"Oh, go on, please, play it, let me hear of his latest failure." I remark with a wave of my hand as I lean back into my chair. Quickly and swiftly, I crossed my legs and began to rock backwards and forwards with the help of my heels. At the end of one of my fingertips, a small piece of dark fire burned. It grew in size so easily.
"Inerish, this is Ni- Dark Crow, no changes to the usual way of things. No deaths to report either and damage to the city is also not an issue. He continues to elude me. End of report." the extensive speaker system before me let out as my finger suddenly struck my palm. Like that, the dark fire was extinguished and I started to sneer.
"Well, I am sure glad he made a point of telling me who it was, how else would I have known? But, this is quite new, isn't it? He's got a nickname... Now... Somebody remind me, what earns you a nickname in this day and age?" I asked my staff whilst one of my hands bobbed up and down.
"Doing something great?" a member of my command staff answered as they turned away from their control desk.
"Correct! Doing something, now, somebody, tell me. What has that bug done to deserve a title? At the very least, it should be representative of reality!" I hiss before a particular bell started to ring.
"Grandguard Inerish, the Clockwork Council is gathering." an aide explained to me from behind.
"Thank you for pointing out the obvious..." I commented distastefully as I crossed my legs again and lean back into my chair. With a glare, I then watched as my five-year running failure walked through the city. With growing anger, I stood up and left my command centre. And with my frustrated strides, I quickly found myself before the council's chambers.
Straightening myself out beforehand, I then walked into the vast chamber in the traditional manner. With a blank face, I then presented myself before the irate council. It was quiet at first. I kept my gaze down and my expression emotionless whilst they glared and sneered.
"Yes or no." one of them demanded to know with strained patience.
"No." I answered straight away. Something that just gave way to a wave of murmurs and more silence. Judging silence that put the blame unjustly onto me...
"That will be all, then, Grand-Guard Inerish." the Stroke of High-Noon remarked as the Clockwork Council left with little fuss. And once the chamber was empty, my expression shifted. From a frown came a glare, and with that glare came quivering anger.
"Night after night, week after week."
It was always the same. For five years I have had to put up with being besmirched because of the failures of that osibindah. Jhurack wanted him specifically, the entire reason he went out at night was because of him! But for all five of those years, this 'Dark Crow' had done nothing but fail!
All he ever did was fail!
And I was the one left to shoulder the blame because he was my responsibility... That creature never worked with my men nor listened to me directly! Yet, I was supposed to be fine shouldering his failures!? It wasn't even a developed behaviour, that bug had always been and would likely continue to be difficult to work with!
But from my anger came a sadistic smile, I would be relieved once he arrived. All those failures from the past week. All those embarrassing, pathetic failures! I was going to enjoy rubbing them in his face.
So, I turned to leave the chamber, though, I found myself withholding the desire to burn it all down. It would have been so cathartic to do so as my hatred for the Clockwork Council was as ferocious as my hatred for Nin right now. To watch them all burn in the darkness as my cheeks flushed with colour! But my fantasies would remain fantastical, for now.
"Grand-Guard Inerish, your tablets." an aid declared as I left the now empty chamber.
"Wonderful." I let out as I began to smile and scoff at the recordings engraved onto them all. It was a compilation of that bug's failures from the past week. Every blow he failed to block. Every humiliating, firm step of the foot he had been put under.
It was enough to make me squirm in anticipation! And what made it all the sweeter was the fact I was obligated to do it! He had to listen to me besmirch his useless, incompetent backside! Oh, I couldn't wait!
"Well, well, it seems we are destined to meet!" I nearly chirped before my joy vanished in a moment. Everything seemed to die once that towering, bandaged-wrapped figure came into view. My gaze was frozen at first. But then I quickly surveyed each fresh wound that covered his body.
He then approached me slowly until he stopped right before me, "I take it you got my message?"
"I did, now, any luck with dealing with Smiling Jhurack?" I asked him anyway, just so I could hear him say no.
