A Ragnarok On-Line Fan Fiction
"Falling for Hellish Eyes"
By Bloody Priestess
Summary: Assassin x Priestess. They couldn't be anymore different, yet that difference bonded them as childhood best friends but now the difference of their jobs and feuding guilds thwart the blooming fondness for one another.
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Chapter Seven: Wake Up
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From the party of seven that left Cyfton Castle yester morn, one was M.I.A (missing in action) and another dead.
Death and loss of a love one does not bring on Ragnarok—the seismic end of the world— to ensue. Damon thought as he grimaced… Genesis's death was not the end of the world. Grimaced slightly, of course, for the damnable sake of appearance before the remaining members of the hunting party he sent out. But it was certainly the end of his.
As a gentle breeze tousle the papers and maps scattered on his desk, he could almost hear to her spirit wistfully say…
//I'm going to ride this plane, out of your life again//
Damon wondered if the Gods formidably decreed that he should live out an existence all alone. He made plans to tell the young sage that he… that he…
He was becoming aware of the notion of being a tad bit melodramatic, "It's most unbecoming for a gentleman…" The Lord Knight shifted in his seat, turning away from his window's view to the five out of seven who returned as that quote echoed again and again in his head…
"We found ourselves in a skirmish." The Whitesmith was saying, "Before us was the… Baphoment."
And the rest of the account, as well as everything he understood to be essential simply dwindle to nothing… Damon leaned and sank deeper into the cushions of his chair and sank even deeper in thought. Empty thoughts, really. Thoughts that reflected the hollowness he felt but would not, nay, never let somebody witness… This time, there was to be no more Adrienne to rebuke and argue with him.
There was no solace in that effort at positive thinking. He lost his little 'sister' too…
//I wish that I could stay but you argue
It took quite an effort just sitting there when in all honestly his mind was in condition to heed anything but his quiet and disturbed musings. In the end, a raven black head nodded absently, pausing before rising to study the books lined on one of the shelves in one corner of this chamber… "Fear not," he addressed Van, Portia, Mathieu, Mackenzie and Lexender, "for we shall hire agents to recover the Jewel of Prayer."
The Bringer of Tempests was acutely aware of Portia who shuddered. To the Alchemist, he made it sound that the agents will be bringing home a corpse.
Van, on the other hand, narrowed his storm-blue eyes into disapproving slits at Mackenzie who left without ceremony. Her countenance shadowed by her side-swept bangs as she left the assembly…
//More than this I wish, you could've seen my face//
Damon, the Whitesmith noted, was noticeably, uhm, inattentive to give a care.
The Assassin Cross and Champion remained there, motionless. Van can only guess what the pair was thinking. He, as well, wanted to get out of this bleak chamber, and take what the party managed to gather and dispense the items to the archer class, forgers, alchemists, healers and/or just about any guild member who would craft the items into arrows, weapons, potions and the like.
Theichmacer was not one who would allow something as valuable as sacrifice go to waste. Being a Whitesmith that he is, it was in his nature and nurture to utilize of any and every thing presented by transforming and retransforming such into the best thing it could possibly be— a certain some thing of use.
"It will not be long…" Damon's blue eyes grew weary when he turned to face them, a heavy bound journal at hand and restfully returned to his desk. They knew it was the new burden he must now carry; they knew if the Jewel was amongst them now, she, without doubt exclaim of Damon's masquerade of calm— "Please, rest and regain strength for tomorrow we must all wake up to another daybreak."
Not all of us will awaken… He opened the journal to its most previous entry. The group silently looked on as Damon dipped the point of a quill and etched on the book's parchment in that firm and bold calligraphy of his: "'Labyrinth Forest, Prontera: 'Genesis Birdeen—deceased, and Adrienne Luex—M.I.A'."
The Militia of Sungren's Guild Master managed to curl the corners of his mouth and the group took the gesture as a dismissal and departed. With them gone, the smile died away.
Gathering his bearings, he sauntered out the chamber, down the far end of the east wing of the castle where he took a narrow flight of winding stairs up to the east tower. He sought the place that would offer him the solace, especially in this time for second mourning in a fortnight.
It has been a while… He thought, landing on the final step of the stairs, feeling the full gust of wind whipping his white peasant shirt and mahogany brown breeches forcefully to his body, his dark hair to his stubbled chin… It used to have a calming effect on him, but not today… probably, never again.
