied.
There was a small shuffling from Roman's end and some muffled screams of pain, then everything went quiet.
"Anyway," he continued, "about that favor you mentioned at the docks."
"I'm listening."
"I found it. Well, not all of it, but one of the entrances. Those mines aren't on any geographical maps, Niro. There's bound to be more than one entrance, but the mines technically don't exist. So even finding an opening was a hell of a hassle." The crime lord sounded exhausted, likely having searched for this piece of information for 24 hours straight now.
With a request like mine on the line, nobody would blame the mastermind if he did just that.
"I'll send you the coordinates. Do remember our deal, my good friend."
"I don't break my promises," I said, turning my head slightly to see a car pass me by on the empty street.
"I'll keep you on speed dial then!" Roman replied cheerfully, drowsiness seemingly melting away, "Perfect for when I need to cash in that favor."
"Glad to hear…" I continued walking, seeing that car pull up to a storefront window far ahead of me and watching as each of its doors clicked open.
Four armed men in masks exited the vehicle.
More shuffling came through from Roman's end as I heard the crime lord whispering to someone else, "Neo! No biting!"
There was more shuffling, then a loud hmphed chomp before the muffled wail of a gagged man breached my speaker, the voice sounding like it was likely tied to a chair somewhere behind Roman himself.
I never questioned Roman's strategy to gather intel… but I wouldn't put it past him to use Neo to get what he wanted.
This contact in particular was probably going to skip town once Roman was done with him.
Nobody snitches on the Maestro family.
Roman finally returned to his scroll to say his goodbye, "Be seeing you, Niro."
I hung up after that.
Both my hands soon found their way into my pockets as I made my way forward, the group of men in front of me surrounding the door to the store they parked in front of and prepared to break in.
Only… one of them suddenly looked up and caught sight of my approaching form.
The eyes behind his face mask seemed to widen by a margin I didn't feel like taking note of, his entire countenance tensing before he stuttered backward and pushed away from the wall.
Then he bolted.
The other three turned to watch him run off, most of them angry.
Words were thrown around before I calmly blinked and stepped through them, each quiet tap of my boots silencing one after another before all three stared at my back as I continued walking.
The traditional sound of glass breaking or a door frame rattling didn't occur. Instead, I heard the sounds of curses and yells, before three car doors slammed shut and the smell of burning rubber filled the air.
Then the car whipped around in the street and sped away.
Ordinarily, these guys would be seen as amateurs for getting spooked and running away.
I huffed in silence at that, letting my cold breath spill out in front of me as I turned the next corner.
No. An idiot didn't know when to quit while they were ahead.
These guys were seasoned professionals and had the equipment to prove it.
I stopped for a moment, looking up in thought before glancing to the night sky.
Oh, right. There was a high valued bank on this side of town.
Wonder if that was it.
The walk through Sanus's southern forest was entirely uneventful. All I did was kill grimm along the way, and that was it.
Nothing special.
Black blood dripped down my arm, trickling over my fingers as I took a beowolf by the jaw and snapped it open. The creature didn't die, but without a jaw to fight or feed it was as good as dead.
That, and-
I grabbed it by its arms and kicked its chest, ripping both limbs from its body and sending its torso and whatever else was still intact crashing into the dirt between the trees.
-without these, it'd bleed out and die in just a few short minutes.
Or, at least, a few excruciatingly long ones for the beast.
I tossed both bloodied appendages to the side, a sickening squelch and the crack of bones rattled as they hit the ground. An armada of dead beowolves and ursa laid smoking behind me and at my sides as I evaporated the blood from my skin and clothes.
Entirely uneventful.
Nothing in this forest ever was, especially since the general population of this side of Sanus was those two breeds. The occasional deathstalker would arrive from time to time, but most tended to huddle away in their caves and wait for groups of grimm to come along before congregating.
I let out a low growl as I passed between the trees, leaves bristling and swaying far above me as I reached up and pushed a thick branch to the side, bending it before I passed it as well.
There was a subtle sting of prickly energy in the distance, carrying with it an electrifying scent of hard stone and unbridled energy ripping through the depths of Remnant.
And it all only got stronger the closer I got to Roman's coordinates.
