As the two men put on the little introduction to their show, Noth finally managed to reign himself in from his thoughts enough to notice that his eyes were beginning to burn with his angel’s power. He blinked a few times to try and get it to go away, but nothing seemed to be working. He of course was very displeased with the men who were mocking him, but that didn’t mean he was alright with turning them into monsters, especially in such a crowded venue. Besides, the nagging fact that these two were simply the pets of the real monster that he should be looking out for was making it hard for him to want to make more problems for himself, knowing that any minute the Pope might just arrive.
Serris’s soothing hands came up to cover his eyes. To the rest of the onlookers it seemed as if Noth had simply closed his eyes, and a few giggles came out at what they imagined must be the poor boy trying to stop himself from crying. However, when Noth’s eyes had cooled down and the angel finally removed her hands, they could see the clear and strong look on his face, wiping away any hopeful thoughts of his weakness. Noth re-tightened his grip on his drink that he’d been close to spilling, and took a sip out of it to hide his words of thanks to Serris. The angel gave him a silly little smile and then lazily turned her gaze back to the two offending men, prompting Noth to do the same.
Of course, the men weren’t pleased that Noth had the wherewithal to simply drink without responding to them.
“Honestly, is this boy ignoring us again?!”
“We shouldn’t be surprised, we already identified him as a fool without manners.”
Noth did his best to keep his face and emotions neutral, lest he bring back up the power he’d only just managed to have suppressed. He could feel his frowning mouth betraying him, though, despite his best efforts, so instead he hid it behind the convenient champagne glass in between speaking.
“You both speak a lot about manners for someone who smacked another noble’s hand.”
The first man who smacked him grimaced, as if he hadn’t expected such an audacious response, but the second man simply smiled patronizingly, as if he were talking to a stupid child who didn’t know better.
“Another noble, you say? Does that mean that you don’t even know who we are?”
Noth stared at the two men, completely unimpressed by their antics. Eventually he sighed, deciding to just play along if he wanted them to get to the point. He lowered his glass and returned the same patronizing smile to the second man.
“No, I can’t say that I do? But you must think you’re both pretty important to be wandering around smacking hands and insulting people in front of everyone.”
The second man let out a small harrumphing grumble as he squinted his eyes at the young upstart, but the first man quickly pushed his way forward and tried to look as big and important as he could.
“How dare you not know of us?! The great Marquises Harold and Tyrell, the highest ranking nobles in Odessia! We’re second only to his majesty the Pope and his holiness the Prophet!”
Noth looked pityingly at the simple man in front of him. He couldn’t help but wonder if the man realized that that meant they were in third place, not second, but he felt that the argument would be wasted on such a man. He decided to look away and take a sip instead.
“Really? How nice for the both of you.”
The teen’s lacklustre response of course only served to infuriate Marquise Harold further, and the astonished giggles that he could hear from the onlookers surrounding him were only managing to add salt to his wounds. He flushed and raised his hand as if he were once again going to smack Noth’s hand, but before he could make his move, his fellow Marquise spoke up, stopping him from his foolishness.
“Come now, child. Surely you don’t want to treat your superiors this way. We can make allowances for your savage upbringing, but we can’t have you disrespecting us like this.”
Noth smirked. How long had it been since someone called him ‘child’, especially now that he was legally adult enough to become a noble? It seemed that these people really didn’t consider him to be a noble like them after all. Maybe that’s why they were so eager to tear into him with only a single word from the Pope? Or maybe they were simply too pompous and power hungry to care?
“I’m sorry, my ‘savage upbringing’ taught me not to be nice to people who greet me with violence. I’m sure you understand.”
He laughed emptily and took a sip, finishing off the last of his glass. The teen tried to turn to replace his glass with a new one, but before he managed to, Marquise Harold once again reached forward, this time snatching Noth’s empty glass from him. Noth blinked for a second and let out a small chuckle at the man’s childish move, before easily grabbing a new glass of champagne with his now freed hand. He swirled the liquid gently in his new glass and looked towards Marquise Tyrell.
“Your friend seems to have some bad habits. You must be so embarrassed being with him.”
Tyrell sent a disappointed glance towards Harold, who was left dumbly holding on to an empty glass in rage, before clearing his throat and looking back disgruntledly at Noth.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Hmm, quite. But don’t you yourself also feel embarrassed being here, child?”
Noth took another sip of his drink as if he were stopping a moment to think, but then he lowered his glass and let a teasing, goofy smile cover his face.
“Nope. If anything I’d say that I’m bored. I was told I had to come, so I was hoping I’d maybe get to meet some other nobles my age, but only two old men came to talk to me. How disappointing.”
