Remus had originally hoped that they would have time to talk, or for him to catch his breath, or, well, any time at all really.
So when Maris transported him in a flood of water, before he even had the chance to open his mouth, it was a little disconcerting.
When he next opened his eyes, Remus found himself in a cube, marbled room. All around him, looking far more bewildered, were the Talents of the Future. Even the men of Beckett’s army that had recently signed up.
Oh boy, Remus gritted his teeth. This was going to be a difficult situation to navigate.
There was an uproar of worried voices immediately, and Remus’ senses were sharp enough to feel the thirty or so Marks flaring into being. Remus flew into the air as fast as he could, and, raising his voice, tried to enforce order.
“Everyone stay calm!” His words had no effect. “We are in no immediate danger!”
. . . unless Maris had developed a taste for genocidal murder since they’d last met. In which case . . . Remus tried to keep optimistic.
“The Water God-Graced, Maris, transported us here. We are on good terms. Please all listen to whatever explanation she has for . . .” Remus struggled to find the right words. “Escorting us here.”
Remus dropped elegantly to the floor, deactivated his Mark, hoping the others would follow suit, and stood right before the leader of the Water Sect.
This had better be good.
The interior was clearly a meeting room of some kind. For someone with as much influence as Maris, she likely had a dozen or so places exactly like this. It wasn’t a space designed to instil fear into its inhabitants, but Remus was overwhelmed by claustrophobia nevertheless. The fact that troubled Remus most wasn’t her dragging him here. It was the fact she had the knowledge, and the desire to take his rebellion alongside him. Did that mean she approved of his plans? The support of a God-Graced would be a colossal advantage.
He knelt. Remus felt the perspiration leak down his nape. He probably should have taken a knee far earlier. Maris acted like they were best chums, but their relationship was strictly transactional, far more than Remus' friendship with Koa had ever been.
The binding across his soul was evidence enough for that.
“Remus!” She bared her fangs at him with fanatic glee. “How I’ve missed you!”
Her head snapped to somewhere in the crowd. “And Koa! I don’t think I’ve had the honour?”
Why was she being so friendly? None of this sat right with Remus. Had they really become that close? Was burning to shreds one clan enough for Maris to put you in her good books for life?
Remus shivered. His attack on the Frost Clan still gave him nightmares. Like a dog chained down, he had been coerced into that horrible deed. Remus had blood on his hands, no doubt about that, but at the time, he’d lacked any choice in the matter. It was either die at the hands of Nova, or play into Maris’ politics. With so much riding on him, there was no other choice.
For a second, Remus found himself thinking that she must have still been protecting him now. Then recollection hit him in the face: Violet had killed Nova.
Violet.
Before he knew it, Remus’ eyes landed on two women in the corner. His mouth went dry when he realised who. Veida and-
“Excuse me, your majesty,” Koa approached Remus’ side, taking a knee too. Courtesy came so easy to the man. The perks of your sect leader once being Queen. “But I must ask, on behalf of everyone present: what brings us here?”
Wise. Koa had worded that just nicely enough to get his question plainly across, but not in a way that antagonised the God-Graced. And trust him, Remus had done enough of that to know it was never a good idea. Would that stop him from doing so again in the future?
He preferred not to answer that.
“Ah, but we’ve only just gotten together.” Maris pouted. “I know you’ve all had quite the shock. Why don’t we discuss this over a banquet?”
That was enough to quieten down the hoards of unruly men. Food was the great uniter. Remus held back a sigh. Despite himself, he was awfully hungry . . .
----------------------------------------
Even after a full stomach, things grew no less awkward.
Three vast tables filled another similarly cubed room, with Maris seated at her own private table up front. Remus tried to hide behind the chicken bone he was devouring, but between every other tentative bite, he was sure that he and Violet were locking eyes. She was seated by Veida, the two of them almost symbiotically merged, with how close their bond seemed. Both at the same embellished table as Maris herself.
Koa was seated opposite Remus, clearly paying the situation no mind. He seemed quite content to bicker with his wife, and eat his bodyweight in whatever the servants carried over to their part of the table.
“Koa. What do you know about Oaths?”
The question escaped Remus’ lips before he could really decide if it was a good idea to ask.
The man laughed, swirling the spoon in his soup. “What, you're having second thoughts?”
“No, no, not about our Oath.”
“Stop playing with your food,” Octavia swatted at her husband’s wrist. “Wait.” Her neck should have snapped with how fast it turned to Remus. “What? Do you have a habit of making Oaths with anyone you walk past?”
Remus cleared his throat. Gods, the past really had a way of coming back to bite him.
“What if I said I was in a bit of a pinch last year? One bad enough that I made an Oath with the woman who’s serving us?”
“And why would you do such an idiotic thing?”
One thing that Remus liked about Octavia was that she was always upfront with him. She didn’t bend around the bush. If she thought Remus was a fool, she would tell him about it. Elaborately.
