The fifth son of the majaal queen Hestia awoke from his sleep angrily. He wrestled his mind away from his mother’s grasp with petulance only a favoured child would show. His own dream had been full of shadows and blood, with the shadowy people cast on the world seeping from wounds that he created. Mania had enjoyed that.
He did not enjoy being told what to do. Ever. By anyone. When that occurred, he tended to lash out.
With need to remain mobile, Mania had decided against taking up residence in a mansion and instead commandeered the lovely and comfortable stagecoach. Snapping his eyes open from sleep, he stared for a short time at the roof of his carriage. Well, it wasn’t his carriage. There were still two scions of the family which had once owned it left alive, though whether they survived the day would come down to Mania’s whims at this point.
The parents and guards had all walked off a cliff. Mania could have that effect on people. He had kept the children around on a whim. They could have been any older than twenty and for the most part Mania let them keep their minds. His ability, borne from his mother and twisted by life, let him control the actions of others. If he pushed, he could make them want the things that they did to themselves and others but that was only necessary when it came to subterfuge.
He was content with torture.
The girl had no tears left to cry as Mania willed her into the carriage. It had rained last night and her feet were slick with mud. She shivered but Mania put a stop to that. The chattering of her teeth was not needed here. Her brother would be kneeling in the mud, not even able to look into the carriage unless Mania allowed it.
The girl’s feet were going to give out soon by the looks of it. Mania had a habit of running his toys into the ground but he felt no pity for the pathetic young woman. If she wasn’t so flimsy and soft then Mania couldn’t do this to her. Couldn’t do what he did to her family. They had employed a passable fighter but that paltry guard had fallen to Bloom before Mania even got close.
The result was natural. The most natural thing in the world. The strong taking from the weak.
Mania was a prime example of this given form and power. If he were stronger, the weak did as they were told without fail. It was an intoxicating way to life and Mania had long since fallen to the hedonism it allowed. With a lazy swipe of his hand, Mania pushed aside the current physical space in the carriage. It was a clumsy, hungover kind of moulding but it did the job. The inside of the carriage extended, warped and changed.
Within seconds, the task was done. Not just people or animals, Mania could change the very make up of the world around him with little more than a thought and a bit of pressure from his soul. What had been the standard plush interior of a stagecoach was now a workable kitchen of high quality on one side. From the outside, nothing would have changed but even space itself warped to Mania’s control.
He left the girl to cook his breakfast and took a step outside into the filth.
His siblings had agreed when he said they should not stay inside of Allusia proper. He did not mention that his own reasoning for this was fairly simple. He could not manipulate labyrinthite as he could the rest of the world. Without that advantage, his actual combat capabilities were severely lessened. One on one, Shade would have torn him to pieces.
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Mania paced, slapping the face of the boy each time he passed. It made him feel slightly better. He allowed the boy to shout obscenities if he wished, only the muscles below his neck were locked. Instead the boy begged for Mania to let his sister go. The girl wasn’t even the one being abused but Mania supposed that he didn’t know that.
“Admirable.” Mania cooed, following his words up with another slap. He didn’t mind someone trying to protect their family, though if Mania were honest it was something of a lost cause at this point. He looked over the feverish boy. He wouldn’t last another two days before the infections and exposure kills him. “Protecting your family, I mean.” Mania’s lip twitched, the anger inside of himself forcing its way out in a tic. He would give anything not to think about family right now.
“Please just let her go, I’ll do anything-”
“I know you will,” Mania purred, “everyone does anything I want.” He stopped paying the boy any attention and gagged him by freezing his tongue. Mania was done with this conversation and tired of controlling the boy’s movements and motions. With one quick, kind slice, Mania cut the boy’s throat. “I’d given you until tomorrow but plans have changed. Apologies.”
It was time for his siblings to meet. By the time the girl left the carriage, breakfast in hand, her brother’s face had fallen into the mud so far it looked like he’d buried his own head. Mania did not permit her to feel the emotion that started to well up inside her, squashing it down with his own will.
“Ouch.” Void said, looking at the girl and then the boy. Whether he had a complaint or not, he didn’t voice any further and that was enough for Mania to ignore it. He was already on edge thinking about Ravage. She was probably dead and if she wasn’t, she should have made sure she was. If she was being used against them? She was as good as a weapon in Shade’s hands and no longer worth thinking about.
He took the pot from the girl, ignoring the skin that came away with it as he yanked it by the handle. He had made her carry it with her bare hands.
Because he could.
She stood to attention, the smell of blood and charcoal rising from her smouldering hands.
“So what was it? What did she say that meant I couldn’t kill the child?” Bloom asked, his own lips twitching like Mania’s had. His brother’s anger was misplaced. No one on their side had stopped him from killing the boy but there was also no way through the dragon girl without pushing themselves.
Something they had to save for later if they were going to be ready.
Mania did not explain their mother’s thoughts. He was not so foolish as to assume he could, nor did he want to. Instead he released the bonds he had on the girl, left her and the corpse of her brother to the ruins of their carriage and told his brothers to follow him. Her screams followed them down the crevice.
“Do you know where they’re keeping Ravage?” Bloom asked. “Do you even think she’s alive?”
“Ravage doesn’t matter.” Mania’s retort was sharp. The fool should not have gotten herself caught. “We cannot let Ravage be used against us. Our plan remains the same. Enter the labyrinth. Find the soul relic.”
Saying it aloud made the fantasy feel real. A genuine, unclaimed soul relic. They were said to annihilate almost anyone who tried to take them but Mania knew his destiny well. He would find the relic. He would take it for his own and finally stand aside his mother as an equal.
“Do you know where it is?” Bloom’s question was genuine but it annoyed Mania. Of course he didn’t know where it was.
“Yes.” He lied as easily as he breathed, to sibling or stranger. “We have a path and it is why we needed the Court.” Without answering another question, Mania led his brothers back down into the depths of Allusia and towards the Court and its hidden entrance to the labyrinth. His mother seemed to know and was directing them there.
That would have to be enough.
—
In Guan Yo Shen’s hand, the soul relic was silent. He could not release it, the soul relic would not let him. He had the vague sense that he was waiting for something or that the world was waiting for him but he had no way of knowing what for.
His soul had been in agony from the moment he plucked the weapon from its place in the labyrinth. Rather than ceremoniously slotted into a display case, the spear was simply lodged deep into the unshapen, rough rock of the labyrinth. It had been a great struggle to reach the place to begin with, the weight of the lance in his hand and on his soul had been too much.
Underneath a church in Allusia, hidden in its secret basement, Guan Yo Shen wished he had never had an ambitious bone in his body and prayed for someone to save him.