Chapter 55

Crimson Lullaby

Michael and James stared flabbergasted at the man standing some twenty feet from them. He was being serious–he was effectively inviting them to kill him just so he could prove some hollow point. Neither came with that intent, not truly–they simply wanted to establish a power dynamic in which they were the drivers, at least to some degree. It didn’t take.

Though they respected the fact that the man was likely stronger than them, the hubris of his actions spurred them elsewhere; not only was he standing there, not attacking, but he wasn't even putting on any defences despite knowing that they could attack at any point.

Michael hesitated.

For one, there were no victors in this scenario–whether they 'won' or 'lost', the relationship would be strained even more. Secondly, though Michael indeed probed, it wasn't for whether the man was strong or weak–he was simply intrigued as to how the man knew as much as he did. Whether he set off an alarm in the man's psyche, or it really was as simple as the man getting 'bored' of a simple, somewhat misguided interrogation, was irrelevant at this point.

“Should we?” James asked.

“... at this point, do we have a choice?” Michael sighed. If they retreated here, chances were that the man would rescind the deal immediately. As much as they were probing him before, he was probing them now.

Both men stood up and took off their jackets, rolling up their sleeves, with Michael walking to the front while James took the rear, pulling out a gun. They were both Awakened and have sparred not only against each other but other soldiers as well rather extensively. Well enough familiar with their Classes, they were at least confident in dragging the fight out as their combination was of a tank archetype paired with a utility-driven controller.

“We’re ready,” Michael said but the man remained unmoving, standing still like a statue. As though taking it as a slight, James pressed the trigger and the bullet flew–and it flew directly through the man’s right shoulder. The man, though, didn’t even flinch, his eyes focused on Michael’s, unmoving.

"My turn?" the man's grin sent shivers down Michael's spine–before he could blink, the man moved, straining together droplets of blood into a sword and fell down and directly cut off Michael's left arm, his defensive ability be damned. Blood sprayed out like from a fountain as pain assailed the General's senses. However, this was not his first time being wounded–when he saw Ethan trying to circumvent him and go after James, he forcibly ignored the pain and kicked out. A faint expression of surprise flashed across Ethan's face, but it was as fading as Michael's confidence that the kick would do anything–the man stopped the leg with one hand and grabbed Michael by the foot, yanking him off the ground, and using him as a weapon that he slammed into James, causing both men to groan in horrid pain of having their organs jostled around within their insides.

The two men flew backwards, rolling like a pair of lovers, their Health values plummeting. They nary had a moment to breathe before the horror resumed–the man was upon them, the pins of blood shooting into them like needles. They couldn't breathe properly, much less move, and even straining their voices to say 'I surrender’ was impossible. Blood began to pool below, and their visions began to fade. Soon, within the birth of the fear of death, they found themselves fading.

Michael’s eyes snapped open as he stood up, his first instinct being to reach for his left arm. It was there, though it hurt erroneously to a simple touch. He felt weak and especially hungry, drained of any desire besides plunking back onto the ground and fading.

His eyes veered to the size and recognised that they were still at that cafe, though that it was deep in the night. The man was there, sitting on a chair, fiddling on his phone.

“Took you long enough,” the man said casually, putting the phone away and walking up to Michael, crouching down. The reddish eyes were besmirched with apathy, void of care or shame or guilt. “Remember this, o’ ye mighty General,” Ethan added. “You are children. To me, you’ll always be children. I was willing to let you believe we were making deals, but you pushed and pushed and pushed. So, this is me letting you know that you are unworthy of that. We are not making deals. I’m granting you favours. And I can be very generous with my favours, dear General. As I can be stingy.”

“... name’s Michael,” Michael mumbled.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t move for a couple of hours, Michael,” Ethan said, grinning effortlessly. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, and I didn’t exactly do the most perfect of jobs stitching your arm back together. You both should heal up fully by tomorrow, though. I did go easy on you, in the end.”

“... easy?” Michael glanced at him.

“When you get back,” Ethan said, standing up. “Ask Elijah. That ought to convince you I was being a pretty nice guy to you, all things considered. Anyway, it was nice meeting you. I’ll assume that the deal is on. I’ll come down to the city in three days, so text me a maximum of four names. In the meantime, the girl that you’ll be looking for: twelve, lives with both her parents somewhere in the city, she’s rather short for her age, has brown hair and blue eyes. I’ll let you know if I remember anything else. Well… arrivederci, as some say.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The man disappeared into the night, his footsteps muted as though he were not even there. Michael remained sitting for a moment before lying back down on the ground, his head playing through that fight on repeat. They stood no chance–no, that was perhaps a very nice way of putting it. It felt much, much, much worse. In fact, it felt eerily similar to when Michael was a boy, desperately standing in front of his father, trying to protect his mother at the tender age of nine. Closing his eyes, he began to drift, weakness taking over him.

By the time he woke up, he saw that James was already up, sitting on one of the chairs, an expression of defeat plastered all over his face. Michael joined him at the table and sat down in silence.

“How’d it feel? Getting your arm ripped out?” James broke the silence.

“Like I was getting my arm ripped out,” Michael joked lightly.

“... he can’t be the same as the rest of us.” James commented.

“He’s not,” Michael nodded. “He has a story. Though I doubt he’ll share it with us.”

"It's not just a matter of strength, Mike," James sighed. "I got a clean shot in, and he shrugged it off. Shit, he used the blood to make a sword out of it. If that isn’t psychotic, what the hell is?”

