The Eternal Dance of Light and Dark

by The King of Ravens

Having just survived a nine year long civil war, those of Lucael would be forgiven for entertaining the notion of peace. However, new threats are rising, and as the son of the king, it is Caiellis's job to combat them, despite his youth. But as the leaders of a rival nation declare war and mysterious figures pull strings in the shadows, Cai will be drawn into the fate of the world.

36. A Hero's Death (Part II)

As usual, I've managed to grossly underestimate the amount that I want to write with each chapter. This is the first part of what I planned to be Chapter 36, though I made the decision to split it into two (well technically three since it is part of A Hero's Death) since it was approaching 84,000 words in a single chapter and that was way too much even for me. So yeah, the conclusion to this one should be coming soon since I'm already nearly done with it.

---

Marik's eyes snapped open once again, and before he even came to terms with the thoughts revolving round in his mind like a chaotic and disorderly hurricane of many different mental pathways he analysed his surroundings so that he could assess whether or not making a break for somewhere where there was a greater possibility of escaping. He was not disappointed at all when he found that he was sat on one of the wooden benches in the entrance hall to the Mind Realm that had become the bane of his existence for however long he had been trapped here. It seemed that escape was not a likely way for this to end, but the king knew that he should cause as much disruption as possible before being thrust into his memories once again because it might have some sort of effect if he was being controlled in reality – an awful prospect which would not bode well for Caiellis at all.

Speaking of Caiellis, Marik thought as the sudden realisation that he had made whilst reliving his recollection of the night before the murder of Emili hit him fully, revealing something that in his grief and sheer emotional pain he had missed and never thought about since.

Caiellis … he predicted the death of Emili – his nightmare happened! How?! It cannot have just been a coincidence, because he described what would happen afterwards almost perfectly – his mother did die, and his father was whisked away from him by war and the need to avenge the loss of his wife. The demon that murdered my wife did have black eyes as he had said, and there were two of them with one much lesser than the other, also what happened in my youngest's nightmare.

How did … how did he know? How did he have a nightmare relating to almost exactly what was going to happen afterwards? Marik was shocked, wishing that he had paid more attention to his youngest son instead of dismissing the vision he had had as nothing more than a child's bad dream, something to be soothed and comforted and subsequently forgotten about afterwards, but all that meant was that he should have stayed by his family as his children slept and Emili watched over them instead of going and planning for the civil war – as that could have waited. He should have kept his family close, but then, Marik knew that already, had told himself that a million times over in sleepless nights thinking about what he had lost when Emili had died and his brother had betrayed the kingdom.

What was more concerning however were Caiellis's powers of foresight which he had been told about now by his most recent flashback. Come to think of it, the had seen the signs of something like this before, and he already knew that his son had the ability to sense guilt through his power that turned his left eye into an orb of inky darkness. Before the negotiations at the Scholaria Magnus that had ended with the Lucerna princes abducted by the Welkalites and was the catalyst for the war that they were now fighting, Marik's youngest son had warned against going into the hall for reasons that the boy had been unable to describe to his father. This meant that the king had disregarded his son's concerns and put them off as simply being doubts about the diplomacy and the fact that he had been clearly exhausted from whatever lessons in magical and physical sparring had been taking place that Marik had whisked his youngest son out of and thrown him into a tenuous political situation instead.

Caiellis had brought that up in their first argument as well, which had made it all the harder to stomach that he had been right for the king who was furious over the wounding of his eldest son and the fact that his second child had been trapped in a dream realm and relatively unharmed whilst his brother was being drained dry of his blood and corrupted. However, now that Marik was actively looking for the signs of it, he vaguely remembered Drax Gloria of the Lucerna Guard telling Marik that before the monorail train with Caiellis and four of the praetorians on it had been attacked Caiellis had started acting strange and ordering the door to be opened so that he could look out with the magic that Marik had described earlier.

That meant that his son must have had some sort of premonition that had allowed him to predict the attack, but it did not tell Marik anything at all about his abilities, nor how powerful they were. More than likely they were a strange by product of his White and Black mana combined that allowed him to sense negative intent or the presence before it happened due to having the magic of darkness inside of him, not something that he could control to predict the future like some form of oracle.

He doubted that even Caiellis knew what his abilities in that respect were or how to manipulate them, his son probably simply feeling a familiar feeling that he could not articulate that warned him of impending violence. If only it had worked for when Marik attacked his son and had warned Caiellis about that so that he could have left – or perhaps it had, and perhaps Caiellis had simply not believed it to be true because of the fact that he was with someone that he should have been safe around. Or maybe it only worked against those that wielded demons as their Summonings or had chosen the darkness over the light, which the king had certainly not, so hadn't applied to the boy's father.

Nonetheless, it was still shocking, and after this battle if – when – they all survived and recovered from the horror of the war, Marik would make sure to ask his son about it in a way that would not make Caiellis feel uncomfortable or seem like some sort of pariah due to abilities given to him by his Black mana. It could be quite an asset in the future, that was for certain, as it had allowed him to ambush and flawlessly defeat the army of Garod Morr when the Fallen had been intending to surprise attack the train and would not have been noticed due to the Cover of Night without Caiellis's set of skills. However, Marik would have to ensure that he did not make Caiellis think he was some sort of freak or inadequate because of it, something that he had done very well at not succeeding at the past month.

"I'm glad to see that you have stopped trying to resist the progress of our tour into your psyche, Mariky-boy," the damned horror spoke, its sibilant voice a mixture of a purr of pleasure seeing the king in emotional pain and coming to term with his dire predicament and a hiss that told the man that any more attempts to escape would not be taken lightly, and the king turned to it as it sat on the same row as him, though too far out of range for him to attack. He glared at it, and it smiled, revealing the bleached white teeth of earlier that was set in a wide and incredibly smug grin that Marik sorely wished he could wipe off and return to consciousness to stop whatever the horror was doing to him.

Then it hit him. The "tour", this forced excursion into the forty year old's memories that was obviously implemented to distract him from what was truly happening and weaken his mind with thoughts of happiness as well as cause him pain as he came to terms again with what he had lost, was not finished. Panic suddenly surged through Marik's mind as he realised what was next, what was the logical destination of this journey into his remembrances, the next time he had seen Caiellis. The horror knew it too, judging by the way that it extended its head towards him and smiled in sadistic amusement, and Marik started to breathe heavily.

He knew that it would be much worse than his nightmares, because the fact that his dreams and unconscious psyche distorted the memories could have been said to make it worse but actually made it slightly better, as although it was terrifying and still showed him the same scenes and made him experience the emotions of utter powerlessness that he felt now and horror at the fate of his perfect wife, Marik somehow knew that plunging into a flashback of the events exactly as they had happened would be worse. There would be no distortions that made the events seem unrealistic; it would be presented to him in the cold truth of it that made Marik's broken heart scream in agony and emotional pain at the night that had ruined his life, ripped away safety and happiness and exposed the harsh and uncaring reality of the world.

"Don't look so down, Mariky-boy! This is just a natural development of our delving into your mind! You shouldn't be so scared of it!" the horror laughed, giggling wildly at the man's torment as it rush through his mind that was controlled by the being of the nether realm, meaning that Aksua's Summoning (which had not dissipated back into Sancturia as its Summoner was killed) could taste the pain that the king was feeling at the mere realisation of the next flashback they would enter. If this was how delicious his fear of the events was now, the horror definitely wanted to sample the absolute terror and sadness the man would experience as he was forced to re-enact his memories for a purpose that was currently unknown to the king.

"Please, no! Not that!" Marik didn't even realise he had shouted, his breaths becoming shorter and faster to the point where he was hyperventilating, the utter fright running through him at seeing the images which had remained with him through nine years of unrelenting war and ruined the lives of him and his children in gruesome and brutal detail once again. The horror grinned even wider at the king's pleading, which was a very pleasant surprise considering he had not once done that in the time that it had been inhabiting the man's mind and seeing through his eyes, not pleading for his youngest son to forgive him over strangling the whining brat and certainly not begging the horror to free him from the prison of his mind.

This was uncharacteristic of Marik, but it was expected of him considering the amount of self-loathing and sheer despair that the man felt over the fatal events of the fated night, especially considering the amount of nightmares that he had over it that had nothing to do with the horror, though the being enjoyed them anyway. It widened its mouth again, the smile splitting across its entire shadowy face as its black pits of eyes glinting with malevolence and sadism, and asked, "Why not, Mariky-boy? Surely you want to continue on with the progress of our expedition so that you can see what is happening to little Caiellis sooner?"

Marik growled at the being for a moment in pure anger and hatred at the mention of Caiellis, but even so he didn't want to experience those memories again. He also didn't want to have to see whatever was happening to his youngest son – he wanted to stop it, and the best way to do that would be to prevent his will to escape being trapped inside of the cage of his memories again, so to that end he leapt up from his seat, his mind filled with the desperate need to avoid what he knew was coming should he land himself in the horror's noxious clutches once again. The wood of the bench clattered down loudly as he pushed up off of it, about to sprint out of the hallway again, before the horror laughed.

It chuckled, mirthlessly and full of spite for Marik's pathetic family, and sent crashing and stabbing pains through the king's skull that had him falling to his knees and coughing up blood they were that full of destructive intent and that painful, before telling the king: "But Mariky-boy, you are already in my clutches! And I am sick and tired of your resistance!"
A tendril of darkness possessing huge amounts of strength slammed into the side of Marik's head, sending him crashing across the room and smashing his head into the hard stone wall of the cathedral hall, though he knew that any damage inflicted to his mental representation would not carry over into reality and would not truly harm him. His vision began to fade, and he began to scream in terror, clawing at his face and surroundings and thrashing violently in the cold but humid and clammy embrace of the horror to try and escape.

No … please not this … not again … please … I can't … I can't go through this again … Marik's mental voice was growing progressively weaker and more and more like a child's, like his son's choked pleading as his father held him down on his bed and throttled the oxygen from his lungs, like Marik was a young boy once again pathetically begging his own father not to hurt him any more – though those pleas for mercy had always gone unheard and even earned him more punishment as Garius had disapproved of his Lucerna son asking him to stop. The analogies were not lost on Marik, who was deeply sorry for what he had done to his second son and wished that he had somehow located and banished the horror from his mind earlier, found more fault with his own uncharacteristically violent behaviour instead of blaming Caiellis's constant prodding and grating defiance combined with the stress of the war and the middle Lucerna's brush with death at the hands of the last vampire.

But now it was too late, too late for all of that, and all Marik had to do was ensure that his two sons survived to grow into Lucernas that would aid the Kingdom of Light and have their own families that would last much longer than the one that Marik and Emili had tried to create – though the king was going to make sure that the shadow of that perfect family that he had always pushed aside during the civil war and left mostly untended after it would be resurrected into something where at the very least his two sons would be happy. Right now, however, all he could think of was being forced into his most painful memory, and he battered at the clouds of darkness obscuring every sense that he had with all of his frantic might.

Stop! I can't go through this again! I can't relive this! I can't! Please! If the horror heard the desperate mental messages imploring it to stop that rose unbidden within Marik's mind, it gave no sign, though if the king had been able to think or use his mind which had frozen up in fear for his family, he would have known that the pleas would have fallen on deaf ears – no, not deaf ears, ears that enjoyed the pain that he was in, ears that found his emotional agony as delectable as the finest symphonies.

"Of course you can go through it again, Mariky-boy! You're a king! A Lucerna! You're supposed to be able to do anything! So why not make the most of this experience and enjoy the opportunity I am giving you!" the horror taunted, though its malicious voice was growing quieter to the king every second as his limbs began to be suffused with a numb feeling which signalled his descent into the past in spite of all of his desperate resistance. "Surely you want to see your wife again, Mariky-boy?!"

.*.*.*.

The king nodded, his brow furrowed thoughtfully in a way that his sons had seemed to inherit only in a small amount, Alexander and Caiellis instead pulling the same deep thought expression that their intelligent and beautiful mother did. Marik regretted arguing with Emili before this, but the two had left each other on good terms as his wife put their little boys to bed once again, as the two had got up because the youngest Lucerna had had a nightmare and wandered into his parents shouting at each other.

Nevertheless, a fond smile almost played over the king's serious features before he repressed it as he remembered what he had said to his smallest son and how the boy had reacted to it. It had been less than an hour ago, but it still felt to the thirty one year old that significantly more time had passed because of the extremely tense discussion that was taking place in the night, this unprecedented war council that was not formulating strategies for dealing with enemies outside of Lucael. There was still not enough information to ascertain the loyalties of different metropolises throughout the kingdom, or indeed if any of them had rebelled at all and the messengers had been giving false information, if they had somehow been corrupted by the abyss without any of the prominent mages in Capitalia Lux noticing to spread discord and damage the unity of the nation, but Marik would make do with what he had so that he could restore peace and order and put down any of those who had sided with the darkness.

Around the table sat several important figures – there was the albino Guardian Axeclion and his apprentice Tristram to the right of king, and the twenty one year old had matured a significant amount (as well as developing a large amount of muscle that combined with his height which was an inch taller than the king's own impressive six foot seven frame made him look more suited for the role of Guardian if he did inherit it) in the past couple of years, and although he was ten years younger than Marik the man considered the apprentice of Axeclion a friend. He and the Guardian often spent time training the eight year old eldest son of the king and queen, and would make excellent combat mentors for Caiellis when he became old enough in two years or so to start as well.

It seemed like Tristram had undergone a complete transformation from a moody teenager (in his final teenage year) who resented authority and had a rebellious streak to a loyal but sometimes disobedient (one of the reasons why Marik liked him so much was the fact that he did not instantly accede to the wishes of a Lucerna simply because of their heritage) young man who would be a great asset to the Kingdom of Light in the future. Tristram met the king's gaze, sensing his scrutiny, and Marik inclined his head before turning to look at the others situated around the large wooden table in the large Lucerna palace strategium.

Dependable and loyal Carlis Montlea was sat on the other side of Tristram next to some of his captains who were not currently leading patrolling soldiers throughout the city, and Marik saw himself reflected in the slightly older man through the way that the general's eyes were tinted with parental concern for his own two children and fear for them should the rumours of a civil war prove to be true.

Venerable and wise Tybalt Litria sat on one of the wooden chairs emblazoned with the heraldry of the prestigious Lucerna family and the Kingdom of Light, insisting that he join the council session and that the age of sixty eight was not old. Marik wouldn't rather have anyone else here giving him advice on what to do than his mentor, one of the few people who had seen Marik for who he was when he had been a young prince instead of comparing him unfavourably to his twin brother, encouraging the slightly younger son of Garius II to develop his own skills such as reading and researching instead of just conforming to what his father wanted of him. The former Hierarch sat next to the current, Mithres wearing a sad smile as his eyes traced imaginary pathways across the map of Lucael in front of them.

The twenty three year old was analytical and very intuitive as well as a great spiritual leader (in spite of Hierarch Incedian's doubts about the fact that a young man could be a Hierarch), and although he did not teach Marik's sons as much as Tybalt did due to the fact that his role made him much busier, he knew that the young man had built up a relatively strong bond with the boys – well, at least Caiellis, though his youngest was only four.

Marik opened his mouth to speak, about to explain the next part of his plan for bringing order and unity back to the Kingdom of Light, before a sudden and sick sense of horror wormed its way through his gut and he frowned. His eyes widened in surprise but also fear for his family when his sixth sense detected the fact that his wife was using her mana and that there was a suddenly large saturation of Black coming from the nursery. He didn't speak as he jumped up from his seat, urgency filling every molecule of his being as his mind began to process the implications of what he had just perceived. Words were unnecessary, they would only waste precious time, time that his family may not be able to afford. Shivers of genuine fear cascaded up and down Marik's spine as he picked up on the fact that his wife's mana was desperate and using the full extent of her power – and he only knew that because of how intimate he was with her, meaning that none of the others would realise - and his mind was alight with different, horrible possibilities of what could be happening in the nursery.

Marik sprinted out of the room, his large strides pounding on the floor in tandem with the pounding of his heartbeat in his head, adrenaline prematurely rushing throughout his veins as his long legs carried him out of the strategium. Adrenalized blood mixed with anxiety and a determination to be there and protect his family pumped its way at a vastly increased rate through his bloodstream, and Marik paid no attention to his surroundings or what anyone else was doing as a certainty of purpose filled him.

He had just promised little Caiellis that he would protect his family, that he would not let his nightmare come to life and that they would be safe, and he would be damned if he let anything happen to them now. The relatively short journey from the strategium seemed to take aeons as every step somehow didn't decrease the distance between the king and the place where his young family was, where his wife and two sons could be in danger. Marik knew that there were two Lucerna praetorians stationed outside that he had selected for the task of guarding his family, but that did nothing to assuage him as he sprinted through the palace. An exhausted servant most probably at the end of his night shift wandered absently into Marik's path and the king shoved him hard out of the way, his desperation to ensure that his family was safe making the motion automatic as he rushed through the palace.

Emili … Alexander … Caiellis … hold on! I am coming! I will protect you, so just hold on! Marik repeated the litany over and over in his head as with a mounting sensation of fear he sensed that the power of the Black mana was rising and the White belonging to Emili was being overwhelmed by it. He drew his sword, the massive Lucerna greatsword that he had barely used in combat reacting to the presence of enemies as Marik's protective mana ran through it, and the massive blade did not slow him down at all as he kept running through the corridors, cursing whoever had decided to make the palace so large and his own stupidity in abandoning his family and not listening to his wife protestations about going to Scientia Mos.

If anything happened to them now, it would be his fault, there were no two ways about it, but Marik was determined to stop what was going on and brutally murder the danger to his infinite and immeasurably precious and perfect family that he would not let anything happen to for as long as he was alive. He rounded the corridor, his lungs on fire from the spring across the entirety of the palace though his mind did not let him rest or even take a breath as he crossed the short threshold to the door to the nursery.

Please do not be too late, please do not be too late, please do not be too late, please do not be too late, were the endless words of worry and fear for his wife and two young sons who should have been safe within the protected Lucerna citadel as he got closer to the wooden door which was closed, and with the two guards that he had stationed outside of it gone.

Marik could stay silent no longer.

He heard a scream of pain, a blood-curdling howl of agony and sorrow that could only have come from one person resounding through the hall and through Marik's mind, although it seemed to have been attempted to be suppressed by the owner, as if she didn't want to frighten anyone with it and simply wanted to be ignored.

"EMILI!" he roared, the breathlessness that he felt not affecting him in any manner as every second seemed to stretch into days or even months as he rammed his body against the door, splintering it open and smashing it off of its hinges with his considerable bulk and strength as he charged into the room, hefting his sword. Time slowed to a crawl as he entered and took in the horrific scene presented to him, his heart leaping into his mouth as more horror and fear that he had ever felt before rushed out of his mind and infused his body with paralysis.

Alexander was on the side of the room next to the beds which had been pushed together, the eight year old boy held still in the loathsome grip of some sort of foul monster with its hand over his mouth and nose, shadows pulsing into the boy's only places to access air as he laid still, his body slack in the clutches of the vile being with his eyes closed, though clear tears still ran out of them and dripped over the leathery flesh of the one suffocating him. Alexander was in very clear danger, and the angel-forsaken thing that was holding him was whispering words that Marik couldn't hear into his eldest son's ear, but time had stopped completely for the thirty one year old as he saw the worst things he ever had in his entire life.

The part of the boy's face that Marik could see was suffused with childhood purity now that he was unconscious, and although he was quite a large youth for his age of eight years he seemed incredibly small and fragile in the grip of the creature, but nowhere near as tiny or frail as his brother.

Marik's gaze, which took in the entire scene but was only focussing on one thing at a time in a way that seemed to take years, though only milliseconds elapsed, swept across the room to his next child, Caiellis swaying on his thinand small legs with his mouth open in a silent scream of pain as tears of a much larger quantity than the ones trickling out of his brother's closed eyes cascaded out of his wide and fearful green orbs.

He had a large bruise on his cheek and a cut on his forehead that leaked blood down his face, the crimson liquid stark against the pale purity of his son's youthful and innocent features that should never have had to be contorted in such sadness and scarily enough, hatred, hatred that Marik had never seen from any of his family before. Caiellis was terrified, trembling with fear and with his little arms clutching his chest the large slice on his head, the blood running down his small fingers and coating them sticky and red as shadows pulsated around the room, distorting the light emitted by the niveous wisps into something far more sinister and malevolent.

The boy was choking out painful sobs that encapsulated the sadness and utter terror he was feeling that no four year old should ever have to experience, and the ominous Black Sun birthmark on his right cheek that was even more obvious with how ashen the four year old had become because of his fear and the loss of blood pulsed with a riotous display of dark and malevolent purple light, more than Marik had ever seen it before apart from his Angelic Descent, and the dark luminosity was reflected in his wide and terrified green orbs that were not looking over at Marik or Alexander but something across the room, and something that inspired such complete terror from Caiellis was something to be wary of.

Marik looked over at the other side of the room, feeling like he had lived in this moment for years of his life whereas in reality less than a single second had past since he had burst open the door and entered.

And his heart died.

"Emili..." he gasped out, a pathetic, pleading and wheezing sound which carried none of the earlier determination of his shout of her name and that sounded strange to Marik. It was raw, broken, and full of emotion, and the king did not knew what it was until he realised it was the sound of his heart irreversibly shattering into a million pieces within his chest.

Tears sprung to his austere blue eyes which had not cried in years (apart from in happiness and joy) and then cascaded out much like what was happening to his youngest son as he beheld the awful sight of his wife that would be burned into his memory for as long as he lived. Grief froze Marik's mind, afflicted him with an unbreakable paralysis that ate at him from the inside, mingling with the guilt that drowned out his mind and forming a potent brew of negative emotions that held him still, though he knew at the back of his mind that he was too late.

Oh angels … Emili … Emili … Emili … why her … why? Emili … no ...

EMILI!

His mind was swamped with a tsunami of sadness worse than he had ever experienced as he felt a physical part of him being torn to shreds by the sight he was presented with, and he felt so utterly helpless, so pathetic and useless as he gazed upon his stricken wife as his mind screamed at him to move, though those desperate urgings to help his sons who still needed his age were completely eclipsed and overpowered by the grief-stricken wailing inside of his skull that Marik had no idea whether he was screaming in real life or not, nor did he care.

His wife was in the air, though her feet had stopped kicking back against the being that held her, the demon who had killed her. Emili was as beautiful and alluring as she had ever been, although that beauty was tainted by the trickle of crimson blood from the corner of her red lips dripping down her perfect face and the sadness and fear in her eyes. Her eyes were still alive, though only just and glazed over, as well as bloodshot, filled with none of the sharp intellect and wit that Marik had grown used to over the years and had always made Emili attractive to him and instead of twinkling with happiness and joy at life they only contained a faint glimmer of life left in them.