“I had to save my own ass.” Remus continued. “I kind of have a tendency of getting myself in deadly situations, if you haven’t cared to notice.”
“Remus.” The way Koa said his name was long and severe. “What exactly do you mean you made an Oath with a God-Graced?”
“Remember that business with Maris not long ago, when we were fighting for her right to the throne during the coronation?” He saw the recognition flicker in Koa’s eyes. “I wasn’t exactly doing that out of the kindness of my heart. Didn’t you know about the Oath?”
“You never cared to mention it.” Koa seemed to have completely forgotten about his food. His tight-lipped expression was reflected in the soup bowl. “I thought you were just too pressured by a God-Graced to say no, or you wanted to build connections, or you simply needed some powerful protection.”
“All partly true. I originally befriended her, if that’s the right way to refer to it, as a way to travel to an island far off the coast of the world’s pangea. That was where I recovered the ancient techniques of the Ambition Clan. I was going to find another way there originally, but that was when Nova decided he was going to give me some mind-splitting trauma. I needed to agree to the Oath, or me and Violet were going to be killed very slowly, and very painfully.”
Octavia was cutting a piece of bread with a butter knife, every facet of the way she held herself radiating disapproval. “So now you’re chained down like Maris’ faithful pet.”
“The Oath.” Koa’s fists tightened. “What was the Oath Remus?”
“I-” Remus pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing, “I agreed to-”
Suddenly, light coursed through the room. Remus craned his neck to look up, and a rushing streak of water illuminated the space, near the ceiling. It was enchanting. Ethereal colours added a glowing ambiance to the scene, and Remus didn’t fail to notice the variety of sea life swimming mindlessly amongst the floating currents. It was like gazing at the sky on a beautiful night, constellations and colours that shouldn’t have been possible showering your eyes with a celestial radiance.
While Remus was still appreciating the abrupt decoration, Maris materialised at his side. His heart skipped a beat. If she had overhead, was he in trouble? He hadn’t said anything explicitly bad, but-
“I hope you’re enjoying yourself Remus.” Her predator teeth, the only material thing about her, widened at the others in a bony smile. “And all of the other guests too, of course.”
“Ah, so about why you brought us all here-”
“When we get to it.” She interrupted curtly. “I thought I would give you some time to catch up with your old friends. It would only be right.”
Remus gulped, doing everything in his power not to glance at Violet. He instantly failed. If there was a way he could have slapped himself in that moment, without appearing deranged or infinitely disrespectful, he would have done so.
“Once you’ve had a chance to speak, I’ll announce the broader reason why we’re gathered here.”
Remus looked over to Koa, something in his eyes screaming: help me.
Accordingly, Koa rose. “Excuse me, your Majesty, but I would also appreciate a moment to catch up with my old companions. So much has transpired since our last meeting, as I’m sure you're aware.”
Remus looked at Koa again, in some kind of non-verbal communication the pair of them had just mastered. I could kiss you right now.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Regardless of whether the man had received the message, Koa looked at him oddly.
“Oh yes, absolutely!” Maris would not stop grinning. Remus imagined how satisfying it would be to smash that rictus of hers into calcified fragments. One tugging sensation behind his navel, and Remus knew his Oath did not approve of that. “Well, I’ll entertain the guests with a little lightshow. Go have your fun!”
If there was a way you could make holding down your dinner a fun and exciting activity, Remus was yet to find it. He regretted eating so much.
Remus and Koa took their first tentative steps towards Violet. One entire Rebirth’s worth of worries and stresses purged Remus’ mind of anything but panic.
Koa placed his palm on Remus’ shoulder. Another look, and a soft curve of the lips that read simply: relax.
Remus took a deep breath. He was a grown man. Seventeen years old, and he couldn’t even approach an old flame without feeling sick to his stomach. He was better than this.
Old flame. That would suggest they had been together, in the romantic sense of the phrase, but things had never even progressed that far. An old friend. Remus was simply speaking to an old friend.
He erased his brain of thought, and walked over to her.
Koa, bless his heart for eternity, took charge. “Violet, Veida.” That familiar warmness, like everyone Koa spoke to was one of his best friends, consumed his tone. “How pleasant it is to see you both again.”
Before Remus could think to make his own greeting, Veida leaped into a hug. She was surprisingly strong, but then Remus remembered that this woman was Splintered Ranked: Warden. She could easily crush his bones down to their marrow if she so chose.
“It’s . . . nice . . . to see you too . . . Veida.”
She finally pulled away, and Remus felt his chest decompress. “It’s been so long! I’m so sorry about your sentence Remus. Everyone has been on your side about the ruling, it was wholly unfair.”
“Well, I can’t say I’m completely free of fault. I’ve gotten on the wrong side of too many people — it was bound to catch up with me at some point.”
