Story:Kings of Strife/Part 2

Part Two
The bag with the crystal made a dull thump as it landed on the wooden table. Once it landed and the employer appeared to look at it, Silverius crossed his arms and looked at the man with unmistakable satisfaction. “I did what you wanted. Wasn’t easy,” he paused as he rubbed his still-painful shoulder, “but I managed. Now, about my pay-”

“There will be no further pay.”

A stunned silence rang from Silverius. The employer hadn’t moved or even grabbed the bag, but he might as well have slapped Silverius in the face with his squirrely presence and painfully blunt statement. The words didn’t even fully register to the mercenary for a moment. “…What do you mean, there will be no further pay?” The ache from his arm and back served as catalysts for his temper, but there was no mistaking the amount of firewood that the employer had stoked into his fire. The idea of not getting paid after all he had done was just inconceivable.

Now the employer sighed. Again he had an entirely condescending tone that only irritated Silverius further. “I do not have time to repeat myself. I was told that you stole the Crystal even before you arrived, which means the Inusians know as well. You did not complete your job of a stealthy infiltration, which means you have failed, which means you will not be paid.” The final words of his explanation scorched Silverius’ face and allowed a red hot blush of anger to form on his angular face.

The mercenary snatched the small burlap sack from the table and gripped it with white knuckles. His arm shook. “Don’t you give me any of that bullshit! Do you know how hard it was for me to get in that place? Do you know how hard it was to escape?”

“I provided you with all necessary materials for a successful mission. Failure is simply unacceptable.”

“Every time a word comes out of your dusty old mouth, I get pissed off and want to shove my fist into it!” The employer did not move nor respond, but the mercenary could almost feel his dead, ancient eyes studying him and glaring into his soul. He didn’t care, in fact it strengthened his frustration. Misery enjoys company. “Now you take this stupid porcelain sack of shit and pay up or I sell it to whoever has the highest price!” None of them moved. Still seething, Silverius whirled from the presence of the employer and walked purposefully out of the warehouse.

The employer, as always, did not move from his vigil. He lay down his head slightly and crossed together his two articulate hands like branches from a gnarled old tree and allowed them to mix as roots. In this position he sat for a full three minutes before he looked up and banged upon his table with the closed fist. A man dressed in dark verdant green robes seemed to synthesize from out of the shadows and stood behind his employer. He held in both hands a sophisticated rifle and a short sword at his hip.

“How may I serve you, my leader?”

The employer replied with his charismatic yet slow voice. He always spoke with a foreign drawl that could not be locked to one solid region, and today it condemned a man to death. “We’ve had a failure, my Scale. I shed you and your comrades to make sure that failure ceases to exist.” The robed man bowed deeply and stood up, adjusting his hold on his weapon. He left the room without another word. A rustle was heard as three others from around the shadows followed him. The employer, still at his perch on his table, lowered his head and continued his meditations.

Outside the darkness of the criminal warehouse, Silverius still fumed as he made his way towards his apartment. He was not extremely tired from his night, considering he did manage to sleep almost entirely through the train ride back to Morshia City. The day was broad and bright and the sun high in the air. The temperature was prevented from being sickeningly hot from the cool sea breeze that rode through Morshia’s dirty streets.

Still, the mercenary wiped sweat off his forehead as he recited the conversation over and over again in his head and couldn’t yet comprehend just where it took such a drastic turn. His black hair began to mat itself onto his brow. “How in the hell could he have expected me to get into that place, steal something like this, and escape without anybody seeing me, even with his stupid maps?” This he shouted to himself, if one could shout in their thoughts. It did nothing for his mood and only managed to anger him further. So strongly did the fires of aggravation burn within him that he did not bother to logically think through what was going to happen to him next besides “getting back” at his employer, and thus the first bullet that was shot towards him instilled complete surprise and fear into his heart. Luckily for him, it missed and only managed to rip a small hole through the fabric of his baggy pants.

The mercenary turned and couldn’t even remember to duck or get to the ground, as he normally would have upon hearing a gunshot. He was greeted with the image of about four men in dark green robes leaving the warehouse he had himself just escaped. One of them had a rifle and a sword, one just a rifle, and two had swords. The sole one with the rifle had been the one to shoot at him and had to pause to reload his weapon. He worked with haste and it was apparent that he would be able to shoot again within the next two seconds.

Now the mercenary listened to his instinct and ran into the streets without a destination or inhibition. Another gunshot indeed rang out but missed again, and soon after that he could hear the rest of the henchmen racing after him. Silverius burst into a crowded market street and danced on his feet in indecisiveness before running to his left. The moment of hesitation only allowed his robed pursuers to follow him closer. Frustrated, he cursed to himself and drew the looks of various passerby who already disliked him for how roughly he jostled through the crowd. Silverius’ chasers held less qualms for disturbance than he did, but upon seeing the unsheathed weapons they held, most people got out of their way and let them pass. In that regard, the crowded street was useless for Silverius’ idea of slipping away. Now he knew that he would have to confront the men before the police arrived and the situation was made almost impossible to escape from. He continued to run down the streets for almost five minutes before ducking into another alley.