Instead, those flawless and dazzling green orbs which the king could lose himself within for eternity were filled to the brim with sorrow and tears, as well as fear, though it was not any concern for herself. The king realised, in spite of the overwhelming surge of emotions running through him and tearing apart any semblance of logical thought that he could attempt to start, Emili was not scared for herself, but for her family. She was worried for her children who were in this situation with her, and terrified with the knowledge that the fact they were being attacked meant that young Alexander and Caiellis, her sons which were the most precious things in the entire universe to her, were definitely targets in the war and that Johnias (or whoever was commanding these beings, but Marik could clearly sense his brother's intent within them, albeit twisted by a corruption that he had never seen or predicted that it could have been within his twin before) had indeed sided with the darkness and wanted the throne from her husband.

Her emerald orbs were filled with despair, not at her personal fate but at the fate of her family, as if she knew how much her death was going to tear apart the Lucerna family just as much as it was tearing apart and fracturing Marik's dying heart. She was sad that she would never be able to see her children grow up and help them through their lives as Lucerna princes, never be able to see them foster their own families and never be able to grow old with Marik. She would never see her grandchildren, or daughters in law, and the king could see that it hurt Emili far more than the horrendous and frightening wounds in her stomach did. Most of all, she was terrified for her sons and what her death would do to them or what would happen after she was cast out of the way, and her green eyes were welling with tears that Emili had clearly tried and admirably succeeded to keep from dripping out of them so that Caiellis would not be as worried, not that the boy was anything less than terrified and was having his own heart broken as well as the woman who he had formed a connection with ever since his premature birth died in front of his young eyes.

Marik's eyes took in the slender form of his wife, and he felt bitter and acidic bile rising up from his stomach and making its way up his throat, spilling out of his lips and joining the tears rushing out of his eyes, as with a mounting sense of grief and despair he looked down and saw the wound that was killing Emili.

Bone white claws stained with blood and virulent toxins that would be coursing through his wife's blood vessels were piercing through her dress and stomach and lifting her off her feet, dripping with Emili's blood as it plinked onto the carpeted floor and forever stained the fabric crimson. The scarlet blood covered his wife, Caiellis's face as it mixed with his own (suggesting that it must have exploded out of Emili, though Marik's mind would not be able to process that), the floor, and the demon beast that was killing the queen in front of Marik's eyes.

The demon was a foul creature over seven and a half feet tall, with glinting and malicious pearls of midnight obsidian that were tinted by its enjoyment of the acts it was committing for eyes, and had large curling horns that arced back from its head, made from bones that was splattered with Emili's blood and exuded threatening intent. It had skin the colour of the deathly pallor of corpses, brown like the dead earth of the graves once dug within the kingdom before burning all but the Lucerna dead (or those that were noble enough to be buried in crypts or mausoleums that were warded) became customary in the reign of Queen Matrice so that necromancers could not reanimate her armies against her – prompted by the arrogant Emperor of Light who would turn her dead and his dead into more fuel for the "loyalist" armies.

On one hand it had large claws that were rammed agonisingly through the queen's stomach, and with the other it stroked Emili's hair even as he killed her, though Marik's wife had long since stopped resisting anything that the demon was doing to her, her eyes showing that. However, the worst thing about the demon, the thing that made cold fury and grief begin to fill Marik's body as he gazed horrified upon it, was the inane predatory grin that the being of darkness which was about to ruin the king's unimprovable family, a wide smile of absolute sadistic and sick joy at the killing of the loving mother who had obviously tried to protect her young children that made more hatred than Marik had ever felt before begin to pour out of his mind, though it was quickly stopped by the implacable barrier of pure distress that was killing him on the inside and froze his body.

The king felt more powerless than he had ever done before in his life – here he was, the king of fucking Lucael, and he couldn't even help the person that he had pledged to help in the time of her direst need, he couldn't do anything to stop the life from leaving his beautiful, loving, caring, considerate, intelligent, compassionate, enthusiastic, kind, perceptive, wife, his perfect wife, the woman who had entered his life and made it worth living, revitalised his entire existence and delivered two fantastic sons, all the while with that alluring and brilliant smile on her features and the thoughtful and happy twinkling to her emerald eyes.

"Emili …" he gasped out again, choking on his misery and agony as he felt every single wound that was inflicted upon his undeserving and innocent wife multiplied a thousand times over within his head as he saw his perfect family shattering in front of his eyes, broken apart by his pathetic traitor of a twin brother who was obviously jealous of what his younger identical twin had achieved. Marik wished that it was him in the position that his wife was now; he would suffer that fate endlessly as long as it meant that his wife and sons could be safe and live happy lives and he would exchange places with Emili and embrace and eternity of torment without a moment's hesitation should it save her, Alexander and Caiellis.

It was his fault this was happening to her, if he had just listened, done what she had suggested and sent her and their two little boys to Scientia Mos on the newly constructed monorail line between the capital city and the City of Books, she wouldn't be here, lifted off of her feet by venomous talons piercing through her stomach and tearing apart her internal organs as one of her sons was held by another monster and the other one, too young to do anything to help her, cried uncontrollably in a flood of tears that cascaded out of his worthless father's eyes as well.

Emili had been reaching towards her youngest son, the boy heavily bleeding from a wound to his skull that must have been inflicted by one of the fiends dreamt up from the foulest nightmares and sobbing as the Black Sun emitted a light paradoxically darker than Marik had ever seen before. The slender hand of the queen almost reached her son, almost brushing against his cheek, and Marik knew that his wife would have been telling the convulsively whimpering Caiellis that everything would be alright, that he had nothing to worry about and that he shouldn't be concerned about her, until she had stopped speaking which could only have been moments ago.

I should have been there for them.

I should have been there to save her. I am her husband, these boys are my children, and together they are my family, and I failed them. I should have been there. I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE TO SAVE EMILI'S LIFE! WHY WAS I NOT THERE?! WHY?! WHY?! Why … Why … Why did it have to be her …? Why couldn't it have been me? She doesn't deserve this … Emili didn't do anything wrong … Why did it have to be my family? It was perfect … everything was perfect … I'm sorry, Emili … Angels I'm so sorry … this is all my fault … It seems I was too worthless and pathetic and stupid to stop anything from happening to her after all, Caiellis …

Marik was in the grip of an unbreakable paralysis, immobilized by the emotions crashing through his whole body and wracking it with painful sobs similar to the ones that affected his youngest son twenty seven years his junior, and unable to move or do anything other than watch his wife die in front of his eyes, and though the moments took a perpetuity of torment and sorrow to end for Marik, only seconds passed in reality – three seconds since he had smashed the door off of its hinges and burst into the room.

The shadows of the room were becoming substantial, solidifying on the walls and wriggling, pulsating and throbbing like the veins of some sort of malignant being borne of the inner darkness, but the king could pay no attention to that, nor the plight of his sons, his eyes transfixed with the image of his wife bleeding to death and succumbing to the toxins that were travelling through her blood vessels, her flawless face full of melancholy and appearing extremely familiar to the statue of a mournful angel that Marik had once seen in one of the many rooms of the gigantic palace; within the vault in fact, the reliquary of powerful artefacts whereby the sword of Garius I had been stored until he took it as his weapon in his ascension to the throne as tradition dictated.

Not that the powerful and ancient armament once wielded by his grandfather in his short few years on the throne and many Lucernas before that who did not favour a different weapon had stopped his wife from entering the plight that she was now in, not that the relic weapon said to bestow the user with immense strength, divine fortitude and an adamantine will had prevented Johnias allying with demons and turning on his younger brother in his apparent lust for power that Marik would not have believed was true only a few minutes ago but now knew was plainly obvious because he could sense his brother's malicious intent within the demon that was ripping Emili Noctis apart.

Marik was frozen, and may have stayed like that forever as his mind simply failed to process what was going on, until Emili's outstretched hand fell limply and lifelessly by her side, only four seconds after Marik had entered the room, and she took her last breath. Her last act, even as she was in agony dying to the poison of the darkness and the claws impaling her through the lower abdomen, was to be attempting to comfort her sons, to assure them (though one wasn't conscious and couldn't hear her words) that they would be fine, and it belatedly occurred to Marik that the reason why it was Emili that was being killed was because she had been trying to protect her baby boys, giving her life for them as the demons had probably targeted the two Lucerna heirs in the first place because of their orders, and that as she was not of Lucerna heritage she wasn't important to Johnias's plans.

Emili … Marik was snapped out of the immobility stricken state that he had been in ever since entering the nursery which had been the location of some of his happiest memories and would now be the place for the worse of them to be burned into his mind by a cackling laugh of hysterical enjoyment and bestial intent from the demon as the woman stabbed through the chest by its huge claws died. It giggled insanely, exposing its massively oversized teeth as it laughed, looking at Caiellis and cackling with completely insane amusement at the death of the king's wife.

Rage, and pure hatred, exploded out of Marik's mind at the fact that this bastard demon dared to laugh after what it had just done, and the man was suffused with a longing to rip apart this being of the deceitful shadows and agonisingly massacre every single piece of scum who had sided with Johnias, have them executed in the most painful manner and make them feel the pain that Emili had felt, that he was feeling now, the exterminate the darkness for what it had done to his family.

In the past, he could never understand what had made his father annihilate the entire Grafnican capital, as there must have been countless innocent civilians there who had not chosen to be born in that nation and had done nothing to wrong Lucael, but now he could fully empathise with the man, he could fully empathise with his coldness after the love of his life died and the need for revenge on those who had taken away Marik's grandfather and placed Garius junior on the throne at the young age of sixteen, because Marik wanted to murder every single person who had ever even been tempted to choose the side of the darkness, to raze to the ground every single city that dared to oppose the light of Lucael and took the blessings of the angels and the sacrifices of the soldiers for granted.

He wanted nothing more than to march up to Johnias and kill him a billion times over in the most painful and brutal ways possible until he could understand what his fucking stupidity and petty envy had done to Marik's perfect wife, what his foolish ambition had caused, but even then that would not heal the hole that was forming within Marik's chest, the endless need for vengeance against the darkness for desecrating Emili and ripping apart his family that would never be satiated, not even when every inch of the stain of Black mana had been erased from the world, forming in the place where his heart had exploded into an endless number of unrepairable fragments.

Garius II had once told him and Johnias, after beating them both to within an inch of their lives in spite of the fact that they had only been around ten years old, following Marik asking him why he did that to them, and why he never showed them any love like a father should, why all he cared about was war and not his sons, that he hoped neither of his sons would ever understand why he was like he was now. It had one been one of the rare displays of emotion from their austere and stony father, and in the back of his mind Marik had always thought that he was just trying to make excuses. Now he knew that long held belief of his that even persisted after the previous king's death was false. Now he understood. Now he definitely understood.

The king was glad that in his paraplegia and inability to move he had not let go of his sword or let it clatter to the ground, instead holding onto the handle with a grip that would have broken bones had a human been subjected to it, the force of his fingers holding the blade tearing the skin from them he was holding the handle that hard in his despair, though now his mind was drowned in anguish mixed with his hatred of everything that had conspired to hurt his family and had made his wife die, self-loathing directed at himself for being too weak, short-sighted and trusting of his brother to protect Emili, and the need for vengeance which he would begin indulging now.

"Mummy … mummy … no … mummy …" Caiellis's broken and tormented voice broke into Marik's thoughts, only reaching Marik because of the amount of emotion infused into every anguished syllable that his youngest son who had just watched his amazing mother die before his eyes as otherwise the cackling of the sick demon would have drowned it out due to its lack of volume. The words were sad, sadder than anything that Marik had ever heard before, and Marik would have had to fight to stop himself breaking down in tears because of his son's misery if they weren't already streaming out of his eyes, would have felt the need to comfort his son if Emili wasn't dying in front of them, would have been afflicted with severe heartache at any of his children being that sad if his heart hadn't already been destroyed.

"Yes, you worthless Lucerna brat, your mummy is dead! And you couldn't do anything to stop it from happening!" the grinning demon taunted even as it shook Emili and stroked her pale face, a perfect face that could have been said to have been in some sort of meditative repose if not for the lines of blood trickling down from her blue-tinged lips and the sorrow for her family in her eyes tainting the image.

It was as if she knew that her death confirmed the worst: that Johnias had allied with the foulest of beings, and that the kingdom would now be plunged into a brutal civil war as her husband led their armies against those of his brother in his need for revenge because of what was happening to her now. She knew that her sons would have their father ripped away because of the war, just as their childhoods would be torn away from them as well because of the fact that they were valuable targets. She knew that Alexander and Caiellis would have to grow up even at their immensely young and tender ages, that they would be thrust unready into an uncaring reality as the darkness and those who chose evil besieged the creations of the light and the good, and that their lives within peace were over until Marik ended the threat.

Marik was about to rush forwards and hack apart the demon who held his wife and had defiled her perfect form, taunting his youngest son and seemingly obvious of the king's presence,with his sword. However, his son was faster.

"No … mummy … no … why mummy …?" he cried, the tears increasing in frequency as they surged down his cheeks, reacting with the ominous birthmark on his cheek in a blinding scintillation of incandescent darkness that rushed out of it and filled the room with the light of tenebrosity, and as Marik stepped forwards to end the foul being who was killing his wife (as he could still not accept that his Emili who was perfect in every shape and way was dead), the boy began to scream, "NO! MUMMY! MUMMY! MUMMY!"
A gigantic surge of Black mana more potent than Marik had felt before even fighting against those who had traded their power for the gifts of the shadow rushed through the tiny and fragile form of his youngest son, the darkness surrounding him and bleeding out of the Black Sun on his pale and soft cheek. Caiellis's voice was suffused with shattered and raw emotion augmented to deafening proportions by the deep and otherworldly resonance running through the howl of emotional pain that no four year old should ever have to go through, that no person should ever have to go through, and it resounded throughout the room as he kept screaming in anguish that Marik knew came from his heart.

It was a shout of pure and unadulterated hatred similar to what the king himself was feeling but somehow much darker and given form by his youngest's Black mana that he had been born with instead of choosing to obtain it through some sort of demonic bargain like Johnias must have done, and magnified by his magic, and the demon's black eyes opened wide in a mixture of shock and awe as the four year old who was small for his age flung out his short arm towards the one holding the body of his mum aloft.

An explosion of purple and black flames that were overflowing with unrelenting hatred of the things that had stolen Caiellis's mummy from him and threatened his big brother erupted out of the boy's outstretched hand, the mana ridiculously powerful as the naturally huge mana pool of one with Lucerna blood was combined with the four year old's unstoppable emotions of pure and absolute loathing of the being that had murdered Emili in front of him as well as the one that threatened to do the same to Alexander but was currently not harming him.

The black flames, pulsing with an inner purple light of haunting sadness that mixed with the hatred in a manifestation of the youngster's powerful feelings which gave him a much higher release of mana than most likely any four year old in the history of the kingdom since Matalis Ortus Lucerna had ever been able to use, roared in a mournful song mixed with Caiellis's screams of despair and hatred as they rushed across the room, bursting through the nursery and annihilating everything in its path towards the demon holding Emili. Some of the inferno of hatred split off from the rest of it, turning round and blossoming towards the monster holding Alexander, the beast raising the blissfully unconscious eight year old up by his shoulders and holding him like some sort of shield to protect itself from the purple-black fire.

Marik would liked to look over at his eldest son, to focus his eyes upon him so that he could ensure that the boy would be alright in the massive discharge of ruinousBlack energy from his younger brother that was spreading all across the room where the two had been sleeping (and with Emili watching over them as she often did, sleeping in the chair that was across the room from them so that she could make sure that they were safe on the nights that she didn't desperately need sleep), but the thirty one year old could not tear his gaze away from the imaged of his wife held in the air on claws slick with her scarlet vitae.

The flames started to consume everything, crashing over the demon that held Emili at a vast rate and utterly destroying the being as it shrieked in agony that Marik would never have expected from a demonic being borne of the darkness, but the dark inferno of his son's hatred was not of the same origin as that foul creature, as it came from inside the four year old instead of being a product of the accursed abyss.

The man didn't let that stop him. Nothing, nothing, would stop him from getting to Emili, and the king marched straight into the fire with his sword held high and with no thoughts for his own safety in his mind. Marik instinctively raised his hands to protect himself from the sudden blaze of loathing that washed over everything in the room and drowned it all in malevolent black and haunting and mournful purple, and he could vaguely hear his loyal soldiers and advisers who had been following him after he took off from the strategium without any words entering the room behind him.

The demon's shrieks echoed throughout the room, blending with Caiellis's screams of anger, hatred and sadness and forming an evocative cacophony that would have stirred several emotions within Marik if he wasn't already under the sway of those feelings in a much greater intensity than anything but the death of one of his perfect family members could subject him to. The king lowered his hands but kept his sword hefted as the flames of his youngest son who had never even hurt a fly before in his short life because he was that gentle pulsed over his father and didn't harm him at all, covering him in darkness that restricted his sight and simply making him hear the sound of his baby boy crying in his ears that would have made him want to help if he didn't know that there was nothing to be done.

He couldn't do anything to salvage Caiellis's emotional state, because he couldn't do anything to repair his own and he wouldn't be able to interact with his child because it would remind him of Emili – and that was assuming that he would ever be able to recover from his wife's nearness to death enough that he would be able to talk. The thoughts fell away from Marik's mind as the demon who had rammed its claws through his wife's stomach screeched in agony that, despite its obvious potency, was nowhere near as painful as the heart-wrenching torment that Marik was being devoured by.

There was no heat from the fire, just hatred, and sadness mixed in with that, raw emotion that seethed through the air as it destroyed everything of the abyss that had stolen Caiellis's compassionate and understanding mother from him, but there was no increase in temperature as Marik waded through the blaze of black flames.

Emili … Emili … The flames faded, slowly, painfully, but when they receded there was no trace of either of the creatures of the darkness who had caused the thing that had murdered Marik's heart, though he was not yet ready to give up on his wife because she would do the same for him. All he could think of was the beautiful and selfless woman who had risked her life to protect her young sons and made Marik's existence worth living, elevated his life from the gutter it had been in and lifted it into being something sublime and perfect, where every moment with her and his family became one that he would treasure forever within his mind, which was still reeling from the possibility that the creation of happy memories would be cut short, that no more happiness would ever come upon the world, that he would never see his wife smile at him again and bat her eyelids in a mixture of playful flirtation and dazzling beauty.

The destructive inferno of sorrow and unadulterated hatred that Marik would have been immensely concerned about had it come from his son only minutes ago (as for one he couldn't think about Caiellis and secondly he understood very well where the four year old's grief was coming from), and though he hadn't even stopped as the fire had been roiling around him he picked up his pace now that he could see and sense anything past the pure emotional energy which had been released by his four year old son.

He knew that he should have helped Caiellis and Alexander, as with the death of the demons and the release of mana from his youngest son, both of the young boys were in the process of toppling over out of the corner of Marik's vision. But he couldn't. He couldn't. He couldn't focus on anything other than the slender and petite form of his wife dumped unceremoniously on the ground. He vaguely noticed two figures shooting towards his sons and catching them before they could fall and hit their heads on the ground, but the shapes were just a blur to the king's teary eyes, the only thing that was clear to him the centre of his vision as he half-sprinted, half-staggered towards the location where his wife had been before the explosion of Black.

Emili! He saw his wife, laid on the ground with her glazed eyes looking up at the ceiling and her arms hanging limply by her sides, the dress she had been wearing stained crimson by her blood, and the king rushed towards her. Her face was as perfect and beautiful as it always had been, untouched by the flames of dark annihilation that her son had inadvertently used, though Marik knew that no matter how accidental Caiellis's release of power was and no matter how full of hatred that he didn't understand and grief that he shouldn't have to feel he was, the four year old would never hurt his family.

I need to help her! I need to help her! I need to help her! Marik dragged his slender wife, who seemed even more weightless than ever and even more fragile than he had ever seen her, into his arms, the tears streaming out of his eyes dripping onto the woman's face as Marik knelt down beside her, paying no attention to the clear liquid trickling down his ashen cheeks as he took Emili into his arms. The wound in her stomach was stark, bleeding, although the blood pouring out of it seemed to be leaking instead of pumped out of the hole in my wife by the beating of her gentle and caring heart that was stronger than any person that Marik had ever met before.

She wasn't breathing! SHE ISN'T BREATHING! There was no pulse coming from his wife as the king held her, one of his bare hands gripping her waist whilst the other gently stroked the back of her neck, the king's face pressed close to that of his faultless wife's, close enough that the tears pouring out of his eyes splashed onto her ashen cheeks and ran down them like they were her own. The king was distraught, he couldn't think, and when the world started going blurry, he knew that he couldn't breathe. His breaths came in short, sharp hitches that barely replenished his lung's screaming for air, and the world span around him as he clutched the unmoving form of his wife close.

Why … why did it have to be her?

Why Emili?

Why couldn't it have been me?

WHY?

Marik started weeping, uncontrollable whimpers escaping his lips as his large body was wracked with painful sobs that sent trembling shudders through the sylphlike body of his wife. He scrunched his eyes closed, desperately wishing that this was all just as dream, that he would wake up soon to the concerned but brilliant smile of his soul mate and the excited happiness of his young children bouncing on the bed with him, but after a few seconds he reopened them, knowing that despite all that he wanted this was real.

And it was his fault.

It was his fault that Emili had been in the palace in spite of all of her intelligent warnings, it was his fault that his family had been attacked without the worthless and good-for-nothing eldest and physically strongest of them was out trying to solve a rebellion that he should have seen coming instead of being with his wife and sons, and it was his fault that she was dying now because he hadn't been fast enough; he hadn't been trusting enough; he hadn't been strong enough. And instead of him lying here, with a massive hole in his stomach and bleeding to death, it was his wife who had suffered for her husband's mistakes.

All I had to do was listen to her … but I couldn't even do that … my father was always right … I am a failure … I could never do anything. Emili showed me life and love to the fullest, gave birth to our two amazing sons, and in return, to repay the affection and devotion she showed me and them I failed her in every conceivable way …

"NO! EMILI! EMILI! NO! NO! NO!" Marik howled, gasping and screaming out the words as he swallowed the bitter truth of the matter, swallowed the realisation of his wife's death, just as he felt White mana surging through him. An angelic presence that didn't do anything to assuage Marik or help his wife Summoned itself unbidden to the king's side, and while at every other point in his life the king had been awed by the Angel of Wrath he could think of nothing else but his heavenly partner who was unrivalled in beauty or kindness. Life without the sharp wit, joyful intellect, enthusiastic happiness and the utter love of his wife would be cold and dull, monotonous and sad, and Marik didn't want to have to live like that.

He didn't want to have to live without Emili, he couldn't live without Emili. She was a part of him just as much as his arms and legs were, if not infinitely moreso. She was his heart, and it couldn't keep beating on without her.

No … I can't give up on her! She can't die like this! She can't! I won't let her die! I can do that much for her, at least! Please don't let her die! Marik frantically scrabbled for some mana within his mind, but unlike his son's Black magic which reacted to his hatred his sadness did nothing for the magic of light, until his mind began to be filled with a protective instinct that he had always felt as a partner and as a husband to this beautiful woman who he couldn't fail now.

