Story:Kings of Strife/Part 22

Part Twenty-Two
The man walked lifelessly and slowly. He had been roaming the land for a long time now, most likely more than two days straight if his mental calculations were accurate. He couldn’t remember how long it had been exactly, but that fact was only in the back of his mind as he continued to walk. The only things he felt were the pangs of hunger that had recently begun to spring up in his belly and the occasional pangs of pain that wisped through his brain. He ignored them.

By now he found himself aimlessly stalking about in a desert, which meant he must have went north and further into Inusia. Since he awoke in the dark castle, the man couldn’t explain anything about his feelings, his location, nor the fact that he was completely alone. All that he could constructively piece together in his mind was a relentless feeling of weakness, emptiness, and failure. It was beyond overwhelming, and it had completely overshadowed any feelings he had. All he had was his loneliness.

He hadn’t realized where he was going, or why, just that he had to escape from where he was when he awoke. The dark and dreary place, impossibly dismal despite the sunlight that flooded through its empty halls, was cavernous and completely silent. It only taunted at the emptiness he felt and stabbed at his consciousness, so he wanted only to escape it. All he had left was to walk.

The man had left behind his shattered weapon and his coat, and most of what remained of his shirt and pants were torn to dirty shreds. They were covered in blood, but he had no injuries anywhere on his body, so he assumed it was from somebody else. That would have normally brought about some guilt in him, but not much, yet now he was completely unaffected by the idea that he must have brutally killed someone. Truly, the dubiousness of this would have even relieved him normally, but still it failed in this regard at the moment. From the instant he awoke, the man was an allegory for pure nothingness.

There wasn’t a destination to his wandering, but he knew his mindless shuffling would only end when he was dead.

The date was still unknown to him and the days he trudged through were made of pure monotony. Weakly and with a hint of dark irony, he questioned if he was immortal. The sun continued to beam down harder on his skin, now tanned beyond normal preferences. What a riot that would be, he thought to himself. An immortal king of an empty kingdom. Ruling over a graveyard whilst on a throne of skulls and regrets.

All he could do was weakly shake his head at these conjectures and lick his lips again. By now, he was so very thirsty.

No longer did he mourn himself nor his problems. There was nothing left for him to do about them, especially not now. Everything about his very existence was proof of that for him now. Out of delusion, he began to speak to himself as he stumbled across the dunes.

“I do not change… This world does not change. I do not change… Nothing changes… I can never change… It ends. I end… It ends… Unchanging… I am… It ends… Immortal.” He knew not if the words made sense, nor where they came from, but they were his laws and he knew them to be his truth.

What was he? Where was he supposed to go? Why did he still live?

The man didn’t know the answers to any of these, and he knew he never would, so he found them pointless. It was time for him to stop asking meaningless questions and let life deal him what it may. This he told himself he would change before death took him; this he would not allow himself to die with. The grips of cold oblivion would not take hold of him while he grasped at mundane straws.

It took him no longer than an hour to realize this about himself, after which he found his empty state much easier to bear. The small comfort had made him a tiny bit stronger. There was no longer any pain in peacefully waiting for death to take him away.

His content oblivion was shattered when he heard the voice. Idly, he remembered that the first time such a change happened to him, it was also because he heard a voice that called for his attention, although this time the voice was not out of distress but instead concern.

“Silverius?! Is that you?”

Before he knew it, the man found himself squinting at the soldier he had seen not long ago. He was even rougher looking than before, with his beard fully grown and his noticeably longer hair wildly pushed backwards, and he was obviously in an even worse state than before. Running towards the man with a limp, it was clear that the soldier had been injured, but his energetic state proved that it couldn’t have been bad enough to bring about a crippling injury. His clothes were even more tattered than before, now settling with barely hanging off his frame, and his weapon was missing from his person.

Vikcent Hyusei arrived at the wandering man and stood in front of him, gasping for his breath. The wanderer absently stopped walking and looked straight at his companion with no real expression on his face.

“Silverius, wait… What are you doing here? What happened to you?!” The soldier looked with surprise at the obscene amount of blood decorating the wanderer’s clothes, but was even more appalled to find that there were little to no injuries on the wanderer’s body at all. “How in the world…”

“I don’t know.” With three words, Silverius answered most of the questions Hyusei could have asked, and his abysmally empty eyes quashed the rest. Standing in front of the soldier was truly a broken, lost man. “I woke up like this and I don’t have anywhere to go. I don’t have anything to do anymore.” Within his eyes, Silverius painted to the world a perfect picture of pure despondence. Even his voice was empty and weak.

Vik awkwardly balanced on the balls of his feet as he once again looked over the resigned existence in front of him. “Well, er… Does this have to do with that girl you were looking for earlier? Did she reject you or something?”

Silverius’ face twitched with pain for a moment before it returned to the blank slate it had occupied before. His eyes were so lazily opened that they appeared closed at times and the ever-darkening bags beneath them proved his exhaustion, mentally if not physically. “I never found her. I never found anything.”

It was clear that Vik definitely wanted to say something to Silverius and perhaps comfort him, but at the same time he looked off at the sun in the sky and often glanced at the sand dunes off to the west. “So… What will you be doing now? Do you have anywhere to go?”

“No.”

“Well…!” The soldier hesitated, his meanings pure but his rationality telling him that he was wasting valuable time. “I know you’re good with a sword and I need to find somebody and stop them. You should come with me.”

“…No, I don’t think I will. More people will die…”

“Oh, don’t bring that up now!” Vik seemed almost personally affronted by Crono’s answer. “People die no matter what happens. People are…” Once again, he hesitated and looked off into the distance quickly. “People could be dying right now. If you had come with me before, we might have saved them, but it’s too late for that now. If you come with me now, we actually have a chance at doing what’s right. You might even see that girl again!”

The muscles of Crono’s face moved quickly once again. They drifted towards almost shock at hearing the reference to Maria once again from the soldier, but he donned his mask of apathy fast enough to make one believe that he was purposely shunning happiness from himself.

“I might… No, I won’t.” He looked down onto the ground beneath him and wavered. “Will I…? It’s too late. Is it too late?”

