Story:Kings of Strife/Part 46

Part Forty-Six
Vik awoke with a headache. His ears were ringing, and all around he felt warmth. It was comforting and relaxing – like an embrace. He felt tired and his eyes were heavy, and thanks to the warmth all around him, he felt as if staying where he was, resting in warmth, would be all he needed in life. For just a moment he relished in that relaxation, that gentle touch, and smiled.

A voice cried out to him, and his eyes snapped open in alarm.

As he sat up, Vik saw that he was surrounded by black fire – rather, he was consumed by it. The flames licked all around him and erupted from his hands, his chest, and his face. He yelped and crushed his eyes closed, forcing all of his energy into his eyes to stop his Tyrant ability. It took him a moment, but soon he had ceased the fire, and the warmth left his body.

He sat up, and all around him were ashes.

The roof of the massive Inusian complex was a mess. Bluecoat corpses and ashes were scattered all about, and many were still alive or running about. Vik’s ears felt like they were ringing, and as he focused his vision to look around, sound gradually returned to his senses as well. The roof was loud, and between rampant gunshots, screams, or the odd sound of the wind blazing about viciously, he could think of no other word to describe the situation but chaos. Yet around him, in the unholy circle where his flames once blazed, there was a knoll of silence and deathly peace.

He heard his name being called once again, and a hand gripped onto his shoulder.

Vik turned to see Karilyn Red squatting with a massive object in her right hand and holes on her large green cloak. Her curly hair had gone undone during the battle that Vik did not remember, and she looked at him with concern and an open, panting mouth.

“What… What happened?” Vik squinted at Karilyn, confused on why she looked so urgent, so concerned. His mind felt slow, and his head ached.

“You’re not burned,” Karilyn said with knitted brows. “Not even your clothes are burned. How? Is this your power?”

“What are you talking about?” A shot rang out near the two, and Vik jumped. Remembering where he was and how much danger he was in, despite the fact that the scene was so chaotic that the bluecoats appeared to be shooting at each other, Vik stood and pulled Karilyn up with him. “Where is the Knight? And Silverius?”

“She ran off as soon as they started shooting. I tried to go after her, but then you… Watch out!” Karilyn shoved Vik to the side before swinging the large object she held in her hands right in front of him, blocking a stream of bullets that had been aimed right at his chest. Vik stood back and looked in awe as Karilyn wielded what appeared to be an unorthodox fusion of a wide greatsword and a cannon. The guard of the sword’s hilt was especially long, and three triggers jutted out of the handle. What wasn’t covered by dingy bandages on the wide weapon were either blue spots of sharp metal or multi-colored rivers of wiring, all conspiring to the large barrels jutting out from either side of the sword’s flat blade.

Once Karilyn had stopped the bullets with her huge blade, easily half of her own height, she shifted her footing and lifted the blade with both hands. Her right hand grabbed onto a handle of pure metal halfway down the blade’s length and her left hand flicked all three of the triggers as she aimed the blade towards a stunned group of three bluecoats aiming right at the two. There was no buildup of power, no gathering of energy; once she flicked all three triggers, Karilyn’s great-cannon fired a massive beam of pure white light, almost like a laser, and it immediately burned right into all three of the bluecoats. With a groan, she pulled her sword off to the side, dragging the beam of light with it, and the moving beam cut through another throng of Inusian soldiers. More screams and cries of astonishment rang out throughout the roof for the three or so seconds that the beam existed.

Then, as fast as it appeared, the beam of light from Karilyn’s weapon vanished, and steam started to waft up from the wires on her sword. She dropped the large weapon with a groan and trembling arms, and cursed. “It’s running out of fuel. Damn it! I’ve got half another shot, maybe. Shit!” The woman looked back to Vik, who stood staring at her with wide, confused eyes, and gave him a pleading look. “Do something!”

“Do what?” He grabbed Karilyn’s arm and led her towards a nearby throng of debris clumped together as if rising up to touch the turbulent skies. She dragged the great-cannon behind her and the two crouched behind the cover of stone and steel. Vik patted at his pants. “I don’t have the gun on me, and no knife is going to help here.” There were still a large number of Inusians around at the complex, and their gunshots were starting to converge on the rocks that the two were hiding behind. “Shit! Where is Cidolas?”

“Why don’t you use that power again?” Karilyn asked, more urgently this time. She looked into Vik’s eyes and frowned. “What happened to your eyes? They’re not gold anymore. Are you alright?”

“Huh?” Vik looked down to his hands and remembered the embrace of fire that he awoke in. “I… I don’t know. I feel weak. What did I do? I don’t remember.”