Golden light bloomed from his fingertips, bouncing around as it sparkled with the magic of healing that Marik was not adept with at all being a Lucerna trained for war, not in the art of repairing others, but all White mana users could at least learn some healing spells and the king's mana pool was that vast (especially with Akroma Summoning herself beside him as if in reaction to his emotions) that it must do something. The king charged his wife with huge amounts of mana that would surely save her life, surely repair the hole in her chest just as doing so would repair the hole in Marik's chest where his heart had once been, and his tears began to turn shining with the amount of mana that he was outputting as he dragged all of it up from within him and placed it inside of his wife, leaving no drop of magic unused as the air around him began to be saturated with desperate White mana and a golden aura surrounded the king, but not Emili in his arms.

"NO! YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME! PLEASE, EMILI! WAKE UP! I NEED YOU! PLEASE! I'm so … I'm so sorry I sh-should have listened to you … please …" Marik released more healing mana into his wife, but she remained still, resting in his arms like some of the nights where he had carried an exhausted Emili to bed after she fell asleep at her work desk, but instead of the woman murmuring softly in her sleep and tossing in Marik's arms, her warm breath on his cheek as he held her to his chest, there was no movement, no sound, no breathing, and the only thing coming out of his wife was more blood.

The king turned his gaze towards Akroma, the light surrounding the angel scintillating upon the tears in his eyes and distorting the sight of the large seraph, and frustration borne from his sheer grief burst through his mind.

"HELP ME! HELP ME WITH HER! WHY ARE YOU JUST STANDING THERE! HELP ME!" Marik screamed at the unflinching and emotionless Angel of Wrath, though the thirty one year old could not see her expression or eyes due to the tears pouring out of his own, and he howled in misery and anguish at his useless Summoning, his voice becoming broken and raw with unrestrained distress that reflected his inner desolation, "Please … Akroma … help me … help her … please … you can't let her die … You have to help me … PLEASE! DO SOMETHING!"

His words rose to a desperate cry, a plea for aid, even though Marik knew at the back of his mind that his First Sisterhood angel was just as much of a healer as he was and that she could not bring back the dead. He was simply targeting his frustration, his utter helplessness, at the personification of angelic divinity and salvation stood next to him who could do no more to help Emili than he could. Marik knew it was because he couldn't countenance the light of his life being dead, that he couldn't process not ever seeing her again because he knew that it was his fault that this had happened. He had promised his family that he would make sure that no harm ever came to them, but he had failed them and now the mother of his children was dead.

No … she can't be dead … she has to be alive … I can't live without her … Emili … Emili … Live, please!

"EMILI! COME BACK! PLEASE! I'M SORRY! PLEASE, EMILI!" the man screamed at the corpse of his wife, hugging her close and pressing his face into hers, trying to breath for her and hoping that she would start again as the tears streamed down his pale cheeks, but it was a hopeless endeavour. He could feel the shadows twisting around him, and he could feel the stares of those who had entered the room with him as they gave the monarch a wide and respectful berth, but he didn't care. All he could care about was his wife, who wasn't breathing, whose heart wasn't beating as she laid, still as a fallen goddess, in his arms, the lustre of her green eyes which were as deep as the Yentarian oceans faded and dim as she stared up at the ceiling,

"EMILI! NOOOO! EMILI! DON'T DIE! YOU CAN'T GO! YOU CAN'T LEAVE US! YOU CAN'T US!" Marik howled at the uncaring world, raising his head up and letting his anguished voice out in a mixture of a vengeful roar and a desperate, imploring plea to the heavens above to spare his wife from the cold embrace of death. He would do anything, anything, just to hear her talk again, just to feel her slender and comforting but strong hands on his once more and to be able to have her rest on him as they talked and showed each other affection. He wanted to see her interacting with their children as the perfect mum, he wanted her to smile alluringly at him as she once again beat him at a game of cards, and he wanted to feel her lips on his as they shared moments of the most passionate and affectionate intimacy.

He couldn't bear to live in a world without her, but no matter how much mana he poured into his wife, she wouldn't come back to him, her heart wouldn't start beating again and her stomach wouldn't repair itself, the damage to her internal organs too great and the healing started too late. Marik screamed his hatred of the world where Emili would be taken away from him, howling at the cold reality of her death and the fact that he could never be whole again without her, not concerned one bit by the fact that this was exactly how a Lucerna king wasn't supposed to act, and that he should be organising parties to hunt down Johnias now and bring the perpetrators of this awful act to justice.

He screamed and screamed and screamed until his voice died and his throat was raw, but even then he choked out sobs and howled his sore defiance of his wife's fate at the roof of the nursery. He didn't stop, even when all that was coming out were rasping whimpers of pure emotion.

Emili … I need you … please forgive me … I need you in my life … I can't … I can't go on without you … I'm so sorry … I'm so sorry … I should have been there for you … like you always have been for me … If Akroma wasn't already stood by the king's side (although she wasn't offering any comfort, nor was she actually doing anything), Marik wasn't sure whether not he would consider partaking in some sort of infernal exchange so that his wife could remain in the world while he died and his delicious Lucerna soul was picked apart by demons, as while he was supposed to be the king and supposed to be a paragon of noble virtue that spat in the face of the darkness, he was above nothing to bring his wife back. Even if they couldn't be together, even if he died through the bargain, he wouldn't care, simply knowing that Emili would be alive to be with their children was enough.

No. It was the darkness that had ripped his beloved wife away from him, which meant that no matter how hard he tried the darkness would never let him have his wife back. Marik knew that, and knew that that meant there was only one other option that would allow him to be with her – to join Emili in death.

It was incredibly tempting. All Marik would have to do would be to plunge onto the large sword he had dropped in favour of holding the unbreathing form of the queen, and there was a possibility that he would join Emili in her ascent to the highest heavens, the most perfect of paradises, where her soul belonged. There was a chance that he would be able to spend an eternity with her by taking his own life, and he didn't care at all that suicide was heavily frowned by all for being a coward's way out and that most thought that those who ended their own lives would be giving up on the salvation given to them by the angels, giving up on their celestial idyll.

However, he knew that he could not do that, no matter how much he wanted to do now. It was strange, because even after all his words of what he and his wife wanted coming before his duty as a Lucerna, it was that which bound him to this life. That, and his two young sons, who needed a father to help them through this crisis, although Marik knew without a shadow of a doubt that without Emili he would be a completely inadequate parent. Additionally, selfishly ending himself now would mean that one of his two sons would inherit the throne and become king at the ages of four or eight, which would be disastrous for the Kingdom of Light and his little boys. No child needed that amount of pressure at such a tender age.

Besides, if he killed himself now then he wouldn't ever be able to avenge Emili, he wouldn't be able to obtain vengeance for her brutal member and exact payment from the forces of the traitors for what they had done. The fact that Marik came to the realisation that he needed to keep living, for the good of the kingdom and his sons if not for himself, didn't reinforce his emotional state, in fact it hurt it even more, because he knew that he would have to wait to see his beautiful wife again and that she would be lonely in afterlife.

Marik sobbed, holding the unmoving woman who had given him everything and died protecting the sons that she loved more than anything else in the world close, and he stopped screaming – although what had been coming out of his raw throat could no longer be considered as howl. He wished that he could turn back time, listen to his wife and take them to Scientia Mos, or stayed with his family and let others do the strategizing, but it was too late now, and it was his fault that his sons would grow up without their loving, supportive, doting and understanding mother.

"Please, Emili. Don't leave. Don't leave me. I love you, so, so much. I can't," his voice broke, and the king was once again wracked with violent sobs that made him feel like his entire body was being ripped inside out and that all of his undiluted emotion was being pulled to the fore. He could barely string a sentence together in his grief and misery, the words lost within the endless crying that he thought he had stopped when he had stopped being younger than three years old. "I can't go on without you."

He whispered to his wife like she was sleeping and he didn't want to disturb her, and stared down at the pale face of Emili. Marik gently brushed the hair from out of her eyes like he had done so many times before; at first it had irritated his then girlfriend, who had told him that the next time he did it she would chop off his hand and that she was quite capable of dealing with her hair herself, but she had grown to love it and sometimes before their children had been born Marik had been certain that Emili had deliberately managed to get it into her eyes so that her partner would have the temptation to move it out.

The king shuddered, his trembling passed on to Emili and making it seem like she was moving, and cried, cried at his utter failure to protect her. He didn't deserve to be the one living now out of the two, he didn't want to be the one living any more in a world without Emili Noctis, but his tears would change nothing. Marik rocked the still body of his wife in his arms, feeling like the whole world was going to collapse inwards of him as the woman who had made him feel wanted and loved lay silently, the life that had been filling her with energy gone.

Despite the fact that his maddened screaming had stopped, Marik was no better, and he blubbered apologies to his wife, though they were made without any coherent words as he couldn't force his lips to move in the right way.

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! This can't be happening … I can't give up on her … she wouldn't give up on me … I'm so sorry Emili … please, please forgive me and come back … you have so much more life to live …

In spite of Marik's wailing mind voice, the king fell silent in reality and gently rocked his wife,

Eventually, as he felt the malicious Black mana of the perpetual night increasing in intensity in the air around him and suffusing the nursery in its malevolent darkness, the man slowly started to fall still. He simply knelt, holding his wife in his arms and to his chest as the others watched out for potential enemies whilst some could not tear their gaze from the king and his dead queen. No one disturbed him as he gazed upon the pale face of Emili, wiping the blood away from her lips so that she could be perfect in his embrace once again, and shutting her eyes so that he would no longer have to gaze upon their faded lustre and so that her soul could be at peace.

He didn't say anything, didn't say goodbye or say a prayer for her soul because right now he couldn't imagine life without her, and praying for her spirit would mean that he had simply accepted her death and hadn't fought enough for her, no matter that his healing was not strong enough to bring her back from the dead. Marik would later, if this wasn't just a horrible, horrible nightmare, when he could force the words out of his mouth and stem the tears that cascaded down his face, because it was his duty as a widowed husband to bless her soul and help it into the afterlife through his prayers and love. But right now he could not do that, could do nothing more than stare at his beautiful wife and hope beyond any logical hope, hope more than he had hoped for anything in the world, that she would open her arms and he could do something for her.

It was the sheer worthlessness and helplessness that he felt that was killing him (as well as Emili not breathing), the fact that he had been able to nothing for the one who had done so much for him and could do nothing for her now. Marik knew that when he had entered the room Emili had already been almost dead and that nothing he could have done would have saved her, but it didn't stop him from hating himself because he hadn't reacted instantly. However, that wasn't the greatest cause of self-loathing within the man at this moment in time, the fact that he had abandoned his family was.

"Emili …" he whispered to his wife, as if afraid that increasing the volume of his wounds would cause the hole in his chest to open up and swallow him within its grief filled depths, or that speaking loudly would confirm that this was real. He imagined his wife sleeping, tossing and mumbling adorably in a way that little Caiellis had picked up on, but instead of the steady and comforting rhythm of his wife's breathing there was nothing, and instead of occasional movements she laid perfectly still, only shaking slightly because of her husband's trembling.

She was so, so beautiful, perfect in every conceivable manner, and the ones who had taken her away from Marik and the children she had risked her life to give birth to (as the non-Lucerna mothers of Lucerna children often had a greater risk of dying after the births after their mana was drained (whereas a Lucerna mother would be exhausted for a few days and then recover completely)) were going to pay in blood. They were going to pay for what they had done to her, Marik would make sure of that, and when he was finished with the scum who had betrayed the kingdom the loyalty to the Lucerna cause and Lucael would be much greater because the people would learn exactly what the king could do to those who wronged him and his family.

The king could hear the hushed tones of his advisers, none of them willing to break the mournful silence that had descended in the room that would be forever remembered as the location of Emili Noctis's death but needing to because of the intensification of the darkness that meant more enemies would be coming into the room. Marik couldn't hear the words past the screaming in his skull, nor did he really care what they had been saying. All he needed now was to hold his wife close, to have her next to him. Well, he needed her to start breathing and come back to life so that he could help her and have her live, but no matter how much Marik wanted to deny it that wasn't going to happen.

Emili … she's dead … what am I going to do without her? How am I supposed to live without her? Marik realised then what he had to do. He had to wipe the stain of the traitors off the face of the Kingdom of Light, restore order to the kingdom, and ensure that his sons would be suitable heirs to the throne. Then, he could claim his rest and be with his wife again, once he solved the problems that he should have seen so that his and Emili's descendants could take over from where he had failed them and lead the Kingdom of Light into a glorious future.

Marik's tears began to dry up, and a change overcame the king. No more was sadness flowing freely through his limbs, it was channelled into a weapon, his grief moulded into a sword that he would pierce into the heart of his murderous twin brother, and given power by his hatred of those who had killed the most kind and caring woman on the planet. He sat still, and though he could not stop his frightened trembling because of what had happened to Emili and the fact that he was extremely scared for her sake, the intensity of the shaking decreased. He shut his eyes, and leaned down towards his wife, the smell of her copper blood mixed with the aromatic fragrance of the perfume that the king had bought his wife recently because he knew that it was her favourite type; it was the one that Emili had habitually worn and would still wear if not for the stupidity and folly of her good for nothing husband.

Thirty one was too young, she would miss out on too much, and it was all Marik's fault, and the fault of the ones who would rather have themselves ruling the kingdom despite not been chosen by the divine Death Vision of the last king. He would make them regret that, and he would hate himself for the rest of his life over what he could not do for Emili, the woman who had given everything for him and her two sons.

Marik's lips met Emili's for the last time. They were cold, and dead, but the king didn't care. It was strange, kissing her lips without the recipient reacting, although Marik still wanted to hold onto the moment as long as possible, infusing mana into the kiss in the vain hope that it would help, because he knew that the second he let go of his wife and left the kiss he would be finally admitting that she was dead and that there was nothing he could do. Time seemed to stop, and the king couldn't prevent several tears slipping from his eyes and running down the peaceful face of Emili. He left the kiss on the lips, not wanting to force himself into his wife's mouth because of habit and the fact that she was dead.

The words of the other Lucaelians were louder now, more panicked, but Marik couldn't hear them and to him everything was silent. Everything apart from the two voices in his head, two voices that he welcomed – one spitting condemnations and damnations at the king that he embraced with opens arms because he deserved them, and the other spoke of his vengeance against Johnias, the need to avenge his wife which would in some small manner atone for his crimes against her (his failure to protect her), though it would never absolve him.

"Emili. I am sorry," he broke off the kiss, murmuring the words softly and infusing them with all of the despair and sorrow he felt at this member of his life and family leaving him, and though he did not say the next words they were no less heartfelt.

And you will be avenged.

Slowly, the king stood, shaking with rage and grief, and carrying his wife in his arms. He did not want to let go, did not want to leave her, but the eldest loyal Lucerna knew that he would not be able to fight with her in his arms, and that the muted cries he could hear from other places in the palace and the loud clanging of bells outside meant that the citadel, and by extension Capitalia Lux, was besieged. Marik gently placed her on the ground where she had been laid, almost reverently smoothing out the creases and folds in the dress that matched her perfectly, and kissed her on the forehead like he was only placing her into her bed after he had carried her there. If only she was just asleep …

He shut his eyes again, forcing the tears to return back into their cage, and focussed on combining his grief with the need for vengeance that was taking the empty space where his heart had once been. It was running through his veins like blood now, renewing the purpose within him, and providing sustenance for his emotionally ravaged form. The primal desire to murder those who had caused this to happen to his wife coursed through his body, and he fed upon it, using it to augment his mana to the point where it was bleeding out of him.

The king opened his eyes, and heard a muted gasp from to the side of him. Tristram gazed in horror and fear upon the king, feeling more scared than he ever had in his twenty one years of life as he instinctively held the unconscious and weightless form of the youngest prince closer, (his master Guardian Axeclion holding Alexander in his arms by his side) a protective instinct for the two Lucerna brothers rising up within him, though he could not sensed it as it was drowned underneath his terror and sadness.

He had not known Emili too well, but he had always admired her (and secretly been attracted to her when he had been younger and less mature than he was now) as the queen and the strong supporter of Marik that she was. She had radiated life, beauty, and a motherly resonance for her two sons (though that did not make her seem any older or less attractive), and Tristram knew instinctually that she would have been the perfect wife and the perfect mother to the princes just by looking at her.

It had hit him extremely hard to see what he had done when he had entered the room after Marik, and he was shocked by the sheer release of power from little Caiellis whom he now held protectively but carefully in his burly embrace, but what was more terrifying than anything he had ever seen was the look in the king's eyes now. The fire, the utter hatred, in those piercing blue orbs that the Guardian in training could not tear his eyes away from, would remain for him the rest of his life, and the fact that such potent emotions were being conducted through a Lucerna monarch who had Summoned meant that they were amplified to absurd levels and had the young man quaking in his boots.

It was awe inspiring, but also terrifying as it told Tristram that the Lucerna family and the king would not let this tragedy and betrayal go unanswered, though it also spoke of how the friendly, loving and kind father that Marik had been had been ripped apart like the body of his wife and replaced with a vengeful king that would stop at nothing to bring those responsible for this heinous crime to justice at the end of his massive sword.

The Guardian in training held the exhausted and unconscious body of the youngest prince in his left arm, making sure that he would be safe and with his axe held loosely in his right, glad that the boy was so small and young so that he could keep a hold on his weapon. The king did not turn around, and hefted his sword as the shadows began roiling and wriggling in a much greater vigour than before like the darkened walls were coming to life and they were inside of the pulsating organs of a gigantic monster.

Tristram, stifled a gasp as several holes were beginning to be ripped from the reality located within the burning nursery, the flickering wisps which had been controlling the small fire that had been lit destroyed by a combination of Caiellis's release of annihilating flames and the Black magic of the new invaders of the capital city (judging by the warning bells ringing all across the city which signalled an attack), sending normal flames that collected shadows from the roiling mass of raw mana (instead of dispelling the darkness) scattering across the whole room and setting everything on fire. He automatically held Caiellis, closer, hoping that the smoke that was rising up out of the burning room that no one was concerned by wouldn't get into the youngster's lungs, although the boy already had a large bleeding scrape on the side of his head that the twenty one year old couldn't deal with with only one arm that was already occupied with holding the lad.

However, for all that he wanted to whisk the tiny four year old away from the horror that had happened within the room that had supposed to be a peaceful sleeping location and a place to have fun, the young Lucaelian didn't dare to leave the king's side in this time of immense peril (having had it ingrained into him through his training and upbringing that the Lucerna family was the most important thing in the Kingdom of Light and that he should protect it above all else, which included the king), he didn't want to be seen running from enemies no matter that it would be in the intentions to help the unconscious Lucerna heir easily held with one arm, and finally he didn't have the courage to take one of Marik's sons away from him right now in the state that he was in, because it was entirely possible that after eliminating the foes that threatened them in close proximity the monarch would want to see his sons and ensure that they were safe.

Ripping away two other members (as Tristram would have to ask his mentor and master Guardian Axeclion whether or not to leave, since he knew at the core of his being that Caiellis and Alexander needed to stay with each other) of the man's family under the pretence of keeping them self could end him or drive him into massive panic, and if either of the two boys woke up there would be confusion and fear because of their memories and not being with their father. No, for now Tristram would keep little Caiellis safe and ward off enemies with his axe without launching himself into the fray, and kept a wary and watchful eye on the enemies that were just now ripping themselves out of the unnatural holes in the walls.

The loathsome stink of the forbidden and evil abyss was everywhere, permeating the room and overwhelming the smell of family that infused this nursery in particular and the reassuring and encouraging background aura of the Lucerna palace that instilled the minds of everyone within it with respect and solemn admiration for the ancestors of the courageous and revered Lucerna family which had obtained the blessings of the most powerful of the benevolent angels of the heavens, and inspiring feeling that motivated all who stood within it to serve the bloodline who had elevated their kingdom to the safe place that it was now and had ruled it with their brilliant minds and determination to protect the people.

The stench of the darkness which resonated much more in the king's metaphysical sixth sense simply reminded him of the deep rooted hatred of all things that were formed from Black mana (well, all things apart from one that he loved more than anything else apart from the rest of his family, but that was not the same – that was darkness, but not corruption like this) which had risen to the surface with his wife's death. He would see to Emili's body later and ensure that it was in the perfect condition, but right now he had enemies to slay and his entire being ached with the need to remove their stain from this place, to expunge the desecration that they had caused by entering the room in which his wife had died.

Large talons pierced through the walls of physical substance, widening the holes that tore apart the barriers between the mortal and physical world and the abyss of Sancturia, and writhing tendrils of solid blackness pushed themselves out of the intensifying darkness of the walls of the room. The gloom shrouded everything until each Lucaelian activated their mana and let it swirl around them, creating pinpricks of light in the almost overwhelming dark that threatened to be snuffed out at any moment. Chittering whispers of dark desires mingled with atavistic howls of pure hatred of the light combined with deep and threatening growls and echoed across the room, sounding unnervingly close to each of the ears of the occupants, although those who had fought against the forces of the shadow before were accustomed to the technique designed to dishearten and demoralise those subjected to it, though there was little chance of that happening to the elite warriors here.

While even those with powerful mana pools within them were only like flickering candles in the eternal night, the king and his exalted Angel and Wrath were like a blazing beacon of light that repelled the darkness. Marik glowered, his eyes shining with a wrathful light that almost matched that coming from the Angel of Wrath stood next to him, at the demonic denizens of the nether realm that dragged themselves out of the tears in the physical substance of the room, snarling and snapping at the king with distended jaws as they were goaded out by several smaller but no less terrifying demons that wielded huge chain whips which they used to goad the other beings of the darkness into the room.

The nursery swelled, the amount of enemies pressing against the thin walls between the material plane and the dark realms of Sancturia causing the entire substance of the room to become bloated, far more creatures dragging themselves into the room which had been the location of Emili's death than it should have been able to fit, the hellish warping abilities of the abyss which seemed to make it massive and endless and had always made travelling outside of the protection of the cities extremely dangerous now deforming and contorting the dimensions of the nursery so that the sheer volume of creatures formed from malicious Black mana could enter and attack the soldiers.

They smiled at the king malevolently, fully aware of the pain that their brethren who had somehow infiltrated the palace without anyone noticing (although the fact that there was nothing to be seen of the two bodyguards that Marik had assigned to protect his family suggested some form of shape-shifting magic) had caused the hated Lucerna king and his children, and their eyes glinted with the same sadistic gleam that the demon who had ripped a hole in Emili's stomach and killed the most beautiful and kind woman on the planet had been filled by.

The fact that these demons had arrived after the others suggested to the king that the ones who had murdered his wife in cold blood had been providing some sort of pernicious beacon that would allow their foul brethren to erode the barriers between their foul residence and the inviolate and holy palace which would normally be anathema to their presence. They seemed to have been released to complete what their two fallen comrades had started in the attack on Marik's family orchestrated by that bastard who dared to call himself the king's brother must have planned out for quite a while, as his victorious arrogance at killing Emili was carried over in these demonic servants of his. Emili had never truly been a target, and it reminded the king of what his wife had said before he had done the most stupid thing in his entire life and left her – that Alexander and Caiellis would be targets of Johnias and the rebels if they sought to obtain the holy throne and rule over the Kingdom of Light, as merely killing the current reigning monarch would cause one of his young sons to inherit the throne instead, although before this night Marik would never have thought that his older twin brother would ever target his sons and would simply take the throne by force or use the one who gained the crown to further his own agendas.