Vik interrupted his whisperings to slap him on the shoulder lightly and begin to anxiously dance on his feet again. “It’s never too late! Stop wallowing in your sadness like this. If you hesitate for anything, you’ll never get anywhere in your life. Don’t worry about what you can’t control; either you come with me and find this girl again, or you stay here and die alone!”

As enticing as death had been so earlier and as conclusive as the mercenary’s mental closure had been mere minutes before, Singun Crono Silverius found that he could not resist the fact that he might see Maria Zorphan again, even if for a moment and with this odd soldier. He still held within him the sharp blades of regret and remorse, both in himself and in her disappearance, but the weapon of his resistance had been dulling until now it was at the point of uselessness. He discarded it beneath him and looked back to the soldier in front of him, who was visibly impatient at his thoughtfulness.

“I… I think you’re right. I can’t give up yet. I’ll follow you.”

*****

The sun was high in the sky once again when the two stumbled upon the hot city of Inusia.

Named after the country of which it was capital, Inusia City was a sprawling metropolis that lay on the border of its home country and the neighboring Shorica. It was very large but quiet and peaceful for its size, especially much more so than Morshia City, which was many miles to the north at the top of the border. It held within its large urban section a large population of middle and low class peoples, all milling about their daily lives with little to worry about the rampant crime that plagues Morshia. Originating as a merchant trading post, Inusia City was notable in that, while it held a sizable noble and merchant population, a majority of its populace were accepting and hard-working people who gave their all into their prosperity. That being said, honesty had never been the key to success, and not only was poverty always an issue in the land, homelessness was a continuous problem.

Because of this, it wasn’t surprising to anyone for Singun Crono Silverius and Vikcent Hyusei to arrive with rags upon their bodies as clothing, especially not in the middle of the hot afternoon. It only took them a few minutes of wandering the streets for the both of them to realize they had no money between the two of them.

“I’m sure she went this way. That light went to the west… I’m sure of it.” So focused was he on the task in front of him that Vikcent did not allow himself anytime to recognize the fact that he had escaped the world’s largest desert with his life. Ever since he had met Silverius, his time had be occupied with him muttering to himself and checking the skies to see if his calculations had been correct. The beam of light had happened the night before, meaning that by the time he arrived at its destination, there would be nothing he could do to save anyone.

“Hey, soldier boy?” Silverius’ words were quiet and strained from exhaustion, but still grabbed Vik’s attention, albeit momentarily. The soldier in question glanced at his mercenary friend before looking back off into the full streets ahead of him.

“Yeah, what is it? You feeling alright?”

“That’s the thing.” Silverius was hesitant to voice his own weaknesses, but now that he had been given a new goal by his companion, there wasn’t much desire to die left in him. Not completely non-existent, but still dwindling. “We’ve been walking for days. We need to find somewhere to eat, sleep, and resupply.” Weakly, he pulled on the remains of his clothes. While their rough state wouldn’t normally be that appalling to the residents of Inusia, the blood on them was drawing more than a few looks.

Vik pondered this for a moment. “Well, alright then, if you insist…” Mentally, he added yet another day of delay to his first aid goals. “Do you have enough money for all of that?”

Silverius paused and patted his empty pockets. “No, I don’t think I do.” He hadn’t obtained any income since the initial payment he obtained from stealing the Wind Crystal; over the course of a month or two and all the travel he had been conducting, the money had apparently been spent entirely.

Speaking of the Wind Crystal, he found himself surprised that it was still on his person after all that he had been through. Out of all his personal belongings, even his long-used gunblade that was constructed based on designs from his late father, it was the Crystal that he always found himself keeping safe, even unconsciously. He thought back to the statements that Hyusei himself had said earlier, that the Crystal was taking hold of him. He sucked his teeth and spoke to his friend again with finality. “Typical… I definitely have no money left.”

Vik looked back at the mercenary and wiped downwards on his face. “Great. So… What do we do?” As goal-oriented as he was, not even he could argue that the two of them would be able to last much longer without supplies, let alone take down that lance wielding enemy he had encountered in the Tower. Usually he’d be able to access his bank account or call upon the Inusian military funds in times of need, but the two of them were certainly bereft from his control after almost two months of being away from his duties without given leave.

The mercenary could see the cogs in Vik’s brain moving to surmount their problem. “I’ve got nothing to sell, and we don’t have any weapons to complete a quick job…” Silverius spoke his thoughts aloud as the two continued to wander the area, but didn’t catch Vik’s bewildered glance at him when he mentioned the fact that they would need weapons to complete a “job”.

“What kind of job are you talking about? We’re not going to kill someone to get any money, man!”

Now Silverius looked at his acquaintance with his own form of bewilderment. He opened his mouth to reply and justify his words, but realized that voicing a supportive opinion of murder probably wouldn’t have warmed the soldier up to him at all. Feeling a bit spiteful, he instead scoffed and attempted to change the subject. “Whatever; we need to focus. Is there really any way for us to make money quickly and easily?”

“How should I know? You’re the sellsword,” spit Hyusei in reply. He had taken note of Silverius’ true meaning and hadn’t approved. Additionally, he was somewhat offended that the man thought he could just brush off such a topic. Hyusei did agree, however, that it would be childish and a waste of time to dwell on it.

The mercenary’s face darkened as he went deeper into thought. “I’ve pondered this before, and there’s only two things I can think of to save me in a situation like this.” He turned and looked Vikcent in the eyes, his serious face even more hardened than usual. “Either we sell a part of our bodies, maybe an organ, or we steal the money from someone. I guess we don’t have to kill them, but we would have to make sure they couldn’t retaliate against us within a relatively short amount of time.”

Vikcent was in awe. Not only was Singun Silverius’ words completely flat and emotionless despite the things he was saying, the idea that he had pondered this before and agreed that they were his last resorts was eye-opening. For the first time, Vikcent realized that he was in the presence of a common ally, but this ally was actually an experienced criminal. He had found a way into Inusia’s greatest security system, stolen and made off with its Crystal, and had murdered so much that the idea of doing it even more was nothing special to him. The soldier could hardly come to terms with it, although he also realized the fact that he was taking this a little bit too far.

He stopped and looked at his feet, still thinking over what had been proposed. Their options were mercilessly bleak, but he knew before very long that selling an organ was out of the question, at least for now. There was no time for them to recover from a surgical operation of any kind, nor any smarts in sacrificing their battle prowess at all. A robbery had to be done.

