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I had way too much fun with this chapter - hope you all like it!
Chapter 3. Summit.
Amalie stared at the door apprehensively. Fucking Vander and his disappearing tricks, leaving her to deal with his brother. She was terrible in these situations, and would honestly have preferred taking on the entire Pergrandian Army instead. At least then she'd have weapons.
With a sigh, she pushed the door open. The missing Pradesh stood in the middle of the room, chest heaving and eyes wild as he locked them onto the Change mage. He was completely naked, covered in the blood and gore of what she counted to be at least 8 guards. They were in pieces, ripped apart by what she could only assume were his black wings, which curled around his shoulders protectively as he stared at her. Despite it all, the resemblance to Arman was unmistakable.
"Zen?" she asked, holding her hands up to show she held no weapons as she stepped into the room. He growled, glaring at her before lunging. Amalie fought her own instincts to remain impassive and still in the face of a potential bodily threat. He stopped just inches away and she had to crane her neck to keep eye contact. He was close enough she could feel the heat emanating from his body, could see the gold flecks in his purple eyes. His drug induced hard on brushed against her hip. She felt an overwhelming urge to touch him take over and reached out in a daze, gasping as a jolt of unfamiliar magic ran through her fingers when they barely brushed his stubbled cheek before she caught herself and pulled back. "Sorry."
"Who are you? I've seen you before, watching us," he demanded, his expression unchanged despite the effect touching him had had on the pinkette. He glared down at her. "Is he watching behind that window?"
"Believe me, watching perverted Pergrandian bloodsport wasn't by choice," she snapped back, annoyance at his accusation momentarily taking over before she calmed it back down. Getting snarky wouldn't help their situation. She needed to get them both out of the stadium before the rapist's sympathisers appeared looking for him. "I'm Amalie. Karadin is a non-issue now."
"How?" Zen growled, his face moving close to hers as he continued to glare.
Amalie shrugged. "He's crippled beyond repair and on his way back to Bosco for his reaping."
That seemed to satisfy the big man as he nodded, apparently believing that she was being honest, and took a step back out of the former princess' personal space bubble.
"We need to leave now, though," the pinkette told him. "There are ancient catacombs under the city. We can use them to get as far away from here as we can before we have to surface."
The dark haired Boscan nodded once and gestured towards the door, swaying slightly. Amalie swore. They would need to move fast and he was still fighting whatever the hell it was they'd given him in an effort to make him compliant for the King.
"Can I touch you?" she asked. His lips thinned, but he again nodded his assent. The pinkette carefully grabbed his right hand from where it hung at his side, forcing herself to ignore another jolt of unfamiliar magic as she pulled his arm towards her. Her other hand closed around the magic draining manacle on his wrist and she closed her eyes in concentration. Changing regular materials was easy, but magical items required precision, especially when it was magic that she didn't want to absorb. The cuff had layers of magic within the steel and it took her a few minutes to work around its composition before Changing the cuff itself into sand.
Zen watched the young woman as she worked, feeling small waves of magic wash over him, diluted but tangible, with each layer of magic that she neutralized. The last time he'd felt that much accessible power was when a cuff had been damaged during a battle with a wyvern. He swayed slightly as the magic washed over him, trying to fight whatever the hell it was in his system, and she was quick to grab him around his waist. Not that she'd really be able to support him if he went down given their size difference.
"I'll Change the other ones, but we need to get out of here first," she told him, manoeuvring herself under one of his arms and leading him out of the room.
He tried to not lean on her too heavily, or outwardly cringe when she released him briefly to scoop up a small cache of black weapons. He wanted to trust that this wasn't just another ploy by the King to try and break him, that she was actually there to liberate him after his life in captivity. She moved back beside him, her warm arm wrapping around his waist, and he let her guide him down the hall.
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Vander had rather enjoyed the trip through the Voids with the King. Usually he was extremely careful when he took people with him, the Void demons were attracted to anything new or light, and he relished in the terrified screams of the crippled King in the hours that it took him to return to Palerno.
He materialised in the middle of his father's study, which was occupied by most of his family - Farron had been called away to the Embassy and Kaleb obviously hadn't been able to escape the duties at White Sea - and Lucy. He almost doubled over laughing when those that hadn't been privy to his imminent arrival visibly jumped, the blonde even giving a delightful startled yelp at his sudden appearance.
"Merry Christmas," the Shadowquip greeted them all, dropping Karadin to the carpet and bowing with a dramatic flourish. His father could be furious about the blood and mess later. "Milly hopes you like our present. Sorry we didn't have time to wrap it properly."