However, that was irrelevant, and so was however the creatures of the pit had got here. The fact was that the spawn of the darkness was here, that the demons wanted his sons, and Marik would not allow that to happen – not would he allow Emili's death to go unavenged, and these foul beings would be the first in a long line of those who would atone for the murder of the queen and the defilement of the sanctity of the palace and Marik's family. The king had already almost died from seeing his wife death, and would grieve for her as long as he lived, but he would not let the woman's legacy, their treasured sons, be taken from him by the envy of his brother as well.

Reality buckled and thrashed around the king, although the area around him and his First Sisterhood angel remained unaffected and solid, like the holy power of Akroma mixed with Marik's Lucerna gifts kept the stability of the palace around him. Marik sighted the enemies, his warriors taking their places up beside him as the ones holding his sons were surrounded by their other comrades in a protective cordon guarding the two unconscious princes, though all of the Lucaelians in the room stayed silent and continued to give their exalted king a wide berth. There was a huge amount of them, though no one else in the room Summoned yet, all trusting in the divine power of the Angel of Wrath who was just as terrifying as the king at the moment because of something none of them yet knew but Akroma had sensed.

Their numbers were vast, but Marik did not care. With a primal and raw battle cry on his lips that howled out of his sore throat, the king leapt into the fray, an explosion of holy light obliterating enemies left and right as they screeched in pain and dissolved, the fact that Sancturia was so close to the real world meaning that the spawn of the shadows would die permanent deaths if killed instead of simply returning into the other realm, banished from whence they came. Akroma launched herself into some form of horror creature made up of gloom and murk and with several huge claws that pierced out through its flesh.

The physical Blade of Wrath, shining with the same celestial intensity of blinding incandescence as the birthmark on Marik's bare neck, crashed into the monstrosity borne from psychotic nightmares, and the horror was torn apart by the angel as she turned to smash apart a new foe with the flat of her gigantic sword, the marble blade covered in noxious black blood from the invaders of the citadel. Marik crashed through the enemies, tearing them apart with his blade, ripping them to shreds with holy swords conjured from his desire for retribution for the fate of his wife, incinerating them with bolts of holy and harsh luminescence that cleansed their taint from the world. Claws scraped against the king, but the magical and spherical shield borne of his hatred surrounded him and made him immune to most of the attacks.

The king roared his defiance of the darkness which had taken away his wife all the while. He knew that what he was doing was extremely ill advised, as his soldiers could not keep up with him as he plunged like a blinding spear into the heart of the amount of enemies that made the room expand to bursting point, but he didn't care. The king threw himself at the nightmarish creatures and their demonic taskmasters with reckless abandon, his sword rising and falling as he waded into their ranks. He no longer cared what happened to himself, nothing that these beings could do to him would eclipse the torment that he felt at the death of his beloved soul-mate. If the demons and their foul servants harmed him, then it would do nothing, because he deserved the pain for what he had allowed to happen to Emili, and as such the king did not pay any heed to defensive tactics as he rammed his way through the enemy lines.

The sheer amount of enemies from the macabre phantasmagoria of horror and nightmares packed densely into a small space would have made progress difficult for any other warrior, but the king simply ripped through their ranks. He fought without the superlative skill which he had attained with swords through years of arduous and gruelling training, using his brute force and huge mana pool to force his way through the tightly packed mass of foes, the dimensions of reality changing as horrors reached up from above to attack the king and beings on the right attacked from below as all space and normal properties of the world were warped and corrupted by the darkness, though it did not affect Marik as he charged unstoppably through.

Beings with teeth for faces screamed at the king and launched themselves at him, but were split apart by his sword, the shockwave from the blow that was given huge amounts of power from his need for vengeance sending other enemies sprawling to be trampled by their brethren who lusted for the death of the Lucerna in their midst. The battle began to blur into one single haze of brutality and slaughter for the thirty one year old, the enemies distorted and moulded together as he slew multiple of them at once with a cleaving blow that sent unnatural green-black blood spraying in every direction and splattering on the king, though it was quickly evaporated by the purifying White mana exuding out of his whole being.

Marik killed and killed and killed and killed, all the while screaming his hatred of the things that had taken Emili from him and cut her time with her beloved children short. One of the demonic overseers snarled threateningly at the king and flapped its wings, covering its viciously spiked scourge which it had used to whip its servants into a frenzy with spiteful Black mana and flinging it towards the Lucerna monarch. The father of two simply grabbed the weapon, the energy of vengeful and judgement-seeking light bleeding of his hand preventing the curses enchanting the whip from harming him and healing the cuts caused by closing his hand over the serrated edge of the cruel implement of war. He yanked it backwards before the demon could let go, snarling at the being with a fury that far eclipsed that felt by the lesser demon as the being tumbled at the king's feet. He slammed his booted foot into its skull, crushing the unholy bone to pieces as he rammed his sword into the face of another screeching horror that flung its distended form at the man.

The battle lost all sense of time and meaning as the grieving man cut his way through the hordes of enemies that threatened the safety of the last two members of his once perfect family, the last two parts of Emili's legacy that he would be damned if he let any harm come to. The enemies were just splodges of darkness to Marik, who hacked his way through them nonetheless as their pathetic attempts to harm him were nullified by the sphere of incandescence that surrounded him. The king released his fury at what had happened to Emili mixed with his eternal desire for repentance for leaving his family unprotected as he ripped his way through the hordes, his large and ancient Lucerna greatsword covered in unnatural gore and the mutated internal organs of the foul creatures he eviscerated. The sword hacked left and right, killing enemies with every blow as the man gave into his desire to brutally murder those who had conspired to end the life of his compassionate wife, and Marik howled, not caring if the warriors who fought behind him could hear him over the din of the battle or not.

He murdered more, and he cared not for the resistance of the foul creatures that he killed. The violence intensified, becoming a whirlwind of blood, claws, darkness and pulses of holy light, though Marik sustained no damage as he cut his way through the attack of intruder beings which had violated the holy sacredness of the Lucerna palace with their foul presence. Akroma was at his side all the while, the angel a constant and solid presence next to Marik as she tore apart creatures of the most disturbing shadows with her sword and blasted them with bursts and shockwaves of bright mana. Though the Angel of Wrath was usually quite an independent warrior, preferring to fight slightly apart from her Summoner and to take on different opponents to him, she remained by Marik's side due to the lack of space and the fact that she was feeling the same emotions that he was.

Marik paid little attention to the seraphim of the highest order, though he was aware of her by his side and murdering enemies at a massive rate which aptly exemplified how powerful she was and how suited for war Akroma was. It was a storm of unnatural gore and steel mixed with blinding flashes of light that dispelled the hungry darkness. More demonic taskmasters leapt at him, hoping to claim the glory of killing a hated Lucerna king for themselves and to devour his potent essence so that they could claim more power, but Marik conjured up an orb of light in his free hand as he savagely dismembered a fleshy monster which had attacked him from the side.

He poured huge amounts of mana into the sphere, knowing that although the palace was under attack and the whole city was being assaulted, which meant that he should conserve his magical energy, he would easily be able to generate more mana because of the power of the emotions that sought justice, holy vengeance and repentance coursing through his muscular and tall form. The king released it, tossing the orb that shook with the power channelled into it at the demons, and swept his hand down, his fingers leaving trails of light on the air as he freed his controlling hold on the mana. It exploded, detonating in a large discharge of thrumming White energy that blinded the beings of the darkness as their forms were consumed by the light, and leaving those that were untouched dazed and sightless as their unholy eyes were seared by the blast of harsh luminescence.

Marik swept forwards, hacking his large sword which hummed with the force of his mana augmented by the crown on his forehead (which on a whim he had decided to wear for the council session that he dearly regretted going to) into the forms of the demonic overseers. His blade cleaved though them, inflicting a trifecta of damage upon them – there was the cutting edge of the ancient steel which split the denizens of the nether realm open, the sheer size and weight of the sword which smashed apart their unnatural bones and splintered their bodies like a hammer blow, and finally the magic of vengeance and light which cleansed their taint and destroyed the Black mana that formed them.

One of the last remaining lesser demons hissed and shrieked in panic as the king turned to it, fixing the pathetic creature with his hate-filled gaze and vengefully stalking towards it. It snarled at him in a way that was not common to demons – one that showed its fear of the Lucerna, something that would have perhaps brought satisfaction to Marik had he been able to feel anything other than the cold grief and the self-loathing and sadness within him.

It was strangely fitting, how this taskmaster of the malignant pit which had caused innocents in the kingdom to live their lives in fear of attack from demons and the forces of the perpetual darkness, was now instilled with terror at the sight of the avenging and unforgiving king. It screeched in alarm and dread, turning back around to the glistening and pulsating abyss behind it which had forced its way into the nursery and intending to leave, but a bolt of light hit it through the chest and stopped the lesser demon moving away.

Illuminated by the wan light of the flames that were beginning to consume everything in the place that Marik had cherished as a site for his sons to grow up within and had been the scene of many of his most loved memories but now his most hated and covered in brackish and oily blood that despite the best efforts of his spherical shield stained his clothes and skin, the king was a terrifying figure indeed. The fire was roaring, though it was natural and could be put out soon, and Marik resisted the temptation to keep this fleeing demon alive so that he could torture it and make it feel even a modicum of the emotional agony that he was subjected to, make it undergo the pain that Emili had gone through in her final moments of life which had been devoted to protecting and comforting her sons, instead increasing the power of his purifying magic and immolating the demon in the cold fire of vengeance.

The thirty one year old looked around himself coldly, sensing at the back of his mind that there were no more enemies left as the dimensions of the nursery began to return to normal. He could not lie, he felt disappointed that there were no more left to kill, no more left to vent his rage at the mistreatment of his beloved wife upon, and stood stock still in front of the cabinet stood next to the wall which had been concealed by the holes ripped in the fabric of reality that bled blackness upon the room. He stared at the photographs taken quite recently by the newly invented mana cameras that showed his family, their smiles bringing tears to Marik's eyes as he looked upon the version of his wife captured within the picture forever.

The cabinet was also covered in pictures that had been drawn by the king's sons, childish scrawls that he couldn't help but have a fondness for but were now tainted by the loss of the woman who had given birth to their creators. Orange flames licked at the edge of the wooden furniture, some of the teddy bears that Caiellis and his mother must have placed there in a way that they often did (putting them in random places around the palace) catching fire and falling to the floor. The soft toys were soon consumed by the fire, reflecting the fact that the rest of the family of bears and teddies would be burning to death in the blaze that had swept across the whole room and would be incinerating the boys' beds.

Marik wasn't ready to give up on his family yet. While Emili may have died, and he would never get over that, his sons were still alive, and Marik knew that he would be leaving soon to prosecute war with his army against his traitorous twin brother. He wasn't yet ready to cast out the thoughts of his sons from his mind, but he couldn't take everything with him, and for some reason he didn't want to stop the fire. The king picked up the photograph of him and his family, gazing at his wife with tears in his eyes, and stuffed it inside of his jacket, where it nestled next to his pounding heart of vengeance. The father was reminded of what he had told his youngest son after his nightmare which seemed ridiculous now since reality had become much worse than any bad dream the four year old may have had, that he would always be within the boy's heart, and hoped that Caiellis would know those words would extend for Emili as well – that she would always be watching over her beloved sons from her place in paradise until the day many years into the future where it was their turn to join her.

He couldn't carry it all, and while it would have been child's play for him to stop the fire and leave the nursery relatively unharmed until he had the time to return to it, he instead walked towards the form of his unbreathing wife. Marik let the room burn behind him as he sheathed his sword, kneeling down beside Emili as he brushed her hair, unaffected by the smoke rising up from his sons' bedroom which would have had a lesser person choking and spluttering for breath. He lifted her light body up in his arms again, knowing that eventually someone else would extinguish the fire so that it could not spread to the wider palace or that the wisps which inhabited the building would douse the flames, and was tempted to stay within it and let it take him and his wife's corpse.

No, even if he knew that he had to survive so that he could put down this rebellion, the king was aware that his loyal Summoning would prevent him dying in such a mundane blaze. He let it burn down the memories and the possessions within the room, the frame within his jacket digging into his chest. It was symbolic, showing that with the death of Emili his family and happiness had been ended, and that his mistakes had ended any chance he had at joy and comfort. It represented the starting of his new life; no longer would he be content with the safety that he perceived within the kingdom, he would take the fight to the darkness until either he died and his sons could continue his legacy or the abyss was crushed out of existence and every single demon or follower of the shadows was slain.

Akroma stayed by his side as he stood still with his wife in his arms, the flames lapping at the shield of safety that encapsulated his human form (the Angel of Wrath unaffected by anything as weak as normal fire), though everyone else had vacated the nursery and waited outside for their king. Marik strode out, holding onto Emili and trying not to let his pure grief at her death consume him to the point where he would be unable to act, instead forging it into a weapon that lived for vengeance and ached with the need to bring holy and unflinching justice upon the betrayers. He still needed to lead the defence of Capitalia Lux against those who attacked it, and the king could sense the taint of many abyssal breaches much like the one within the palace but at a much greater strength since the demons did not have to tear through the barrier between worlds into such a sacred and holy place which was abhorrent to them.

As Marik exited the burning room, Akroma pacing slowly behind him, the king handed his wife to the waiting general Carlis Montlea, the man's face solemn and filled with sober sadness at the death of one of his closest friends (as he had been the king's champion at the same time Emili had been taken in as his advisor) and the grief that Marik was filled by, his brown eyes highlighting his worry for his own children and wife who would be at the Montlea residence further into the palace. Carlis would ensure that she would be kept safe and given to one of the solitary custodians of the palace mausoleum which was the burial place for Lucernas and their families which the young woman would be interred within.

He marched to the head of the party with Akroma at one side and Carlis on the other still holding onto his wife and not yet willing to let go, all of them ready to follow his commands as he walked towards the window of the corridor that showed the outer city below them (as the nursery was located in one of the floors in the top half of the huge palace), the rest of Capitalia Lux burning just like the bedroom of his children had been. Marik could see an angel fighting against a large demon in the distance, recognising the familiar mana signature of the two creatures despite not being able to pick them out with his eyes due to the distance.

The citadel was still under attack, and Marik could hear the screams of the palace warriors battling against demonic creatures and warriors of shadow further below them, so that would need to be cleared first.

The man's soul had been torn asunder by the death of his wife, and his heart had exploded into a million pieces which could never been brought back together, but because he was a Lucerna king he still had to fight, still had to push aside his own worries and heartache in the service to the kingdom which depended upon and revered him. He stroked his wife's hair in the arms of Carlis, the man's eyes burning with the want to avenge the death of his best friend's wife, and the king would give anything to see her alive again. Marik shuddered in rage and sadness, his new found hatred for himself only matched by his hatred his brother and those who had sided with the demons, until a small voice broke his reverie of drowning in his emotion.

"Dad?" the voice of his eldest son, young, scared, innocent, entered Marik's ears, and his hand on his wife's head fell still as he continued to stare out of the window at the besieged city below, wondering how blind he must have been to miss this blatant treachery right under his nose. Everyone was silent, perhaps waiting for Marik to answer his little boy, perhaps not knowing what to say themselves, and that left enough time for Alexander to cough painfully, though from the smoke of the burning nursery that he had ingested while in there or from what the monster holding him had been doing was unknown to his father. The boy sounded exhausted and extremely frightened as he asked, "Dad … what's happening? Where is Caiellis? (he was shown the unconscious four year old by a quiet Tristram) Is mum ok? What's wrong with mum? Why … why isn't she moving? Dad? Mum? MUM?"
Marik gulped nervously, feeling the bitter saliva burning the inside of his already raw throat, and though he knew that he should be turning around and comforting the eight year old, ensuring that he knew that his mum had gone to a better place and that his dad was going to make sure that him and his little brother were safe, he couldn't. He couldn't meet his eldest son's gaze, he didn't want to have to explain to his son that his mum was dead and that there was nothing they could do about it, and most of all he didn't want to see the boy crying because of what had happened to Emili that Marik should have stopped!

It would break him, the look of despair and sadness son his innocent eight year old's face, and he couldn't deal with his sorrow knowing that the king could have prevented the death of the heart of their family. Instead he trembled with fear and anger and continued to gaze upon the city below him which was alight with battle, as Alexander continued, "Dad, why isn't mum moving? Dad? DAD! MUMMY! MUMMY!"

He hadn't called her that for a few years now, ever since Caiellis had begun using the title for Emili, not wanting to be seen as a baby, but now that obviously didn't matter to him. The king heard a scuffle of feet and a high pitched grunt of effort, indicating that Alexander had tried to run towards the still form of his mother and that someone who Marik was immensely grateful for was holding the boy back, though he winced when Alexander screamed, "LET ME GO! WE HAVE TO HELP MUM!"

The king knew that he was being immeasurably selfish by not comforting and assuring his son himself, but he wouldn't be able to, and the boy's words were already killing his father more than he was already dying inside. To be honest he could barely think straight himself, his thoughts a roiling tsunami of sorrow and hatred directed at himself and the traitors, and in no way was that suitable for a child. He heard someone saying things to his son, somehow calming him down, but he couldn't make out the words as he stared resolutely and stubbornly at the burning city. His sixth sense informed him that a gigantic army with huge amounts of mana was attacking the city, a force that would take monumental effort to defeat especially with the disarray the soldiers of Capitalia Lux would be in because of the attacks from without and within and any agents that Johnias had employed who would be sowing discord and confusion.

The king needed to fight, he needed to be able to kill those who up until this fateful night he would have known as subjects and brothers in the war against the darkness, not soothe the woes of little children. Besides, Marik wasn't sure whether he would be able to comfort Alexander when he felt little of that himself, as assuring his son that everything would be alright would be a lie and they would both know it. At the moment, he didn't want to think of his two emotionally distraught and innocent sons who would have their childhoods cut short and be forced to grow up by the events of this midnight attack, he wanted to think about the battle and wiping out the enemies who threatened the precious capital.

He knew at the back of his mind that they would have to be taken away from the war and the fighting, most likely transported to Scientia Mos or one of the safer cities so that they were not in danger and stay incognito so that Johnias could not target them again, and when he heard the distressed voice of his beloved eldest son fading into the background along with the stern and adult voices of Guardian Axeclion and Tybalt Litria coupled with the younger words of Hierarch Mithres and Tristram, Marik knew that the evacuation process of his sons had already begun and that Tybalt and Tristram had been chosen as their protectors.

He would miss his sons in the time periods between being able to see them, that was for certain, but right now he wanted neither of his impressionable youngsters to see him this broken and vengeful, especially not with them having to already contend with the death of their beloved and fantastic mother who had loved them more than anything and had made their lives and childhoods up to this point fantastic. At the moment, Marik didn't think that he would ever recover from the death of his wife, but right now he was broken, shattered in two, and would be unable to provide sufficient love or even tolerance for his two little boys.

Marik had to resist the temptation to smash his fist through the intricate and elegant glass of the window that he stared out of at the dark city below him lit up by flames and pulses of White mana that beat back the shadows. He trembled with the effort of holding his rage in, only just managing to push it back inside of his shell so that he could quickly release it upon the foes and not on his soldiers.

A hand gripped his shoulder, the strength within the slender fingers stronger than Marik had ever felt before apart from the times she had touched him before, but even firmer this time, and the king brushed the burning tears from his eyes as he gazed up at the vindictive face of Akroma, her grey eyes alight with the flames from the battlefield and the room behind them and shining with the holy desire for retribution and judgement.

"We will avenge them, Marik," she told the king, her words not shouted but no less powerful, suffused with an awe inspiring resonance that stirred Marik's broken heart and made him want to slay the traitors not just for murdering Emili in cold blood, but for daring to align themselves with the demons of Sancturia and to oppose the divine will of the Lucerna throne. Had the king been able to concentrate properly and think, he would have wondered why his First Sisterhood angel had said "them" instead of simply "her", or why Akroma had what looked like faded tear tracks etched onto the pale skin of her porcelain cheeks, but right at this moment all the king could think of was bringing the bastards who had revolted in this foolish play for power which had divided the kingdom to justice.

Marik turned back round to his generals and advisers, glad that each and every one of their eyes were filled with rage at the mistreatment and murder of the queen and the siege of the majestic capital city which was the first city Matalis Ortus Lucerna ever established.

I am going to make you pay for what you have done, Johnias. This treachery will not go unpunished, and Emili will not go unavenged; no matter what it takes you and the scum who you call allies who have turned their back on the light of the kingdom will be brought to justice at the end of my sword!

Emili … I am going to kill them all for you!

.*.*.*.

The king woke up once again to the grinning face of the damned horror who had trapped him inside of his own mind, although this time instead of trying to instantly battle his way out to create as much disruption as possible he simply slumped backwards in the bench that he was sat upon and snarled, though it was much quieter than before.

Seeing his wife die again … it just reminded Marik of how much he had lost, especially after all these flashbacks and memories of the perfect family – his perfect family – that he had been forcefully subjected to. He could still feel the hole in his heart which had not reduced in size, only the amount that he let it affect him, aching for the presence of his wife even after nine years without her and without any love. He had spent nine years sustained only by the promise of vengeance upon those who had harmed his family, and used that to win the civil war against Johnias – although he had no idea what his brother had being doing in the forsaken abyss whilst Marik focussed on the rebuilding of his kingdom and then the war with the upstart New Empire of Passion.

He knew that his need to avenge during the civil conflict and the violent bloodshed had been instrumental in achieving victory for the loyalist forces of the Kingdom of Light, but now he knew that unless he was fighting against his brother or those who had wronged Lucael he would eventually burn out and turn out exactly like his father had – brutal, cold, unfeeling and bereft of any form of love.

The king realised then that he had been making a mistake now, and cursed himself for not seeing it sooner. While in the midst of the war with his brother the memories of his family and the thoughts of his children, the sheer love he felt for Emili's legacy, had distracted him from achieving victory – he had only starting winning battles once he had cast off all remnants of the father – the daddy – he had been and became the ultimate personification of the kingdom's wrath at the traitors (on the night where he had pushed all thoughts of the two emotionally distraught sons he would have to return to after the war into the cage in his mind that was only now beginning to break, he had burnt the photograph that he had rescued from the smouldering nursery), now that they were already breaking out of their imprisonment within the deepest recesses of his psyche and his love for his children that could never be denied they were his greatest strengths – and greatest weaknesses.

Alexander and Caiellis, despite only really talking to them both limited amounts after the civil war and with most of the conversations between him and his youngest son involving some form of heated argument or dispute, had become everything that he lived for. Ever since his eldest son's desperate plea for him to notice the youngest member of their family's plight, the king's fondness for his young sons had become something that was worth living for. He had forgotten how much he enjoyed being around them, how much he cared about the two little boys who had grown up into wonderful young adults (no matter how much Caiellis argued or yelled at him, especially because the arguments were both of their faults).

They now meant the entire world to him, and Marik knew now that instead of pushing them away and not wanting to face his parenting duties alone and without Emili, aware that he would never be as good on his own than he would have been with her at his side and that the family he had envisioned within his mind would never come to fruition and had died with his wife, he should have embraced them and held them close. While the hole where his heart had once resided that had once been filled with Emili Noctis's love was now empty and cold, instead of leaving it bare and desolate he should have started to try and repair it with the love from his sons.