“Alright then, we’ll have to take someone’s money. I don’t…” Vik gave a resigned sigh. “I don’t know what to do about this. You take the lead.”

Silverius ran his hand through his hair, now slightly longer and still sloppily framing his face, as he let out a deep breath. Their wandering had led the two away from the main streets, and now the air was mostly empty and quiet, leaving the two able to talk in quiet voices and still understand each other. “It’ll have to be fast and we’ll have to get someone who has enough money to satisfy us both at once. Making a spree out of things will just make it too complicated.”

The taller man looked about the slowly thinning streets with a sort of helpless desperation. He did not like this situation he found himself in and did not like even more how he couldn’t think of any way out of it. “So… What do you suppose we do? Beat up a merchant or something?”

The mercenary looked at his companion with a cold and distant stare. It caught Hyusei off guard. “No, that’s foolish. Something like this must be done precisely, so that we don’t get caught and we don’t have to do it again.” Silverius spoke flippantly, as if he were scolding an ignorant child. Hyusei was a bit insulted, but was too unnerved to say anything about it. “Going about crimes the easy way is how to get yourself caught. No, we’ll find a place somewhere in the housing district and stake out the farthest place from the main city. Between you and myself, we should be able to break in and steal enough money or useful items and beat someone, if it comes down to it.” His goal stated, Silverius turned and began to walk in a completely different direction than the one they were wandering toward before.

“Well, uh…” At this point, Hyusei was bewildered and speechless. The gravity of his planned actions were beginning to weigh heavily on his shoulders. “You seem to know this city pretty well.” Maybe avoiding the subject, for now, would save him some guilt and preserve his mental acuity.

“I’ve been here a couple times before.” Singun looked back at Hyusei, who was tersely picking at the beard he was growing. It was a shade lighter than the rest of his hair, but was still plenty dark. “Relax a little bit. I’ll do most of the work and we won’t get caught. I’ve done it plenty of times before.” This didn’t comfort Hyusei in the least, so the mercenary turned around and the two walked in silence for a number of minutes.

As the two quietly walked single-file throughout the Inusia City avenues, the quality of citizenry gradually rose, and so lowered the appearance quality of Vikcent Hyusei and Singun Crono Silverius. At the point that passerby gave the barely-dressed men odd looks, they decided it would be a good idea to take to the darkness of the alleys and side streets for best travel. Navigating their way around various parks and squares added some time to their urban journey, but it prevented them from being subject to questioning from the police on their purpose. Still, the infrastructure generally improved the further they delved into the city, until it was to the point that houses and skyscrapers decorated both the sky and the near horizon.

Night had finally fallen when Silverius had stopped walking and announced to his companion that they had successfully moved into the suburbs of Inusia. All around them were fancy houses, multi-storied and strongly-built, some with lights on and others without them. Small cars were parked in the driveways of some, but most simply had bicycles held up against their frames. There were some people walking about with a purpose, but with night out in the suburban neighborhood, there were few who were up and moving.

The duo, led still by Singun Silverius, headed to one of the largest houses that had a car in its driveway. Whispering to his companion, the mercenary explained his mindset.

“You always want to go for the places with obvious displays of wealth, because that means they are materialistic and keep things in their home. Even if they don’t have money, they will have things you can sell.” Hyusei nodded weakly, but his face was still agonizingly torn. “Now, when we go inside, the most important thing is to not be seen, by anybody.” Now that he had gotten to his point, Crono looked Vik in the eyes with his own hard and serious ones. Complete focus shined through his dark orbs. “I don’t care what you have to do or when you have to leave. Just don’t get caught.”

With this, he turned away and began to inspect the window, squinting through the darkness. Vik sputtered and walked up behind him, faltering with his distaste. “Wait, is there really no other way? Are we really going to do this? I thought we were supposed to be the good guys!”

Silverius wiped at his face with one hand and let out a frustrated sigh. “We’ve been over this – you’re just wasting our time! The ends will justify the means, but if we don’t do what we can to build our strength back up, we’re just asking to be killed, especially with no weapons on us or money for food.” Right on time, both of their stomachs grumbled at the thought of nourishment. “Just do what I said and stay out of the way if you don’t want to feel too bad.” The slimmer man shook his head and began fiddling his nails into the bottom of a window pane.

Within a minute, Silverius had successfully opened the window and had pushed it up to its hilt. The house was dark inside and the two were camouflaged in its large shadow. The mercenary looked to his companion, who still showed indecision, and gave him a hard look. Without exchanging anymore words, he climbed into the house via the window, followed by Hyusei.

Once inside the dark house, the mercenary took a look around and began to walk away from the window into the darkness. Before he could disappear into the abyss, he faltered and turned back to Hyusei, who was still standing close to the window. He looked to the man with fiercely shining, determined eyes, and whispered to him.

“I’ll look around and see what I can do. You just stay here and keep a watch out. If anything happens or anyone shows up, just run.” With this, his eyes seemed to harden, and his gaze became distant. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll see this through. If anything, just run.” Neither of them said another word as Silverius walked away and soon merged with the inky blackness.

Hyusei was left alone by the window and soon found himself chilled by the breeze from the outside. He did not feel the wind at all as he was already chilled by what he was taking part in. What had occurred within him recently was strange, new, and unfamiliar to the man. Up to this very moment, he had been crusading across the world with the firm belief that he was in the right and that he would soon be rewarded for his actions. Pursuing the evil Ouroboros and saving the world from their tyranny would justify him skipping out on the military and smuggling into various countries, mainly because those were necessary to bringing about justice. But, no matter how hard he tried, Vikcent Hyusei could not justify his current actions.

Where was the justice in robbing an innocent person? How would Ouroboros be wounded by them breaking into an unrelated citizen’s house? Wouldn’t his time be better spend rushing towards where the Lance Knight headed and maybe saving any people that he could? Even though he had reluctantly agreed to stealing money over something as absurd as selling an organ, there was a firm belief in his mind that their purposes could be better brought about. Surely this was not the best way to accrue funds.