The chase continued for another good while before they finally arrived in a dead end. Silverius, panting and highly winded, moved to turn around when he found himself now boxed in by three of the men. The man with only a rifle had apparently fell to his exhaustion on the way there and was nowhere to be seen. Silverius began to back onto the wall behind him and unclipped his gunblade from his waist’s belt. The two men with swords shuffled towards him.

Tensely, the three stood in a nervous pre-battle stance that did not last for much more than a moment. One of the men jumped at Silverius with his sword raised into the air, and a grin slid across Silverius’ cheeks. Now he was in his element, he thought to himself as he idly sidestepped the downward slice. The man who had attacked now stumbled and Silverius turned, stabbing his blade into the side of the man with no hesitation. He screamed and squirmed beneath his steel, and his companion with the sword moved to strike as well. Out of the corner of his eye, Silverius noticed the first man with the rifle take aim, and Silverius moved his sword towards him while bringing its attachment with him. The gunshot resounded through the alley and hit right on target – into the chest of the man impaled to Silverius’ sword. The bullet crashed right into his chest and killed him instantly with enough force that his last exhale spat a wad of blood onto his comrades.

Silverius saw that they were disgusted and took his chance to strike. He kicked the body forward and off his sword, pushing him into the reluctant arms of his comrade with the sword. While they were distracted, Silverius tackled the man with the rifle as he wildly shot again into the air. The shooter banged his head into the wall of a building and found himself stunned. Silverius grabbed the man’s flat face with his free hand and smashed it into the wall over and over again until there was blood on the ceiling and the man was motionless.

Two out of three bodies disposed, Silverius looked back onto the third man, who now lay on the floor with his weapon discarded. He looked at his comrade, who bled into his arms and robes, with tears in his eyes. For a moment the mercenary considered just running off and allowing the tragically mournful man to live, but then he remembered the quick ferocity with which his former employer ruined his financial future and tried to eliminate him. Silverius felt no further guilt as he lifted his gunblade and pulled its trigger, and the frame of the weapon shook in his hand with the explosion of the gunpowder. The small shell shot into the side of the surviving man’s head and burst through to the other side, splattering his blood on the wall of the dead end and instantly silencing his cries. The surviving mercenary wasted no more time before he turned, reapplied his gunblade to his belt, and left the urban graveyard.

In the distance, he could clearly hear the sirens of an approaching police car. Another moment of hesitation overtook his senses and was soon replaced by fear. In his haste to escape his pursuers, the mercenary had ran himself into a part of town that he didn’t recognize. The sirens grew closer to his area with every second, he noted. Not that that helped him at all.

A metal object on the floor caught his attention and harkened him to his improbably infiltration of the Inusian Tower. “If it worked once, hell, it should work again,” he thought to himself as he made a mad dash to the manhole that covered the ladder into the dank sewer system. The sirens seemed unbearably close but were the police were still out of sight by the time Silverius let the manhole drop over the hole. The darkness, along with his safety, took over in the tunnel as the light was extinguished.

****

The girl grew exhausted. Her throat was now raw and it hurt to breathe. Her arms and legs were sore and her legs shook from how badly she had to use the bathroom. For a while she had finished trying to speak and had hung her head without energy. Would a normal person despair in this situation? Why wasn’t she filled with panic? How did she know, from the depths of her soul, that she wasn’t “normal”?

Thus was her dialogue with herself. In the place of emotion or companionship, most people either convene with their thoughts or sleep. The girl was terrified of sleep because of her earlier nightmare, so she spent her time thinking of anything and everything she could imagine. Every few minutes or so she found herself returning to the subject of herself or her unknown origins. At this point, she was glad that she couldn’t quite speak, for she knew that she would begin to annoy herself with how repetitive her thoughts were becoming.

So she had sat for the next good chunk of hours. She slipped in and out of a state of bare consciousness, but she always awoke herself with a jolt. There was absolutely no way she’d let herself return to the hell that was her prior nightmare. Maria – she almost forgot her name once, and so she constantly reminded herself that she was indeed Maria Zorphan – barely even remembered what happened in the nightmare. But the sensation that it brought about, one of ice and fire and complete fear, was one that she would rather not revisit.

That was another thing that she couldn’t understand. Why couldn’t she remember anything? Her eyes felt so heavy when she tried to dig beneath the veil of her mind and so she didn’t explore that territory very often. Maria was so very alone, and a part of her did not want to be, but the other part did not know why. Why was it so bad to be alone? Why was she tied into this chair?

