𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑—𝐃𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐓
.ೃ࿐ᴸᵉᵗ ᵘˢ ᵉˣᵖˡᵒⁱᵗ ᵗʰᵉ ᶠᵒᵒˡ'ˢ ᵖˡᵃʸ.
A dream, a nightmare, someone’s ideal reality— Palace of Ulric labyrinths, Elvira Crest.
࿐RENON࿐
RENON MORTIMER watched as the spirited sun lowered the soft blue sky to an unusual shade of mourning purple. To its left was the Olympus moon, shining its usually sheen of expired petunias, foreshadowing all the disarray that was due to unravel in the town of Bozez. The disjointed rock shone antagonistically over the heads of his troops, distorting and abusing the shadows of their armour while exposing him to his world's neglected spotlight of criticism. It was as if the world that surrounded the young boy was completely falsified, a game built for the sole purpose of uncovering his inability to portray his father's feats.
Those cruel feelings of estrangement torrented his existence as the procession of his soldiers throbbed in tempo with the hysterical thing his father claimed to be too weak to be called a heart—but nobody would ever know that with the hard amour covering his chest. His feet felt thin with the constricting expectations of his father, but nobody would ever know because of the stiff boots bewitching him in place. He was strangling in his caught air of fixation, yet all anyone would ever notice would be the macabre mask that exhaled malice, decay, and inevitable death. He was not a person in the eyes of his prey. He was not a son in the silhouette of the father that refused to acknowledge the boy under all his seams of protective coverings.
Renon was not a person, only a peak of Gothic Mortimer's novel power.
A power, his father's nasty whisper put in, that is a grain of me.
Gothic's whispers were thawed with a brisk surge of grace, wrenching and prowling the young general's insides with nothing but raw fuel. He had felt the same crackling grace on the day of the LEVEL disaster committed by Than, bundled and coiling beyond the shades with a rotten artery to trouble. It wasn't long after the lightning of grace that the northern city scattered into a hot-tempered outflow of butchery. Devastation delivered to both standpoints of strive. Its danger seared the Llevanian city.
Murderers, an elusive pur dusted his ear, hide in the royalty of darkness. He could hear its crazed grin against its malignant words. They lurk for the blood of your sheep. They skulk for the man at the point of your sword.
The spare trees curtailed the nigher they got to the town, the raucous whoops of civilians orbiting around him as a baiting scent laid out for the tastebuds of a monster. Closer. The forecasting voice of a man trembled at Renon’s eardrum, effortlessly disguising the rumbles of his men's expedition. A little further. Standing at the edge of Bozez's wild forest, the boy could finally feel the five branches of grace that stalked within the closing town, each a grim rabid that was keen to strike as they closed in. Closer, boy.
"General Mortimer," a figure called, descending from the overgrown trees to its feet with a graceful drop. "I was sent by a friend of your father's to assist you in your success." A woman menaced over him, woolly blonde hair in the shape of a bob glazed at the tips with a leaf of dried blood and mud. She wore a grey one-pieced robe that flooded behind her slightly. Her eyes roamed the soldiers behind Renon, eyeing each of them like a list that was to be checked off with coral paste; weapons glinted from behind her worn coat, flashing threats just as severe as her eyes.
She had Grace? But how…
"And you are?" Renon lightly sneered, watching as the mysterious woman he had not seen until now dropped to one knee to offer the young general an imperial bow. It was modest, but Renon could still see and feel the woman's grace coursing violently through her veins, almost as if it were captioning her from any likely attacks.
Could it be…is she?
The image of a true soldier, his whispers bragged as an insatiable grin carved the blonde’s face, a silent warning to Renon on the woman's unmistakable attention to the graceful setting.
"Rosary Fenriz of the Republic of Than."
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࿐SÉRAPH࿐
A DECOY. Akil had used a decoy.
The machine rattling on the ground below her recoiled away with artificial horror, not even grasping that its three-dimensional mirage of Akil Theron no longer stood to conserve its identity.
"The Tempest," a soft voice affirmed to her side. It was the girl—the cloud-haired girl that Séraph had taken note of during her terse moments of uncertainty. "I haven't seen one of your kind since I was a little child." The girl tilted her head to the side, guard off as she watched Séraph with a dire amount of fondness, a child reuniting with her childhood memories. “An Alec assassin.”