As he stood there, completely still in the darkness, Hyusei found himself truly analyzing the companionship he had chosen. Not only was it shocking to find Singun Crono Silverius once again, in the middle of the Inusian Desert no less, he was beginning to wonder if working with the man was truly in his best interest. After all, he was a criminal, and he was only proving this with the lack of hesitation he showed in the breaking and entering. Not only that, but the man had seemed to elude himself of both his aggressive female friend from earlier and never found the “girl” he was looking for, whom Hyusei assumed to be a different person, but had never seen. How much further could this man alienate himself from justice and normal society? Did Hyusei really want to alienate himself as well?

So engrossed was he in his self-analysis that the soldier didn’t realize he was not alone until he heard footsteps and muttering. Whirling to his right, he noticed a light from a room click on. The bright light illuminated some of the dark room Hyusei was in, which he now realized was a sparsely furnished living room, and it was accompanied by a tired groan and a deep voice. He strained to listen and couldn’t identify just what the person was saying, but he knew in his heart that they were investigating some noise that Silverius must have made.

The footsteps grew in volume and still Hyusei found himself frozen still. In the back of his mind he panicked for a moment and, without realizing completely what he was doing, snatched up a large blue vase that was close to his location. The action made a slight scraping noise, which made the footsteps pause, but they continued soon after with a much faster pace. The soldier knew the resident would appear past the wall in front of him from which the light originated and would see the foreign man standing completely still in the middle of their living room. Once more the breeze blew into the room, audibly this time, and chilled Hyusei to the bone.

Finally the person made their entrance and froze, much like Vikcent himself. The short, obese, and barely dressed man looked at Hyusei, then the open window, then to the vase in Hyusei’s hands, and understood the situation completely. The two stood completely still for a moment before both jolted with movement. The fat resident whirled and started to run as Hyusei dashed forward and raised the vase to the side, ready to strike in an instant. The soldier’s instincts and reaction time were much quicker than the fear of the resident, even when both had turned the corner and started to run into the adjacent and lighted room, and within a second Hyusei was right behind his target. Hyusei’s muscles flexed with latent strength as he smashed the vase from the side, much like a baseball bat, and crashed it into the side of the fat man’s head.

An extremely loud noise flooded the house as the vase broke on impact with the resident’s skull. Sent flying from the attack, the resident flew a foot to the side and subsequently smashed into the wall of the house with enough force to cause it to resound with another crack, along with a wet splat as his head almost flattened from the two attacks. The body, dead instantly, fell to its knees before lying face-down on the tile. Blood soon began to drip from the visibly flattened head of the fresh cadaver.

Vikcent Hyusei stood frozen in place, glass shards in his hands and all over the floor, and looked at the blood with wide eyes. Already splattered on the cream brick walls of what was once a pristinely kept kitchen, the red bodily fluid was also vigorously pooling beneath the body of the large man. The soldier’s eyes were wide and he shivered heavily, even though he was no longer anywhere near the window. Only now did he remember Silverius’ instructions in case of emergency.

He suddenly shook with more than cold and fell to his knees among the glass shards. The soldier was breathless suddenly and his hands, beginning to bleed from clenching and digging the glass into his flesh, were almost convulsing. He felt no pain in his hands or his body but was overcome with an aching of his heart. The only things he could see where the body and the blood, so much of the blood, too much for him to acknowledge completely. All he could see in his mind were the vase, so heavy and large in his hands, slamming into the side of the man’s head and destroying his life in one small moment, all from a rosy red filter. He was completely disgusted and felt sick, but could not force himself to vomit or even let out a single tear.

The insufferable quiet was followed by a bang and more footsteps. Hyusei didn’t move and in a moment Silverius bounded from the very room the two had entered in. Hyusei could see him from the corner of his eye but did not move, could not move. The mercenary looked at the scene, mouth slightly agape, and instantly moved to grab Hyusei’s shoulders and help him stand. The soldier followed his silent directions limply.

Silverius shook his head before addressing the soldier with an annoyed yet still condescending tone. “Didn’t I tell you to run away? Dammit, I knew I should have left you outside. Look at this mess you made…”

Hyusei was suddenly appalled by the words of his companion and looked at him with a gaze full of horror and sorrow. In that instant, the hesitation he felt before he spoke, the soldier looked into Silverius’ eyes and found them as dark and empty as ever, and realized that now he had them too. The two of them were more alike than he ever thought, and the fact that he just killed a man, an innocent man doing nothing more than investigating strange men in his house, proved his alienation from society as much as anything could have. Hyusei could never return home the same man again, would never be able to look the world in the eyes and say that he was a man of complete virtue and justice, and he felt himself break because of it. Still grappling with this revelation, he somehow managed to stutter out to the man still helping him from the ground.

“How could you call this a mess? Is that what this is to you? I just ended a man’s life and it’s solely a mess? This man will never speak again, nor feel pride at his accomplishments in life, but… you… This is just another obstacle to be overcome to you?” Hyusei was completely sickened at his words, which defined his actions and placed his own blame on himself finally and clearly. His hands clenched even tighter, this time on purpose, just so he could feel the pain as some form of penance.

Silverius did not make eye contact but instead looked over to the disfigured body the colored glass and seemed to piece together the situation. It was only a scarce moment before he replied, but in that second, Hyusei saw every feature of his face and seemed to gain insight on everything that drove those features to being. In that moment, Silverius’ eyes were half-closed and completely dark, so dark and empty despite the bright light of the kitchen, and looked darkly onto the bloody and still future. His face was stone still and his jaw was clenched as he looked onto what had happened but knew he could change none of it. The features of his appearance, while unremarkable and only somewhat chiseled, were altogether a wholly different and unique show of distant and complete melancholy that Hyusei found them hard to see, but he understood them entirely in that quick moment. The mercenary had one of those rare auras about him that proudly and defiantly showed his purposeful alienation from the laws of humanity and rather looked at them with distaste. Obviously, it wasn’t enough for this man to be alive and live for his own rules, and he could only be satisfied by proving that he was superior with the power of his own aloofness.

Showing all this in a hardened glance and a weak gesture of his hands, Silverius waved off Hyusei’s concern and replied. “I found money in a bedroom and grabbed some jewelry we can sell in the morning. Let’s just get out of here, find an inn for the night, and by the morning we’ll rent a buggy and be out of this city.”