The East Tower was the highest tower of Cyfton Castle. It was nothing if not a huge and cylindrical balcony of magnificently chiseled stone sculptures. This was Damon's favorite spot in the entire castle—it was his sanctuary growing up… It was the best place to be alone and cry your heart out—without fear of being perceived as weak.
//The morning will come
In the press of every kiss//
Though the kiss of the brilliantly shining morning light touched his electric blue eyes, his eyes drew naught of the light. His soul was desolate and dark as the dawn was exultant and fair.
…exultant and fair. Miss Sunshine.
Damon clenched his large fists to succumb the severity of his responsibility to her… he felt that it was he who sent her to her untimely end.
He dug deep inside him and found a voice. And roared it in one deep and resounding exclamation, which shook out the perched birds on the roof tiles above into a startled flight. When he perceived sound of uncontainable yet muffled sobbing, Damon straightened instantly. It appears that, he was sharing his sanctuary with someone else.
A crouched figure in the far end of the terrace's stone-sculpted arched entryway was the doer. The shock of her unusual brick-red hair was a bold distinction from that of the white-washed hue of the stonewalls of this out-of-the-way place.
"Ashencastle?"
The figure didn't stir, ceaseless in her wrenched mourning though he swore his heavy footsteps announced him. Her long limbed arms, devoid of her iron gauntlets were folded over her drawn up knees, her head slumped unto them in woe.
She was never the sort would go around with her heart on her sleeve and now, she's doing just that, literally, I might add. He wryly reflected… and yet something tugged his core. If she had short and raven black hair instead of that long brick-red hair of hers, he would be seeing himself, an eleven year old going exactly that…
Damon wordlessly took a spot on the stone floor, next to her. He stretched out an arm behind her proud head, just over her shoulders and pulled it to a rest against his chest. The Lord Knight kept his arm over her shoulder, trapping her in a rather hesitant yet firm hold.
//With your head upon my chest//
Her astonishment came and gone like the life of her dear, dear Gen… Mackenzie turned into his arms and cried harder.
//Where I will annoy you
With every waking breath
Until you decide to wake up//
Mackenzie, Damon thought as he tears soak his shirt's front, was human after all… And the biggest blow he had was the realization that even though they annoyed the other in almost every opportunity presented to them… They can now help the other…
Wake up from this hurting. And begin to heal the pain.
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Bloodbaths' head burst out of the freezing torrents, he was about to swim toward the shore when a blow of alarm hit him. He just remembered that he was not alone when he fell in the water…
Adrienne!
In a deep breath, he filled his lungs with air and dove.
It took a while to get his eyes adjusted to the water, then promptly scanned the area for her. Sensing something shifting behind him, he turned and thrashed against the torrential water barrier between him and the priestess. Zach caught a handful of her clothing and heaved it to him. He grasped her torso with one arm, the other outstretched to the beacon of light overhead.
The Priestess came up noisily, coughing up swallowed water and gulping for air. Without delay she pivoted, searching of something to keep her from being swept away from the swift coursing currents…
Apparently, she did not want him to her help her… but for the Sin Cross who saved her, he would not have such display of pride to supersede for safety. He lashed a hand to her and just about dragged her to him…
It was his intention to help her, by putting a steady arm under on her but she pushed him aside, apparently determined to get to shore on her own… He gave in… This was Adrienne after all… he should know better. "All right," Water treading, Zachary's mouth twisted into a grin. "I may have deserved that for discounting that you fell in too. A temporary breech in memory, I assure you 'twas not of senility."
She raised an eyebrow demonstrating her clear disinterest in his jest. Her reply wasn't the once he anticipated and he could not blame her. He was the one attempting to initiate a dialogue, Beggars can't be choosers, they always say. The girl was already some distance ahead of him, he swam after her.
He closed the distance between in mere four stokes. Adrienne shifted her gaze, anxious that he may see the impressed look at his undeniable skill and grace in water.
I need not bloat his ego all the more. She decided concentrating on her own callow but efficient strokes… She had handled his kind before, arrogant the lot of them! Adrienne was confident on how to soldier on with him. "With detachment and unruffled snobbery!" She thought sternly, her outstretched arm causing her shoulder-to-chest wound open up… and bleed.
The Assassin Cross didn't see that. He had rolled over to his back, kicking and beating through the water with easy progress. He floated for on his back for a while relaxing at the feel of the waters ripples and the sound rustle of water that told him she was moving. "It's getting dark," he voiced, eyeing the red, pink and purple setting sky. "We have to make camp…"
He maneuvered himself unto his stomach in that same easy movement… Adrienne's eyes narrowed at him. "Are you jealous that I still swim better that you?" He queried, amusement lit up his dark blue eyes as he stood up in the shallows with the water measuring up to his waist.