"A class that doesn't keep in their avenue, Parthenope, tends to not last very long," A snide voice prodded. A brunette and clean-looking young man dwelled to Séraph's left, guard menacingly meagre as he shrugged his folded arms. His eyes were a pallid cobalt as they drove into her, mirroring the chaos around them like an icy autumn creek.
"But you've got to admit, she took us quite by surprise." A dreamy smile was spread on the girl's face as she scanned Séraph. It was as if she was a billion light-years away while being a hundred miles unduly close. Séraph could feel the friction of her pulse purifying itself from the clangour of screams around her.
"Sneaking up on people is considered an invitation to battle in many nations," the brunette prodded, an arrogant smirk carrying a challenge to his eyes. "Your prize of death will be more than an honour, Tempest." His shoulders rolled back, spine straight like the words escaping him were inflating his figure with every sentence.
"Death?" Scoffed a voice too familiar. Scarlet stood a few steps behind them, one hand in his pocket, the other exerting a blade as he inspected the incoming Ignatius soldiers. "I thought someone with access to all forms of academics would understand that our kind doesn't scare as easily with death as your kind do."
The albino girl dismissed the knife that blinked in Scarlet's grip, although her taut posture notified Séraph that she has been caught off by his sudden appearance. Violet eyes fluttered against her pigmentless lashes as she surveyed both Séraph and Scarlet with intrigue. "There are large costs on both your heads. I know who you are, I know what you two did to Prince Levion."
Scarlet snickered, nodding his head in Séraph's course of direction with pride. "Unfortunately, the credit's all hers on that one."
"Parthenope, we have a big problem!" Broke a man's voice through the static of the radio attached to the white-haired girl's hip. "He took her! The general has her! I can't-- I can't fucking find her!" came again the voice panting madly, broken in hysteria followed by sirens over the sluggish frequency of the radio. There’s some more incoherent scratches that make their way through the radio. “I need-- she-- I'm bleeding. I can't--” Before it all cut off and they were met with nothing but violent silence.
"Séra," Scarlet whispered, watching dread drown the girl before them. Somehow he had shifted his way towards Séraph, towering over her with a shielding form as he eyed the portable battalion of soldiers that had insulated themselves from the muscular crowd, marching their way up to the podium with the rattles of their battle boots stalking them. "I believe our mission is already long over."
"You were told to kill Akil, weren't you?" A voice hurriedly intercepted. Parthenope peered at them with frantic eyes, all previous calm replaced with watered desperation. She was crying. She took a step closer, only halting once the grating of Scarlet's dagger unsettled her pace. "Who...who was it? Who wanted him dea—"
"Who the fuck doesn't?" Scarlet cut her off with agitated complacence. "I mean no offence, your magnificence, but it's quite clear from this shitshow of yours that your messiah needs to spruce up his character a bit." Scarlet pulled out his gun, shifting it out of its safety as he aimed at the approaching cavalry, not once taking his thorny gaze off the wary rebels as he did. "I'm skipping a lottery draw all because your purple maven couldn't shut the hell up—to even say I'm disappointed would be some fucking euphemism."
Bang. Bang. BANG! BANG!
The glares of his flare gun bored the entire coliseum, overwhelming anyone who had whipped their heads in the direction of the explosion. Séraph leapt off the keen end of the stage, seeping into the rebelling crowd of civilians with a muddy roll.
Scarlet opted for a more theatrical form of coverage as he drove headfirst into the throng of soldiers with a knife now in hand. He sprung off the chest of one of the striking troopers, diving up to the slack vine Séraph had used to strike Akil's decoy with a thrust off of the cracked screen projector behind where Akil's hologram remained distorted with the glitches of frantically pulled wires and poorly handled bullet fire. He swung past the many forlorn heads of the drowning individuals below him, smirking at Séraph who was stationed on the lowest platform, glowing shamelessly at his lucky benefit.
'Smarter, not harder,' was what the arrogant asshole mouthed at her, grin virtually shimmering as glorious as his flash bombs as he sprinted his way across the bungalow roofs.