His intel was rarely wrong, and to that, I can drink to.
There was no opening or clearing when I reached the shattered crevice of a small ravine, just an open rift in the land that tore through the forest floor in front of me, impossible to see from any distance or vantage point with no way to get to its bottom.
The grass-ridden edge crumbled at my feet as I approached its ridge, the opening only spanning 231 meters in length and only splitting 3 to 4 meters in width.
For an enormous crack in the surface of the planet, it wasn't anything to be impressed by.
Roots of trees breached in and out of the walls of the crevice, entwining together like bridges to further mask any aerial reconnaissance just grazing by this section of the continent. And, to top it off, even the tree canopy reached far enough to obscure the ravine away from the sky.
I see why it hasn't been found by just random chance…
The ground beneath my boots would've given way if I hadn't stepped forward, letting gravity yank me down into the deep rift as dirt melted into stone and bedrock, dropping me hard enough into the deep opening to force me to hold my hat in place.
2 miles passed… 5 miles passed… 10 miles… the miles were only counting up as the lightless abyss beneath me grew darker.
I didn't hit the ground until I fell for nearly 38 miles into the planet's upper mantle.
It was rough, dry, and devoid of water, explaining why the majority of it cracked and ruptured when I landed. A certain energy stifled the lightless air I dropped through, softly bristling between the walls and shaking just enough to be felt across any visible skin beneath thin clothing.
This was the right place.
A much more potent entrance lay ahead of me as I stepped forward, leaving the crumbling, cracked stone behind me as I descended even deeper into the downhill ravine. The light from above was nonexistent down here, leaving the expanse of stone before me in complete darkness.
Veins of ore glistened in the walls, yet remained untouched. Iron, gold, silver… I brushed my hand softly against the wall and crumbled some stone away, finding a faint yellow hue seeping out of the earth just out of reach.
That light led deep, far beneath the ravine itself, and the presence of it only increased gradually as I continued downward.
Before long, the walls and ravine floor surrounding me were overtaken with the thick energy from within the stone itself.
Each step I took amplified that presence further, and as I reached the end of the ravine, a dark corridor began to reveal itself in the broken wall to my right.
A manmade cave system, mined out with machinery or tools. It wasn't a naturally formed tunnel…
I headed down that way, and after a hundred feet, the cave took a jagged turn. As soon as I rounded its harsh bend, a golden glow illuminated the rest of the sharp tunnel in the distance.
When I reached it, the cave broke away into a brightly shining cavern, a clearing surprisingly immense in size and vast in what lined its walls.
Lightning Dust.
Raw veins illuminated the empty expanse of stone before me, breaking away from the stones and enriching the thick layers of earth around this cavern so potently, the veins even reached the surface beneath 19 separate sectors of the continent itself.
Each surface-reaching vein was miles apart, some even moreso than that.
They all led here, to this epicenter. And something immeasurable in power lay deeper inside the cavern, over the sloping hill that lay before me.
It was shiny and bright, but I wanted to see what prize lay just out of view. It felt… overwhelming, surprisingly so.
Something that bristled with enough energy that it easily overtook the veins of Dust making up the entirety of the crystal cavern I walked through.
Barely any stone was visible as I stepped forward, crystalline Dust crunching under my feet as I strolled through the literal field of breaching manifestations of mineable energy.
It was all Dust.
No wonder why the Maestro family suddenly rose in fortune this generation. However… I narrowed my gaze as I strolled deeper into the mine, just exactly how did the family's prodigy son find this place…?
41 miles beneath the surface of the planet, dug to by a ravine so deeply lodged into the planet itself that it'd require several metric tons of materials and machinery just to reach safely, this wasn't just a casual walk in the park.
That heir to the family name knew this was here.
And he didn't invite me…
How selfish.
I made it a few feet into the cavern before something new came into my senses, and I stopped. The rim of my hat tipped down as I looked slightly to my side, obscuring my eyes as I scanned my surroundings.
The energy blanketing the stifling air down here made sensory abilities obsolete, so only a faint trace of something foreign brushed against my senses before its presence surged.
This'll be good.
I leapt backward as the ground warped beneath me, sharp spines of golden Dust crystals penetrated the ground from below and tore out of the ground at where I was standing.
