24: LOYALTY TO MADNESS
3:38 P.M. // 10 - 25 - 2023 // Arc - Hospital
Featuring Junseo Park and Fanny
//
Jun stared into the ceiling blankly when he heard the rattling of the doorknob opening. He recognized the girl’s silhouette.
“Jun?” Her voice was high. Fanny’s head followed, neatly combed orange hair that brought his attention to her petite face.
“Hi.” He politely nodded his head and invited her to sit, which she gladly accepted. “It’s nice to see you again today as well, Fanny.”
“Oh.” Fanny’s eyes were not fully making contact with his own. “I probably know because I asked this twice already, but… how are you today, Jun?”
He positioned himself upright and comfortably, posturing himself to open towards her. “Same as yesterday, same as the day before. Just a bit bored. How about you? It looks like you’re dressed right now. The blouse looks pretty on you.”
“Thanks,” she said, self-consciously pulling at the end of her hair as if to soothe herself. “I mean, I won’t be visiting for that long, though. “I’m gonna go out with my friends after this, so there’s no way I wouldn’t’ve gonna dress up, you know?” Her fingers moved in that same small pattern on her hair, twirling, pulling, twirling, again.
“That sounds fun.” Jun pondered for a second. “Why’d you come to visit me again? Don’t you have somewhere to be right now?”
Fanny waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about them. I’m talking to you right now, so you’re more important right now. Get it? And also… I came to check on your condition. Is it…?”
“It’s fine now,” he reassured her with a nod, and pulled the blanket up to reveal a perfectly healed foot. “The doctors healed it a while ago. They said they could trace small amounts of foreign mana on my feet beyond the goblin trap, and something about not wanting to risk a mana infection? But I’m not sure how that works, so I just agreed to stay one more day.”
She made a relieved face. “That’s great, Jun. I hope you can avoid this mana infection thing as well.”
“Yeah, I’m not too worried about it.”
“Mhm.”
Jun closed his eyes. “If that’s it, maybe you should go now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, k?”
“Mm,” Fanny nodded her head. “Okay. See you tomorrow, Jun!”
She stood up, and after a brief hesitation her footsteps soon left the room.
…
The door was pushed open again, and Jun opened his eyes. He first heard the sound of crisp shoes on the glistening clean ground.
“This way, patient. To the far bed. A doctor will attend to you soon.” Another person walked in while grunting, and another murmuring to the former.
As they crossed his bed Jun got a good look at them. There were three people. The first was the one that was attending to me. An unremarkable doctor. Clearly he had also been assigned a small child with dark purple hair that fell down to his shoulder. His features made him look almost between male and female, but more boyish than girlish, and in all straight up childish. Matching the punk theme there was a small contraption holding up his jaw, which was swollen pink and in a very large area surrounding his cheekbone.
However, beside him was someone who snatched the entirety of Jun’s attention. Tall, beyond handsome, blueish hair and kindly eyes, they were the most simple of attributes attached to someone who looked so remarkable that dumbing them down was a sin.
They made their way over to the bed beside me.
“Avil Daniase, right?” Jun raised his eyebrows, and then silently gasped. He recognized the name. “Doctors will come by in a moment. Please wait here.”
As soon as the doctor left the room, Avil cursed loudly to Jun’s awe and slight entertainment.
“That s*** was embarrassing as f***! F*** those bastards. They can go to k*** themselves!”
Was this the Avil that the 55th Serene had been talking about?
In the smallest voice a whisper escaped from Junseo.
“What do I do…?”
//
8:20 P.M. // 5 - 20 - 2020 // Oakcrest Plaza - Gwen’s Room
Featuring Gwen Olynn
//
“I’m here to make a deal.” Reyenal said. Her eyes were sad, but her lips were set.
“What’s the deal, Reyenal?” Gwen’s interest had been piqued.
Reaching slowly into her pocket, Reyenal pulled out two small ornaments resembling rings, except in the center of one of them there was a beam running across, making it impossible to wear. “These are Binding Promises. Take this one,” she placed one in my lap gently. It was the one with the beam. Reyenal conspicuously put her own ring onto her right hand. Gwen noticed her motions were steady and made her feel safe, “and hold it. Yes, like that.”