Though he would never quite be able to create the family which he and his beloved wife had always wanted because she was no longer in this world, he knew that it was insulting her memory not to try harder with his sons and embrace them fully now that they were by his side once again, and maybe at the end of it all he would be able to form a family that was strong, healthy, and full of love and happiness for his children to grow up within instead of the barren thing that it was now.
If only Marik had realised this before now, if only it hadn't taken remembering the good times before the war and seeing his wife die once again for his mind to undergo this obvious revelation. Now it was almost too late; he was trapped inside of his own mind whilst his fragile youngest son who had been exhausted as Marik arrived fought alone against the gigantic power of an Archdemon. If the king had accepted Caiellis's arguments instead of fighting against them and simply shown his son love instead of censure, they might not have been in this desperate situation now where the fate of one of his children was unknown and the position that his other was in was the most dangerous that he ever had been in before.

Caiellis might have trusted his father enough to inform him about his plan to bypass the Welkalite force and kill Tradax as soon as possible to try and end the Tempest of Craving (although that was unlikely since he hadn't told Alexander – most likely because the seventeen year old would have stopped his brother no matter what), they may have been able to come up with better tactics than this. His youngest son might not have felt that he needed to potentially sacrifice his life because he thought that it was that worthless, and would have felt more comfortable fighting at his father's side instead of terrified of his disappointment and further violence.

Now that Marik knew the cause for the violence, he could put a stop to it, although if he had suppressed his rage it was possible that the horror would never have been able to affect him in the first place. That of course didn't excuse what he had done to his thirteen year old son, and in Caiellis's position he wasn't sure if he would ever forgive his father for it no matter if he had been controlled and manipulated by evil forces or not, but after this battle when they all survived because Marik broke out of the prison in his mind he would set that to right and ensure that the boy knew he was loved.

Now that his family meant so much to him once again, he could not let himself lose another member of it again. It would destroy him even more than the death of his precious wife had done. He wouldn't lose them. He couldn't. Marik already knew what it was like to lose something extremely close to themselves, and he would not allow either of his sons to die before they were adults and had lived the long and fulfilling lives that they deserved, that they had worked for through their selflessness and courage.

If the horror had thought that using the awful memories of the death of Emili would weaken Marik's resolve or break his defiant spirit, it had made a fatal mistake in that assumption. Instead of cowing Marik into submission, make him feel the same powerlessness that he had when watching the last vestiges of life leave his wife and not being able to do anything to stop it, instead of preventing him from acting because of the influx of powerful emotions like sorrow and grief that were rising up within his mind, seeing the death of his perfect soul-mate once again reminded Marik that Emili had loved her children above all else and that by preserving them not only was he helping to protect the two boys who were descended from him and whom he loved deeply he was conserving the last remnants of what his wife had wanted, what the woman who he had been married to had lived for – and what Marik lived for as well.

"It is a shame that you didn't come to that conclusion when you have your hands wrapped around Caiellis's poor little throat, isn't it Mariky-boy?" the horror of Aksua jeered, although the malicious voice of the invader within the monarch's mind was spat out at him spitefully, like it was irritated by the fact that showing the king the worst flashback yet hadn't had much of an affect on his desire to oppose the shadow being's malign machinations. Marik did not let it affect him, once again trying to force himself out of the cage of his thoughts and Mind Realm because while he did not know how much disruption it was causing, there had to be a reason why the horror continually forced him into recalling his memories past its own sadistic and perverse enjoyment of feeding upon his emotions.

He didn't know what he was doing in the real world, whether he was simply unconscious on the ground or something worse, and every bit of a delay to the plans of the darkness that he could cause in these intervals between the flashbacks was a delay that he would take. Besides, that was the last memory that he had of the time before the civil war, the last memory of Caiellis that he possessed although it had been mostly concerned with poor Emili due to the fate that she had met that had been his fault, and while Marik knew that there were recent memories of him and his youngest son together he wasn't sure whether or not the horror, who had been within most of them, would put him through them or not.

The voice of the vile being split into his thoughts again, and with it the same nauseating sensation that heralded being forced into one of his recollections of the past that he was powerless to change or even think differently within, "And don't you worry at all, Mariky-boy. Be patient, and soon you will certainly have the chance to feel useless and worthless once again!"

.*.*.*.

Marik stared at his eldest son with a mixture of surprise, disbelief etched onto his austere features, and cold disappointment not directed at the seventeen year old in front of him, as he processed the words that Alexander had just said. Silence descended for a brief moment as Marik's mind sprang into action, and the man wasn't sure whether or not he had been able to prevent a scowl from forming on his harsh face, or annoyance becoming prevalent in his piercing blue eyes.

The two were stood in one of the many training halls of the Lucerna palace, and sweat still glistened on the younger male's brow after the intense, exhaustive and extremely difficult exercise regime that the eldest son of the king had completed only a few minutes or so ago. Marik had watched him do it silently, pride that he hadn't felt in a long time mixing with a slight bit of apprehension at interacting with one of his sons for the first time after the civil war and then frustration at the back of his mind at having to deal with children without Emili, frustration which was now rising with the words of his first born son.

Nevertheless, thoughts of Caiellis could wait for now. Alexander had clearly grown up into a mature young man, and it would be a crime for Marik to not acknowledge that he was seemingly turning into what he would consider the perfect son – respectful, honourable, strong, determined, definitely handsome (which made the king wonder if the boy had broken his ban on having a partner until he was eighteen or not since it would be laughably easy for his eldest to have several members of the fairer sex fawning over him) and intelligent.

Alexander, especially now that he would be able to eat properly due to the end of the war that Marik had prosecuted to the best of his ability (though he still felt that it was a failure because he hadn't been able to kill his traitor of a twin brother Johnias), was becoming a very muscular and toned lad, and he was quite clearly very strong from what Marik had seen so far. Given a few years time of working out like he did now, the boy would one day be as burly as his father was – that wasn't to say that he didn't already have a very impressive physique for someone his age.

The boy's eyes, the same colour as his father's but much less cold and harsh than Marik's knew, instead reflecting his inner youthfulness and reminding the man heavily of what he had looked like when he had been happy in the past – although what it made him think of more were the eyes of Emili herself, just the colour of Marik's orbs - were currently filled with a combination of different emotions, and although Marik was inept at picking them out having not had to do it for over nine years, he was confident that he could identify several within the warm eyes.

He could certainly see happiness at the seventeen year old seeing his dad again, happiness that Marik wasn't sure he could reciprocate entirely. Instead of seeing his sons, he should be leading the kingdom – his advisers had only barely managed to restrain him from leading his elite warriors into the abyss to follow a heavily wounded and fleeing Arch-Heretic, and the only reason that he was intending to talk to his sons now was because they would be his heirs and it was the duty of a Lucerna to ensure that those who would potentially inherit the throne were ready for that immense duty.

This was particularly relevant with his own children – whilst Tybalt had been a superlative teacher to Marik, and he had absolutely no doubts about the quality of the education that his sons would have been receiving, because of the civil war which had prevented him from seeing them he had been unable to personally assess their suitability to the throne like any Lucerna parent should. He needed to make sure, like his father had done with him no matter how harsh the man had been about it, that his sons would be ready at any point to take the throne from him should the terrible (for the kingdom, at any rate) and he died.

The king was also sure that the happiness in his son's eyes was guarded, like it had been at the beginning of this conversation, the childish excitement of seeing his father again tempered by the knowledge that Marik would have almost certainly been changed irrevocably during the war, and suppressed enough so that any potential disappointment would not affect him much. Marik was aware that he would probably be immensely disappointing to his son's vision of him, and briefly wondered what Alexander thought now, before realising that so long as the seventeen year old respected his rules and continued to excel as much as he had been doing, was happy enough and safe, he didn't really care at all.

Finally, there was concern and apprehension in Alexander's warm blue irises, although that worry was no directed towards the youth himself and was inflected with a slight bit of guilt, though Marik thought that it was silly that Alexander felt guilty about something he would have found out about within a day at least.

Marik's eyes narrowed, and Alexander diverted his gaze so that he would not have to stare into the transfixing glare of his dad that wasn't even directed towards him. The two had been having a pleasant but awkward conversation before this particular topic had come up right at the end when the king had been asking about the whereabouts of his youngest son. He – and the kingdom, which made it even better – was very happy with how the eldest prince was turning out, and one day he would make a fantastic king or leader that commanded with the strength and strategic skill of his father mixed with the empathy, leadership and charisma of his mother.

"I see," the man responded simply, his brow furrowing in consternation as he processed the news that his firstborn son had just delivered to him. Alexander's face fell, as although Marik had tried to keep his tone even he must have let some of the anger and pure frustration he felt inside drip into the words. He should not have to deal with this from one of his and Emili's sons. "And has Caiellis given any indication as to how close he is to completing the Summoning trial?"
Alexander pondered the words for a second, almost opening his mouth to say something in response to the question from his king but then closing it as he actually considered what the request had been. Every time he had asked his little brother something similar, the boy had always replied cryptically or managed to deflect his attention from it, which was something that Alexander was only just realising. During the civil war which had only ended four days ago on his baby brother's thirteenth birthday, the boy had devoted some time to it but since they were always on the move Cai had only been able to attempt it on safe locations as it had exhausted him.

They had only been in the palace and the capital city a day or so more than their father had (which meant that they had been here for two days), and it was with some reluctance Alex admitted that he hadn't actually spoken to the squirt in all of that time now that they could actually have some freedom – sure, he loved his little brother more than anything in the world and was certain that that fondness was appreciated, but they were both teenage boys now (angels above … I'm still not used to the fact that Cai is thirteen) and needed personal space, something that his younger brother hadn't quite understood when they had been younger but was perfectly amiable towards now.

Alexander had been out seeing his friends and training, and Caiellis had been presumably attempting his Summoning trial and making friends of his own (or "wasting" the day with his head in a book and reading on some obscure knowledge to expand that ridiculously sized brain of his), but apart from a few "pleasantries" (if exchanging brotherly insults could be called that) neither of the two had held a conversation with one another as they settled into a stable and safe location once again – only this time it would be permanent, and there would be plenty of time to talk to one another now that the war was over.

The relationship between Alexander and his brother had become slightly tense and strained near to the end of the war which had haunted almost (and even more so for Cai) their entire lives, as, because they were brothers, they had become sick of each other's presence even though for the most part Caiellis hadn't yet been thirteen at that time. Alex had been getting irritated at his brother's obstinacy and the fact that the younger boy had mostly had to tag along with him (whether either of them wanted him to or not), whereas Cai had started to get annoyed with Alexander as well and tired of the seventeen year old for reasons that he hadn't communicated – though Alex was sure that they would have been precisely as petty his own causes were.

Anyway, that meant that they hadn't spoken much recently as each of them embraced the fact that, while they were brothers, they were still individuals and entitled to alone time. Alex replied to his dad, wary that he was stepping on dangerous territory that could potentially land Caiellis in even more trouble than he was already, "I don't really know, to be honest. He doesn't talk about it much."

Marik's eyes flashed with vexation and infuriation for a second before he consciously repressing it, knowing that no matter how close he was sure that Alexander and his younger brother were that it wasn't his eldest son's responsibility to know everything about Caiellis's state. Technically, if he hadn't been a king, it would have been his duty as the boy's father to know what was going on with his son, but since he had the kingdom to look after which was far more important he did not have the time to chase up lagging youths. Nevertheless, Marik was still intending to go and see Caiellis to ensure he knew exactly how close the boy was getting to completing the trial (he must have been almost there in his attempts by now).

Alexander slumped slightly, his posture slouching dejectedly as his dad's eyes clearly communicated that he had decided to link Caiellis's lack of speaking about his trial with the youngest Lucerna being ashamed of the progress that he was making and not wanting to tell his family. However, even if he was struggling extremely hard, it was unlike Caiellis not to inform his older brother or one of his "Uncles" of his plight even if he was embarrassed of it, which had almost stopped him in the past. Alex knew that the runt tried to work things out for himself before informing others of his problems, and wondered if the fact that he hadn't yet spoken to Caiellis nicely since his birthday (though before that they had been at each others' throats (almost literally, though luckily Tristram had managed to restrain Alex then)) meant that the boy thought that his brother no longer wanted to hear his issues or help him with them.

That of course wouldn't true, while Alex enjoyed finally spending time away from his little brother the boy was one of the most precious things in the world to him and he would always help Caiellis with anything that he wanted (well, unless it was incredibly inconvenient or they had been arguing). Alex didn't know why his brother hadn't told him much about the Summoning trial, but concealing information like that never boded well. Besides, he, Tybalt and Tristram had always been supportive and reassuring of him whenever he attempted it, constantly telling him that one day he would be able to pass it and that it was natural that a First Sisterhood angel's test was extremely punishing and difficult to complete (to which Cai would always despondently murmur that Alex had unlocked Aurelia at the age of ten).

Now Alexander couldn't help but feel that he had landed his brother in serious trouble, not that their dad – who hadn't objected to being called that – wouldn't have ever found out without Alex's words. Marik tried hard and failed to stop a severe scowl creeping onto his features which looked remarkably older than they had done when his son had last seen him, the war and what he had been forced to do to achieve victory ageing him more than the passage of time had and making him fit all of his forty years of life.

"In that case I should go and see him now," Marik replied, his voice tinted by a minute slice of volcanic anger that Alex couldn't help but think was going to be released upon his innocent baby brother, something that he couldn't let happen but could do little to stop. Marik invoked a sense of awe and obedience from his eldest son, who could no more disobey his commands than he could change the colour of the eternal night to fluorescent pink, and Alexander had idolised the man all his life, something that wasn't going to stop now despite the change which his dad had suffered because of the war and the death of Alex's mum.

Marik turned away, his posture straight and confident and his bearing kingly, but before he left Alex broke into the tense silence which had descended with a "Dad?"

The man instantly stopped, combat honed reflexes identifying the sound the second it had left Alexander's mouth and processing it as something which was not a threat, and turned back around to his eldest son.

Alex couldn't just let him leave like this without saying something, he couldn't just let Caiellis be the recipient of a stern reprimanding that he didn't really deserve from the man he had spent nine years creating a perfect representation of within his mind and who he hadn't seen since he was four years old. His eyes met Marik's glacial blue orbs once again, hoping that his own were filled with determination to help out his little brother. Alexander wasn't willing to let Caiellis meet his dad after nine years and instantly be chastised and scolded by him for something that he already put a lot of pressure onto himself because of.

It would crush the younger boy's hope, destroy one of the very few reasons including Alexander himself that the little dude had managed to get through the war without being broken by the violence and forlornness of the situation they had been in. It would tarnish the fact that Cai had never had the chance to have a childhood even more now, and Alex wasn't about to see his brother's already lacking self-esteem crushed by their dad.

However, as he looked into those austere blue eyes, he felt that he couldn't voice any of these objections, nor did he want to any more. He understood then that perhaps Caiellis did need a bit of fire instilled within him, and that his little brother wasn't as weak as he thought he was and more likely than not would be motivated by the scolding and the criticism if it was done properly by their father. He found that he trusted and respected his dad, and that he was willing to let the older of them handle it because he had precious little chance to do so before now. Besides, it wasn't as if he could speak out against his dad now even if he had wanted to, the sharp gaze of Marik informing him that he would tolerate absolutely no dissent from his sons and that his word was law in their young lives.

"It's nice to see you again, dad," Alex gave up on trying to force the other words out of his mind, although he hoped that their meaning was implied after his sentence. Go easy on him, please.

Marik's gaze softened slightly, although it wasn't anything yet past a cold and stony stare directed at his son a vague bit of pride in his thoughtful eldest son made its way into Marik's mind, who was glad that he had at least one boy descended from him that was progressing perfectly well within his ascent into adulthood and was the pride of the kingdom. The king allowed himself to feel proud of his seventeen year old son and favoured Alexander a small smile that he was sure didn't quite reach his eyes but hoped conveyed that the boy should continue on as he was.

"It is nice to see you as well, Alexander," Marik replied politely, making no moves to embrace his son like Alexander might have thought that he would. Instead, he reached out and patted his son on the shoulder, not quite comforting and reassuring but still a familial gesture that he used to show that he did indeed feel pride in his son and how he had grown up (and he had listened to a few of the boy's exploits during the civil war from the new Guardian and Hierarch).

If he was so inclined, he could still remember Alexander as a young boy that had been full of infinite and unlimited enthusiasm for life and everything apart from vegetables and reading (or anything that was forced upon him like going to bed at a decent time), but Marik preferred not to think of that time unless he had nothing to do and was laid awake in bed reminiscing of the years before his wife's death and the civil war which had ruined his family and dragged his children's parents away from them.

Alexander smiled back, though it was a tiny grin instead of the infectious and large one that he would usually wear in happiness. He was glad to see his dad again, though he understood that the man had been changed forever by the war – like they all had (well, maybe apart from Cai, who hadn't had much chance to be anything before the war). He was only ever so slightly disappointed by his dad not being as perfect as he had once envisioned him to be, but knew that no matter how changed Marik had become he would always love the man who was his father and would always seek to please and make him proud of his eldest son. He only hoped that Caiellis wouldn't have all of his dreams crushed by their dad and that his father could act as he had done with Alex himself – pleasant, but still cold, though the boy knew that his dad would be finding it troublesome to interact with his children once again.

Marik left, shooting a backwards glance over his shoulder and smirking despite himself at the fact that his eldest was instantly returning to his rigorous training exercises, the boy obviously wanting to expand upon his lean muscle even more than he was already now that the war had ended. That smirk soon faded as he remembered the task that he had ahead of him, slowly being exchanged for a brooding scowl of displeasure at the fact that his youngest son hadn't yet passed his Summoning trial.

While some in the kingdom would be happy about the fact that the Angel of the Black Sun had not yet gained a method to access the material world through the youngest Lucerna, Marik was not, and he knew that his son was dangerously close to being the eldest any Lucerna child had been before obtaining their First Sisterhood angel and signing the Summoning contract within the Mind Realm. He had argued all he could against Caiellis's detractors that he hoped had been kept a secret from the boy (though that was unlikely because of the travelling he had done during the civil war, as he couldn't be kept clueless in the palace like he had been as a young child), and now he needed the youngest prince to actually start to prove that it was Xarius who had been evil, not his angel, for the sake of himself and the kingdom that he may one day rule.

As Marik walked through the familiar hallways and corridors of the palace that he hadn't set foot in for several years now, breathing in the scent of ancient awe that stretched back to the time of the first Lucerna king which he had grown up with as a child, he thought of his youngest son.

He had realised, paradoxically as he watched Alexander execute a multitude of push ups that would leave anyone exhausted, that he looked forward to seeing his second child yet. Alexander was seventeen now, mature, independent, and he would realise (and had realised) what Marik had gone through, know that his father was not the same man as he was before the war and the death of Emili, and would rely upon his father less since he had already gone through puberty and grown up without his dad. Marik's firstborn son would be able to get through things on his own and without minimal help, whereas he had always known at the back of his mind in these few days of travelling back to Capitalia Lux to begin the rebuilding process that simply because of Caiellis's age he would be different.

The youngest of his two sons was only now going through puberty and his ascent into adulthood whilst his older brother had almost finished, and Caiellis would be in that hybrid phase of no longer being a cute and innocent little boy but not yet an adult that could stand on his own two feet without help from others. Because he was younger, and had been ripped away from his family at a much younger age than his older brother and as such probably wouldn't remember much of Marik or Emili, Caiellis would want his father to create a new relationship with him whereas Alexander understood that the king had little time for that.

Marik's youngest son would be going through the tumultuous and often ungraceful growth into adulthood, although apparently he was still quite small and hadn't yet hit any substantial growth spurt, which, if his own childhood and adolescent rebellion had been anything to go by, would make him simultaneously reserved, quiet and wanting to be alone but craving comfort and attention so that the feeling of hopelessness building up within him wouldn't overwhelm him. Caiellis would require more attention and effort from Marik to get him to know him and understand his rules because the two barely knew one another, and Caiellis had been too young before the war to truly begin to come to terms with who his father was, despite his perceptiveness, whilst at eight Alexander was starting to comprehend the scale of his dad's role and duty to the Kingdom of Light.

The king's second son would, due to no fault of his own, no doubt want to spend more time with the dad that he had never been able to truly have, the dad who had been ripped away from him at four years of age and replaced with the substitutes of Tybalt and Tristram, and have a chance to do things with his old man that he had never had the opportunity to do, something that Marik didn't have the time (nor the inclination, although that was another matter entirely) to do so. Caiellis would understand that eventually, and besides, they had more important matters to be discussing than the interactions between father and son, one that was pressing at the forefront of Marik's mind now as he strode quickly and efficiently through the palace.

He walked through one final corridor, and, remembering his eldest son's words and not wanting to disrupt anything if Caiellis was still in the midst of attempting his Summoning trial, quietly opened the door to the large Hall of Reflection (a name coined by some king of ages past who had used the room for exactly that, although at least it hadn't been one of the many rooms that the self-styled Emperor of Light had stacked up mirrors within so that he could gaze into his reflection, as that would have made the name extremely ironic).

The room was cylindrical, tall, and vast, with glittering stained glass windows showing scenes of Lucerna monarchs in meditative positions as they thought about their rule and how best to help the kingdom, or channelling mana as they expanded upon their non-combative magical arsenals (as there were plenty of other rooms for practising combat magic), and it exuded and air of peaceful and introspective privacy – as this was one of the many locations within the palace that was restricted to all but the Lucerna family. Marik could see why his son had chosen here to attempt his Summoning trial, under the watchful and thoughtful gazes of his ancestors, as the room was private and he would not be interrupted by anyone but his father or brother if they were inclined to do so.

Marik stood in the doorway, his eyes roving across the room and taking in the stained glass panels showing past Lucerna queens and kings but not really paying them any heed as he found his youngest son. Caiellis was sat, cross-legged and seemingly serene, although Marik could see from here the strain that the boy was going through, in the exact centre of the room, with some of the light that was emitted by the top of the Lucerna palace shining through the circular stained glass of the ceiling illuminating him and bathing him within holy luminescence.

The king stayed silent and didn't move, unwilling to break his son's concentration and perceiving his evident mental struggle even from this distance away by the way that the boy's eyes fluttered beneath his pupils and he was breathing through his teeth as he ground them together, luckily not biting his tongue off. Instead Marik simply examined Caiellis as he attempted the trial once again in a series of failures that only the angels knew how many constituted it.

He had listened when Tristram had told him that his youngest son was still small, but it was still slightly shocking to see him there, slender and thin like Emili had been but even more lightweight than his late mother, reminding Marik distinctly of how fragile he had been after his premature birth, so delicate that no one could touch him as he lived out the first month of his life within a neonatal support incubator.