Serris’s giggles along with the indignant look on both the Marquise’s faces made Noth truly and genuinely want to smile. If anything, this moment made up for coming here to him, just a tiny bit. Not enough to make it all worth it, however.
Of course Marquise Harold wasn’t just going to sit still through all of this and let himself be repeatedly ridiculed. He threw the glass down onto the carpet and shouted angrily in Noth’s face, so close that Noth could see little specks of the man’s spit attempting to fly into his drink.
“You, a disgusting former forsaken child with uncertain origin, think you can speak to your betters like this?! Do you think just because you allegedly wiped out the demons and are going to get a medal for it that it makes you immune to consequences? Do you think you’ve somehow earned the Pope’s favour, and so you don’t have to worry about what others think?! Or maybe you’re such a fool that you don’t realize that you should be groveling at our feet and begging for us to forgive you right now?! You may have been given the God-dess’s mercy and finally gotten a [Gift], but no matter how fancy and nice it is, it won’t erase the fact that you were still a disgusting have-not for most of your life! An uncultured and miserable being like you will never be a true noble! You-”
Noth sighed and put down his now contaminated cup as he let the deluge of insults go in one ear and out the other. It was all the expected, uncreative insults that he’d known he would be hearing here, and it felt so particularly uninspired that he couldn’t possibly care about any of it. However, it seemed that the angel next to him was getting exceptionally tired of listening to the Marquise talk. She’d been sitting on the refreshments table for quite some time now with her arms and legs crossed, but she finally got up and flitted around the two men, eventually stopping next to the ranting Marquise Harold with her hand under her chin inquisitively.
The teen, surprised by her words, sent her a confused glance. What could the odd angel possibly be asking him to do in a crowded room like this?
Serris opened her arms, making a huge sweeping motion towards the two men as well as the rest of the people in the hall. Her face was very serious, although somehow childlike as she spoke.
The angel flew up above the ranting Marquise, her arms reaching down so that her hands could grab around his neck. She smiled widely with malice as she looked down at him, and yet somehow she was the picture of beauty in Noth’s eyes.
As Serris talked, Marquise Harold suddenly lost momentum and seemed to be huffing for air. Noth couldn’t help but wonder if it was just his old age or if it was his angel somehow exerting force on him from where she was grabbing him. If the latter was true, then the bloodthirsty angel might really just kill the man. And as entertaining of a thought as that was…
He took the opportunity in the lull of the marquise’s rant to grab a new glass, using it to hide his mouth as he talked to his angel.
“I have no plans to kill anyone just because they decided to be rude to me.”
The angel let go of the Marquise neck and fluttered over to Noth, hugging on to him from the side and smushing her face against his as she wiggled around and pleaded in a high pitched, childish tone.
Noth struggled to stay balanced from her pushy clinging. He hoped no one noticed the way his drink was sloshing around against his mouth. He had to wait for an opening when she stopped nudging against him before he was able to speak without a large amount of champagne flooding into his mouth.
“Just because these performing dogs are doing their best to be annoying doesn’t mean I want to massacre everyone here. Some of these people might actually be good and are just too scared to go against the pope or these two fools.”
Serris stopped her movements and pulled herself back a bit from him, but her face was full of pouts.
<...Okay… But can we at least kill those two? I promise you won’t feel bad about it. I could tell you a lot of things about them that you wouldn’t like. Please?>
Noth wanted to roll his eyes at his hopeless angel. She really wasn’t willing to let this one go, was she? He was about to open his mouth and scold the silly bloodthirsty spirit, but before he could manage to, Marquise Tyrell stepped forward and took his winded colleague’s place.
“You know child, it occurs to me that you’ve come alone today. Often the younger nobles will show up with someone from their family to escort them, but… Yes, as I recall, the Earl is off fighting for the glory of the country right now, isn’t he? Did you not have anyone else to bring along?”
Noth stopped and brought his glass down, staring directly at the man who’d mentioned his father. The teen couldn’t help but ponder why the Marquise had brought this point up. He could only imagine that this man must have been one of the prime leaders in the bullying of his father, considering the only people with a higher rank would be the two men in front of him. Could it be this was some roundabout way to bring up the torment they’d given his father for all those years? Noth wasn’t sure how he’d feel about hearing such a thing; He’d actually genuinely developed a few feelings for his father over the past years, even if it wasn’t on the level of the familial love he’d once had for his mother.
But Noth’s suspicions were wrong.
Marquise Tyrell's intentions were far different from anything that he’d expected.
“You didn’t bring any of those peasant children you like to keep with you? I’ve heard they’re all quite beautiful. I’m sure many people here were looking forward to seeing just how beautiful they all are.”