Not thirty minutes later, the two found themselves bunked in a quiet and small housing inn not a mile away from the house they had broken into. Silverius had fallen asleep on the bed that was next to Hyusei’s within minutes, and his light snores resounded through the small room every now and then. The soldier had not spoken since the two had left the house, and now he sat on his bed, eyes wide open and hands, dried with blood and still embedded with glass shards, hugging himself as he shivered. Even with the blankets around his shoulders, Vikcent Hyusei was still freezing cold. Even when he had traversed Mount Gulg and even when he was face-down in the Mirage Tower’s floor of snow, he had never been this cold. Hyusei had never been this cold in his life, and nothing could warm him at this point. The feeling of such a tundra-like cold, from inside his bones and pulsating with his quick heartbeat, was completely unfamiliar to him, new and foreign, but it only served to push him from comfort even further. When he blinked, he saw the man he had killed with his own two hands, bleeding on the floor in front of him. When he blinked he saw his crimes, and so he did not blink until his eyes began to burn, and even then he waited a moment before relenting to the pain. He never wanted to blink again.

*****

Silverius only slept for two hours before he sat up in bed, his hair messier than ever. The sky was still beneath the veil of night and the soldier was still sitting on his bed, but the mercenary felt his weary body become somewhat more refreshed after his short nap. Before then, it had been more than a few days since he had last slept, and his body was beginning to scream for it. Without a woman in his bed, there was no other reason for him to close his eyes at night.

He slid his legs off the small and rigid cot before standing and yawning quietly. The inn he had paid for was cheap and seedy, but nothing he couldn’t endure for a few hours. He had managed to grab almost a thousand gold pieces worth of money from the house they had broken into, but with what they needed to buy, that wouldn’t last very long. The shirtless mercenary didn’t move from his sitting position on his bed, completely opposite that of Hyusei next to him, as he pondered their financial situation.

It was only now that he realized that things weren’t looking good for him in the long run. With Ouroboros undoubtedly still on the lookout for him, as well as the Inusian government, he would have to go somewhere else to return to his career, presumably someplace off-continent. That wouldn’t be too difficult, of course, but it would mean forgoing all the contacts and memories he had gained over the past few years.

The former mercenary snorted at this idea and became serious. There was nobody besides himself that he ever wanted to see if he started life over.

Nobody except Maria, of course.

That was the first time he had thought of her since Vikcent brought up her existence back at the desert. Progress was slow and would likely take a while, weeks even, but Singun Crono Silverius was beginning to start thinking about something other than Maria for once. That was progress. Bitterly, he noted that even his own name wasn’t safe to induce thoughts about her, though. She preferred to call him Crono and had been the first person in years to do so.

A dark breeze wafted into Silverius’ bones and drew him back into reality. Strangely, there were no windows in the room, let alone any open ones. Hyusei was staring at him with those bright blue eyes of his. They had been so weak and less vibrant since he saw them back at the house, after they had witnessed a crime. They had witnessed their own crime.

Sighing into the silent night, the mercenary stood up and began to dress himself with the scarce rags he had left. First thing on the agenda was buying new clothes for the two for the two of them.

Not five minutes later, he was ready to go and prepared to get the morning started early with some much needed selling and shopping. He held the stolen trinkets in the crook of his arms and looked at Hyusei, who was still dressed and still staring at him from his bed. Somehow, Silverius knew that Hyusei was staring at nothing at particular, and was horrified with what he saw. The mercenary lightly kicked the edge of Hyusei’s bed and nodded his head towards the door. The soldier, knocked out of his trance, got the message and walked after the quickly leaving mercenary with all the gumption of a corpse.

*****

By the time the two were in their car and were speeding away from the large city, the sun was just coming up at noon. The car they found themselves in was a bright red, fairly recent machine that had its backseat completely consumed by the purchases of the day, which amounted to little more than food, extra clothes, and weapons. There was little other traffic on the road, so Silverius sped along to the east as fast as he could with relative safety. Hyusei, who had only pointed him further and further west for direction, was still in no condition to drive.

None of them spoke for the entirety of the ride and none of them had a problem with it. The two had become companions and dependents, reluctantly, but hadn’t yet crossed the line of true friendship and comfortable conversation. For Silverius, it was simply enough to focus on driving and maneuvering the clunky and loud car around the rocky Inusian coast. Hyusei still didn’t want to talk, and he looked out of the window on his side with twinkling sad eyes. Occasionally he would shake with revulsion, but his weakness would not progress any further.

The trip only lasted for an hour before Silverius noticed the ash in the sky. Hanging about the atmosphere like a fog, he at first confused it for mist until the fine gray substances began to enter his mouth and make him cough. At this point, Hyusei had adopted an even darker expression and sat with his knees tightly held against his chest. The mercenary took this to mean that he was heading in the right direction, although he was becoming increasingly more wary of what exactly the two were to be moving towards.

Soon after that point, the two arrived at the ruined city and the car puttered to a stop. Hyusei let out a weak gasp at what he saw in front of him and choked on sobs that threatened to escape. Silverius was in plain awe and awkwardly struggled with words on the destruction in front of him. Never had he seen such chaos before, and never did it seem so overwhelming. No human could have ravaged a city so, he knew. No human could have caused ash to rain from the sky and descend on rubble in every direction.

Unlike the mercenary, Vikcent Hyusei knew exactly what had caused the city to be ruined, and he was completely overcome by guilt and fear. He remembered the heavily armed and caped Knight who had used the two Crystals to manipulate the sky and summon a giant lance of light. The fear at first was formless and merely an unlikely whisper in his ears, but now Hyusei could see that they had been proven completely right. That lance of light had indeed been slammed onto the earth, and what an impact it had made. There was not a body or a cry to be heard anywhere. For such an attack to be completely distant and leave not even a corpse about in the destroyed city, it had to have packed unimaginable power.

The city was ruined by the power of two Crystals, this he knew. If such a thing could happen with only two of the objects, what could happen if the organization had their grips on even more? What sort of feat could they perform next? Now, more than ever, Hyusei felt the gravity of his situation and the importance behind his haste. He had been too slow and too weak to do anything for the people around him and beneath him, all destroyed within their metropolis. But with his own power, and that of the mercenary behind him, he knew that there was a chance at saving the lives of others and bringing Ouroboros to justice.