“But…” Gwen was quiet. The ticking in her head had gone silent, and everything felt fine. It was strange, and maybe it was the light perfume that Reyenal was wearing that eased her so. “But what if I don't want to take this deal?”
She met with Reyenal’s dull eyes. They told no stories and held no signs. Yet her voice was so careful, filled with an almost deep regret and sorrow. “I think you will like what I have to say. I’ve noticed that the past few… weeks, actually, the girls like Melinda Yeh and Moxie Hedges, they’ve been harassing you, have they not?”
Gwen was silent for a moment, and then nodded her head. She would listen.
“It’s gotten bad, yes? Even I have heard of it, though I’m usually attending to other matters; it’s so bad that it’s made it has way to me.” She shook her head. “And I know the remedy for this. That’s why I’m here to make a deal with you.”
Another moment passed by as the two girls sat quietly. Gwen finally looked back up into Reyenal’s waiting eyes. She opened her mouth, and then closed it.
And she tried to speak, “I… I…” but her voice caught on her tongue.
“Do you accept?”
…
Gwen nodded.
“Please hold up your ring.”
Gwen obediently heeded Reyenal’s instruction. Her eyes were unfocused, but her fingers were determined.
Reyenal said somberly. “Repeat after me. I swear to swear the following…”
“I-I swear to swear the following…”
“That from this point,” her voice was almost ritualistic. Like she had done this many times before.
Gwen repeated. “—That from this point…”
“No words spoken now by the Promisor shall be spoken by them again.”
…
“No words spoken now by the Promisor shall be spoken by them again.”
As she finished the sentence, the room seemed to darken. Shadows crept around the edges and dusty areas, and harmless as they were Gwen squirmed a bit.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
And then a light broke through the shadows, enveloping the two to Gwen’s surprise and sudden terror. All around were shimmering colors that resembled no color at all. In the next instant, Gwen could see again. She was in a room, not so dissimilar to her own room’s size, the edges outlined by gold and everything else was blinding white. Everything else had disappeared. Only Reyenal stood in front of her.
Gwen’s eyes were completely wide open in awe and fear. She said something.
But the words never left her mouth. Baffled, she tried to grab her mouth with a hand, but then quickly realized that she was stuck in place.
Then Reyenal spoke. Her voice was loud now. “That the Promisor must kill Noeh Manna and Zoe Manna by the end of the year 2020.”
The ring on her finger glowed with brilliance and power. Gwen’s eyes dilated.
Reyenal had a horrible look in her eyes. They were enraged, they were terrifying, and they were hateful. “That the Promisor must do so in complete secrecy, and that once the deed is done the Promisor may never personally reveal their involvement nor the Contractor’s own involvement.”
Against her will Gwen’s mouth opened. Nothing she could do closed it, and she repeated Reyenal’s evil words in full. “That the Promisor must kill Noeh Manna and Zoe Manna by the end of the year 2020.” There were no falters in her voice. “That the Promisor must do so in complete secrecy, and that once the deed is done the Promisor may never personally reveal their involvement nor the Contractor’s own involvement.”
“Thus ends the Promise.”
“Thus ends the Promise.”
//
5:14 P.M. // 10 - 25 - 2023 // Wings of Justice Hideout
Starring Gwen Olynn
Featuring Aythe Siena
//
Pitch black darkness.
I couldn’t see anything. Something was tied around my eyes, constricted so tightly, so uncomfortable that I couldn’t do anything but squeeze them shut to relieve the pressure against them. Tears were splotched on my face, the blindfold wet against my will.
Unable to move.
My hands were tied around the back of a chair, legs and ankles blinded together by burning and scraping rope. The back of my neck hurt from the angle at which my head flopped, the chair wasn’t tall enough to support any sort of comfort.
Cold air.
Slow ventilation tickled my arm, and I could tell I had been in this position for a while now. I was freezing, and with nothing but the under layer of my Arc uniform the shivering didn’t stop. Where the overwear had gone, I had no clue.
Ominous silence.
Nothing but the sound of my labored breath, a room where noise was absorbed into the walls. Or maybe there were no walls here and I was simply in the stagnate of the outdoors, where no wind blew under cold moonlight.
Burning fever.
Even through the cold I was sweating so much. My body felt tired, my nose plugged, my throat dry as I tried to breath through my mouth, saliva strands pulling every time my mouth opened. Dizzy. So, so dizzy.