"No..." and there it was, that short answer that filled me with delight.
"Another week of failures, Dark Crow." I explained before I scoffed at the nickname.
"Another week of learning." he tried to correct as I stifled a laugh.
"Learning to fail, even more, I presume?" I rather nastily asked as I took the lead in dictating where we'd be heading. And, for the moment, I felt a duelling chamber was best suited to our needs. We could go over everything he had done wrong and drill it into him! After all, he spent all of his free time focusing on that one thing, yes?
The bug said nothing in response and we kept on walking.
"Does the weight of your failure press down on you that harshly?" I bitterly asked him. Yet still, he said nothing and we found ourselves in a duelling chamber with little else being said. He then quickly found himself a place to sit and I carelessly dropped most of the tablets down to the ground. Keeping hold of just one as I began to pace about on the open ground.
In the particular instance I was watching, I watched as he failed time and time again to show awareness. Blows from behind and suddenly from the side crippled him time and time again. It was embarrassing, to say the least. He should've learned by now...
"Well, come on, get up, let me drill it into you where you failed." I told him as I drew my sword and taped the blade against the floor. A few quick tings at first, but when he failed to move, I smacked the sharp edge against the floor. In a way, I was showing off the quality of my blade. If it could stay sharp after such misuse, then it would cut him without issue.
"I do not need a lesson." he quietly answered as he looked down at the tablets I had left behind.
"Until you stop failing, you will learn." I clarified as I slashed some of my magic in his direction. Just enough to force him to move. And while he did move, it was sluggish and slow.
"Stop." he said as he began to slowly enter the ring.
"I'll stop when I see Smiling Jhurack's head on my desk!" I hissed as the edges of the arena burst alight with shadowy fire. The artificial light of the building was soon replaced by a dome of varying shades of dark purple that bordered on black in some patches. I held my blade aloft at him and began to step away, through the magic. If he wanted to continue to fail like this, then I would punish him for it.
So, I sent some magic around the rim of the dome, I gave the impression that I had gone around. That I was tracing his back as he cautiously turned around, unsure of where I would be coming from... But, I had yet to move, and I prepared my sword as such. The pressure was building up at the edges of my feet and hateful glee had spread across my face.
A chance to hurt him... A chance to get back at him for all that I have had to suffer through! He was supposed to be my way out of this nightmare! But my name had only been dragged deeper into the quagmire since he supposedly started working with my forces!
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And I dashed ahead, seamlessly bursting into the darkness that I had him trapped in. With a blazing trail behind me, I then swung my sword. But a crash resounded throughout the room. And a three-digit claw grasped my face.
In but a single move, I was forced head-first to the ground and my magic was blasted away by the force...
"Enough." he told me as he stared down at me through that mask.
"Don't you mock me..." I growled up at him as he let go.
"You will never be able to teach me anything, so stop trying." he remarked as he started to walk away.
"I am the Thrurstradtur's Grand-Guard, its greatest defender!" I reminded him as I blocked off his exit with a sudden, shadowy blaze.
"And yet, you have failed for far longer than I have. And you rely on me." he points out forcefully.
"THESE PAST FIVE YEARS ARE YOUR FAILURE!" I screamed in fury as I shot towards him in an effort to bisect him. I would see him burnt to ash for that!
Yet, with one swift move once again, I was pinned, this time, against the wall of the room. And while he could not entirely disarm me, he had made sure my sword clattered off into the distance. So even as my magic blazed across my skin and attire. Scorching his claw with traces of fire magic or corrupting it with dark magic...
He was unphased by it, not bothered in the slightest.
"You are not strong enough." he reminded me as he let go, allowing me to drop to the floor with a confused expression. I heard him walk off but I remained where I was from then on out. I then looked up with a tremble and got up slowly. In a humiliated, embarrassed manner, I then went to retrieve my sword.