There was a moment of stunned silence, broken only when his slightly older blonde sister, Emzadi, asked, "What the actual fuck, Van?"
The Solar Dragon Slayer stared at the ruler of Pergrande, orange eyes disbelieving.
"You know you're ruining the carpet, right?" his older brother, Cristoff, pointed out. From the nonplussed look on his face, though, the big Lunar Slayer gave zero fucks about it and made no move to heal the tormentor of their family.
Vander shrugged, moving to lounge on the couch beside the blonde Fairy. To her credit, she didn't flinch away from him, and just continued staring at him with wide chocolate coloured eyes, her hands clutched together in her lap. He looked over at her, eyes drifting down to her plump lips. He'd only gotten a brief taste before of her cherry flavoured lips, but definitely wanted to revisit that and see what the rest of her tasted like. He smirked at her and winked, watching as she blushed slightly and looked down at her hands.
"Where's Amalie?" Arman demanded, also choosing to ignore his son's 'gift' as it lay moaning and bleeding all over his favourite rug.
Vander arched an eyebrow at his father. Obviously, Kaleb hadn't told him the specifics about the magical signature that they now knew was Zen. He'd probably sold their father the 'familiar soul' propaganda that he'd tried on Vander.
"He can't Void jump again, Dad!" Bickslow argued. He'd activated his magic to see his brother as soon as he'd recovered from the shock of the Shadowquip mage's sudden appearance and it was grim, to say the least. "His soul is torn all over the place and dark as hell!"
"Chill, big bro," Vander drawled with a smirk. He was exhausted, emotionally and magically, and knew he needed to stay out of the Voids for a little while. His sister, Xally, was a Water mage and a talented artist, and had once drawn him as a chibi character walking chibi void demons, complete with leashes and tiny horns. It had been hysterical, and so far away from the horrors that really filled the Voids. It was still stuck to the wall in the Shadowquip mage's bedroom at the the family home. The demons, in reality, were most definitely not like Xally had imagined them and could rip him apart if he was too weak to control and fight them. "I'm not an idiot - I know my limits. We're meeting them at the sky port in Sin."
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The catacombs below the Pergrande Stadium had been a pain in the arse to find, but Zen and Amalie had finally made it to what she deemed as a safe distance away from the capital. It had been slow going; the affects of the drugs the big Boscan had been given seemed to be exacerbated by his higher magic levels. It had effectively turned the man into a big, drunken puppy, and forced her to make a call from the comms lacrima she'd stolen from a guard earlier.
"Long time, trash panda," the maroon haired man greeted her with a fanged grin when he finally answered on her second attempt to call him. After the first call had been answered by a complete random, the pinkette had had to wrack her brain to remember his actual birth name.
"Not long enough, danger noodle," Amalie replied with her own grin. She adored the rough man and their ongoing game of insults. "How long does it take for subservience drugs to wear off?"
He leered at her suggestively. "Why? Who'd you roofie?"
She just rolled her eyes, not even bothering to respond as she turned the comm towards Zen so Erik could get a good look at what she was dealing with. "We're in the Pergrande catacombs and need to get to the Sin summit."
"Really didn't need to see his dick, Queenie," the Poison Slayer grumbled. "He'll be fine. Get rid of his other leashes and call me if he starts foaming at the mouth."
With that said, he dropped the link without further explanation or so much as a 'bye'.
Amalie sighed and turned back to the bigger mage. He was swaying on his feet and looking around the cavern in unadulterated fascination. "Zen, you need to sit down before you fall over. We'll rest for a bit here while I get rid of the rest of those nasty draining cuffs."
He sat, but his hands closed over her hips, dragging her with him so she was straddling his lap. She was again acutely aware of his nakedness - getting him covered had been much less of a priority than getting them the hell out of the Stadium - and the hard length was now nestled between them. She'd tried to get him to tie her shadow cape around his waist earlier, but he'd tossed it aside when she hadn't been paying him enough attention.
He growled at her when she tried to put some distance between them and she relented with a sigh, both hands moving to the biggest manacle around his neck. His lips started to trail a hot path down her throat and she struggled to concentrate. "Zen, stop."
He ignored her, pulled her tighter against him, and she was momentarily lost to the delicious friction of him grinding against her, before swearing and fighting to control herself. She was here to do a job, and he was drugged to the eyeballs. She focused back on the cuff but her magical control was lost the moment his teeth scraped her collarbone. The manacle on his neck burst violently into dust, the magical surge that hit the big Boscan making him hiss against the Change mage's skin as she muttered, "You deserved that."