It was a sweet morning at The Library of Chen, as the bronze dawn light colored the clouds in the blue sky. The freshly hired laborers, now able to work openly, cleaned the place up as best they could though repairs to the buildings and installation of full electrical utilities would have to come at another time.
Nonetheless, this was where most of the former inmates of Tartarus would temporarily be housed and educated alongside the Immortals.
Among those inhabitants were Lanying and Letiche, adopted by Auntie Chen herself. From thenceforth, her daughters have been inseparable pieces of each other's puzzle: Lanying led in front and played in the dirt while Letiche read and wrote for the both of them.
In a parking lot of an abandoned diner on the outskirts of the city, Letiche was reading about Meiji and his World to Lanying. To read aloud slowed Letiche’s rapid pace to a crawl and Lanying would forget the sentence as it was being read to her, but they were nonetheless happy to have each other.
“This is the only way I can get her to talk. She’s been burning through all my books otherwise,” said Chen to Uncle Deimos, “I’m about to give her keys to the kindle. She likes all books—except the ones about heroes slaying monsters.”
Todd was called to the parking lot but was unexpectedly accompanied by Angel and an entourage of Immortals that escorted prisoners. Among those prisoners was Max Force.
“Hey, what’s happening?” asked Todd. Lanying held onto the book so that Angel could bring Letiche away. Uncle Deimos stood with Angel and Letiche while the Immortals moved the prisoners to the wall of the diner.
“Your brother killed Four-Leaf and Lady Teumess,” said Chen as she hefted up Lanying.
“...What?” The heat dissipated from Todd.
“Anthony also died. It’s not a big deal if some gang bangers or terrorist fodder die for the cause, but my immortals need to maintain their prestige. So we’re responding with a public execution.”
Kenny killed them? How did that happen? Was he really sent to the frontli—no, with Auntie Chen’s power there is no real frontline. Still, he must have been brought to an important objective and allowed in combat. But how did he kill them? How did they get killed? It must have been some kind of accident. Kenny can’t shoot, can’t punch, can’t fight. He couldn’t have killed anyone, there must be a mistake.
The prisoners were lined up, hands bound, barefoot, blindfolded, and knelt in front of the wall. The cameraman rooted his tripod to get a wide shot of all of them. Max was the only one Todd recognized but dressed down Max was indistinguishable from the other prisoners on the firing line. Despite the setup, the immortals did not aim their rifles. Instead, Angel knelt to Letiche and floated his feathers in front of her, with one arm wrapped around her shoulder. The other hand directed the feathers: with a fell motion, a feather darted forth into a prisoner’s heart and splattered blood against the wall. He demonstrated this to her again and again, prisoner after prisoner killed without a word or a chance.
The second to last prisoner, who had been incessantly panting at a tempo that increased with each death, finally broke and ran. The Immortals to the sides remained unmoved, this feeble attempt recorded alongside everything else to be uploaded for the world to soon see. The feathers nailed his heels to the ground. His momentum tore his ankles and slammed his head into a parking block. His heart was staked to end his misery.
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Finally, at the end of the row was Captain Max Force. He seemed to mouth something to the Immortal next to him and had his blindfold removed, allowing him to face his execution with some spare dignity.
Letiche stepped back a bit but was held in place by Angel. He hovered one last feather in front of her and demonstrated with one last fell motion that plunged the feather into the concrete next to Max, close enough to cut Max’s ear. Max, bruised and drenched in sweat as he was, remained calm.
Letiche held her arms together.
She looked to the side at Angel, who gave her his best smile.
She looked up to Uncle Deimos who wore his mask: with the scratch caused by GalvanGal, it looked like angry glowing eyes with a maw full of sharp teeth.
Letiche grimaced like the mask and condensed the air vapor into a rhodonite petal that she hovered like Angel’s feather. Then, with a fell motion from her small hand, the petal shrieked through the air, ripped through Max’s heart, and erupted the diner with the bloom of a crystal bouquet. The crystal was made rose by the drip of viscera from the prisoner’s bodies mangled on tips of pistils and stamen.
Letiche dropped her grimaced and looked around in a panic, her frost spilling out in vapor, but Angel pulled her for a warm hug. Then the Immortals began to clap and cheer, and hoot and holler for her, fists pumped in the air in jubilation all caught at the end of the video. The cameraman tore down his stand and joined the others for a turn to give her a high five. Even the sun finally rose above the horizon and clouds to crown her in gold. It was all very nice, but the vapor didn’t stop pouring.
Uncle pulled her away by the hand, Todd came up on his flank and Chen followed further behind which left the rest to clean up the mess. Uncle eventually let go of her hand which allowed her to stumble forward and vomit slush under a busted lamppost. That lamppost saw rime creep up its pole and reach into the broken glass of the globe. Stalagmites sprouted from cracks in the pavement around her while howls of wind lashed out above her.
This was usually the part where Todd and Lanying were sent to manage her but Auntie Chen held them both back. Instead, Uncle Deimos stood by her. He let her cough and fumble on the ground as the storm gathered into a tempest that lacerated the brittle asphalt and crumpled the abandoned cars. He let her swirling winds swing an icicle at a velocity that ran through his armor to stab him in the stomach, a sight that surprised her so much that the tempest died from her shock.
He did not flinch, or yelp, even as his blood stained his clothes and spilled out over his leggings; he looked her in the eyes, took hold of the icicle, and pulled it out just as lazily as he took it in.
“It hurts, doesn’t it? Pain, confusion, nausea—you’re not used to experiencing those things. But they are still important elements of living a full life, just as much as the warmth of the sun and the cool of the wind against your skin: all were deprived from you. Killing is also just as important as living,” he knelt to her, his hands at her waist and her hands on his temples, ”I want you to understand that. I want you to do more than read about living, I want you to experience everything. I want you to have everything—that is what I want for my daughter. Tell me, now, what do you want?”
Her eyes hung on every word he said with the same wonder she had when she read her books and the distress that unleashed her blizzard within had waned into nothing. Instead, she was empty, her body felt lighter, her mind dizzied such that thoughts and images fractured and tessellated as she tried to form them. She fainted in his arms, her soft cheek coming to rest on his shoulder. He lifted her up with her skin away from his coat then carried her towards the library. The rest of the crew was still at work power washing the blood and pulling down the bodies impaled on the bouquet.
“His… h-h-his daughter?” asked Todd, “I thought you adopted them.”
“We’re co-parenting. Officially,” Chen hefted Lanying back into place, “they are both my daughters but he has chosen Letiche to be his successor and Lanying to be her guard.”
“That’s weird, heh,” Todd laughed without meaning to, “I was just thinking this whole time about how…just the other day… Philip was telling us that ole’ Uncle Deimos didn’t want to involve kids in gang life.”
“This isn’t gang life, this is her future—our future. Trust me, he would not choose a successor lightly. He sees potential in everyone which makes it all the more certain when he recognizes a prodigy,” said Chen.
Todd swallowed that answer.