Speaking of the mercenary, Hyusei then noticed that Silverius had curiously wandered into the collapsing area after doubling back to the car and retrieving his new gunblade. The weapon wasn’t as expertly made as the last and was slimmer, giving it more of a rifle aesthetic than a sword’s. Outfitted in new gear, Singun Crono Silverius wore all black, thin-fitting pants that tucked into light brown boots. Above this he donned a grey jacket that buttoned asymmetrically across his chest and was accentuated with two light metal shoulder pauldrons.

Likewise, Vikcent Hyusei had reluctantly been treated with new clothes, and was wearing a practical suit of brown and red pants with a matching shirt beneath a scarce set of heavy shoulder and arm gauntlets. His old boots had been completely destroyed and were now replaced by strong leather ones reinforced with thin crystarium metal. The soldier wiped at his face, eyes tired from his sleepless night, and picked up his own new weapon from the back of the buggy. The assault rifle was cold and shiny and a bit too heavy for his hands to get used to, but it worked for now and it would kill a man if push came to shove. That was all he needed.

The two were completely aloof to each other as they explored the dismal and empty streets of what remained of Phenicks. The streets were stained completely gray from the ash and were framed on either side by tall walls of crumbled concrete. The horizon merged with the monochrome sky and hazed together with the wind, blowing ash completely about the area. It didn’t take Silverius long to realize that there were no bodies left behind from whatever had attacked the city.

Almost an hour into the exploration, he shook his head and looked straight into the sky. He couldn’t even see the sun anymore. “This is hopeless. This isn’t the Phenicks I know. I’ve been here so many times… I’ve lived here before. Now, everyone is gone. I just can’t believe it.” He spoke with a hollow disappointment, sadness even, but still Vik couldn’t find any sort of real attachment in his words. “What could have caused this?”

The soldier kicked up a piece of rock into a dried blood stain on the side of a building. The impact caused a few pebbles to quietly drop down to the ground. “Ouroboros did this. With just two Crystals, they did this. They killed all these people.”

Silverius stopped in his tracks and looked at Vikcent, who had just shoved his hands into his pockets and continued to shuffle around without looking back. “What did you say? Just two Crystals flattened this entire city? Just two Crystals made every person in the city disappear?”

“That’s what I said,” grumbled Vik. Silverius ran his hands through his hair and his eyes widened.

“Hoooly shit. If this happened with two Crystals, what could they do with three? Or maybe even four?” He reached down into his pocket and ran his fingers on the Wind Crystal that he held in his possession. Now, at least, he had a logical reason to keep it out of their clutches besides that of his primal urges. That didn’t ease his mind at all, though.

Hyusei found himself suddenly bestowed with a burning need to confront the mercenary. He whirled in place and started to glare at Silverius. “Now do you see what I mean when I told you to work with me? That’s why we can’t just let these Crystals go back somewhere, because they’ll just find it again! Trust me, this group is big. They’re huge. And obviously,” he emoted angrily by waving his hands at the desolation about them, “they aren’t afraid to throw their weight around. So you’ll forgive me if I get a little possessive, huh?” He waited on a response from the dazed Silverius with crazed eyes.

Taken aback a bit by Hyusei’s outburst, Silverius stepped back and was insulted. “Look, man, you’re the one who lost your Crystal. I don’t need your help, it’s more like you need mine. I’ve kept mine on my person just fine.” He scoffed as he spoke and crossed his arms.

“Oh yeah? Sounds to me like you were a little sad that you couldn’t keep a person in your possession a little while back, right?!” Hyusei looked confused for a second, realizing that he was pushing past a delicate boundary, but he soon regained his aggression and decided to push harder. His fists clenched tightly and lost some of their color. “Hm, I wonder who stole the girl of your dreams… Oh, right! It was Ouroboros… Wasn’t it?”

The mercenary growled and adjusted his gunblade on its waist strap. “What do you know, dammit?! You’re just some hick beefcake! What kind of soldier pisses himself after killing someone? Isn’t that your job?”

“No, my job is preserving justice and destroying those who would seek to bring it down, people like you! In fact, if it weren’t for these Knights terrorizing the world, I’d have taken you down a long time ago! Not like you could have done anything about it!” Hyusei was in Silverius’ face at this point and the two breathed hard at each other. The falling ash would occasionally get in their eyes and the two would blink furiously at each other.

“I can handle myself just fine, you ass! And what do you know about justice? What can you say about how I live my life? Everything I do, I’ve done it to survive. That’s all that matters – none of this justice crap, no getting my hopes up for revenge or love or any of that, so I’d appreciate if you just let it go and be in the past! I sure am trying to!” With this, Singun Silverius shoved Hyusei and began to walk back towards the buggy. “There’s nothing to see here. Not anymore.”

Vikcent stood in place after being pushed for a second, unsure of himself for a split second before losing himself to his emotions. He ran at Silverius and pushed the lanky man back, sending him into a side crop of broken rubble and coughing as ash flew up in his wake. The mercenary stood up to retaliate, but Hyusei used his larger weight to his advantage to shoulder the mercenary back into the rubble and send him off his balance. Now in the clear, Hyusei grabbed the collar of the mercenary’s shirt and brought him close to his face before whispering at him with malice.

“You’re nothing. Not anymore. Now you’re going to stay with me and we’re going to find whoever did this, you understand me? They won’t get away with this, and we can’t let them escape, so just shut up and keep walking. Got it?” Hyusei waited for an answer for a moment before realizing that Silverius’ eyes had gone wide and were looking right past the soldier’s face. Thinking he was being ignored, Hyusei shook the man and whispered even harsher at him. “Don’t you ignore me! We will find them, you hear me?!”

“I… I already found them. I found her.” Silverius was breathless and had lost all of his tension and aggression in an instant. Confused, Hyusei let go of the man and backed up. “Move… Move!” The mercenary shoved Hyusei out of his way and stumbled towards what looked to once have been a street corner. It was mostly obscured by sharp outcrops of rock and strewn dirt. “Wait! Come back!” Without looking twice at Hyusei, the soldier ran forward with all his speed and began to chase whatever he had seen. The man left behind was at first struck dumb before realizing that what his companion had seen could likely be the Lance Knight, who would undoubtedly be able to destroy them both without much effort. Spitting out a curse, he ran after his black-haired comrade with haste.