Caiellis had gaunt cheeks which had developed the same high cheekbones as Marik had, obviously inheriting that trait from his father, and the skin of the boy's face was pale, smooth and innocent, contrasted sharply with the large Lucerna birthmark of the ominous Black Sun that tainted his son's right cheek – no, not tainted. I know that you haven't seen him for nine years now Marik, and that your hatred of Black mana has grown even more than it was before Emili was murdered, but Caiellis's Black mana is different to the evil magic of darkness used by the traitors and heretics. It is Black mana given to him by an angel, which means that it has to be a different form to the type that unholy demons are made from.

The youth had a slightly curly and wavy mop of brown hair on his head that was too long for Marik's liking, as the fringe almost covered his eyes and the king was sure that if Caiellis had been stood up and slumping his shoulders then his hair would obscure his eyes fully as it was already partly doing so now, which was unacceptable for a warrior of a calibre that Caiellis was going to become – although he was not his own father and would allow it for now as long as it didn't grow much more than it was now because the boy was still a child and Marik wanted to avoid having him fight for as long as possible until necessity called for it, especially if he hadn't passed his Summoning trial yet.

Eventually, after a few minutes of silence which Marik knew better than to disturb, his son's eyes snapped open, and the king felt a twinge of regret and deep sadness that permeated to the core of his being and occasionally leaked out of the cage surrounding his broken heart as he saw the green orbs that reminded him so much of Emili's dazzling eyes focus onto the wall across from the boy. They were soulful, and enigmatic, but thoughtful and Marik could remember well how Caiellis's green eyes had looked before the civil war – they seemed infused with the exact same worldliness and gave off the impression that he knew more than he should at that age, although the childish and young wonder at the world which had often suffused them as he lapped up any and all information available was tempered by the horrors that he must have seen and become much more mournful and even slightly haunting. Marik recalled the annihilating black and purple fire which had blazed in Caiellis's wide orbs when he had only been four and destroyed the demons who had murdered his mother and threatened his brother, and it seemed like that inferno of hatred had left its mark on the boy's eyes just like the night had clawed its way into Marik's soul and tore apart his heart.

To say that Caiellis was a good looking kid would be an absolute understatement, as while the boy was possessed of the natural handsomeness and charisma of the Lucerna family he was striking in his own right. In fact he was just as good looking as his older brother was but still had a baby face, a lost little boy look that would most likely never fail to earn him a pinched cheek or ruffled hair from some motherly figure or the protection of those that were older than him – Marik himself already felt that he wanted to protect his youngest son, particularly because of his frail and slender physicality that would be near useless in combat, which clashed slightly with what he would be doing – although ultimately it did not, as successfully completing the Summoning trial would provide Caiellis with more protection than he had ever had before in the form of his own personal First Sisterhood angel to direct.

Caiellis would grow out of it eventually, and his innocent and young face would become as attractive as his older brother's was to girls, but those soulful puppy dog eyes would always serve him well. Marik was aware that he would be soon subjected to them in full force because of what he was planning to say, but quite frankly he didn't care and failure was not accepted with the Lucerna family – because it could have serious consequences for the rest of the kingdom which had entrusted them with the duty and privilege of ruling.

Caiellis seemed lost in thought, staring blankly at the wall opposite as he clenched and unclenched his fists like he was in anger or in frustration, and though Marik already knew the answer to the question that was brewing in his mind he thought he should give his son a chance and ask it any way. He was about to speak, but first cleared his throat because of the dust in the ancient room that servants hadn't been allowed access to for nine years, and the boy spun around in surprise. He evidently hadn't noticed that his father had entered the room, and while he was instantly combat ready (something that Marik would have been proud of if he wasn't seriously disappointed with the boy) he responded with confusion and almost toppled over.

Caiellis stared at his father as if in shock for a second, the man meeting his son's gaze with the inscrutable and frosty blue eyes set into his head, and then a smile almost creased Caiellis's features. A guarded happiness similar to that which the king had seen exhibited within the warm orbs of his eldest but noticeably different made its way into Caiellis's bright and intelligent green eyes as he rose to his feet, the king failing to notice how shaky his son was standing up or how he was still breathing quite heavily after the trial of the Angel of the Black Sun and putting off any signs of discomfort as the boy simply being pathetic and having been coddled too much by his elders instead of exposed to any real hardship.

This type of joy in his youngest son was very real delight in seeing his dad for the first time after the civil war (delight that unfortunately was not mutual), only guarded because of the fact that he was no longer a little boy (debatable) and wouldn't explode in a bundle of excitement and cheerfulness at finally looking upon the man that he had looked forward to meeting every single day of the civil war, only just suppressed within him because he was older and more mature now – as if the meeting had happened a few years ago he would have either ran over and hugged his father or bounded around the man, though he knew that he had never been as energetic as his older brother had been at his ages in the past.

Instead, Caiellis shyly looked up at his father as the man took a few steps towards him in the room, though not close enough to touch, the king towering over a foot and a half above his 4'11'' son, and his eyes reflected that he wasn't yet willing to let his joy at seeing his dad overwhelm him nor affect him too much, like he was unready yet to believe that it was true and in some way realised that it would never be as good as he imagined it, though not as obviously as his older brother.

"Did you succeed?" Marik asked the boy as he looked down at him, eschewing any pleasantries, his voice unflinching and steely as his emotionless and frosty blue eyes examined his youngest son and took in his unimpressive form. Caiellis instantly became downcast, his eyes flicking to the floor for a second before he almost met his father's gaze again. The fact that he hadn't yet passed his Summoning trial was evidently a cause of great embarrassment and shame for the youth, but clearly not enough otherwise he would have completed it already. Caiellis shook his head slowly, wondering if he could have tried anything else whilst in there, but there had seemed to be nothing he could have done – he hadn't had access to mana, and the walls of the room had been pressing in on him from all sides at a terrifying rate.

He had stayed until he began to be crushed and smothered by the pressure, and then left the Mind Realm, and the fact that he couldn't prepare for these trials beforehand made it even harder for him as he was someone that liked to come up with a strategy for something before rushing blindly into it. His father and king was right to be annoyed at him for it, but he was still happy to see the man and hoped that with encouragement from his dad himself then Cai might be able to complete it and unlock the forbidding First Sisterhood angel who had stained his right cheek with her Black Sun symbol and who had only been Summoned before by the insane King Xarius.

Instead of staying silent and sullen, his excitement at looking upon the man who he had last seen at a tender age of four made him want to speak and he replied, "No. I didn't. I'm sorry." He didn't want to feel like he was making excuses, because there was no excuse for his failure and he really didn't want to make a negative impression upon his father and king, so didn't expand any more upon his points than that, but the fact remained that he had lasted as long as he could have against the walls pressing in on him from all sides and about to snap his bones and crush him into a pulp.

There was nothing more he could have done, and he only hoped that dad understood that from the dejected expression he was almost certainly wearing, one that he had grown accustomed to because of his abysmal failure to Summon that only wasn't swamping him with shame and pressure because of the reassurance and inspiration from his brother and two Uncles. He gazed into his father's eyes, though they were as inscrutable as a sheet of ice and only showed his reflection within it, and as he looked into the mirrored version of his own green orbs within the eyes of his dad he faltered.

"That is unacceptable," Marik said harshly, and Caiellis took an involuntary step backwards because of the sheer disappointment and dissatisfaction with his youngest son that the boy would never have predicted, although now that he was seeing his real dad instead of the imagined and perfect version of him he could clearly discern that his father had changed significantly during the war, and reminded himself that his vision of the man would have been distorted anyway because he had only been four years old at the time that his parents had been ripped away from him so he would have seen them as the best things in the world besides his brother.

Cai's mouth twitched somewhere in between a smile and a frown as he was hit by the harsh words, the force within them more potent than the content of the short statement. He felt the tendrils of hope which had wrapped around him at the entrance of his father begin to slither away, and the dream of being reunited with the man who he could remember loving more than anything but his mother and brother which he had chased all the way through the war seemed further away than ever before, almost impossible now.

Marik's tone, and his mind, held no sympathy for his youngest son, and he narrowed his frigid eyes as the boy took a step back, seemingly not of his own volition, glaring at his youngest son who gulped nervously in conjunction with his parent's statement. The fact that Caiellis had stepped back meant that he apparently saw some form of threat in his dad's intimidating posture, although Marik was not about to correct that and wanted his son to understand the cost of failure. He wasn't going to go and hit the boy or hurt him in any way, that would be far out of line and after his own childhood Marik severely disapproved of the beating of children – especially since Emili would curse him from heaven for it – but Caiellis had quite plainly had the consequences of not passing the trial yet soothed by the Guardian and Hierarch.

It was very clear that his youngest boy had been smothered by his protective elders and lacked independence, shown by how he now stood anxiously in front of the Lucerna monarch, and while Marik had been exactly the same when he had been a youngster like Caiellis he hadn't had anyone to rely upon whereas it was evident that his more confident son would take the pressure off of the back of his second born child. Marik was very irritated and disappointed with the boy's failure, because this was the exact thing that he did not need as the king of a nation which had just endured the worst civil war of its lifetime, and he wanted both of his sons to be performing at the apex of their capabilities so that he could call upon them when necessary and so that their First Sisterhood angels would be an asset to the kingdom.

He had neither the time nor the patience for this, and so if his youngest son found him threatening then good because maybe it would give him an incentive to succeed instead of being coddled and told that his failures were good enough so that he could avoid his dad and sovereign's displeasure. Marik didn't want to have to and shouldn't have to deal with children who couldn't even pass a simple test around the age that Caiellis was, and simply stared down at his little boy who averted his gaze instead of looking into the man's simultaneously fiery but icy blue eyes. The floor was preferable to that, the manifestation of the crushing of his dreams to have a perfect family as his fantasy of it shattered within his mind, although it was possible that his dad was just going to start of chastising him but change and become loving after he understood the severity of the scolding.

"How old are you now? Twelve?" the king questioned as if he was an interrogator, his scowl burning into the boy who thought that he might shrivel up underneath it, and when he replied there was a tinge of annoyance in his young voice that surprised even him, "I'm thirteen."
"Thirteen," Marik repeated, and underneath his anger there was a hint of sadness and regret at having missed out so much of his sons' lives to the point where his youngest, his baby, was now already a teenager, but instead of making him feel sympathetic for the boy it simply incensed him further. Of course he was thirteen, his birthday would have only been a few days ago, which meant that he was edging perilously close to being the eldest a Lucerna ever had been when passing their Summoning trial – if he kept at this failure for another month, he would be the Lucerna child to gain access to their First Sisterhood angel the latest, something which Marik was not going to accept. Marik was not going to have one of his sons remembered as the one that passed their trial later than any who had come before him, for his own sake and for the king's reputation which had been damaged somewhat by the civil war in his own opinion.

"And do you think that not completing your Summoning trial by the age of thirteen is perfectly satisfactory?" Marik demanded, his tone coloured by his frustration in his son but not angry – yes, there was anger at the boy's newly discovered failure within it, but he wasn't furious or fuming, just cold and heavily disappointed with his youngest son. The boy shook his head sadly, dropping his eyes once again after meeting his father's again for a moment as if checking to see whether they had changed or not, and Marik's scowl deepened even more. "I can't hear you, Caiellis."
"No. No it's not," Caiellis replied, his voice meek and ashamed, tinged with sadness at his own failure to unlock his divine angel and to speak to his father, face his failure and overcome it like any other but him would, and he couldn't look back up at his dad because he knew that those furious eyes would sear his soul and rip apart his dream of a father that would understand and love him, one that he had been waiting for through all the dark nine years of the civil war, and one that apparently he wasn't going to get. Marik nodded in agreement, tempted to forcefully tilt the boy's head up so that he was looking at him but unwilling to potentially hurt the fragile teenager, and he knew that his words would be enough.

"No. It isn't. What is it about your Summoning trial that makes it any harder than any other Lucerna's?" the man asked his dejected son, noting that the childish and naive light which had been present in the boy's eyes when he had first made his presence known to his youngest son was fading and becoming replaced by despondency and sadness. The man could have snorted. It was extremely transparent that Caiellis had thought that his lack of ability to Summon so far would simply be overlooked by his dad, which was utterly ridiculous, and it was also obvious that the thirteen year old wasn't quite aware of what not passing his Summoning trial yet meant. Right now it was his own personal failure, something to be annoyed at but not something to take over his life, and he needed to comprehend that this was not just something that affected him, but could potentially have dire consequences for the entire kingdom.

Caiellis, knowing that the question was more than likely rhetorical, didn't reply, wanting more than anything to be away from here so that he could bawl his eyes out at his dad not turning out like he had always wished, which in hindsight he now knew what been incredibly stupid – especially for someone with an apparently extremely intelligent and analytical brain like his. Marik's son's brown hair concealed his green eyes, so the king had no way of knowing whether or not his words were having their intended effect or not, and to correct that he firmly told the boy, "Look at me when I am talking to you, Caiellis."

The thirteen year old swallowed anxiously again, wanting to do anything but that although he knew that the words had not been a mere suggestion and that he would be expected to follow them instantaneously. Brushing his brown hair out of his eyes, Caiellis resolved to suck it up and take this verbal beating like a man instead of the pathetic child he had been acting as, and stared resolutely up at his father, though the instant that his glanced into the man's eyes that were so similar to Alexander's yet completely different his courage faltered and broke.

"I asked you a question," the man informed him, his brow furrowed in annoyance directed at his son who hadn't deigned to answer his stern inquiry, and Caiellis opened his eyes wide in shock for a second before returning to the guilty expression he had adopted in this conversation between father and son. He opened his mouth to speak, and though he wanted to communicate that the had found each and every one of the different trials so far utterly impossible no matter what he did, forced to retreat at the last second so that he did not die in the Mind Realm, so instead settled upon a muted, "I just can't do it-"
"And do you think that that is good enough for a Lucerna prince who may one day inherit the throne and rule over the whole of Lucael? Do you think that our blessed ancestor Matalis Ortus Lucerna simply gave up when the goings got tough and decided that he "just couldn't do it"?" Marik replied seriously, his voice cutting into his son like the cold blade of a large sword, and Caiellis shook his head dejectedly again. Nothing his father was saying or had said so far was new to the boy, but normally these reprimands and rebukes came from within Caiellis and were refuted by his Uncles or more commonly his big brother who refused to let him think badly of himself and gave him hope that he would be able to succeed if he kept trying hard, so the words having their origin as someone (particularly his father who was supposed to encourage and support him) other than Caiellis was an unpleasant experience for him.

"I tried as hard as I could-" Caiellis offered, the words sounding hollow and weak to him despite the fact that they were true, before he was interrupted by his dad. Marik snapped, cutting him off so hard as to make him flinch, "Evidently not, otherwise you would have passed the trial. I refuse to believe that you are too weak to unlock your First Sisterhood angel, because you are my son and a Lucerna, which means that you aren't trying hard enough. You don't have enough of an incentive to succeed, which means that you are bound for failure. I will not accept this from you, Caiellis. This is not happening, and as a Lucerna you should have gained access to the Angel of the Black Sun earlier."

But Caiellis had tried harder than he had ever tried for anything in each of the trials, and it was never enough. Maybe his dad was right, maybe he didn't have the right incentive to succeed and that was why he was failing, but he wanted this more than he had wanted almost anything in his life apart from safety for those who he loved, for the civil war to end and to be reunited with his loving father once again and for his mum to come back. Now that all of those had already occurred or there was no chance of them happening, perhaps this last thing would be one that he would focus upon above all else, but deep down no matter what he thought to himself Cai knew that it would not be enough.

"It's just impossible no matter what I do..." the boy murmured sadly, the words the most pitiful he had spoken so far, and the plea for sympathy within them went unheard by his father. He felt his throat tightening like someone had closed a vice around it, his chest felt heavy and constricted like it had been during the most recent endeavour to triumph over the difficulties his angel set for him, and his eyes start to water slightly until he brushed them violently, determined not to cry in front of his father who was telling him off.

"Damn it, Caiellis. This isn't about the trial. This is about you," Marik growled at him, annoyance thrusting itself to the forefront of his mind at the sight of his youngest son's wide and young eyes beginning to well up and become wet at the chastising from his father. "This is why you are trained. This is what you will have been helped with ever since you first learnt to cast spells. No excuses. You will tell me no excuses, Caiellis."

The boy nodded once more, his face a mask of shame and despair as he blinked to clear the blurriness out of his eyes. Marik scowled again at him, as the fact that Caiellis had almost started crying cemented the fact that he had been coddled – because of his fragility, innocence and age during the war no doubt, which he couldn't blame his carers or brother for – far too much by his elders. He would receive no sympathy from Marik, although had the man been able to watch the seen from the outside he would instantly notice the fact that he sounded almost exactly like the late King Garius II in addressing his son. "You will have to work harder if you are to pass this trial, harder than you already are, and you need to focus on this instead of anything else. The war is over now, you have no excuse not to pass it – even so, your brother still obtained Aurelia at the age of ten during the war. Perhaps you would like to think of that before telling me that your trial is too hard. Perhaps you would like to tell the citizens of the kingdom who need the Lucerna family to protect them against the darkness that you can't summon the angel given to you by your birthright so that you can protect the people because you find it too hard."

Caiellis took the criticism stoically, although Marik thought that his son was going to burst into tears any second now, entirely unbefitting of a Lucerna scion and they both knew it. He pressed on, not willing to give Caiellis any time to come up with any form of distraction that would prevent him thinking about his failures, and though he would not admit it he used haste because he didn't want to let his youngest son's sadness or his current condition affect him in any way and reduce the potency of the message. Caiellis was trembling with the effort of holding his tears in, and it physically hurt to do so as his father continued, "How can you be any use to the kingdom as a Lucerna prince – or even worse, a king – if you cannot even complete the simplest of tasks?"

This one was definitely rhetorical, as there was absolutely no answer to that other than "I can't" and both of them were aware of that already. Caiellis tried to keep a straight face and keep his father's gaze because he knew that it would only anger the rightly disappointed and angry man further if he looked away, even though the intensity of the glare coupled with the fact that it represented the destruction of something which he had hoped for every single day of the worst time of his life – the only time of his life.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled nervously into the gap in which his father had obviously left for him to respond, almost desperately needing to look away from Marik but not wanting to make him even more disappointed than he already was in his pathetic failure of his youngest son – besides, with the way that the king's posture was tensing, he wouldn't put it past him to force him to look into the man's eyes if he so much as glanced away. No, that was ridiculous. He knew full well that his father would never physically hurt him, because even though he was fully aware that Marik was not the same man that he "remembered" from his very young days he also knew that the man wouldn't ever hit him or Alexander, even though he was had screwed up extremely badly.

"Sorry isn't good enough Caiellis. Sorry is nowhere near good enough. Would you simply say sorry to those who might die because you were too weak to protect them?" Marik asked, once again favouring the tactic of asking him a question and forcing the boy himself to realise that his failure was unacceptable instead of repeatedly jamming that information into his head without letting him consider it on his own and find himself lacking without much input from his king and father.

Caiellis was taking it better than he had expected, "better" in this case being worse for the lad himself as he looked about ready to cry in shame and put all of his effort into the next attempt of the trial (which would probably occur tomorrow), as he had anticipated some form of defiance from the teenage boy in front of him (which was how he would have reacted had he been in the same circumstance as a youth up to the point where he actually passed the test of Akroma). Instead, Caiellis was taking the criticism to heart and listening to his father's points, condemning himself alongside the man, which made Marik certain that he was doing the right thing by making him think about his lack of success instead of just shouting at the boy like he might have done. He was positive that this was the correct course of action for both himself and his son, and that he was giving the boy the right incentive to succeed so that he would not be forced to deal with Caiellis's mistakes again and could focus on the undoubtedly long and arduous rebuilding process of the Kingdom of Light which had been rent asunder by his brother's treachery.

"Caiellis," he said sternly for one last time so that he would get the boy's undivided attention, as his eyes were becoming filled with a form of young hurt and rejection that threatened to overwhelm Marik's defences and make him start to question this course of action or want to pull his fragile youngest son into a hug and take him away from all of the pain and hardship of the world. He could well empathise with how other people found it hard to chastise him unless they were incredibly annoyed with him, as Caiellis's wide green eyes clearly showed how he was punishing himself for his failure just as much as Marik was now that he actually knew that it was completely unacceptable.

Those doleful puppy dog eyes which were so reminiscent of the few times that he had seen Emili sad or crying made Marik himself want to start crying at the harsh world because of the family he had lost, wishing that his sons didn't have to go through such sadness and pain because of their dad's twin brother and the threat from the darkness.

Marik removed the ridiculous thoughts from his mind, his ire roused even more because of his boy's eyes making him think of such things instead of verbally punishing his son for his lack of any form of success – because there was absolutely no doubt as to how useful a boy of Caiellis's height and weight would be without access to a powerful First Sisterhood angel. If the youngest Lucerna thought that he was going to get any sympathy from his father by trying to look cute or deeply hurt, he would be sorely disappointed and when Caiellis's eyes refocussed upon the one who had created him and given him love when he had been younger, Marik knew that once again he had his son's total attention and focus.

"Because you haven't yet passed your Summoning trial, you are a failure to me as far as I am concerned," Marik told him, his voice bereft of the anger which had been in it when he had first started talking to little Caiellis, but the words were no less serious or cold. The youth rocked back as if his father had physically shoved him, a single tear of absolute sadness almost trickling down his cheek before he brutally swiped it away with his small fist. Caiellis's expression became one of utter rejection and despondency, something so incredibly sad and regretful but something which also told Marik that that had definitely been the right thing to say to spur Caiellis to pass the difficulty of his Summoning trial now.

He looked deep into those wide and welling green eyes until he sensed a change begin to overcome them, the sorrow in the mournful and haunting green orbs slowly leaving them and becoming replaced with an utter lack of emotion, the feeling that had been clear in those expressive emerald orbs locked away within the boy's heart as Caiellis pushed passed his sadness and suppressed his emotion. However, the rejection that the thirteen year old felt because of Marik's words was still plainly evident even through the fortifications of blankness which had crashed down in front of the youngest Lucerna's eyes, and when the king ensured that his words had had the intended effect he quickly and efficiently turned around and began to walk out of the room, not even offering his son a goodbye nor saying anything positive towards him.

He hoped for both of their personal sakes that Caiellis would pass his Summoning trial soon, because he didn't think he could do that again. It was stupid and utterly illogical that he had started getting emotional behind his visage of a stony and disappointed mixture of a father and a monarch which he had been presented to the world, but the sheer sadness present within his youngest son had encouraged a similar emotion to make itself known within Marik. It had hurt him more than he had anticipated to say such things to one of his children, but he hadn't been doing it for himself – he had been doing it for Caiellis and ultimately for the kingdom of Lucael itself.

Marik knew that he was being ridiculous – he had watched his perfect and kind wife who he loved more than anyone else in the world apart from his sons at the time, so seeing Caiellis a little bit sad because of something that was the boy's fault in the first place should not have rattled him, a Lucerna king who had survived battles in which hundreds of thousands of soldiers had died and walked through school buildings full of dead children, slain by rapacious demons enticed by the possibility of a banquet of innocent souls. His youngest son being downcast and ashamed should not have affected him as much as it had, almost enough to make him start to even consider going against his duty and spending more time with the boy so that he could ensure that he passed it – which would have failed, as the whole point of his speech had been to make Caiellis know that he needed to do this on his own and he couldn't blame anything other than his own weakness or lack of determination for the failure to Summon.