“How could you not remember? It was… incredible. You were completely surrounded by that fire, and… and… you jumped right into the soldiers. You must have killed at least thirty of them. The fire was black, and it burned away everything… There was nothing left of them. They couldn’t even shoot at you. It only lasted for a few seconds before you just… stopped.”

“I was… surrounded by the fire?” Vik looked at his hands once again, and they trembled. ‘What sort of power do I have? I killed that many people in such a short time…?’ The concept of his fire being so powerful, so righteous and yet so disgustingly sinful in its ability to eradicate, teased at Vik. He could feel his very morality bending… and it horrified him. “I… I don’t think I can do that again. At least, I don’t know if I even want to.”

A rack of bullet exploded from the rock, flying right between the two of them and sending them ducking to the ground. All of Vik’s thoughts returned to the priority of survival, and he pulled his knife free from his belt. “You said you’ve got one shot left in that big gun of yours?”

“If we’re lucky,” Karilyn muttered with a gulp. She pulled on her large weapon and visibly shook. “I’ve got to make it count.” The wind started to jump in intensity on the roof, blowing her bleeding red hair about her face.

“On three, we jump out and run for Silverius. Do you know where he is?”

“No idea. Start counting, Scarface.”

Vik chuckled. “You got it, Red. One…” The wind seemed to continually magnify, and visible streams of shrapnel and debris swam through the air as if flowing through a raging river. Gunshots burned through the river as loud as ever. “Two…”

Before he could get to three, the debris – the bluecoats – and the wind itself exploded, rushing in all directions like the creation of a new universe. Vik and Karilyn were blown backwards, their clothes and robes blowing around them as the sudden storm of wind buffeted into them. The wind kept blowing, and blowing, until it felt as if it could grow no more. Holding his hand in front of his face, Vik squinted into the source of the ridiculously powerful wind. His jaw dropped.

Standing right in front of him, in torn grey prison rags and the wind visibly blowing around him like a tornado, Silverius looked straight down at the ground with dead, soulless eyes.

“He’s alive!” screamed Vik. He looked over to Karilyn, who squatted next to him, both hands on her sword and her eyes clenched close. Vik had to yell ever louder to be heard over the cacophony of the storm. “Silverius is alive!”

“What?!” Karilyn yelled, though more out of inaudibility than surprise.

“He’s alive!! He’s right there!” Vik glanced back to Silverius with a smile, only to see the mercenary look up and stare at Vik from beneath his long, disheveled hair. His eyes were glowing a bright, violent golden.

The mercenary took a step towards Vik and Karilyn with those same dead eyes.

Stormy winds rushed towards the two even stronger, as if it was moving with Silverius at the center. Vik found himself struggling not to be blown away, and minor streams of shrapnel and debris started to rush past him and cut into his skin. Karilyn stabbed her sword through a crack in the ground to hold onto it, and her hair floated behind her as violently as her ill-fitting cloak did.

“Silverius! Stop this!!” Vik could not even hear himself screaming over the ruthless onslaught of the storm, beating forward harder and harder with each step the mercenary took towards him. Just as he felt he would be literally blown away and torn apart by the winds – they stopped. While the winds continued to blow and cacophonous sound continued to permeate the air, there was such an instant and drastic change in the situation that for a moment, Vik heard only silence.

He opened his eyes to see Silverius standing where he was with the Chosen Knight standing behind him, her arms wrapped around his chest and shoulders. He was looking to the side, right into the Knight’s eyes, and both were golden and bright with Tyranny. Behind the two, very close to the roof of Icarun, hovered a small private-sized airship, and Cidolas Teftah held onto its dangling ladder. Cidolas looked right at Vik, and held his hand out towards him.

*****

Silverius was silent as they fled Icarun, and he was not the only one. All of the group stood in silence in the common room of the small airship, as if shocked and struggling to understand what they had just lived through.

The Chosen Knight had held onto Silverius’ hand after her gaze calmed him, but he had not spoken and the two had not looked into each other’s eyes since. Cidolas, the group immediately discovered, had left to find an unused airship at the complex and hijack it. Along the way, somehow, he had reunited with the female Cidolas body, and the two of them worked in tandem to control the military ship. Their escape was timely and uncontested; not only was the airship completely painted in Inusian colors, the Tyrant storm that Silverius had manifested succeeded in blowing away almost every still-living bluecoat there.

The rescue had been a success, in the end.

