Story:Kings of Strife/Int 3

Intermission Three
"It is finished." The speaker, a bald man clad in a series of dark red and black robes, sat back from the edge of his seat and wiped sweat off his brow. His face, usually contoured into a bored sneer, was wrinkled and showed days of exhaustion. He looked to his side with an expectant look.

"That took you longer than predicted. We are disappointed." The figure behind the cloaked man, taller than him and standing with extremely good posture, was completely cloaked in shadow. In fact, the only light in the room was shining solely on the cloaked man.

He sputtered and looked away from the figure behind him in anger. He visibly struggled to keep his temper contained. "I haven't had to operate on this magnitude before. Not only was the work difficult, she kept resisting. There was something she kept holding onto, no matter how hard I tried to sever it. I had to cut it forcibly." He looked to the ground with a grim gaze.

The person behind him hung on his words for a moment, hearing them and processing the jargon. "There are no excuses for incompetence. We had thought that it would have been out of you after 4 cycles." The cloaked man looked down to his side at this insult. "You have an ability and you should be able to use it, no matter what. But... What's this you're saying about cutting forcibly? All you had to do was reinstate her programming." The figure in umbra spoke with supercilious disdain, as if looking at the elementary mistakes of an idiotic child.

Now the cloaked man's temper began to rise again as he caught the condescending tone being directed at him. "It's not as easy as it sounds, alright?! Especially not on living people. They have minds and consciousness that can resist me. It's a lot easier when I can just force my own will onto the dead. Tampering with the living isn't like inserting some "program", you know. Like I said, she had a mind of her own, and she kept wandering and resisting what I had to do. For some reason, she was so damn tenacious..." His fists clenched, anger rising through his body like bile at the memory of his dark deeds and the struggle behind them. "I've never experienced anything like it."

The room was swathed in silence for a moment. The dark figure shifted their stance before speaking again. "Did you accomplish your task?"

The cloaked man froze and thought about his answer. After a moment, he answered, "Yes. She's been Chosen once again. It'll take some time, and there may be some side-effects, but..."

The room moved in an instant and the cloaked man found himself being suspended in the air. Now showered in the light, the previously dark figure had twirled him out of his chair and held him up by his throat, choking him and suspending him inches above the ground. The cloaked man, his robes now flowing slowly from the sudden movement, caught his breath in his throat and widely opened his eyes in shock. He found himself looking at the figure, completely illuminated, and responded with terrible fear. He began to shake.

"Side effects? A delay?" The figure, still holding onto his throat with only one hand, threw him across the room and onto the wall. Unseen medical instruments and metal tools vibrated and shuffled loudly at the commotion. Now the figure stood in the light completely, and her long blond curls covered her right eye completely. Nonetheless, her brightly glowing orange eye stared at the cloaked man's shivering and coughing form with complete hatred. "You've proven incompetent once again, H4. It will be completely up to the Lord if you are to live much longer, at this rate."

Now that he was out of the figure's reach, the cloaked man crawled into a tight form on the wall and stared back at her with hatred of his own. So angry was he, at her actions and at his own cowardice, that he began to shake and his reply was stuttered. "I, I told you she'll be back to her normal self. It should take a week at most. Besides that... She will experience some memory loss, both of her relapse and what she had before. She might..." Realizing what he was about to say, he sneered at the tall and intimidating woman with undisguised abhorrence. "She might not even remember who you are."

For the first time, the tall woman's angry face weakened and she looked away from the curled-up man, her posture faltering. Her mouth opened and closed once before she could speak. "Whatever is necessary... Whatever is necessary must be done." She visibly puffed her chin up and attempted to regain her composure. Her lip still quivered slightly. "All that the Lord dictates will become truth. That is why we exist; no other reason. We are the scribes of his doctrine... the architects of his temple. All is for our Lord..." She spoke quietly but with conviction, more to strengthen herself than for any other reason. The blond haired woman looked off into the shadows at something before glancing back at the cloaked man. She had completely forgotten that he was there, and was once again flustered. "Hmph." She turned to leave the room, and he began to rearrange his lofty outfit.

"H4..." She had stopped, just shy of leaving the spotlight, and was about to step over the discarded metal chair when she turned. With her right profile facing him, the cloaked man couldn't see her eye nor much of her face.

"...Yes, L9?" He pronounced the '9' in her name as 'nicht'. As he answered, her hands curled into fists before opening again.

"What could have she been holding onto so strongly that you had to alter her psyche? She was only gone for a month, perhaps two. Did you see what she was holding onto?" The woman, earlier so strong and composed, spoke quietly and seemed vulnerable. The cloaked man had never seen her like this before and looked down at the ground, as if he was witnessing something his eyes were never meant to see. Instinctively he wished to strike at her with venomous words while she was weak, but he didn't. He couldn't; not for this. He sighed as he replied, knowing full well what it meant and how it would hurt.

"I didn't see much, but... It was like she lived an entire life, in those two months. She found something that made her so happy and feel so fulfilled, even with her entire personality missing, that she wouldn't let go of the memory until I forced it." He paused and cringed. "All she could think of was a man's name."

There was silence before the woman nodded slightly. She looked back at the object that was out of the light's reach before reaching down to the metal chair beneath her. The cloaked man instinctively curled further in himself and shielded his face with his hands. As calmly as ever, the blond woman whirled and smashed the chair onto the heavy stone wall of the dark room. The chair shattered beneath her grip and its shards cascaded onto the floor. Not a moment after the ringing from the impact had begun to fade, she let out a pained and despairing scream. The cry felt long and frightened the cloaked man, but it lasted for less than a minute. The woman didn't look at him or at the object in the dark anymore, rather her gaze was on the ground the entire time. An awkward minute passed before she turned and left the room.

...End of Third Intermission.

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