Silverius continued to snake down what remained of the streets in search of the specter he had seen. As he ran, he rubbed at his eyes, completely shaken by what he had seen. “I never thought I’d see her again. Not here of all places…” Just as he thought this to himself, the man found himself falling back on his butt after running right into someone. Instinctively muttering out an apology, he stood up and dusted his pants off, preparing to run again, before finally looking at his obstacle and freezing.

He wasn’t hallucinating.

“Maria… It’s really you?”

Indeed, standing before Singun Crono Silverius was the being he knew as Maria Saphun. She was wearing a deep violet cloak, one that draped over most of her body and had a large hood that was down, but her face still held the innocent naivety that it held when she first met him. Her hair was still curly, long, and a deep black that bordered on violet in the right light. Once he called her name, she looked up at him as they both stood with those same wide eyes that she had before. There was nothing about her that was changed aesthetically. Silverius lost his breath and felt his heart begin to pound as he looked over her face frantically, trying to memorize and hold in everything about her for future reference, all of his slipping passion brought back within a moment. Her thin, slightly opened lips pursed at his presence as she began to speak.

“Who is Maria?”

The mercenary was frozen by the words and his relieved expression quickly turned pained. “…What? Maria, how could you… What are you saying? Don’t you remember? Can’t you remember me?” She tilted her head in ignorance, like she used to do so long ago, and Silverius was pained by the nostalgia.

"Who are you?” His stomach, just moments ago afloat with butterflies, now twisted in despair and denial. He wanted to cry and struggled to stay articulate.

“What are you talking about? Maria, how could you not remember?”

Again, she looked at him with those wide eyes of hers, staring right at his eyes and seeing everything inside of them. “I do not know who Maria is. I do not know who you are.”

He let out a moan of pain and grabbed at her hand with alarm. She twitched at the contact but did not move her eyes or shirk away from his touch. “Stop this! Yes you do! Come on, I can save you! I can save you from those Ouroboros people! Please, come on, listen to me!” He attempted to pull her towards him but the girl did not budge. He felt himself tearing up. “Please…”

“Who is Ouroboros?”

Silverius let go of Maria’s hands and stepped back, his face a pained mixture of frustration and melancholy. “Why are you doing this? Did they do this to you? Did they make you forget everything? Did they make you forget who I am? Come on!” Now he was practically yelling and the tears finally fell down his cheeks. The raven-haired girl did not budge in the slightest. “I’ll make you remember! You can’t forget what we had! I protected you, I saved your life and you saved mine! We were only together for a couple weeks at most, but you were the first person who I didn’t hate being around! You were the first person who listened when I had something to say, even when I didn’t want to say it! You were the first person who actually cared that I never sleep! How can you not remember any of that? How can you not remember the comb I gave you, and all the clothes I bought you, and the airship you rode on! You were the first person…” On his knees at this point, Silverius looked up at her with sad eyes. They were beaten and bruised by the sheer nonchalance of her own and gazed at them in silent awe, wondrous at the quickly fleeting future. He held his hands out, just in front of her body, reaching and grasping nothing. “I’ve done all this for you… to save you. You were the first person to call me Crono since my father died… I told you that I loved you! And you don’t remember any of it? You really don’t remember?”

She looked at him with those blank and impeccably cold eyes of hers. “I do not know who you are.”

Silverius looked down at the ground and shook. He was completely broken and hurt by her impossibly distant words. Although he had spent his entire life refusing to get attached to anyone and living on his own chops, here he was at his most vulnerable and she had forgotten about him. It didn’t take very long for his pure sadness to get corrupted with anger and hatred, first at Maria, but soon at those who had taken her. It became all too clear to him that if Ouroboros could decimate an entire city with two Crystals, it wouldn’t be very far-fetched for them to erase the memories of one girl.

He looked up at the cloaked girl in front of him, eyes ablaze with newfound fury, yet still held back and in pain from the merciless ignorance she had displayed. “That’s alright. We can always make new memories. I’ll just…” He stood, gripping one hand on his gunblade that lay strapped into his belt. “I’ll destroy them for what they did to you. Now that I found you… I won’t let them take you again. I swear it! I swear it to you, Maria!”

Just as he finished talking, a loud and husky voice called out in the ash-filled air, apparently calling some name. It was enough to jerk Maria’s head in the direction of the voice, which was coincidentally the area that she was walking towards when Silverius bumped into her. Immediately after the voice finished echoing through the otherwise silent city, footsteps crept on the two and became louder as Vikcent Hyusei rounded a corner and found himself behind Silverius. The mercenary whirled and looked at his companion, who was slightly short of breath.

“Hyusei! Just in time, you have to help me! I found her, can you believe it?” Despite himself, the mercenary started to grin and walked towards his companion. “I found Maria! She’s still alive!”

The soldier’s grim expression looked threatened and his eyes darted about the city in fear as Silverius spoke. The good news didn’t affect him at all, and at this Silverius was slightly insulted. He awaited an explanation, which Hyusei gave within moments. “What are you doing?! Didn’t you hear that? We have to hide!”

Silverius looked confused and glanced back at Maria. She still stood completely still, looking in the direction of the voice like a rooster throwing its beak out to the rising sun. “What? Hide where? Why?” Hyusei didn’t allow any more solitary discussion and forcefully gripped the mercenary’s arm as he started to speed walk back where he came from.

“Just trust me! You don’t want to be around when that person gets here!” Silverius resisted the touch, but he was smaller and physically weaker than the soldier, so all of his struggling only slowed their movement. On cue, the loud and authoritative voice boomed through the air again and Maria shifted her feet a little bit as her body visibly tensed up.

“What are you doing?! Stop! I can’t leave her, not again! Maria! Maria, come on! Stop, dammit!” He resorted all of his energy to pushing on Vik’s muscular frame with his free arm and kicking the ground, but the mercenary was mostly powerless to stop himself from being jostled from Maria’s presence. No matter how many times he called her name, she wouldn’t turn or look at him. That hurt him the most. “Stop!! I can’t leave her again! Maria! Mari-umh!” Hyusei had pulled Silverius into a tight headlock and slapped a gloved hand over his mouth, silencing the lanky man’s screams and holding him out of struggling range in one effective move. Now with a much easier to move target but with considerably less time to escape, Hyusei took a gambit and dived right into a thin pile of loose debris. The movement caused a quick commotion and an uprising of ashy dust into the air which resolved within moments as a pile of gray rocks that covered the two completely.