His words echoed throughout me as my composure began to break down. I wasn't strong enough... Nothing I could do had the strength behind it or the skill to best Smiling Jhurack. For years and years that point had been made.
The elite teams I had once assembled could do nothing. The vast army at my disposal, despite how far-reaching they were, might as well have been blind. From the highest floors to the most labyrinthian of streets, they found nothing. Nothing that I could muster had worked.
And since that night five years ago, when I called in foreign troops to help out. I have been nothing but useless in the grand scheme of things. Just part of the playground that Smiling Jhurack dominated so easily. I had to rely on Nin, we all did.
"Do not leave this room!" I snapped in Nin's direction just before he left it. Thankfully, he at least listened and turned back around to face me.
"If you try to 'train' me, I will leave." he clarified as he crossed his arms.
"Why do I have to rely on you?" I asked him with a quiver as I brought my sword tip up in his direction.
"You already know the answer to that."
"Why do I have to rely on you?" I repeated with a thrust of my blade and growing anger. Slowly, I approached him as one of my hands tried to massage the stress out of my face.
"Jhurack will not deal with you." he hissed as he likely began to consider his part in it all.
"Why not? I made my name as a custodian back in my homeland of Errakur. In the bastion of my family, the fortress of the Dakrid! It was held whilst I was in charge of it. No spy snuck into its walls and no sappers undercut its battle-worn stone! Such was my skill that a city this far away, so high above the surface wanted to make use of me!" I finished explaining just as my blade's edge was pressed against him.
"Jhurack has clearly found you wanting."
"Wanting!? You have failed for five years! Five years of nothing! Five years of involvement with him and nothing to show for it!" I snapped as he used a digit to force the blade down his front. As I watched him do it, I saw how it might as well have been a dull blade. Not one of those bandages he wore was sliced by my sword's edge.
Just one more display of how weak I was in comparison to him...
"Look," he started off with, and he sighed as he did so, "whatever the reason might be, I cannot tell you why or explain it. But, regardless of our circumstances, of my ceaseless dealings with him. It doesn't matter. I am the best chance you have at resolving this. So get over it."
"If you are our best chance... Our only chance, seemingly, then why do you only ever fail? Why must this city nervously wait from the sidelines, relying on someone who has had not one success!" I demanded to know as some resolve returned to my armed hand.
"I don't know." he answered as his claw moved forward to keep my blade lowered.
"How do you not know...?"
"Because I don't. Because I don't think about it, I have only ever been interested in stopping him." he explained before I sighed and sheathed my sword.
"Come with me." I ordered as I stepped around him.
"Your tablets?" he pointed out as I went around.
"Someone will find them at bring them to me later, now, come." I told him as we went into the public eye.
"Why are we doing this? This is far more than we usually do." he pointed out as we walked.
"Because what we usually do has seen nothing come of it."
"But why now?"
I came to a stop and looked up at him, "I am tired of it, Nin. I am tired of these failures."
"It is five years too late to be changing things around now." he remarked to me.
"I have a job to do, you have an obligation to fulfil. It is never too late to try a different approach."
"There is such a thing as too late."
"Then you best leave my city, because you will never beat him. Your friend will die and you would have wasted five years for nothing." I hissed as I made sure my eyes went up to meet his.
"Fine, get moving." he growled before he moved. In turn, he forced me to move to the dictation of his movements. I took it in stride, however, and I quickly sorted out my posture.
It was quiet between us two after that. The only noise was from the flow of staff around us. Or, it was from the machinery dotted about the extensive hallways of the Sundial. There was a degree of consistency this far down the building, and it otherwise didn't stick out to me.
But as we moved higher and higher into the building, it got quieter. Save for a hectic individual jogging or speed-walking past us. Each one of them had something in hand and it tended to be tablets that they had. Rarer, a larger piece of equipment.