"If you desire yourself in one piece, I suggest you don't move," a rough voice cut off any of her conceivable movements. “Tempest,” her title came out a scoffed laugh. Séraph twisted her head slightly to eye the young boy of the voice. He had a dark shag, very light streaks of black that snuck glimpses at her from under the second-hand blood that established league on him from the vandalised bodies he had fought and cropped up just to get to her. "Were either you or your boyfriend aware of the hefty prices on your heads?" the question came out as a spurning snarl. "Fifty-six million just to deliver one of your corpses to Oswald Than. Sixty-one million just to drag one of you in half alive, dangling off your bones."
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"Only sixty-one?" came an overly posh voice with a snort, "Have your masters always been this cheap, Mortimer?" Parthenope stood a foot away from them, sumptuous gun held up high as she pointed it at the aberration before the assassin and herself.
"Lovely to see you as well, Phaedra."
"Quite the contrary, General," Phaedra bit back. The girl was overwhelmed—it was apparent in the way she gripped her pistol as if she had never held one for a purpose other than an accessory, all the way to the awkward blinks her sallow lashes waved out that looked more like uneasy winks.
She was weak.
"If I may," Séraph exclaimed demeaningly, watching the violence around them with something indispensable in her expression. "General." She soared over them as she shifted forward, blade on her neck tracking her every move as she met the eyes of her aggressor—though she didn't seem to be bothered in the slightest by the boy’s threats of excruciating death as she poked holes into his irritation.
Two sets of eyes drove to her, two unique orders of diplomacy with equal levels of anticipation. "Can you feel it?"
A dark glare was all the boy reciprocated with his stabbing inquiry of, "What the hell are you babbling about?"
"Ah," She gave him a false pout that was almost Cheshire in its transgression. "What I meant was can you feel the ‘fuck off’ I’m currently flooding in your direction?"
The General didn't react as Séraph lunged herself at Phaedra whose lips broke a petrified squeak at the contact of their hands. Séraph yanked the girl's ghostly and shaking palms towards the rangy boy, who with little trouble, evaded most of their raging grey blasts of heat. A wall, great and gleaming frost stood before him, sheilded him from the fire. His grace…damn it. He didn’t want to use it. As the bullets in the chamber cleared, a chaotic silence of turmoil persisted in place of the gunshots, faulting to keep in the incredibly livid puffs that soon advanced.
Something had hit, the short surge of black liquid from the boy's left calf exposed that finding very well. A sloppy shot with a lucky touch, spoke Séraph's wind of whispers. Ice jumped up his leg, concealing his wound as the boy closed off his wound, stopping the bleeding. By the time the young General had taken his eyes off the frozen wound marring his leg, Séraph was already making her way across the squashed throng, shoving a path down to the placid part of town where Ignatius's imperial tribulation had not yet announced itself to the many oblivious souls who were still going about their everyday lives.
Phaedra Parthenope, on the other hand, had disappeared like a snake under sand.
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࿐??࿐
THE BAR was packed with various genres of people, a mixture of common customers and travellers. An aged melody played at the end of the bar, the lyrics timid within the unbothered ambience of the room.
Black locks flickered across the room as she shoved the people near her to dodge the bloodthirsty assaults of a shorter figure who stood geared in charcoal robes. His furtive boots struck with the dusted wood as he chased after her.
A sanded dagger skimmed her face—with her nose scrunching into a snarl, Séraph hauled herself from the boy's hand and kicked off into clear air. The black cape that she had used to conceal herself during her mission was ripped down the thigh, the once misty ebony a now unpleasant colour that dribbled ungracefully to the wooden ground.
Caramel curls chased after her—dark blue eyes swishing between the items that she threw at him and the reasonable paths she could scheme for her escape.
The closer he got, the rapid her agitated pants became, her body slipping through the mob of people like she was butter. A gloved hand gripped onto the young woman's elbow, so cold it burned and her eyes dilated in silent bewilderment. Instinct reeled her bony arm upwards and into the boy's jaw.
A hissed grunt escaped from behind Sèraph.
Tugging, the hand on her only fastened with the received pain. Playing her luck she jumped back with all her vitality, her body causing them both to lose footing and drive down with the smash of a few encircling objects.