She followed suit and straightened. Her silver-gray eyes widen at the sight of how her clothes indecently clung to her body… Her blanching countenance hued a becoming shade of pink on her cheeks. She quickly turned her back to him, peeling the clinging material from its slick contouring of her body.
And as any hot-blooded man would, he laughed at her apparent embarrassment. Oh, Freija, if she knew that he seen. She shot him a glare over her shoulder that could chastise.
At his he raised a hand in his defense. "You must be forgetting, my dear priestess. I'm an Assassin Cross… far beyond your professions training of redeeming. I mean no insult in your capabilities—just your profession, in general."
Adrienne ought to have agreed without shilly-shallying, but she could not bring herself to do so… especially when he took the effort of sparing her sensibilities. In her most recent assessment, they were enemies. This Sin Cross was a collaborator in Cyfton's last siege… He is in league with Doom's Doors, that painful-looking mark on the base of his left neck declared so. A thought came to her… he has been very cordial with her (with an exception, of course, when they faced off in the constricted passageway leading to the Cyfton's main/receiving foyer)… as if… as if… in some point in time they were …friends.
His face… The priestess pivoted. He had his back to her, twisting his blood-red neckerchief of excess water… it is so… well, aside from the fact that I've seen it for the duration of that one castle siege… his face was of a stranger's. But his manner… his manner was very familiar. Adrienne had long considered that he could be conning her… That was what she's truly fearful of. She would not stand for any sort of dishonesty! …and with that the ground shift abruptly beneath when her wobbly knees gave out beneath her.
Her movement ended abruptly in a splash and a mumble. She choked out a mouthful of water and sat on her rear, her legs outstretched, arms propping her body upright… For some reason, she was oddly weary and …waning.
Adrienne threw her head back and eyed the predominantly deep purple panorama of the sky. She could not put her finger on it… There has to be something about this guy that makes her so clumsy! …and the last time she was such… Let's see… Bloody thirteen! It was the foremost instance she stepped in Cyfton Castle and she desperately wanted to impress those around her…
The notion struck her like a blow to the head… She was not given another moment to dwell on the thought… The Sin Cross approached from behind. He leaned over and cast a literal shadow over the figurative one that loomed over her head just seconds ago.
"Do you need a hand?" he eventually offered though it was evident that his voice in the brink of bursting into laughter at her blunder.
"Not when it is offered in ridicule!" She replied sourly, bolting up so suddenly that her torso searing with pain. This is not good, she thought as her head spinning for some peculiar reason. Not good at all…
His eyes shifted from her ashen face, down to the suggestive tear on her bodice that ran from her shoulder to her chest, to that dark swirl of color on the waters about her… What in Loki's name is—?
…Swirl of blood surged from the devastating slash the Baphoment scuff on her, he realized. "Dammit woman, no wonder you're pale as death! Why didn't you say anything?!! Dammit… a priestess who can't help anyone…" He lifted her into his arms and dashed for shore. "…that's what you are! You can't even help yourself!"
Despite his apparent slander on the capabilities he said he say she had… Adrienne managed a laugh. She said so and added; "I have what it takes or I do not… Ohhhhh, do make up your mind already, sir…"
His boots made musical rustle as he treaded into the woods. Several yards in-land, he found a suitable and rather safe clearing. With his foot, Zach gathered the fallen leaves on the ground before spreading out his blood-red neckerchief over them… And as gently as he lifted her, he set her down on the make-shift bed.
She was groggy and genuinely touched… and she said so. "Oh dear… I'm becoming quite wordy, wouldn't you say, Sir Assassin…?" she deliriously repeated… "I'm genuinely touched by this gallant act of yours, Sir Assassin… Although you do not know me or… do you? You are so kind… so kind. I'm most grateful, Sir Assassin…"
"It's me, Adrienne… It's Zach, Zachary…?" He pleaded with his eyes, if he was going to lose her again… By the Gods! He will make her remember! …But, nothing! There was no kind, consoling look of her remembrance of… "Zachary Reith?"
She did not hear a single word he said, but a small smile did tug her beautiful mouth as she curled into a small ball on the makeshift cot; "I do not know you…I do not know you… but thank you, thank you, sir."