Vikcent’s prisoner continued to move and attempt to scream, but his efforts were completely held in check by the soldier’s superior strength and the weight of the debris that had fallen above the two. The rocks had proven enough to disguise Vik’s presence, but were hurting him as he had to basically kneel a few inches above the ground to keep them at a reasonable level, so he couldn’t keep it up for long, and the more Silverius struggled, the less power his legs held in their taunt muscles. He began to sweat instantly against the strain and the tension of the situation.

After a minute and another call from the disembodied voice, the Lance Knight, its origin, appeared on the horizon and soon ran up to Maria. The tall, heavily armored figure had not changed since Vik had seen them, and only their crimson cape showed any effects from the environment, as it was stained a rich gray from the ash. As their namesake implied, the Knight still held onto the gigantic lance that carved a trail into the ground as it was dragged. Towering a head and a half over Maria, the Knight looked down at her with their horned helmet thrusting upwards.

“What was that noise? Who were you speaking to?” The Knight spoke with harshly articulated words that radiated authority and power. Silverius and Hyusei both were frozen by the presence of the Knight and both stopped their movements. The fear had eased into their hiding nook and held them tightly in its cold grip.

Maria stood in her cloak and looked right at the painted black eye visors of the Knight’s helmet as if she could see through it. “I do not know. Who is Maria? Do you know, Nicht?” Maria tilted her head to the side and a lock of her curly hair, previously pushed back from her forehead and left to drift over her back in its long entirety, hanged on her shoulder.

The Knight, in response to this inquiry, shoved the gigantic lance they held into the ground and slapped Maria with the hand that previously held the gigantic lance. Although the strike was weak and more of a sweep than an attack, the impact of the Knight’s armored hand was enough to send her to the ground. Maria did not grunt nor cry out in pain, but stood up as soon as she could before looking back to the Knight’s eyeholes. In Hyusei’s arms, Silverius tensed up and began to struggle again, and the soldier had to seriously flex his large muscles to keep the man in check.

“You know not to call me that, C0.” The Lance Knight named their companion by pronouncing the codename as ‘C-sero’. “Whilst we are performing our Leader’s duties, you are to refer to me as L9.” Likewise, the Knight referred to their self as ‘L-nicht’.

The woman now designated as C0 stood in place silently for a moment before nodding slightly. “Understood. You are L9 and I am C0. C0. That is I.”

The Knight took another long look around the barren area before twirling in place, their long cape flapping in the air as they did so, and grabbing up their lance once again. “Enough of this foolishness. I have confirmed the covenant’s effect. We must be away to the west. The Sea awaits us. Come!” With one simple word, the Knight began to stalk away into the hazy horizon, and C0 followed without a single look back.

Upon seeing Maria leave, Silverius was completely consumed with a new surge of energy, and he began to openly fight against Hyusei’s clutches. He soon overpowered the man and pushed himself out of the debris pile and back into the streets. Now that he was free, he took a step towards the trail of the Lance Knight’s weapon before stopping in place and looking down at the ground. In the ash he saw three sets of footprints; his from earlier, the large stride of the Knight, and Maria’s tiny imprints.

He fell to his knees and looked up at the pastel gray sky, all of his passion washed away like the tide. He began to realize what he had witnessed and experienced, and began to silently sob. “She’s gone. She didn’t even know who I was… But she went with them. They treated her like trash, and she willingly went with that guy in the armor… What makes him so special? Why couldn’t she have gone with me?” Hyusei stood up, dusted himself off and shook off any loose debris from his back, and stumbled over to his groveling companion.

“You need to get a hold over yourself and come on! We can’t let those two get away!”

“You… You don’t know anything about me.” Silverius lowered his head, dark shadows from his long bangs engulfing much of his face. “I thought what we had was something special… But they took it from me. They took what we had and erased it, and now she has to live with that… Now I have to live with that!” He sniffed.

Hyusei looked at the man, speechless at the show of emotion, and grit his teeth. Part of what was irritating him so much was the fact that he knew he wasn’t coping much better mere days ago, back in Inusia City after his incident, but now the time for moaning was over, and he knew that. Reminded of the gravity of his situation upon entering Phenicks and witnessing the Lance Knight once again, he had been able to push his regrets behind him. Silverius hadn’t.

“Stand up and quit your damn whining!” Hyusei forcefully grabbed the dirty mercenary once again and forced him to stand on his two feet, at which point the slightly shorter man looked at him with painfully throbbing eyes. “Are you just going to sit here and cry yourself to sleep, or are you going to help me? I told you about this!” He pointed at the direction the Lance Knight and Maria had gone. “If you want your girl so bad, suck it up and help me get her back! We have to follow them to the next Crystal and figure out some way to take that behemoth of a Knight out, and we can’t do it if you’re over here bitching about your little romantic fantasies!” After seeing how easily Silverius had been able to rob for essential money, Hyusei was convinced that every word he was saying was true. “I swear… We’re both train wrecks, but we can work together as train wrecks, and these two disasters can stop an even bigger one! Now are you with me or not?”

Hyusei shoved his hand out in preparation for a handshake and shoved his chin into the air. Silverius shivered and looked at the hand, then at Vikcent, then back at the hand. He thought of Maria, her shining and pale, innocent face, and how she would smile or gaze at him in concern back before she was taken. He thought of how luxurious and voluminous her hair looked after she combed it with his comb, how happy she had been when he allowed her to watch the stars aboard the airship, and how pained she was when she told him about her nightmares. He thought of how the Maria he had just seen had held none of these human qualities, like she had been a doll whose programming had been reset. The thought of such a thing infuriated him to no end. He slapped his hand on Hyusei’s and the two held a firm handshake as Silverius sniffed one last time before puffing out his lower lip.

“You’re right. I will destroy them for taking her from me. I’ll get Maria back… And then she’ll know that I love her.”

...End of Part Twenty-Two.

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