"He's a soldier, James," Michael said. "Just like you and I. He ripped my arm off and I still had enough sense to try and stop him at the moment. A bullet wound, in comparison, is an itch. Let's go back. Folk are probably already raising hell."

"... yeah," the two men stood up and began descending. An unspoken truth hung in the air–their relationship with the man would be entirely dictated by him. A dangerous precedent to set… yet a necessary one.

In the meantime, Ethan had returned to the lodge just in time to make breakfast for the two kids who were fast asleep. Layla came trotting out in her pyjamas, surprised to see him as he didn’t come back yesterday. Ronald ended up being woken up by the girl’s giggling, seemingly equally surprised that he was back–though, for him, it felt a bit early.

After they had breakfast, Tian and Layla went on their daily exploration of the forest while Ethan fiddled with news sites on the laptop and Ronald cleaned everything up.

“How’d it go?” the boy asked.

“They needed some convincing.”

“You killed one of them?”

“You really think so little of me?”

“Yeah.”

“No, I didn’t kill one of them,” Ethan chuckled. “Just beat them up a bit. And, honestly, a bit.”

“... what’s the ultimate goal here?” Ronald asked. “Do you plan on moving back to the city?”

“I’d love to, for Layla,” Ethan replied. “And for you, too. Gotta find you a wife and all.”

“How can I help?” Ronald ignored the comments and asked directly. “Beyond just being a babysitter.”

“... after I come back from the city,” Ethan said after a brief thought. “We’ll have another training session.” the boy shuddered and involuntarily cringed at the words, though didn’t say anything. “My standards aside, you do have potential, Ronald. And if you truly want to be of more than marginal help, and this isn’t just a wishful want, then you simply have to get stronger. And, perhaps even more importantly, you have to be willing to kill people.”

“E-eh? What?” Ronald recoiled.

“In the coming months,” Ethan said. “Besides just going to the Tunnels that we can, I plan on hunting down most of the people that I remember doing awful shit that are in the city. Now, I can do it all alone–I planned on it from the start–but you can come with me.”

“... when you say awful shit, what do you mean?” Ronald asked.

“Take Logan,” Ethan said. “The man who had my current Class in the past life.”

“...”

“He abused a small, niche part of the Class–every time he’d kill an Awakened, he’d absorb a part of their Stats. It was a very negligible number–we’re talking less than 1%--but, over time, his body count more than made up for it. Now, he won’t have access to this Class, but it doesn’t matter–he’ll use whatever Class he does get just the same. So, I want to kill him before he can do any more damage.”

“... same thing with that Sarah chick?” Ronald asked.

“Somewhat different,” Ethan replied. “She headed a department responsible for doing research on the Awakened–the changes it had on the bodies, bla bla, standard things. About a year into the post-Descent, papers got leaked detailing what she and her team were doing–forcibly Awakening people to observe the progress, and then effectively torturing them to see how the body responded. The subjects that they had the most success with initially, and the ones that they began hoarding in the hundreds, were children younger than one.”

“Jesus…” Ronald mumbled.

“Anyway, once it got out, the military, alongside the government, really, began to collapse and was all but gone within a couple of months. She got herself a very public, very painful execution, and, well, the world never quite recovered.”

“No wonder you said she’s far worse than you,” Ronald said.

“I’m pretty bad, but the number of people that are worse than me ain’t a short list, kiddo,” Ethan chuckled for a moment, taking out one of the few remaining beers from his inventory.

“I’ll do it. I’ll help you with it. Just… give me the monsters of the monsters.”

“... that won’t help with the conscience, Ronald,” Ethan shook his head. “Taking a human life, whether they are an innocent one or a truly deplorable one, is an act that sheds your own humanity. To kill another, you must be willing to kill parts of yourself and recognise that you will never be whole again. You don’t have to do this–you can still become a decent monster hunter in the future, and maintain your conscience all the way through.”

“... I’ll never be whole again, anyway,” Ronald said. “At the very least, let it mean something more than just… this.”

“... fine,” Ethan nodded after a moment’s pause. “I’ll prep everything for you. Whatever happens, at the very least I won’t abandon you.”

“...” Ronald merely rolled his eyes and left the lodge after, going for a jog.

Ethan stayed sitting on the sofa, lost in thoughts. Killing just about every man and woman who committed atrocities in his past life was, well, simply put: impossible. There were tens of thousands of them in the long run, and it wasn't as though Ethan could remember the vast majority of their names. He only, really, knew U.S.-based ones, and even then, he knew or remembered the names of a very small percentage of them.

Most notorious ones, in the end, never showed their faces or said their names to the public, remaining ever-elusive even deep into the future. All he could do was maintain the gap–become so much stronger than everyone else that even ganging up on him wasn't an option. And to do that, he'd soon have to start travelling the world.

The first item that he absolutely needed to get would be given as a reward for clearing a Tunnel in southern France, inside a small, but rather beautiful, town of Espalion. And the Tunnel would open in just three months–which didn't give him a lot of room to properly set everything here up in the meantime. He didn't know whether Delilah could open up portals with such large distances just yet, but he would still want to 'recruit' the girl before then as the journey to France would be just one of the four he'd do in the course of two months before finally being able to return to America. A long journey awaited him, and this city, and the current stories, were just building blocks for the things to come. At least, they were so to him.