It was good that Caiellis felt dejected and sad so long as he used those feelings to improve and gain a greater drive to succeed to avoid his dad's disappointment again, because they were the emotions that were usually associated with failure. So why had Marik felt so awful doing that to his son? It was necessary for him to succeed, and Marik would do it any day of the week if it meant that the kingdom would be safer – and it wasn't like he was being unfair to his youngest son either, as if his eldest had been in the same situation he would have said the same – or been even more severe, harsh and furious, as Alexander would have been older.

Marik smothered the thoughts, knowing that they would not help in the many duties he had yet to complete which had been forestalled and delayed by seeing his two sons. If this was what talking to his children was going to do to him, distract him and open up wounds that were still raw despite being inflicted nine years ago, then he was going to have to avoid and shun them until he could get his emotional state under control enough where he could interact with his sons – his protégés and heirs – and rule the kingdom without being distracted by them. The whole of Lucael was far more important than two teenagers so long as those two teenagers were perfectly alright, and if Marik was distracted by Alexander and Caiellis then they had to be out of his sight because distractions would not be tolerated by the king – especially the king of a nation recovering from a tumultuous civil war with enemies still out there in the abyssal realm.

As soon as the king left the room, Marik felt an extremely disconcerting and sickening sensation of being torn out of his body as a sense of detachment and disembodiment overcame him and made him want to vomit up the contents of the hearty breakfast he had eaten before this battle which had been large enough to give him suitable energy to fight. His perspective was ripped out of where he would have been looking in the memory, although the surroundings of the hall did not change nor did he leave his forced flashback.

What is happening? This is not what I remember! Marik thought, curiosity warring with anger at the mistreatment of his mind and both of them clashing with shame in the king's mind, who regretted very dearly what he had said to his youngest son. His vision was forcefully yanked throughout the large room, laid to rest by his second child who was still stood in the same position in which he had been before his admonishing father had left.

"Don't worry, Mariky-boy. We're just going to watch and see the effects of your words to poor little pathetic baby Caiellis," the voice of the horror snickered in Marik's ear, who turned to try and lash out and smite it out of his memories before realising with a sinking sensation that he had no control of his limbs and that the being was everywhere around him but nowhere. It sniggered, and although the king could feel its foetid presence sinking its cold and shadowy tendrils further into his mind he could no longer sense it in the vicinity and was no longer willing to focus upon it. It was obvious that the invader of his psyche wished for him to watch his son now, probably for its own sick sense of enjoyment, so he would entertain it for now because there was little else he could do and was vaguely interested to see how the being of darkness had managed this, to distort one of his memories – although it was no longer that, it was simply the past – and allow him to watch.

Then a thought clicked in the king's mind, and Marik remembered that this horror had been inside of Caiellis as well, although not as overtly as what was happening to the king Aksua's monster had still trapped the youngest Lucerna in some sort of induced paralytic state in which he could not fight back, which meant that it might have access to Caiellis's recollections of the past as well. With a jolt Marik also remembered that he had never asked his son what had occurred within his mind that had prevented him escaping and coming to the aid of his injured brother because he had been too furious and shocked at what had happened to Alexander – so instead of comforting his more emotionally fragile son (apart from a brief moment of father/son intimacy that they had shared when watching Alexander undergo painful surgery) he had directed his worry and anger at him and shouted at him.

Had he asked Caiellis what had happened within his mind which had stopped him from helping the brother who he clearly loved more than anything else, he might have known how to combat this better (although his son hadn't succeeded in leaving either) but now Marik was stuck and the irony of it all was that he was doing no better than his youngest son in leaving his family members to be ravaged alone by the forces of the darkness, the thing that he had severely berated and yelled at Caiellis for.

Marik's mind snapped back into focus when he looked at the past representation of his youngest son once again, this Caiellis little different to the current one apart from slightly shorter hair and a different look in his wide green eyes that reminded the king so much of Emili that gazing at his youngest son was something that brought a lump to Marik's throat and caused him pain inside, sometimes to the point where he couldn't stand to be in the boy's presence for no fault of his own.

He realised now that what he had said to his youngest son was far too harsh, and that he had been wrong, so, so wrong in his assessment of the situation with the boy. The king, in his annoyance, prideful incredulity and irritation and finding out that one of his sons hadn't yet passed his Summoning trial at the age of twelve (or thirteen as it had transpired), had decided that Caiellis must obviously have been slacking and had been coddled by his older brother and the Light-bearers of the capital – as why else would he have thought that not having access to a First Sisterhood angel at that age would be acceptable?

However, it was plain as transparent glass that Caiellis had not been thinking that at all, and that he had not been smothered and spoilt by his elders – in fact, their reassurances and encouragements had probably been the only things that had kept Caiellis thinking that he was acceptable and that he wasn't a complete failure, because Marik knew well now how badly his son thought of himself – inheriting that awful trait from him. Caiellis had most likely already thought he was a worthless failure like his father had implied not so subtly, but with the backing and supporting of his brother and carers he had been able to still keep some of his self-esteem and a bit of confidence.

That had been destroyed by the brash and insensitive words of a man who had only thought about himself and his duty to the kingdom, not how his sons were feeling, and had never considered looking further into his youngest son's difficulty in Summoning, instead passing it off as a simple lack of incentive to succeed because he was unaware and had been kept hidden from the ramifications of failure. His declaration that his son was a failure and not suited at all to being a king had shattered the last remaining walls between Caiellis hating himself and being able to cope with his lack of success so far which his "Uncles" (Marik thought that it was absolutely adorable that his youngest referred to Tybalt and Tristram like that, although to be fair they were more like family to him than anyone in his actual family apart from Alexander and his poor mother) and older brother had tried to hard to fortify.

He could see now how blind he had been, how horrible the things that he had said to his youngest son were solely because he had not wanted to have to deal with a son that was struggling and simply wanted children that could excel on their own and with absolutely no help from their father at all, and although it would not be the worst thing he had ever said to Caiellis it had been the catalyst for his spiral into self-harming and quite severe depression. He had told the boy that no matter what others said, his failure was unacceptable and that his father would no longer terrible – he had not asked why his son had found it so difficult to succeed apart from in a degrading way, and he hadn't even said that it was good to see him again after all these years.

He had assumed that it was a lack of determination which was afflicting his son, but Caiellis had already been extremely determined to succeed and his father's words had, instead of motivating him, pushed him into dangerous obsession because he had thought that no one would love him and that he would remain worthless if he didn't unlock his angel – whereas Marik thought now that his son was worth far more to him than his First Sisterhood angel was. The king should have of course informed him that he was expected to pass it soon, but been more like he had acted when giving the boy the Sword of Glass – which had been motivated by the anger and desperation of his eldest son for his youngest's sake.

Because of his compassionless and harsh dad the littlest Lucerna had thought that he was not worth anything, that he was useless to his family and the kingdom and had no place within the vaunted Lucerna line, so instead of helping his son in his selfishness he had only made it worse for the kid. He hadn't thought to think that perhaps because Caiellis had been given a First Sisterhood angel which only one other of the Lucerna family had been blessed by before that the trial was perhaps in some way different or harder than normal tests, oh no, he had taken the easy route and blamed his physically weak but mentally strong second son for it because that had meant that he hadn't had to dedicate any time to helping or aiding Caiellis.

His thoughtless words had pushed his son over the edge into deep sadness, and the boy had isolated himself away from everyone – not that Marik would have known without the eldest son of his loudly informing him of it – he had even pushed away his older brother, the one person who he could trust above all others, and devoted his life to passing the test of the Angel of the Black Sun because he couldn't bear the weight of the pressure pressing down on his young shoulders, couldn't bear to see his father's displeasure again due to what it had done to him.

Caiellis had evidently been looking forward to seeing him, Marik could see that now without being blinded by his pride and frustration at having to embrace his parental duties (without Emili) again, and the forty year old had crushed the hope of him being able to meet one of the perfect family that Caiellis had only been able to have until the age of four after nine years of war and peril, crushed the possibility of him having an actual parent that would look after him and make him feel safe and happy again. He should have held the boy – both of his boys – close from the beginning instead of ignoring them, but it was too late for now and Marik deserved all the pain he might yet receive for failing them.

The small youngster had pledged every iota of his existence to completing the test of Orzhova without any aid from his family because he had shoved them away, not wanting them to see him like that or for them to hurt him like Marik had done, and spent every minute of his life either relentlessly attempting the trial, sleeping because of the exhaustion and fatigue heaped upon his frail and young body by the constant mental strain and pressure to succeed. Because of that, he had lost even more weight due to not being able to eat very often as he was either too tired to go and get food or too afraid to confront any of the members of his family, and had no one to tell him that he was still loved and that they believed in him.

Marik should have told his son that he loved him no matter what happened in lieu of ignoring that parental feeling which had stirred beneath his visage of an imposing monarch, Marik the Father rousing after being chained and imprisoned after nine years of brutality to be instantly suppressed and stamped out, labelled a distraction and inconvenience. Instead, he had berated and ranted at the youth who was already close to loathing himself for his failure, and that had sent Caiellis into a deep sorrow where he believed that his dad hated him and wanted nothing to do with him.

It did not matter at all that this desperation and lack of self-worth was exactly what Orzhova had required from her Summoner so that he could pass her trial, and try as he might Marik could not bring himself to blame the dark seraph and hate her for what she had made his son go through to earn the limited acceptance and pride of his father. The Angel of the Black Sun had not wanted a repeat of the Xarius incident and would rather that her second Summoner did not have access to her than abuse her powers for their own gain, though Marik knew that Caiellis would never turn out like the narcissistic and egotistical Emperor of Light.

It was completely irrelevant that the state of mind that Marik had forced Caiellis into with his inconsiderate and cruel words had been needed for him to ever unlock Orzhova, because now Marik (as a father at any rate, because as a king he couldn't think like this) would rather that his son had never passed his Summoning trial than thought that his life was worth so little that he could throw it away simply because of a possibility that he could succeed in something which had hung over his head for the past month. The Lucerna patriarch was abhorred at the thought that either of his young sons who had everything to live for would want to cut themselves because they thought that a brief sting of pain would alleviate the crushing pressure of expectation or would think that little of themselves to be unconcerned by the thought of death.

As he gazed at the face of his smallest son, the one month younger Caiellis unaware that his father was watching him in the past, Marik truly came to grips with the severity of his numerous mistakes, and it scared him more than anything but the death of Emili had ever done that he was capable of doing such harm to the ones who were more precious to him than anything in this cruel world. Now that he had been gifted the chance to experience his memories once again and could analyse them afterwards with a mind that was free of what he had thought at the time, he could see that when he had entered the room and his son had looked upon him for the first time, underneath the exhaustion and bitter disappointment in his expressive emerald eyes (which could switch to being enigmatic and emotionless like his father's were often within a few seconds), there had been an excited and beaming light within them at meeting his dad once again, a light that Marik had wished that he had paid attention to and acknowledged at the time before launching straight into admonishing and downright insulting the boy.

Now that he could see Caiellis again, he could see clearly that that light had gone from his son's eyes. They were blank, but Caiellis was trembling as he stood up from a mixture of exhaustion and despair at what his dad had just said to him. The emerald orbs of his youngest son were lacking any form of emotion, his feelings pushed deep inside of him so that they could not be hurt any more, but Marik could tell that within those expressive eyes there was a deep misery which hurt the king to the core of his being, a misery which was rising every second as his son stood still.

Caiellis sat down once again, his motions tired yet efficient, and he sank to the floor gratefully. Marik hadn't known how much the Summoning trial took out of his son, which meant that he must have pushed himself to the brink of death in trying hard to triumph before being forced to leave because he believed that death would kill him in both the physical world and the Mind Realm. Had he realised how much effort Caiellis had already put into it without his "motivation", Marik might have acted differently and been more sensitise about it, but it was too late now and all the man could do at the present moment was watch the consequences of his actions and ill words. He knew at the back of his mind what was coming, what he would be forced to observe, but he was not willing to consider that yet.

With the horror's laughter in his mind, Marik watched as his little boy slumped, drained by his mental endeavour and with the walls which had been brought in front of his eyes cracking every second. Caiellis sat there for a few seconds, staring blankly at the floor as he processed what had been said to him and what had happened. Marik wished that he knew what was going on in his youngest son's mind, but at the moment his emerald eyes were still empty – no, not empty … more like blank or with his emotions concealed by his mental shell – enough that he could not tell or perceive what mental processes were occurring in the boy's brilliant mind that he did not praise Caiellis upon nearly enough.

Both of his sons were very intelligent boys, but when he was older it was very probable that Caiellis would overtake his brother since he was already at his heels because of his insatiable thirst for knowledge (although not the bad kind that lead to forbidden pacts with demons for more), curiosity for learning and analytical mind, whereas Alexander preferred to focus on his physicality and was much more of an instinctive thinker than his brother. His sons were different, which was something to be celebrated instead of begrudged, and that reflected in their approaches to warfare and their conversations with the other member of their small family.

The light in his son's eyes gone, Caiellis's head hung low on his thin neck and his skinny shoulders dropped. Like a sudden tidal wave had washed through his mind and began to smash apart the cage around the boy's emotions, tears began to trickle out of those wide green eyes, and unlike when Marik had been there severely reprimanding his son for something which was which not his fault he made no moves to stop the flood of clear liquid which began to pour out of his eyes.

The youngest Lucerna burst into tears, wracking out choked sobs worse than Marik had ever seen from him before (apart from when he had been an infant, but even then he had not been this sad unless the night of Emili's death was counted) excluding the day when Alexander had almost died as he cried, huge fat tears cascading down his pale and innocent cheeks as the Black Sun marking one of them shone with a melancholy and haunting purple light. Caiellis cried, choking out whimpers that were so sad, and the king wished that he could gather his delicate and sensitive youngest son in his arms, lift up the insubstantial weight of the small boy with his large physical strength and let him bawl his eyes out into his father's chest, but there was nothing he could do as this was only a memory, albeit not one of his own.

That didn't stop the king from trying, reaching out ethereal arms to his son as he found that he actually had limbs now, though no matter how hard he tried and despite being easily close enough for him to touch the boy his hands never reached Caiellis, the boy always too far away. Caiellis kept crying, despite trying to stop, bringing up his undoubtedly unhealthily thin legs and wrapping his similarly slim arms around his bony knees, pressing his head into them and obscuring Marik's vision of the mournful dejection in his son's eyes that brought tears to the king's eyes like little else did, though in spite of that it did not block out the heart-wrenching sounds of his baby boy crying.

Despite his efforts to stem the flood of sadness and blockade the flood of tears, rubbing at the skin of his cheeks and his eyes until they were red-rimmed, raw and puffy, Caiellis couldn't seem to be able to control the emotions which Marik had created – or rather caused to grow, since they had already been there and only the comforts of his "Uncles" and supportive older brother had staved them off.

Caiellis pressed his head into his knees, probably thinking he was pathetic for letting out these emotions and desperately hoping that his father hadn't for some reason decided to turn around and come talk to him more or his sibling had come looking for him. He removed his hands from his face, knowing that they were doing nothing and that the tears were simply dripping through the gaps in his thin (but reasonably long for his height – which made them even more slender, as if they had been short at least they would have been thicker) fingers anyway, allowing Marik to see his eyes once again.

The hands dropped despondently to his side, gripping the fabric of his trousers as he cried his heart out, each dejected sob like a shard of ice ramming into Marik's own heart which had been hurt so much over the years. Then, one of them must have brushed against something in Caiellis's trembling, and the hand on his right side tightly gripped the solid handle of his self-defence dagger which he always carried around with him out of habit ever since he had been four years old (unbeknownst to Marik, of course, and emulating his brother's unconscious need to always have a weapon nearby just in case).

No no no no no, Marik's mind silently pleaded, although the past version of his smallest son could not hear him as his eyes, still streaming with sad tears, fixed upon the hilt of his knife and a kind of shameful revelation came over him. Caiellis kept looking at the dagger, though he did not move his head, and in spite of Marik's mental begging of him not to touch it because he did not want to watch this happen to his own son Caiellis eventually slipped the elegant Lucaelian steel definitely given to him during the civil war where he had been forced to grow up far too fast out of its holster. He played with it for a few seconds as he kept crying, flicking it round in his hand in some sort of rhythm that Marik could not discern and, as his hand was still shaking and his body was still wracked with extremely despairing sobs, getting dangerously close to cutting himself with the sharp edge of the blade.

Caiellis stared at it for a few seconds, and slid it back into its sheath in the belt on his waist, before gasping out another sorrowful whimper and pulling it back out, staring at the weapon once again as the tears flowed freely out of his eyes, the clear metal of the blade reflecting the haunting purple light of Caiellis's birthmark's reaction to his tears onto the rest of his pale face. Caiellis looked immensely ashamed, filled to the brim with sorrow and self-loathing that Marik wished that he could erase, embarrassed of what he was about to do as he used his other hand to slowly pull off his jacket and pull up the thin fabric of his shirt.

Caiellis, don't do this, please. Please, baby boy, don't do this to yourself. I didn't mean what I said, Marik couldn't speak, so he had to resort to thinking the words which he knew would have no effect on the past version of his second but no less loved son. As he expected, he couldn't touch Caiellis and drag him into a loving and reassuring hug either, and couldn't close his eyes so that he would not have to watch the culmination of his son's lack of self-esteem and his father's horrible words and accusations. He couldn't encircle his son's thin wrist with his hand and stop him from doing the thing that he knew was going to happen, something which he hadn't paid much attention to even when it had been thrown in his face.

Caiellis's eyes were alight with sadness and shame, as if loath to do this to himself, although it was with no small amount of guilt that Marik realised his son's trepidation had nothing to do with the fact that he was frightened of hurting himself – he was embarrassed and didn't want anyone to see him like this for the simple reason that this wasn't accepted in Lucael for teenagers, particularly not for one of the Lucerna family who was supposed to be perfect in every single thing that he did and if he was caught cutting himself he would never know the end of the humiliation. Caiellis wasn't bothered about the hurt that would be dealt to himself, he was only concerned with the shame that self-harming would bring to himself and his family should any find out – as doing something like that was frowned upon by the rest of Lucael and something that teenagers who entertained such thoughts couldn't talk about with other people.

Marik himself had found it immensely hard – or, more precisely, downright impossible unless he was able to converse with Tybalt – during his youth to speak to others about his problems, especially since he was a Lucerna heir that was expected to be an exemplar of justice and nobility even at that young age when going through puberty, and so he should have known that his son would not have been in the best emotional state even with everything going right, which it certainly had not been. As a youngster himself, Marik had had no idea how to ask for help, no idea how to communicate that with his family (although his father probably wouldn't have listened anyway) or anyone else, and had felt ashamed even thinking about it, which was probably exactly what his youngest son had been going through which had been heavily exacerbated by his dad's return and instant scolding.

Caiellis no, stop it now, don't hurt yourself – it's not worth it. Please, Caiellis, don't do this to yourself, you are loved too much.

Now he could only watch in horror and disgust directed at himself as Caiellis hefted the light but reliable and elegant knife, twirling it in his hand as yet more desperate tears dripped out of his eyes, and shut his eyes as he almost gently and tenderly nicked his bare skin with the steel blade. Marik mentally cried out, frantically trying to stop his son in spite of the reality that he knew that this had already happened and that he had been too late to stop it then. Caiellis bit his lip at the stinging pain, tears running down out of his closed eyelids as a thin trickle of crimson blood ran from the wound, stark against the pale skin of his youngest son. The cut in itself was superficial, only just breaching the surface of the skin and only just managing to draw blood, but it was the symbolism of the action that mattered, what Caiellis self-harming represented.

The tears of Marik's baby boy began to slowly dry up, the cascade of transparent liquid out of his eyes starting to lessen in intensity and become more of an occasional drizzle than a tidal wave of sadness. Caiellis pulled the blade away quickly, opening his eyes again and darting them back and forth across the room to see if anyone had come in or not, and it deeply saddened Marik that his son was more frightened of being seen and found out than he was about hurting himself, even more so because he knew that that fear was well-founded. Had the king turned around and decided to re-enter the room only to see Caiellis inflicting a small cut on his lower abdomen, he would have shouted at the youngster even more harshly, yell at him to suck it up instead of being weak and pathetic and resorting to cutting himself just because he couldn't deal with a bit of criticism and censure for his failures.

Caiellis blew out a dejected breath, emotionlessly cleaning his blade with a pulse of purifying mana and then running that same mana over the wound – the boy was fully aware that one of the main tenets of healing was that one could not heal wounds that one had inflicted, but the thirteen year old was clearly preparing and fortifying it against any potential infection. That aptly showed how intelligent Caiellis was and how he was able to think logically even in the direst of situations, but also how he only wanted the brief but all encompassing sting of pain to distract him from the crushing feeling of the burdens weighing down his life and pressing down on his thin shoulders, wanting to avoid any long term implications that would damage his chances of completing his Summoning's difficult trial.

It also spoke volumes to Marik of how much (or rather, how little) his youngest son valued himself, not seeing the self-inflicted injuries as anything that should concern him in the slightest and only something to be ashamed of. The barriers that stopped others from seeing his emotions unless they knew him extremely well and were given the chance to stare deep into his eyes clanged down in front of his emerald green orbs once again, and Caiellis brushed the stark tear tracks from his face, his expression blank and hollow once again as he pushed away his feelings so that they would affect him no longer. Marik felt tears brimming at the corner of his own eyes after watching the ordeal, the only sensation he could feel in this strange world of distorted memories and the past, and after a few seconds he was wrenched out of this perspective and roughly deposited in another vision.

The king would have gasped as the sudden nauseating sensation that sparked queasiness in every one of his nerves coursed throughout his body, but with that came the same detached feeling that he had become somewhat used to after watching his youngest son's awful ordeal. It took a few seconds for the king to get his bearings, the room unfamiliar to him for the moment before he belatedly recognised it as Caiellis's personal sanctum, the boy sat in the centre of the small but private room which only he had access to.

Caiellis was crying again, and it was with a mounting sense of dismay and alarm that he realised what was going to happen, what he would be forced to watch once again. The sobs sending shuddering pulses throughout his son's slender form were somehow even worse than they were before, and Caiellis had scrunched his hands up into frustrated and hopeless fists as he cried tears of anger, shame and dejection. He was more sad then he had been at what Marik somehow knew as the day before when he had spoken to the boy and destroyed the last semblances of confidence within the adolescent and gave him the final push needed to send him on an ever-downwards spiral of despair.

Caiellis clutched the hilt of the dagger once again, though he had not drawn it yet, and the king briefly wondered that had his son been as strong as he was now whether or not he would be crushing the handle of the short blade with the white-knuckled intensity of his simultaneously frustrated and distressed grip. It was evident that Caiellis was angry and furious with himself, probably blaming his weakness and lack of strength on not passing the trial which he had evidently attempted, and dark rings of exhaustion were distinct and striking around his wide and tender green eyes.