This all changed once we entered my command centre and the noise drastically picked up in scale. We were thrust into an environment where the noise was far more exposed. Less so with the talk from those under my supervision and more so with all the machinery about the vast room. The press of buttons and the shift of magic were omnipresent, more so as we reached my chair.
It didn't bother me all that much, but I wondered how Nin was taking it. He was an extreme oddity in a place like this, and it wasn't just because of the contrast between his attire and the setting. This was, perhaps, the first time he had ever actually been up here. If he had been up here before, then I have completely forgotten about it or his absence has become so normal, so expected.
"So, why are we here?" he asked as he stuck close to my chair, which I moved to sit in once again. Then, as I focused on him, I fought back the urge to do the idle work I normally did.
"I want you to be aware of the fact that there are resources here that can help you." I explained to him.
"Resources that have failed throughout and for far longer than the five years I have been at this." he pointed out distastefully. I saw a few members of my staff look his way to scowl before they went back to their tasks.
"Yes, but, for five years, you have captivated Smiling Jhurack for one reason or another. So you present an opportunity to us."
"An opportunity how?"
"What you see before you is one of the single most advanced crime prevention systems on the continent. Perhaps even the most advanced." I explained to him with some measure of held-back pride.
"And it is all but worthless." he told me as he looked down my way.
"Smiling Jhurack has managed to elude capture, he has, however, not managed to keep himself hidden from our eyes." I clarified before I brought up a horizon of still images of the criminal that completely occupied his mind. Some of them, even, had Nin in them, or the Dark Crow, rather.
Looking up at him, I waited as he took it all in.
"We both know that he has a distinct ability that allows him to simply vanish, there is no better way to put it."
"How does this help me? It doesn't help me trade blows abrasively or cleanly, and, it certainly doesn't seem to do what I already can't."
"Yet you failed to respond to his attacks again... And again." I nearly giggled.
"Watching it on playback is far different to being there in the moment. When he vanishes, he vanishes. You cannot follow the trail his magic leaves. Everything the city brings in might as well be his magic, I cannot see or feel him out at all."
"More pairs of eyes are better than one, Dark Crow." I teased rather seriously.
"You cannot help."
"Do not be so sure." I commented as I began to pick out some footage from the night that had just gone. I then adjusted it as necessary so otherwise small details became clear and apparent. The instance in particular that I chose to display was close to when last night's fight began. When, from Nin's perspective at least, it seemed like Smiling Jhurack had fallen.
The footage carried on until Nin chased after him when he smashed through the glass and wall of the tower.
"What am I supposed to be looking at?" he asked as he slowly stepped forward.
"When you go into the dark to chase after him, your senses are tricked again and again despite your caution. The kind of trickery a machine like this will not fall to." I explained as I highlighted the path Smiling Jhurack took.
"It doesn't matter."
"The Dark Crow is embarrassed?" I let out bemusedly as I cleared out the space before us.
"No, I am stating the obvious as regardless of what tricks he puts me through, I still find him." he huffed and snorted.
"But I, we, can help you not waste so much time trying to find him." I pointed out whilst one of my hands referred to my extensive staff. But Nin was quiet, and rather than giving me an answer, he turned to leave. So I swiftly rose to my feet and intercepted him in the hallway leading to the command centre.
"I've wasted enough time here." he told me as he made it apparent how eager he was to force me aside.
"You are not going to catch Smiling Jhurack like this!" I pointed out him as I made sure I was firmly planted before him.
"And I won't catch him relying on that which has failed for longer!" he repeated, clearly annoyed by my insistence. But, unfortunately for him, this was something that I couldn't just let slide.
"I have just shown you that we are capable of helping! You cannot do this on your own!"
"I will learn on my own..." he growled before he barged past me in a single stride.
"Smiling Jhurack is toying with you! And what happens when people get bored of their toys!?"
"He will die before that time comes." he spitefully told me as he presented his cloaked back.
"No, he won't." I corrected as he left. And once the doors closed behind him, I couldn't help but adjust my mouth so my bitterness could be made apparent.