A ringing wreck halted the singing that previously revolved around the space, the tune rewinding in a horrible loop as an unsteady weight muffled it. At the disruption, folks piled to see the scene, their everyday boring lives accepting a fresh twist.
A chaotic duo violently slumped in the centre of the bar—both catching their oxygen while glowing at the other. The twinkle of a blade lifted the two from each other, laboured sweat and blood clinging to their faces.
"You're creating a scene," Renon Mortimer muttered dangerously, his eyes now darting from the panicked civilians around them and then to the split-eyed woman who was glaring malevolently at the adolescent general. "You're making this much more complicated than it has to be."
"Fuck off. Complication solved, " Séraph conceded, her words stressed from her rosy lips. A muscle in his jaw twitched, communicating a rage the young boy did his best to suppress. Deep down and under all the stinging inhales and running nose of blood, Séraph knew that even though Renon was a child, his actions and thoughts held anything but a child's naive compassion.
Renon's gaze darkened with a dangerous gleam as his fist gripped the handle of his weapon. If it weren’t for his father, he would've chopped her down where she stood, all broken and fragile like a discarded moppet. Plus, this wasn't any usual rebel, this was an Alec killer, an assassin that could help his father's cause. "You belong to Than after what you did to Prince Levion. You’re a barbarian, I can't let filth like you go." The words alone pained him to say.
Renon believed criminals from Alec didn't deserve the favour of protection or existence. Cowards who hide behind holograms like her didn't deserve something as selfish as that.
"How about...no?" Séraph humoured, grabbing at something from under her ruined clothes.
An eager caution submerged the young boy as he braced himself. Pull out a weapon, he begged silently through his impatient exhales. Pull out a weapon so I can hurt you. Séraph eyes jumped with a violent flicker as the boy's countenance shifted into something gruesome. She could kill him. He's going to try and do it. He was going to try and attack.
"Oi! What you two done to my pub!?" A dried-out voice shook in bitterness. An old tanned man limped his way towards them, firearm wedged in between his fat and dried fingers. The wood below him grunted under the baggage of his prosthetic leg.
"This does not concern you," Renon shot back hotly, his gaze refusing to fend off the woman’s concealed hand. He could kill both of them and be done with it. He could kill everyone in this filthy bar and the benefits would still outweigh the cons for him. Why waste time sparing the sterile lives of trash like them?
"Surely does when you've wrecked my bar!" The one-eyed man cried, hoisting his gun up to Renon whose exterior didn't tweak once at the loaded weapon held to his face, then to Sèraph who pretended to cower under him.
"I don't know him. I—sir, I just want to go home. I don't know what he wants for me," She stammered a whisper in a shaky voice, steamy tears gushing down her puffy cheeks.
Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar.
"Please."
The old man's posture softened at her susceptible state, his gun swinging back to Renon. His resentment only bubbled when he noticed a smile from the dark-haired boy at the rear of his gun. Renon, although he was both the shortest and youngest in the room, glared up at the gruff bartender from under his nose—a far glister shone in his timeless eyes, an unblinking dare that told an insect to risk travel under his raised boot.
"She's lying to you, that's what criminals like her are bred to do—She's treasonous," The fringed boy resorted in a tedious scowl, his hands held up in a sham meeting of defencelessness. Maybe he'd slit their throats for the inconveniences they'd caused him.
"The young lady don't look like no criminal or no murderer," The bar owner pressed, looking over Séraph's damaged clothes and then to Renon's prosperous wardrobe, a pointed knife at his feet. The teen's murderous watch didn't do much to support his claim of tight-lipped innocence.
"But bloody hell, you sure do. Ain't no way I'm gonna let you 'urt a defenceless woman in my 'ouse."
"She's not defenceless, you stale fool. She's a murderer—scum who'd stab you in the back for the leisure of it," Renon insisted, an impulsive bite to his tone. Every muscle in his body ached to dig his dagger into the oaf for blocking his chase. Maybe his father could make an exception for his violence today.
The senior didn't respond, only inspecting the homicidal looking child at the end of his gun further. Renon looked at the peak of 15, if it weren't for his bloodstained face and costly appearing uniform, the bartender would've expected him to be another one of the east's thieving teens. Then Renon's brutal expression beckoned something within the old man.
