Lucius remained perfectly still, carefully watching the convoy of human beings as they slowly made their way toward him. He focused his mind on the task ahead, taking slow, deep breaths as he temporarily suppressed the explosion of emotions threatening to overwhelm him. The idea that Maryanne's father had not only chosen to leave the child behind but also kidnapped her mother—essentially ensuring her slow death from starvation—was too much for the young man to bear. The crushing disappointment hit far too close to home for Lucius, and the traumatic memories rising to the surface, one after another, made his breath catch in his throat as he struggled to force air into his lungs.
Leaning against a pine tree for support, Lucius continued to stare with growing despair. As the remainder of the group came into view, he counted only a dozen men—half the number that Tiber had seen before. The group must have split up at some point. Walking behind Maryanne's father, David, was a petite woman who stumbled forward weakly, her face turned toward the ground as if the life had been drained from her soul. Her hands were tied behind her back, and a silver chain collar encircled her neck.
A leash extended from the collar to David's hand. He yanked on it when Sarah slowed, causing the small woman to stumble forward. With her arms restrained, she was unable to stabilize herself and fell face-first into the dirt. David raised his hand to signal the group to stop walking, then approached Sarah and pulled sharply on the leash, choking her and forcing her to scramble back to her feet. When Lucius saw Sarah stand up so close to David, his eyes widened, and he glanced back down at his photo to double check what he was seeing.
Something was wrong. The David in the photo stood over a foot taller than Sarah, but the David in front of him now was barely the same height as the petite woman. Lucius couldn't stop himself from mumbling his thoughts quietly, his despair morphing into confusion.
"What the hell is going on here?"
Quickly covering his mouth, Lucius looked up to ensure he hadn’t been overheard. Once he confirmed that his presence was still concealed, he activated his Aspect fully and began moving closer to eavesdrop on the conversation between Sarah and David. As Lucius approached the couple standing at the front of the group, he saw David reach down and rub his hand over Sarah's backside. The woman visibly shuddered as she tried to pull away, only to end up getting choked again in the process.
"What's wrong? You’ve been bitching non-stop about how you just want to see your husband. Well, here he is. I'd like to hear a thank you... Now."
The man's voice was high-pitched, with a heavy lisp. It was incongruous with his appearance, and hearing such a voice coming from David's ruggedly handsome face felt jarring.
Before Sarah could say a word, the man quickly wrapped the leash around his hand and pulled hard, choking her so badly that she couldn’t speak.
The man continued taunting her, demanding she respond while ensuring she could not. It was a sickening display of psychopathy and sadism, many people would be shocked to see human beings act this way, but Lucius was all too familiar with psychopathic behavior.
He glanced at the others to see how they would respond to the situation. The group of men nearby stood watching with unpleasant expressions, clearly disapproving of the man’s behavior, but none of them intervened. When David noticed the growing disgust on his companions' faces, he seemed ready to relent.
"Okay, okay. Maybe I'm not being fair. Here, I'll let you off the hook with a kiss!"
By now, Sarah's eyes had turned completely bloodshot, and she could barely stand. She finally gasped for air as the man loosened his grip on the leash. Moving his face toward Sarah's, the man puckered his lips, grabbing tightly on a handful of her hair and pulling her face closer to his. As his face neared hers, something strange happened. The smooth, light skin on the man's face began to flicker like a faulty light bulb. For an instant, whenever the change occurred, Lucius could see an entirely different face behind David's.
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A second later it seemed that whatever magic was fueling the transformation depleted, and David's face fell away. The face that replaced it was covered in a horrid patchwork of scar tissue. Rough, uneven skin covered the new face, evidence of deep and devastating burns suffered at some point in his life. When the man realized his true face had been exposed, he gasped in anger, shoving Sarah back down to the ground as he scrambled to pull a ski mask over his head to hide his face.
"You stupid bitch! You made me waste all my magic wearing your idiot husband's fac—aaaaagh!"
Lucius had seen enough. As the man was speaking, the hand holding the leash suddenly detached from his wrist, flying into the air before skidding to a stop in front of a wide-eyed Sarah. As she stared in shock at the detached limb a few feet in front of her, she let out a startled gasp when her body suddenly lifted off the ground as though she was being carried like a princess. She squeezed her hands beneath her chin and tightly closed her eyes as she floated away towards the woods. The group of men looked back and forth in confusion—between their comrade writhing on the ground in agony, blood gushing from the severed stump of his arm, and their prisoner, who was inexplicably floating away.
What they didn’t know was that Whisper had begun sending messages to Sarah just before Lucius attacked, reassuring her that they had come to save her and instructing her not to panic, no matter what happened next. Lucius placed Sarah against a tree, then stood up and approached the group of men, letting his Aspect fall away to reveal himself fully.
"Shit, we're under attack!"
"Who the fuck are you?"
"Get back!"
A torrent of curses and rapid-fire questions flooded his ears as the men reacted to his sudden appearance, but Lucius ignored their words. Holding Matriarch’s Fury before him, he made his demand.
"Put down your weapons and surrender. I’m only giving you one chance."
The group of men stared at him in silence for a few seconds, their eyes darting between the menacing blade in his hand and the sleek black armor covering his body. It was obvious that they were steeply outmatched, and whatever courage they had was draining away by the second. Finally, the man furthest to the back turned to run. Before he could take his second step, the sword disappeared from Lucius' hand and reappeared, impaling the man’s left thigh. The throw was so fast that none of them even saw it happen.
Matriarch’s Fury vanished again from the mans leg, returning to Lucius' hand. Now, two men were laying on the ground, holding their bleeding limbs as they screamed in pain. What followed was a series of thuds and clinks as the remaining men dropped their weapons. Lucius stepped forward, casually sifting through the pile of machetes and crude, homemade spears, with his foot. Finding only the lowest-grade [Crude] equipment—nothing worth taking—he turned his attention back to the group of men.
Reaching into the toolbox within his storage ring with his mind, Lucius pulled out a bag of thick zip ties. He tossed it to the nearest man and ordered him to tie his companions’ hands behind their backs.
The man wore an ugly grimace as he received the order, but when he saw Lucius’ eyes narrow in displeasure, he quickly got to work.
"What the fuck are you doing, you useless fucks!?! He’s gonna kill us all the second—OOOF!"
The man with the burn scars had taken off his shirt and wrapped it around his bleeding stump, revealing the terrible scar tissue that covered nearly every inch of his body. As he began cursing at the others, urging them to disobey Lucius, he quickly earned a kick to the gut from the man holding the zip ties.
Lucius raised an eyebrow in fascination when he saw how eager his temporary new assistant was to earn his approval. Shaking his head in disdain, he turned and walked toward Sarah. She was still sitting against the tree, frozen in place and too terrified to so much as blink since Lucius had placed her there. As he approached, she began to tremble visibly, her eyes shutting tight out of fear when she saw him getting closer.
“W-what do you want from me?” she stammered.
Lucius tried to muster the most reassuring smile he could as he extended his hand toward her, his palm out in an offer to help her up off the ground.
“Hello, I'm Lucius. A friend of Maryanne.”
Sarah’s eyes shot open, the fatigue and fear clearing away from her face the moment she heard the name. The women seemed to be injected with new life, reaching out she grasped his sleeve with a shaky hand, her voice trembling as she stuttered from trying to speak too quickly.
“M-M-Maryanne is okay?!”