His heart sank. It was a fact that with his rise as Bloodbath, he buried anything and everything related to Zachary Reith. This woman was the only person he knew who REALLY knew the person he was. WHAT IN ODIN'S NAME—damn! If she has forgotten… then who knew what kind of human being (Bloodbath's incapable of "human" feeling) he was like before the cold, gloomy nights of the hunt, the swiftness of death in the blades of a katar and the tragedy of lonesome despair?
Darkness closed in and dragged her into its depths…
Zach's heart hammered in his chest. It was unlike anything he ever felt in the past. Such hammering was always the consequence of adrenalin… But this… what was happening now… was of something… else.
He leaned closer to her still body… and breathed a little easier. She was asleep.
She hasn't changed. She was always scaring the shit out of him…
No. He amended… I must not think that nothing has changed. Damn you, Reith! You're becoming as delirious as she is! Just accept the fact that she has changed and, admit it, so have you… you cannot go on presuming the contrary… What is in past will remain there! Remember… nothing you can do will change that…
A devious smile curled the corners of his lips… but you can fan the embers of the past…
"Speaking of embers…" he said aloud whilst the unusually nippy wind touched his drenched body, Zach rose, turned in search of kindling and such to start a fire. With the fire cracking, some feet from them, he turned to the sleeping miss and practically grimaced at her ghastly cut.
He took her carrier bag and rummaged through its contents. Zach found a thick, leather-bound bible, a rosary, a Big Ribbon, vials of White Potion, a small jar of honey, bottles of Grape Juice, three pieces of Royal Jelly, an Yggdrasil Berry, a magnifier and other loots… but he could not find the items he needed… Impatient, he turned the bag over and dumped all its contents to the ground. He found what he needed—a strip of clean (although damp but still utilizable) cloth, rolls of bandages, an ointment (he recognized often used for cuts) and a small knife.
Zach cleaned, treated and bandaged her wounds. With the final knot in place, he sliced through the bandage with one side of his infiltrators blade, rolled up the excess and admired his brisk but adequate efficiency in treating a wound. Thank you, First Aid skill. Stretching out to gather the mess he made in his hastiness, he noticed a peculiar corked glass vial and picked it up. For some reason, he could not help himself from investigating the contents of her bag.
Someone once told him in a sly and crafty manner that his young thirteen year old self would emulate, "You can always tell what sort of a lady is from the contents of her purse." He mentally shook the thought from his head… but it was hard to do so. That quote ran deep in his mind… and even deeper in his past. A past that shapes you to who you are now… may it for the better or for the worst… you are you because of it.
Sitting cross-legged, he leaned against a tree trunk and allowed his mind to wander. The vial's glass glinted under the moonlight as it was tossed, caught and tossed again… For a moment, his eyes caught her sleeping figure and they soften at their own accord. "You're no different from me, are you, Aid? You are you because of the past." He chuckled, "And now… you're someone so different from the girl I used to know. We have a history together, kid… And you seem to have forgotten all that. I, on the other hand… cannot."
He caught the vial with a swift, arrogant movement and closed his eyes. "Call me fool, my friend, for that's what I am and will always be… as I say this—I want us to be friends again…"
"Why ever not, you big snowflake-head?"
Snowflake? His eyes flew open. Adrienne was sitting up in the cot, smiling… like during the good old days… "You remember."
"Ah… Duh!"
She remembers then she forgets… Now, what's wrong with this picture?
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End of Chapter Seven
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Author's Notes: Oh oookay… I think I'm painting Zach to be a something of a romantic… "Romantic" here with the meaning and/or connotation of an "optimistic realist"… (Haha! Does that make sense??)
Well, what do you think? I have to say, that wasn't premeditated… it just came out that way… And this isn't the first time… remember chapter 2? When I say his last time was "kinda flimsy"? Well… it's already the 8th chapter! I say it's too late to do a 180 on him… "I'm sorry" if you hate this new itinerary of his character. But personally, I think it's kinda adorable… why? Wait and see! Ü)
Like always, "Thank you very much for your reviews!" This chapter is an effort to capture the essence (ehem) of Coheed and Cambria's song of which this chapter is named after. Hm, I simply took some lines of the aforementioned song that would in one way or another suit the chapter… I'm sorry if you were inconvenienced as caused by the 'incomplete' lyrics.
I really love to hear from you guys. Do let me know what you think… of the turn of this fic, questions, suggestions, and comments about the new NINJA job! I've been meaning to ask anyone out there who knows about that character.
Remember y'all… "Fight the consequence of being LEX DIVINA-ed! ("Silenced" a.k.a writer's block) M'kay?"
Shucks…where did that come from?
./hmm
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