Why?
Why did I have to be trapped like this? Why did the system send me to this horrible fate? Why would Aythe be so hostile to me? Why was I still alive?
…
“You’re awake now, aren’t you?” Aythe’s voice came from behind me as the sound of a door closed behind him, like hard steel against steel. There was a door. I was being contained in a room. His words made no attempt to even bounce around the room, each syllable eaten by the walls.
I asked the only thing that I could think of.
“Why?”
Why me? Why me? Why me? Why me? Why me? Why me?
Why did it have to be my fault?
“Why, hmm?” His voice was sly, full of some sort of irony that sludged through each word he spoke. It was cruel and condescending, and I expected nothing less of him.
“Do you really want to know why?”
My neck was tortured with pain from hanging on one side for too long, there was this part on my back that was itchy, I could hardly hear anything with the cloth covering my ears too. I nodded my head as best as I could.
“Agent Roadkiller, take off her blindfold.”
The hair by my ear was yanked up and it felt like a million strands of nerves were being pulled out of my head. Bright lights all around me, I was in some kind of windowless facility, sent a jolt of shock ran through my body, sudden stimuli and the sick feeling in my body wasn’t mixing.
I made a groaning sort of noise and gasped for air rapidly. I could not barf in front of him.
—UURPPP
Turning my head to the side, my stomach came out. I couldn’t see, hear, smell, or feel anything for a blissful and deathly painful moment. I caught my breath again in more frantic gasps, and another round came out.
Gasps of pain escaped my throat as I finished.
Pain, from the head, to the stomach, to the intensity of my beating heart in my pained chest.
“Let’s make one thing clear,” Aythe muttered into my ear. To me he was barely a blur nearby, just another color blending into the world that hated me so much, the shadows in the background of the white stone room. “You’re weak.”
All too abruptly his face, so impossible to see, became the clearest thing in my eyes.
The eyes of the devil were the colors of the riches of the earth. They gloated in my face, a smug look knowing that I couldn’t do anything, and even if I was able to fight back I would still lose horribly.
“F****** pathetic.”
What was the face I was making right now?
It was probably tiredness.
“I have a question, Gwen.”
I hated him so much. He knew that I couldn’t respond, that I was as helpless as a child. Behind me I could sense the looming presence of the agent from before, Roadkiller.
“Tell me, what was your deal with Reyenal Ato about?”
There was a loud ringing in my right ear. “… no…”
========================
Answer
Memory
Overtake
Will you use a Guide?
Yes//No
========================
…
…
…
========================
Option 1) “I can’t tell you that.”
Option 2) “Go die.”
Option 3) “Don’t kill me.”
========================
…
No one could save me.
Was it her fault?
Was it really Gwen Olynn’s fault? A total, incomprehensible feeling washed over me, like revelation twisted into my very skin, burned onto my tongue, that hurt me so much.
“Don’t kill me.” I added simply. “Please.”
I could feel his gaze on me. The disapproving, disappointed, disgusted look one donned upon seeing an insect daringly staring beneath their heel.
“What could I possibly expect,” his voice was almost a whisper, “from such a lowborn, pathetic girl like you…?”
At that moment I expected to be stabbed, to be brutally dismembered, to die in a horrible way. The face he gave me oozed so much meaning and so little emotion.
My stomach hurt. My head hurt.
No one could save me.
“Ughh,” I groaned as a surge of pain washed over me. Any normal person would have passed out by now from complications, but Gwen was not so normal. I wish I could just fade now into death.
But…
I didn’t want to die.
“Why?”
Footsteps. Aythe was walking away. The sound of a door closing, and I felt completely alone again. Except, I knew I wasn’t alone. I was being watched.
“Agent.” Aythe’s voice came over a speaker. “I can’t let her disgusting blood touch my swords. Go ahead, take her out.”
I was being watched by Roadkiller.
And no one could save me.
—SSSSHHHNKK
The sound of a sword drawn from its sheath. It was death.
I was going to die.
And no one could save me.
Mom. Dad. My friends who couldn’t see me now. I wanted to see them again. Maybe because I wanted to tell them one last thing.
Avil Daniase. My friend of two long months. The only person whose face and name I could remember.
I wished I could tell them…
That I…
—THUMP