“Oh well.” She took a step back away from him. “I hope guard duty treated you well. You look a little older; more mature.”
Remus thought ‘more jaded’ was more true than anything. He was advanced enough for his ageing process to have decelerated to extremes. If he were to ever gain wrinkles, it would be due to stress. “And you look like you haven’t aged a day.”
While Veida laughed as if there was nothing wrong with the current situation, blissfully ignorant, Koa addressed Violet. What a brave man he was.
After a year, Violet hadn’t changed one bit. Remus could almost fool himself into believing that only a day has passed since their last meeting. Her fiery embers for eyes, the way her dark hazel hair was styled into two braids at the side, and then a falling curtain everywhere else. He noticed all of this in one second. The only detail that was different was the white lab coat she adorned.
“Violet, I heard of your defeating of Nova. A mighty feat indeed.” Koa extended that same warmness to her.
“Thank you. It was a hard fight, I think I was a little out of it at the time. It’s all a bit of a blur. Enos showed up, and then there was this whole business with the Speed Sect-”
“Speed Sect?” All of Remus’ caution was thrown out of the window; curiosity was the new presence in his mind barging around, and it was making a riot. “I visited them on my way here. A clansman gave me a vision, but I wasn’t able to make sense of anything that happened. Java’s death . . . so that really went down?”
Veida and Violet nodded solemnly. Koa didn’t appear surprised — for the news to have even reached his secluded Territory, it must have truly gone global.
“How has your service here treated you?” Koa continued, trying to return the conversation to a lighter tone.
All credit to Koa, he was excellent at carrying the conversation.
“I fear I got the better end of the stick. Veida has been wonderful to work under. I felt a little lost after my service was over, but I’m sticking around. There seems to be some unfinished business we have to settle, but we’ll come to that later.”
When her attention finally turned to Remus, it took all his monk-like focus to keep a straight-face. He should have had the courtesy to at least say hello, or some kind of greeting, before blurting out about all that Enos and Java business. “I felt so bad when they sent you to Eclipse on guard duty. That sounded horrible.”
“It was actually quite nice.” Remus was surprised how easily the words came, and even more surprised when he realised he wasn’t exactly lying. Sure, he’d suffered his fair share of bad nights, and it had been hard. But the flickers of light that shone through, those few good moments, laughing along with his fellow watchmen, training Baldwin, late nights having more fun than was reasonable . . . those instances had been few and far between, but their impression on Remus was significant. “It was decent training, and gave me time to reflect. I’m glad you enjoyed your time too. And about Nova — I see that you’ve still got that fight in you. ”
She beamed. “Thanks.”
Remus wasn’t sure what to make of this. Nothing had gone wrong exactly, and any sense of impending awkwardness was kept far at bay. But it was like they were stepping on eggshells, constantly walking around the elephant in the room. Was not addressing what had happened really the best way to go about things? He didn’t mean that with scepticism, Remus was genuinely curious. No closure? No open discussions?
No. Perhaps Remus had been overcomplicating this. Violet had been right. After the death of Andreas, his first time experiencing someone so close to him dying, he’d suffered from an emotional outburst. Nothing more, nothing less. They were old enough to move on from this like regular, mature adults.
Remus’ smile came a little easier. All tension lifted off his shoulders, and for the first time, properly, Remus felt like he was simply catching up with an old friend.
He opened his mouth, vapid platitudes dancing on his tongue, when Koa’s tone turned dark.
“I don’t mean to be overly blunt, but I have to know: is this about my brother?”
Veida quirked an eyebrow. “Your brother? You mean Ash? Why would this be about him?”
Violet appeared equally as perplexed. “Maris and Veida decided to call this meeting because we sensed your battle. There is some pretty advanced technology here. The energy readings we gathered were nothing short of a fully-fledged Right-bearer, at least a weak one. And that is a threat that must be squashed. Though I fail to see how this has anything to do with Ash.”
If not for the absolute control Remus had developed over every muscle fibre in his body, something as subtle as a quiver of the lips may have betrayed the truth. But, as important as this was, it wasn’t his place to reveal it. He glanced over to Koa, the man, who, in that moment, seemed to have all eyes on him.
“That Right-bearer you’re referring to — that’s my brother. And no one is going to lay a hand on him.”
Silence. Two corpses might have had a more lively conversation.
“What exactly is going on here, Koa?” Veida asked, peering down at him, severe. “If you’re saying that Ash is under the control of Enos-”
“He is. But he deserves saving.”
Violet donned the tone of a concerned mother, explaining something very simple to their child. “Koa, once Enos has his hold on someone-”
“It might not be possible for their free will to be reclaimed.” Veida finished. “And we can’t risk him roaming free to lay destruction on Descent. The world is in a shaky place right now.”