Her mental turmoil continued, to her, much longer than it really did. If asked, Maria would have stated without hesitation that she sat in that prison – for it was a prison to her – for months. She could feel an event horizon speeding towards her and knew she would give in to her exhaustion sooner or later. But before that came, she began to sense another force rushing towards her, a different force, one of change. Maria looked up weakly and squinted at the door, waiting and waiting for something that she hoped would come but knew wouldn’t. In an effort to make her desires manifest themselves, she began to speak and cry for help again. It was physically painful and her voice was little more than a high-pitched squeak, but it was a noise that pierced the otherwise silent darkness. She hoped against hope that it would liberate her from her cage (she duly noted her own thoughts of “Why do I want to be free?”).

She could only keep up the effort for about four minutes before she could no longer speak at all, no matter how hard she tried. Swallowing her spit only made things feel drier and less comfortable. Feeling numb, she dropped her head. Not even idle thoughts confronted her anymore.

Then there was a noise at the door. She didn’t notice it at first, but it sounded like a consistent tapping and then became a bang. A deep voice resounded through the room and surprised her. “Hey! Is anyone in there?! What’s going on? Hello?” She didn’t know how to respond and couldn’t think clearly anymore. Some feeling was rising through her chest, one that frightened her for some reason. She couldn’t form any words and simply made a light whimper. The man responded in kind. “Hold on! I’ll break through!” The door shook from an impact, then again and again. Finally it broke and a man rushed through the door from the impact.

The dust cleared and both of them closed their eyes and looked away from each other. Maria had to allow her eyes to adjust to the sudden – but still dismal – light that flooded the room, and the man opposite her blushed and glanced away from Maria’s relative nudity. They both sheepishly opened their eyes and looked towards each other once again, but this time the man looked away again upon making eye contact with Maria. She took this time to observe her rescuer.

He wore white baggy pants that had a low fly, just above his knees. At his waist was a belt that hooked into a sword, and a black jacket ended at his waist. The man had medium length, wavy black hair that fell over his nose and the left side of his face. He stood at a height taller than hers and his chest was framed by his skinny yet lean and almost muscular arms. Finally he looked back at Maria, apparently with difficulty keeping his gaze at her eyes, and the two stood for a moment. When thinking back on it, she instantly described it as awkward.

“Um,” he stated after a moment. “Why are you tied up?” Maria had no answer, even if she could have spoken. The man rubbed the back of his hair and looked up at the ceiling. “Wow, okay… You don’t live here, do you?” Again he glanced back at her and she didn’t respond. It was enough of an answer for him, and he continued to speak as he unhooked his blade from his loose belt. “A-alright, well, I’ll just let you free and, uh… you can go home, I guess.” He knelt beside her and began to cut at her bonds when she struggled to speak again.

“I have no home.”

He froze, hesitated, and began to cut again, as his head lowered the slightest degree. Within seconds, she was free, and her arms slouched heavily on her legs. Moving was painful and her backside was entirely numb. The man now stood in front of her and began to unzip his jacket. Maria looked up at him wearily, drained from her vigil of sedentariness. “W-what are you doing…sir?” She added the respectful honorific at the end in an attempt to gain his rapport. How tragic it would be if this benefactor grew angry at her and murdered her, or something along those lines.

The man removed his jacket, revealing a sleeveless shirt that covered his chest and fully bared his lean arms. He wrapped the jacket around Maria and helped her put her arms into it. “It’s better if you wear this. Just… trust me.” Maria didn’t contest the man’s decision and simply looked into his eyes, hoping that perhaps there she would find some answers in them. He did not return the contact as he spoke to her. “…Can you walk?”

Maria shook her head and he sighed. Did she disappoint him in some way? She noticed he hesitated once again before he put his arms into her armpits and lifted her onto his back. He grunted at first. “You’re surprisingly light.” Again, she couldn’t respond, although she did feel slightly insulted. He ducked and left the room before walking down the sewers without another word.

Her first instinct was to look back into the dark and small room to see if she had left anything behind, but a further thought reprimanded this. There was nothing left in the prison for Maria to scavenge from.

Next she began to question again. What could have happened to her that resulted in her becoming locked and bound in a room beneath the sewers? Why was this man roaming the sewers in the first place, and where was he taking her? Was she safe now, or in further danger? And why didn’t the man make eye contact with her?

Try as she might, Maria Zorphan still had no answers to the inquisitions that plagued her. She resisted as long as she possibly could, but the abyssal weariness that hung over her like a cloud began to creep onto her eyes. They began to close and shut despite how loudly and forcefully she protested. Underneath the ground, beside the quietly sloshing water and sludge, she felt herself slip into a deep sleep once again. This time, surprisingly, she did not feel so terrified and with the darkness came warmth. She suspired and dreamt again of fire. His words were the last she heard before the flames.

“My name is Silverius. Just call me Crono.”

...End of Part Two.

<- Previous Page | Main Page | Next Page ->