After boarding the airship, all of the warriors stood in silence. Silverius looked down at the ground, his arms low at his sides and one of his hands limply held in the Chosen Knight’s grasp. She stood right next to him, her body leaning on his and her hands on his chest, but she did not look at him. Now that she was in his presence again, she made an effort to keep her golden Tyrant Eyes blazing, and Silverius’ eyes were bright as well – though it did not seem he was doing it on purpose. Karilyn and Vik stood across from the two; the woman had wrapped up her incredible weapon and stood in a corner of the cramped living room, staring intently at Silverius from beneath her bangs. Vik was quiet and solitary, his arms crossed across his pectoral muscles and his mouth in a thin frown as he looked over the Knight and the prisoner. His eyes were their natural coloration, and his head still ached.

“We did well,” the Chosen Knight finally said, “and we succeeded. We are reunited.”

“I don’t know if I’d say we did well,” Karilyn muttered. “Crono looks a mess. Who knows what they did to him?” Vik glanced up at Silverius when she said this, and found that the mercenary indeed looked rather gaunt. His eyes had much deeper, prominent bags beneath them than before, and his hair was long enough to touch his shoulders and cast a permanent shadow over his face. “Besides,” Karilyn added after some time, “we didn’t even find Luther. I can’t believe we left him behind like that…!”

Vik did not know who this ‘Luther’ person was, but he frowned in hearing the defeat in Karilyn’s voice. “I don’t think there was anyone else there. We did all we could… and now we have to work towards our real goal.”

“We worked just as planned,” the Knight agreed. “Now, the world will not be able to resist our cleansing hands. The Society will soon crumble.” She turned to Silverius, her lips parting sensually, and her hand started to run circles over his exposed chest. Karilyn looked away.

Silverius moved for the first time, lifting his head and turning it right towards the Chosen Knight with the same dead, emotionless glaze over his face. “I’ll kill you,” he said simply.

His hand swiftly flew right to the Chosen Knight’s throat and tightened over her ivory skin.

The Knight and Karilyn both gasped without air in their lungs, and Vik pounced forward, alarmed. “Silverius, stop! She saved your life! What are you doing?!”

“I’ll kill her first, then all of you.”

“Silverius, you idiot! She’s not your enemy!” Vik ran up to the mercenary and grabbed onto the hand he used to choke the Knight. Raised brown scars decorated his entire thin forearm. “Let her go!”

“Everyone is my enemy,” Silverius growled as he turned to look at Vik. His stone-cold golden eyes were fierce enough to shock Vik into a flinch, and though the Nneonian held both hands tightly around Silverius’ arm, his grip did not budge. “You stole my death from me. I have no other purpose but to kill.”

The Chosen Knight gasped as she struggled to breathe, and she raised a hand to caress Silverius’ angular face. The mercenary’s eyes widened as her slim, gentle fingers coddled his hard face, and slowly he turned to return his gaze to the Knight’s.

“She’s changed,” Vik pleaded. “She’s not the same Knight she used to be. None of us are your enemy. We wanted to save your life!”

“What if I don’t want to live?!” Silverius let go of the Knight’s throat and turned, holding his hands over his face as the woman he once stood poised to kill dropped to her knees.

“God damn it, Silverius! Maria came back to you! We’re all here for you! Stop this angsty bullshit!” Vik exclaimed, his hands curling into frustrated fists.

“He’s right, Crono,” Karilyn whispered. She majestically shed her robe and gingerly walked toward Silverius, her hands diving into the pockets of the thigh-length black fur coat she had been wearing beneath the colors of Ouroboros. “You’re not lost anymore. We found you, and now we can all work together.”

“I told you not to call me that!” Silverius stood, his eyes still furiously burning with the light of the Tyrant Eyes, and dried tears of blood trickled down his cheeks. “You don’t know what they did to me. They took him from me. They took me from me, and they took Maria, and my skin, and… and…” He held his hands over his face and began to violently tremble as he faltered, leaning onto the wire-decorated walls of the airship for support. “They killed him in front of me. Me in front of me. They pulled out his intestines, and they stabbed him, and they stabbed him, and they… and they…”

Vik and Karilyn stood statue-still, their eyes wide and their countenances disturbed. “Oh, Crono…” moaned Karilyn, stepping forward slowly with her hands held together over her chest. “They… they tortured you?”

“Leave him,” the Chosen Knight said as she stood again, one of her hands idly pawing at her throat. “He needs time, and space.” She walked over to Silverius and grabbed onto one of his arms, pulling him off the wall and onto his feet. “Crono will return to us, in time,” she said confidently as she walked him towards the only bedroom in the airship.

Silverius said nothing, at least until he had one foot in the doorway to the bedroom. “The Crono you knew is dead.”

*****

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