Marik knew from experience that it was incredibly unhealthy for one to attempt the Summoning trial relentlessly every single day in a row without breaks, but of course he had not been there to tell his son that – or even been there to know at all, to be aware of his youngest child's predicament so that he could help with it. It was very clear that Caiellis had barely been able to sleep at all, the thoughts of failure and worthlessness keeping him awake throughout the night, and it was also likely that had he drifted off into a restless slumber he would have been faced with one of the many nightmares that Marik was sharply aware of now.

After the siege of Fort Egetau that had led to the two butting heads once again and Caiellis being caught in an explosion after disobeying his father's orders, during the healing which had prevented his rather painful burns from being accentuated and compromising his combat ability and after it Marik had watched as the thirteen year old had been gripped by an obviously very traumatic nightmare. He had assumed that it had been because of the brutal battle and war that no thirteen year old should ever have to have been involved in, but asked Tristram anyway if his youngest suffered from bad dreams very often.

He had been surprised and shocked to find out that his smallest son had been afflicted by horrible and regular nightmares ever since the night of his mother's death that thankfully his older brother had been mostly spared from (though of course he still had to deal with the aftermath of losing his mother and being thrown into a civil war at the vulnerable age of eight), but it made sense and would also be something that Caiellis would not have felt comfortable talking about with his elders.

Right now, the Caiellis in front of him raised the dagger in front of his face, watching with a gaze blurred with cascades of tears (it hurt Marik to see how despondent his son became after failing an attempt at accessing Summoning, because it showed how much of Caiellis's life and desire to be happy revolved around it to the point where he believed that it was more important than his well-being and ultimately his life itself) as the light from the mana-charged illumination in the room reflected off of the blade of the weapon. He shuddered, trembling in a mixture of exhaustion and sorrow, as he brought the blade inwards, lifting up his shirt once again since he wasn't wearing his jacket now.

The cut which he had inflicted the day before had been healing reasonably well because of his advanced and natural rejuvenation due to his Lucerna heritage (although his fragile form meant that damage was worse than it normally was), looking more like a scratch picked up accidentally from a nail or something equally as mundane, and Caiellis only hesitated for a brief moment before inflicting another shallow incision into his soft skin. He bled again, the blood trickling out of the wound and down his skin before he brushed it away with his other hand, the fingertips already coated with White mana. His hand holding the blade shook, making the wound worse than he had intended, but as he sat, shuddering and trying to breath deeply in and out instead of hyperventilating in a combination of frustrated despair and fear from whatever had happened in his trial, the pain eventually allowed him to stop crying.

The instant he did Caiellis pulled the blade away, completing the same shaky but efficient moments as the day before, although this cut would not heal as easily as it was slightly larger and deeper. Again Marik felt tears welling up in his eyes at the sight of his son so broken, though Caiellis managed to hide his shattered emotional state back in the cage within his young mind, concealing them with the shell of emptiness and blank-eyed stares. Marik was ashamed that in the few times he had walked past his son in the days to come he hadn't seen anything wrong with his youngest boy, which was a crime in itself, but he had been unwilling to favour his son with his presence until he completed the trial and Summoned the Angel of the Black Sun.

Then Marik was whisked away once again, spirited away from the non-memory of his son cutting his fragile flesh and placing the barriers of coldness and hollowness back upon his eyes so that no one would try and help or bother him or see how much emotional pain he was in. Once again he was presented with his son in the sanctum next to his room, and if Marik thought that seeing his son crying so many times would ever desensitise him to the sight he would be sorely mistaken because every single time he saw or hurt it it stirred his own heart to sympathetic sadness.

Caiellis was getting increasingly worse, and despite this only being the second day after meeting his father after the war for the first time the boy looked significantly paler and more tired then he had done on that first day.

Instead of twirling the dagger around in his hands after pulling it out, as if trying to stop his tears through sheer force of will before resorting to causing himself pain, he slowly brought the blade of the knife round and placed it by the front of his neck, right next to the pulsing arterial vessel on it. Marik's heart leapt into his mouth when he saw his son in that position, wracking his mind to recall whether or not Caiellis had seemed wounded in that area and deciding that he hadn't.

He kept crying, a testimony to how much he cared about this Summoning trial and earning his father's pride, making the king wonder when it had changed so that Caiellis no longer cared what his dad thought of him. Marik, despite knowing that his son wouldn't do it or hurt himself in that area, couldn't help himself thinking horrified thoughts of what if and encouragements to his son who couldn't hear him that he should never think of killing himself because he was loved far too much and he had so much more to live for in this world, that his stupid father's declaration that he was a failure meant absolutely nothing and that deep down the king truly loved him more than anything apart from Alexander.

Caiellis opened his ages again, and within them was the disappointed sting of failure as well as shame, and it hit the king that his son was ashamed of the fact that he wasn't confident or brave enough to end his own life. The look in his baby boy's eyes was sending Marik over the edge and he was sure that had the physical representation of himself been there he would have broken down and probably become extremely angry that his son was seriously entertaining thoughts of suicide, angry at himself and the world for putting his fragile just-teenager in that situation.

Instead of slitting his own throat and bleeding to death right there and then, Caiellis yanked the knife away from his thin neck, his eyes screwing up in sadness and anger as he rammed the blade with much more force into his abdomen this time, viciously stabbing it into him so that the sting of the pain would distract him from his burning failure that was what he believed his life and the love from his family hinged upon. Marik gasped – or rather, he would have done – at how brutal his son was being with himself, and the forty year old knew how turbulent a time that puberty was, so with the double burden of being a Lucerna that was failing to access the thing that made him part of the royal bloodline pressing down on a boy who was already suffering from an intense swing of different hormones Caiellis was having a very hard time coping.

Stop please, stop hurting yourself Caiellis. You are too precious to all of us to do this … Marik was being broken by the very sight of his son doing something which he had known had happened but had given little thought to, and every cut that Caiellis made into himself felt like a dagger of ice and guilt ramming into Marik, hacking apart his emotional stability and ripping through his mind. There was more blood this time, and the boy gasped in pain, evidently regretting his choice to be more violent this time, before repressing it and forcing any form of his emotions back down within him where they could no longer be seen by anyone else.

As the last few tears trickled down his face, the boy laughed, the sound mirthless, sad, and more than a little haunting. He rested his head on the knee which he had brought up and huddled to his chest, and murmured, "I'm not even strong enough to kill myself. How pathetic, huh?"
Aww, Caiellis. That isn't weakness. That is strength. You are one of the strongest people that I know, young man, one of the most passionate, strategic, defiant and determined Lucaelians that I have ever had the honour of meeting, and you are only just thirteen years old! Marik thought, though inside his stomach was churning at the wounds self-inflicted upon his youngest son and the fact that he had actually considered suicide as a way of getting out and freeing himself from the constant burden. It was obviously thoughts of the Light-bearers, his older brother, and sadly the shame that he would bring upon his family which had stayed his hand, and Marik dreaded to think if Caiellis had been exactly the same and been an only child.

Caiellis … why didn't you say anything, to anyone? Fair play not talking to me, because I probably wouldn't have listened at that time anyway because my obsession with preparing Lucael for the event of another war and my need to protect the people, but I'm sure that Alexander could have helped – heck, even if you didn't want to talk to your brother because you were embarrassed – no, ashamed, and knew how rightly angry he would be, why didn't you seek help from Tybalt or Tristram? They would have known how to help you! Why did you just keep it inside and bottle it up within?

Marik knew why already.

It was because he had convinced his son that he was a waste of time, that this failure of his was down to him and nothing else and that it was a way of him gaining attention, and that instead of delegating his parental duties to others he should have thrown himself into them for the sake of the kingdom and his children. He was just angry, seeing the independent and defiant son that he had grown used to over the past few days, reduced to this, although he knew that technically it had been the other way round and that the Caiellis he had come to tear his hair out about had risen from the ashes of this form of him.

Eventually, Caiellis got up, too tired to even take off his clothes as he slid into the bed within his sanctum as opposed to going into his room, and for the third time Marik was yanked out of this perspective and launched into another.

How many times did he do this to himself? Marik thought, outraged with himself and others for allowing his son to get this low and fall down this spiral of self-destruction, though he knew that mostly it was his own fault. He had caused this, and he had not taken responsibility for it at the time. That was just another reason why he had to come to the aid of his son in the present because he had failed him so many times in the past and hurt him, another thing to apologise and make up for because he knew for certain that these petty arguments between them would stop after this battle.

The others had been exactly as busy as he had – Tristram and Tybalt embracing their new roles, the former learning it for the first time whereas the latter got back into the swing of things, and Alexander had trained intensely and spent time making friends and ensuring that he was still learning how to be a good prince and king if the time came. Besides, the second oldest member of Marik's family had mentioned that Caiellis had isolated himself from everyone so that they could not help and could not know the secret shame that was eating him from within just as his lack of success and the pressure of expectation bearing down on his young form was crushing him from without.

Every time that he saw Caiellis, the boy placed the knife to his throat, hovering around his carotid artery as he tried to get himself under control or end his life there and then, and every time he was chained to the world of the living and took out of frustration at constantly failing on his fragile body. Marik didn't know how much more of his son hurting himself he could watch, considering that he was already almost broken by the despair that he had caused within his baby boy – he had known that it had been bad, he had seen the wounds for himself and he saw some of the more deep ones that he recognised being cut by the boy himself in front of Marik's vision into the past, and he knew that his son had killed himself within his Summoning trial because he predicted that that was what was necessary to unlock Orzhova, but to see it like this … it made him certain that he was an utter failure of a father and that he did not deserve this brilliant sons which Emili had given to him and died protecting him.

If his beloved wife had seen him now … had seen Caiellis as Marik was watching him, the king wasn't sure that she would ever forgive him for what he had made their youngest son do to himself, or more precisely ever forgive him for wrapping his hands around the boy's throat despite the fact that something was inside of his mind and manipulating his thoughts and actions. That didn't change the reality that it was inexcusable, and that Emili would never have done such a thing even if it had meant that her life would be saved.

Please, stop this, Caiellis … you are worth more to me, your brother and a lot of people than you will ever realise, and not because you are a Lucerna. I can't watch this anymore … I can't watch you hurt yourself any more … Marik tried to close his eyes, but again the emetic sensation of disembodiment and not being able to feel his limbs overcame him and no matter how hard he tried he wasn't able to tear away his gaze from the boy crying his soul out and hurting himself because if brought a brief, if stinging, respite from the crushing weight of failure until he could get it back under control and restrained within his mind so that he could keep up the semblance of being perfectly fine and then attempt the trial more.

Marik felt like he was going to be sick, seeing his son in one of the most vulnerable positions that he ever had been in, but more than that he was angry, enraged and seething that he had let this happen under his nose and that Caiellis had not only considered but enacted his actions.

Some part of him was glad that the Marik at the time who had not yet rediscovered how much he loved his two young sons, the last living, breathing pieces of Emili Noctis, had not found out about this self-harming, because his protective instinct would have been roused for the first time and it would have awoken in an incandescent blaze of fury at the fact that his son was intentionally hurting himself. He would have thought that Caiellis was pathetic, but worse than that would have been immensely angry with the youngster because he knew at the back of his mind that any pain inflicted upon his sons was inflicted upon himself and doubly fuming because it was no demon or creature of the foul darkness that he could vent his wrath upon which had harmed his youngest.

Every time he saw his son in the exact same fragile and vulnerable position it became gradually worse, taking longer for him to take the knife away from his throat and subsequently being much more violent with his fragile body afterwards, the tears taking much more effort to be crushed back inside of him so that no one could see his pain or know his shame. Now that Marik was able to see a timeline of his youngest son falling further and further into despair, he could clearly pick out that Caiellis's mental condition was degrading every day, every Summoning trial that he failed making him hate himself even more. It was stupid, the situation, that the boy thought that hurting himself was worth it because of his failing and lack of success to obtain a Summoning, but it just went to show how much pressure was placed upon a young Lucerna to succeed and make the kingdom proud of them. Marik disagreed with how the teenage Lucernas were treated, especially his sons, but there was nothing much that he could do about it apart from supporting them and trying to make their lives as bearable and as enjoyable as possible.

It was true that obtaining Caiellis's First Sisterhood angel was very important, and the safety of the people of Lucael depended upon it and if there was a Lucerna without access to their own angelic protector they would be easy prey for the ever opportunistic forces of the darkness – as the soul of a descendant of Matalis Ortus Lucerna was a delicacy banquet to the denizens of the abyss, and the shadows would know of it and use that information to further their own malicious objectives. But to see the boy so worked up about it to the point where his entire life hinged upon it and he felt that causing himself large amounts of pain just so he could get through it and keep trying, not give into his despair and allow himself to simply fail, was perfectly reasonable and not something to bother anyone else about, was wrong in so many ways and it made Marik's heart ache for his little boy.

If Marik had known the extent of the pain his son had been going through – and there were no excuses not to, as all the signs had been there, he had seen Caiellis's wounds first hand and had been told by the boy himself that he had killed himself within his Summoning trial to complete it; it was a damn good thing that Alexander was attuned to his second son's needs and helped to make him feel welcome and loved after those two revelations when Marik reeled from them and pushed them to the back of his mind so that he could focus – then he would have talked to Caiellis a lot more, he would have taken the time to ensure that both of his sons were alright instead of just one after Alexander's wounding, and he might not have ever sent them to the Scholaria Magnus in the first place.

After one particularly brutal bout of causing himself to bleed, Caiellis looked down at his abdomen in horror, as if suddenly realising what he was doing to himself. His expressive and crystal emerald eyes opened wide and he brushed cleansing and soothing White mana over the wounds, his breath hitching because of the fact that he hadn't yet managed to control his sobbing with his cutting before he had stopped. He put his head in his hands, and Marik could tell that he was silently wishing for this all to be a dream, for someone to come in and help him and take him away from the pain that he was going through, and clear tears spilled down his slender fingers.

Marik wasn't sure if he had ever felt more angry after the death of Emili, although when he had found Alexander at the mercy of the vampire bitch who had Summoned the horror that now trapped him in his own mind he had also been furious, but he knew that there was nothing he could do now as this had occurred in the past and that could not be changed. All that he could do was admit that he had horribly failed both his sons and not let his sometimes blinding pride get the better of him in that.

Perhaps if he wasn't watching his fragile youngest cry tears of innocent sadness and slice apart his own flesh he might have been able to summon counterarguments, assert that he had done all that he could and that if Caiellis's despair had helped him to unlock his First Sisterhood angel then it was fine, that juggling being a father and a king to the nation arguably in the most danger (apart from the New Empire of Passion now when Marik was finished with it) was impossible and that Lucael was more important than the emotional well-being of two young teenagers, but with evidence of his failure right in front of him he couldn't so much as entertain any of the other thoughts. Yes, the kingdom had been in need of strong leadership more than ever during and after the civil war, and there had been little that he could do in the war to check on his sons or make sure that they were as happy as possible in such a dire situation, but that didn't justify Marik ignoring his sons utterly when the war had finished because he didn't want any so-called "distractions" to rebuilding the Kingdom of Light and that he didn't want to have to embrace his parental duties without Emili.

That would have signalled to him that he had truly given up on his wife, though Marik knew now how far off the mark that was – drawing his sons was close and making them safe and happy was not letting go of Emili, it was in fact the exact opposite. It was nurturing the things that Emili had given everything up for and that she had loved more than any other thing in this world, her little boys who took after her so much, and by doing that he was helping to preserve Emili in this world.

It was strange, seeing his wife die again hadn't broken him, simply strengthened his love for his young sons and reinforced his determination to escape the prison of his own psychosis, but watching his youngest son like this was getting close to smash him apart. Seeing Caiellis in so much pain – just as he was presented with the next image of his son waking up, crying uncontrollably and quickly drawing the self-defence blade from its elegant scabbard – it hurt him, hurt him just as much as seeing Emili again because he knew that his son was still alive, that the boy still needed him in this world, whereas Emili was gone and there was no longer anything he could do for her apart from save her sons.

He had never before seen Caiellis in so much agony, not at the time in which he had been wounded after the battle of Fort Egetau, and even when his beloved mother had died right in front of his young four year old eyes. The many occurrences of his son cutting himself began to blur into one yet remaining distinctly separate, turning into a sojourn of sadness that began to gnaw away at Marik's insides when he remembered that the boy – both of his boys – were still in huge amounts of danger within Usnaan whilst he took this journey into the past that could not be changed, only learnt from.

Caiellis, stop right now! Stop doing this to yourself! I'm sorry! I was stupid, I didn't mean what I said to you, and this Summoning of yours is not worth this much pain! Ask for help! I can't watch this much longer! Marik tried to wrench his gaze away from the images of his son in agony of both a physical and emotional origin, but it was if his eyes were fixed to the spot of the boy in pain. He could hear the horror's laughter once again in his mind, the sadistic being enjoying watching his youngest son in pain and revelling in Marik's desperate need to escape from it or somehow stop it. Even though the hysterical cackling was deafening, screeching into Marik's ears like some of the loudest things that he had ever heard, it still didn't drown out the sound of Caiellis's anguished crying.

Eventually, after one especially heart-wrenching scene of the thirteen year old huddling on his bed proceeding him slicing an agonising pattern of incision up his lower abdomen, by far the most horrible wound he had inflicted onto himself so far, Marik's vision darkened and shadows swirled obtrusively at the edges of his sight as he watched his youngest child eventually drift of into a fitful slumber. He was dragged out of the personal sanctum of his youngest son which he wished was not exclusive to the boy simply because sometimes youngsters would abuse that advantage so that their family couldn't see them, even though Marik was pretty sure he could enter if he had ever wanted to being the Lucerna king so even then there was no excuses.

"Boy, doesn't that little kid whine?" the horror howled with malignant laughter, guffawing loudly and rubbing wriggling tendrils of gloom matter up and down its shadowy body as it laughed. Marik glared at it, though his resistance was faltering. The sight of Caiellis so vulnerable and fragile had taken a lot out of him, because now he was truly coming to terms with how much he had messed up and how low his youngest son's self-esteem truly was – most likely because of constant comparisons to his older brother.

Alexander wasn't at all at fault for that, because he was taller, stronger, faster, older, and was still growing as well and eager to earn the pride of his last surviving parent, his king, and the people of Lucael who it was his duty to protect, whilst Caiellis had barely – or rather, not – even started his own teenage development and maturation and was still trying to find his own strengths, strengths which weren't overshadowed by his older brother and the praise given solely to him by their father.

Marik knew that had to change, but there was little time to ruminate upon the many revelations that the horror's visions had inadvertently given him because no matter how weak he felt now, his son's agony having drained him beyond belief because it reminded him how useless he was as a father, especially without Emili here to make up for his mistakes, he needed to fight so that there could be time for him to make reparations for his wrongs and makes amends to his sons.

"Hmm, Mariky-boy? You look a little pale," Aksua's free spawn of the shadows gloated, taunting the king into reacting as it extended its distended body round the seats of Akroma's war cathedral, twisting shadowy limbs round and round as it circled the monarch like a snake, "Was the sight of your youngest son slicing himself up a bit shocking for you?! I swear that boy could make a perfect Welkalite, what with his predilection towards self-harm and-"
"SHUT UP!" the king howled, stunning the being into silence with his sudden explosion of rage, and the whole building shook with the resounding echoes of the man's furious shout. The expression of almost innocent and childish surprise tainted by being held by three eyes of pure blackness soon turned to one of barbarous and fiendish amusement, the creature of the foulest darkness deriving large amounts of pleasure from seeing its victim in so much emotional pain, and although it tried to for some reason pretend that it was Marik's chum it clearly enjoyed the sight of him in anguish – though not as much as it yearned for Caiellis's pain.

Whether or not that was because the thing already had a taste of the boy's mind back when Aksua was controlling it, because Caiellis was only an innocent child and the souls of the pure were even more delectable for those within the nether realm, because he was young and fragile and an easier victim than the other members of the royal family, or due to the littlest Lucerna's unique combination of White and Black mana which meant that he had light from the loftiest spires of heaven and darkness from the deepest pits of the hellish underworld within was unknown to the king, and right now he didn't care. All that mattered was that this disgusting bastard of a creature wanted to see his youngest son in pain, something that would not be tolerated.

"Ooh, did I hit a nerve there, Mariky-boy? It certainly seems like you wanted to shout the whole building down, but that isn't going to happen, and you already know that all resistance is futile whilst I have control of your mind. And I am not intending to relinquish that just yet, oh know, not when we are so close to the grand finale," the being giggled excitedly, exposing gnashing and bleached white teeth as several tongues of arterial murk throbbing to the silent sound of the horror's malevolent heartbeat pushed out of its mouths and licked the shadow skin around it in a disgusting display that the king paid no attention to.

His gaze was fixed upon the horror's eyes, looking deep into those dark pits in an unnerving and furious way that would have forced any human to look away and hide from the piercing glare. The being laughed again, a tiny titter of vile amusement as it met the king's stare with a jeering leer of its own, and it leaned closer, knowing that the man would not waste time smashing it apart unless it came too close.

"What," Marik spat and snarled in the same instant, his voice gruff, dripping with venom, filled to the brim with fury and overflowing with hatred of the darkness which had caused him and his family so much torment that it didn't deserve and had threatened the people of Lucael for longer than the Kingdom of Light itself had existed, "Are you doing to my son?!"

"I think I've delayed long enough, don't you think so too, Mariky-boy?" the horror asked nonchalantly. It was as if it had not heard at all what had just been said, instead preferring to carry on with its own exultant and inhuman monologuing. "I can see that you are just itching to see him again, to look upon precious little baby Caiellis to make sure that he is ok with your own eyes, aren't you?"

Marik didn't answer him, locked, as it were, in the dark prison of his own psyche. He refused to let the being derive even the most minute portion of enjoyment from him.

The eldest loyal Lucerna knew that he would be shown soon, and he was horrified and more than a little anxious to see what was going on back in the real world. Because of the foray into his memories, several of which had lasted hours, Marik felt like he had spent what amounted to days trapped within his head, which couldn't have been true – even so, against an Archdemon with a magnitude of power unmatched by almost all beings in the world, even a second of unconsciousness might have been enough for Caiellis to be hurt, or even – NO!

"Brooding silence is going to get you nowhere, Mariky-boy. I expected better from you, tut tut. But then, we both know that I can't hide this from you any more, and that I would enjoy it too much to stop you from seeing it forever," the horror giggled, the most perversely exhilarated Marik had seen it so far. The more thrilled the being got the worse Marik feared for his son, and the forty year old knew that this was the culmination of its plans, the apotheosis of everything that it had made him do to the smallest member of his tiny family, the completion of all that had led to this point.

He railed against it with all of his mind, refusing to favour the invader of his most personal space with responses as he focussed every inch of his willpower into disrupting whatever was happening in reality and fighting the control of this nefarious spawn of evil, and the horror's teeth glinted in the light of the flickering devotional candles arranged in orderly and symmetrical rows down the sides of the cathedral sanctuary as its smile widened.

"Don't you want to see your son? Don't you want to see where you left your little boy? Don't you want to see where this takes young Caiellis?"

---

New Summonings or Sancturia creatures in this chapter:

Night of the murder: Grinning Demon, Demonic Taskmaster and Nether Horror.