Several more rose in the area I was landing, a quick quaking rumble breaking the crystals beneath me as I flipped around and landed on a rising spike, kicking away from it to barely evade two large crystal chunks crushing together.
One more razor-sharp spine rose out of the ground directly in front of me, ripping out of the crystalline depths at a speed just shy of an anti-material's fastest artillery round.
The tip rapidly encroached on my chest, heading directly for my heart.
So… someone was doing this, huh?
I reached my gloved hand in front of me and crashed my palm into the razor tip of the rising spine, crushing it in a dematerializing fashion as it pushed against my hand.
And then it stopped.
As did the rest of the pre-emptive attacks.
"Finally going to chat a bit, are we?" I asked, landing solidly on the ground in front of the destroyed spike of Dust.
Tiny fragments and specks of the crystalline structure littered the ground and crunched beneath my steps as I made my way around the risen spine's base, my eyes rising with the dark shadow of my hat as I looked to the one who greeted me.
"Aww, but that's how I say hello~"
My eyes locked onto a hungry, dangerous bright teal gaze crouched low to the floor. Tiger-like eyes stared back at me with a feline tilt to them, narrow pupils meeting mine as I took a more casual stance.
"What's a tiger like you doing in a place like this?" I asked calmly, shaking a few dusty remains of Dust from Ahrulian's black cloth as I grabbed my forearm, clenching and unclenching my partially gloved fingers in front of my chest.
She had light orange hair, black tips adding an admittedly beautiful depth to them while white streaks ran evenly through her short, soft locks of hair, each mildly curled at their ends. It wasn't exactly unkempt… but retained a wild look, exactly like her disposition suggested, almost wavy with the end-curls in the style.
Her legs were spread low in her crouch to the ground, one hand outstretched far behind her while her other laid its fingers delicately on the ground beneath her.
She was an Affinity user.
An earth one, too.
"Oh, just prowling around," she replied in the same silken, husky voice she used earlier. The pads of her lightly tanned fingers brushed against the harsh, crystal ground as she stood up straight.
The action was elegant, her body knowing exactly which curves to accentuate and roll gracefully as she stood to her normal height of 5 feet 9 inches.
Shorter than me, but not by much.
The exotic girl breathed out before she flashed me a toothy grin, giving me the alluring gaze of a predator looking at its prey.
Well, sorry to break it to you lady, but I'm not-
My muscles suddenly tensed as I gripped my fingers into my glove, eyes dashing behind her as I lowered my tightening fist back to my side.
Someone else was here, masked by the energy around us.
The girl's smirk only widened more as she took a careful step back, eyes locked on me before she stepped to the side.
All stifled noise in the cavern's crystalline walls grew still as the slow crunch of someone else's boots quietly approached from the overwhelming energy source in the distance.
And that was when I saw him.
"Well well well, I believe we have an unannounced guest standing in our foyer."
His suave voice was smooth, deathly so. An air of confidence shrouded his every tone, embellishing his words with a condescending power to it that was backed by strength that went far beyond anyone else I've come across in Beacon.
This guy…
"Well!" Pale hands clapped together as the heir to the Maestro family himself stood calmly beneath my critical gaze, "I believe neither of us has had the pleasure of meeting one another, Mister Ezdeil."
His last words were given as he bowed forward, one arm behind his back while the other gestured royally before himself in greeting.
"A pleasure to meet your acquaintance," he continued, then his bright, reflective golden eyes had the audacity to meet mine as he stood back up.
And then the 18-year-old spoke again.
"The name's Sylvius. Sylvius Maestro. Now… what are you doing in my mine?"
His princely smirk currently held enough power to level the continent twice over, a realization that only brought a smirk to my unflinching face.
This'll be fun.
Meet Sylvius Maestro! Yeah! Wonder who he is…
Anyway, Kit was cute, Ray exploded, Niro was Niro, I should've gotten this chapter out sooner.
That's my bad. No use in giving any excuses.
For now, Favorite and Follow.
I look forward to seeing REVIEWS for this. You'll be introduced to a LOT of concepts of mine. Feel free to give me your thoughts.
Cya XP