"Ah, I 'now ya...You're a Mortimer, son of that Gothic fellow. You're 'im, Aren't ya?" The bar owner seethed, yellowed stained teeth bared begrudgingly. "Don't think you can just stroll in 'ere and ravage everyone's lives, pretty boy," he spat in abundant distaste. "You militant pricks ain't welcome ‘ere."
Taking a glance back at a discreetly smug Séraph, the man nodded his head towards the clearing at the front of the bar, his actions arising a pressured grumble from the wavy chocolate-headed boy who wanted nothing but to cut her down. If even one of her her feet found its way outside of the door, Renon was going to kill him, his hateful hiss was mute. He was going to skin him.
"Where the fuck do you think you're going?!" The man yelled, blocking Renon's path with a shove of his gun to his chest. Not waiting for what Renon would do next, Séraph took a run for it, her body smashing against the heavy glass doors as soon as she came in contact with them and she could hear the hiss of ice, roaring and eating. She was not paid to save that old man.
Her feet carried her across the street, her breath hitching into a spider's web at the abrupt clatter of shattering glass behind her. Although she was tempted, Séraph didn't dare turn back. She was not going to fight that child.
"YOU COWARD!" Renon's shout of rage bellowed behind her in animosity. Her hurt legs pitched her through the dragging mud, raw heat urging her to give up as they did.
A remembrance overrun Séraph's head. Oh, how pitiful she felt, only age 13 but covered with snot, tears, blood and zero recollection of where she was and what had happen —how her body used to cry; Where all the bodies piled up and around her came from. Séraph fell quickly into the rhyme of her pulse, overdosing on oxygen as she swallowed greedily in and out, panic mauling at the back of her knees with a brooding thought of blacking out quashing out any ideas of even starting a leg out of course.
Unnerving electric pops stroked through the atmosphere, the sound depriving her of a few seconds as she registered it. Séraph didn't require a sense of insanity to see the murderous intent overflowing from Renon Mortimer. He had planned to slaughter and abandon her body as a symbol of his fury, this she had known the second she had laid her eyes on him.
A pale realisation platted the Séraph Alchmey’s heart, nothing but apprehension wearing away at her being. If only there was a button that allowed her to wash away all the sticky problems of her past. If there was one, the confined woman wondered where she would be now.
If she would be happy right about now...
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࿐RENON࿐
RENON watched as the woman's figure vanished behind the inoperable forts risen by structures of soil and crops, the gun in his grip frozen into breakage with his raging grace, the chilled residue of what was once a gun whining as it crumbled to the ground. Swerving around, he made his way back inside the bar, crystals of glass crunching under his feet as he tossed aside the remains of the shattered gun.
The bar was now deserted apart from a bloody limp body stretched along the sticky floor. He had lost control in his anger, had burst all the blood vessels of the old man until he was nothing but a leaking mess of blood. The body of the barman remained still as Renon bridged over it and to the counter, a full bowl of treats embracing his finger and connecting to his ruddy lips.
A little squeak came from behind him where a waitress came out, her body jolting in concern once she examined the mush of blood on the floor which was manager, and then the blood-covered teen inspecting her in indifference. She should be thankful that he had saved her from such miserable employment.
Renon's eyes flashed to the name on her tag before he found her frightened gaze again.
"Want to join him, Clarice?" He wasn’t serious but if the woman said yes he wouldn't have minded seizing the spirited opportunity. The splatter of red on his cheeks probably suited the genuine craze of his smile.
The hissing whimper of glass rubbing against wood prompted him to turn away from the spooked waitress and to the entrance where a blonde woman stood, grey leather jacket coated in fresh blood. The two eyed each other, both unimpressed and ruffled as the other.
"We've got a lead on Theron's next location, little boy," the woman taunted in lethargy, entirely dismissing the gutting sneer the boy sent her way. “Gregn has been ordered to take care of the little assassins.”
"Congratulations, Fenriz, you're not as incompetent as you look," Renon snarled maliciously. His stool fell back as he aggressively stood, shoving his way past the larger soldier with a flashy tongue most passers would frown upon. Renon swore to murder The Tempest next time. She was a termite chewing onto the nourishment of his world and he was going to kill her.