Koa crossed his arms, remaining silent. He didn’t readily expose any emotion: not a lick of anger; not the subtlest touch of sadness. The soft sound of Remus’ breath seemed to fill the room, as the moment stretched on for eternity.
“No-one kills my brother.” Koa’s eye-contact with Veida never faltered. “If worse comes to worst . . . I’ll bring him to rest myself.”
“And if he grows too powerful for you to do that?” Veida’s cheerful tone was nowhere to be seen. “I know you barely made it out alive from your fight.”
Again, Koa didn’t waver for a second. “Then I’ll just have to grow stronger.”
So that was the reason behind all this. Maris had taken notice of their fight against the latest Right-bearer — that should have been obvious from the get-go. Now Remus could see the wider picture, and the ways things were playing out did not spell out a bright future.
Remus held his cup tightly. His curled fingers panged with pain, but holding his drink as tightly as he could seemed to anchor him in the moment. This conviction from Koa was unlike anything he’d seen from the man. He spoke with unbreakable certainty. Memories of the future the Speed Clansman had showed him swam in his mind, fishes in a pool of confusion.
When Remus noticed the tiny droplets levitating above his drink, he felt his guts twist.
Maris’s face appeared out of the cup, and Remus wasn’t ashamed to admit he dropped it the second he spotted the God-Graced. As Maris materialised out of the newly puddled floor, Remus glanced backwards.
The nautical lightshow had ceased to be.
Maris meant business.
“Eavesdropping on your guests isn’t very courtly, your Majesty.” More fiery words danced the cusp of Koa’s lips, but he didn’t dare utter them.
“Your brother, a Right-bearer. Fascinating . . .”
If Maris wasn’t so absorbed by the revelation, she may have pulverised Koa on the spot for that impudence. Then Remus had to remind himself that Maris was not nearly that bad. Compared to the cutthroat nature of some of the other God-Graced that called Descent home, she was a reasonable, although sometimes eccentric, woman.
Or there was always the possibility he was being too optimistic. That would be a change for once.
Remus turned to her. Koa wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t about to start a feud with a God-Graced, one Remus had just revealed he was still indebted to by divine vow. But every alarm bell, sixth sense, and gut feeling he had were clashing clambells in tandem. They needed to get to the bottom of this, and fast. “Okay Maris, now that we’ve given you some very valuable information, I think it’s in order that you return the favour. So tell us: why did you gather us all here?”
“Hold on a minute.” Koa readdressed Veida, all the wind taken out of his sails. “Who is the current monarch again?”
Koa’s words went though one of Remus' ears, and out the other, as Maris spoke. “Ah, Remus, I suppose I do owe you an explanation-”
“Maris of course.” Veida frowned at Koa. “Who else?”
Koa’s eyes widened, his jaw clenched.
“You see Remus, ah, well, this is a little embarrassing, you see.” Maris was acting awfully offstandish.
“It’s been one year since Maris’s coronation.” Two conversations ran circles around Remus, their destinations the same, but neither quite reaching it. “Over one year, in fact. That means-”
There was a colossal bang outside. The roof above tremored, dancing from side to side until it looked as if the chandelier was about to collapse any second now, spilling a sea of shattered crystals on the banqueters below.
Remus blasted off to the nearest window, not caring to consider how rude it would be to activate his Mark. He brushed the curtain that covered two great glass mosaics aside, and what it revealed through those coloured panes, even if it was blurred, made the hairs on his back stand up.
Despite not having seen the woman in over a year, Remus spotted Eliane without fail. Grey hair fell down her shoulders, hawkish, amber eyes seeming to stare up at Remus, even as he peered down from floors up high in Maris’ castle.
Even harder not to notice, were the hoards of Reptilian Clansmen at her back. And they didn’t appear very happy.
No wonder he could activate his Mark: with no one true monarch in power as Maris attempted to overstay her welcome, her authority had dwindled as Eliane dared to challenge it. Now anyone in the City Proper could do the same.
Remus spun. By now, everyone present was at the window’s side. The cat was out of the bag.
“So this is why you actually dragged us all here. To fight your battles for you.”
Remus walked towards the nearest door in sight, not even sure if it was an exit. If they had to storm through every hall here before escaping, Remus would. He had learnt his lesson last time: Remus wouldn’t let himself be coerced, controlled, or otherwise used for another’s gain again.
“Remus, I’d advise that you think about this very carefully.” Maris approached slowly, “think of the power you could gain with a God-Graced to aid you. You’ll have the monarch of Hybrid on your side! I could rally thousands of soldiers to join your cause, and help topple Damosh once and for all!”
“I don’t plan to take down one tyrant with the aid of another. I’m doing things cleanly, and I am not a tool to be used.”
“Oh?” Maris frowned melodramatically. “So that’s how it is?”
Remus looked over to the men and women gathered around the room.
He feared for their safety.
No doubt about it, things were about to get messy.