Walking the streets of Cykes was wrenching the man. The blood that acted as paint. The now homeless wandering about without purpose, without anywhere really to go. The corpses that had obviously tried to fight when they should have run. The dead weight of the man he carried... And it was all because of that man who had somehow stolen his body. He wanted to cry, but the notion seemed impossible with how dry and overused they had already become...
"...Where am I now?"
The unexpected voice shook him from his reverie, and relief took over his expressions. "Fion... You're okay," he said with a smile as he carefully dropped him from his shoulder.
For his part, Fion was still in shock from everything that had happened back at the Burrow, from Riley trying to murder everybody to him losing his arm. Then came the dream. And now some damn hobo he didn't know was smiling at him while he was surrounded by blood and corpses. Speaking of which...the area around here looked awfully familiar...no.
"Alright." He breathed slowly, looking at the man in front of him. "Three things. One, who are you. Two, how do you know my name. Three, please don't tell me this is Cykes."
"Ah," his voice caught with minor surprise at the man's questions. He had forgotten completely in his relief that Fion didn't know "him"; knew her but not him. He looked away and coughed with a faint blush as he began to answer. "The first two can be answered with one word: -- well, name really -- Araki. I found you and your big, um, friend -- shall we say? -- around the edge of the Burrow and began searching for a healer. There was a large release of mana, and thinking it was the feel of a healer, followed it to find him. His appearance was, well, shocking to say the least as I wasn't keen on finding a... monster so far Talze Utera, but as I explained my predicament and I led him back toward the two of you, he said your name...
"And as for your third question, yes, this is Cykes... I believe that it was the doing of the same woman who did... that," he pointed to the stub that replaced Fion's arm.
"Cut the shit." Fion laughed bitterly as he gazed forlornly at his missing arm. "That wasn't her. Her bitch of a mother did something to her, and she's damn well not herself. For one, she sure as hell wasn't good enough to use magics as advanced as she did on me, and she told me outright that she wasn't Riley. Damn witch probably got a demon to possess her daughter or something." Turning back to the man, he narrowed his eyes into a glare. "And stop hiding whatever it is you don't want me to find out. I asked you two simple questions, and you give me a long, rambling explanation that didn't even answer one of them."
His remaining hand went down to the talentium dagger sheathed in his belt. Fion was damned sick of whatever it was that this man was trying to pull, and after the god-awful day he'd had, he was done being nice. "Start over. And this time, stop stalling."
The man scoffed in anger. He saved his life, and yet has the nerve to get indignant with him? Very much in character for Fion, yet infuriating still. "And who the hell are you to be asking me such thing, boy?" he shouted bitterly. "You obviously hold yourself in high regard to ask questions and then accuse me of lying when you have no apparent right to!" He began walking away, grumbling. "Thinking of fighting me, a goddamn mage, with only one arm; what nerve!" he grumbled.
"A name is all I want." Fion scowled, pulling himself back up on his own two feet as wind began to swirl around him. "That's all, friend. Not that hard to give me, unless you're hiding something you don't want me to know."
"It is Eldran, mage of Illiserev," he called back as he continued to walk away in the direction of Fion's house. A sneer crept across his face. "Dare claim that I am lying about and I shall have something much bigger than you take the that other arm of yours."
"I have business yet with that monster friend of yours, and all I have to find him is an address he claims to be yours."
"Feh," Fion spat, sheathing his dagger even as the wind continued to swirl around him. "A male mage? I'd say that's unlikely, but given myself...they slap a dying girl's arm onto you too, or was yours natural?" He snarked, wrapping his cloak around him as the magical wind finally died out.
The man's jaw hinged with the statement. Was he being serious? The man didn't know; they had never really spoken about the source of Fion's magic, and Fion's attitude made discerning reality from such words was difficult, as was the usual. "Natural..." he said flatly. "Although it has only recently began to manifest," he added almost as an afterthought, "so my control is a bit... limited, at the moment."
"Wonderful. Second partner in a row to have issues controlling their magic. Well, at least I might not end up getting clawed in the face by a giant demon bird this time." Fion rolled his eyes as he took the lead, walking ahead of the man. "If you're coming to the Seyour estate, follow along. I've nothing better to do than see how they fared in the attack."
~
Halfway through the walk -- enough for the man to simmer from his previous outrage -- he spoke again. "So, I know it is not my place to ask," he began to rub the back of his neck nervously, "and you have every right to not answer or tell me to shove off, but... was this 'Riley' you mentioned earlier your 'partner' who had demon birds attacking you?"
"No, it was Araki." Fion said blithely, slightly annoyed by the mention of Riley's name and the twinge in what remained of his right arm. "But yeah, it was Riley. Why so curious?"
"Well, it's just that it seems we have very similar abilities then, and um, I'm sort of hoping that my magic doesn't lead me to attacking anybody who would call me their 'partner'." His lies were getting more outrageous... and rambling, he knew as much, but now wasn't exactly the time to stop lying; particularly seeing as how he was the one who had technically (or at least somehow in his mind) caused his loss of arm. "Erm, excuse me. I probably shouldn't be saying such things; I do want you to trust me after all. I'm an agreeable person, and the least likely to hold a metaphorical blade to your throat."
"Right..." Fion narrowed his eyes at one of the things the man had said. "Similar abilities, eh? You mean to say you've got the same demon summoning abilities as a half-witch? Please tell me they grafted a witch's arm onto you or something." As much as he wanted to believe the man just to make things easier, something just seemed off about that whole spiel.
"Ah, um, not actual demons -- heavens, I thought you were being satirical about that seeing as how that's how you've acted since we've started our conversation -- but just... monsters, at least at the moment..." Well, this was quickly going downhill. "That's why I was asking; I don't really know how far my powers stretch, but if I'm just a fledgling, and she was able to do so much, how long is it before my own powers do to me what hers did to her..." All she could think at the moment was 'Save!'.
"Um, sorry again, but are feeling all right about everything? I mean, your partne -- er, ex-partner -- just took your arm and your home is in shambles... I would have expected more sign of emotion from everything that's happening to you all at once."
"I'll break down crying in private, thank you." Fion scoffed as they continued to walk. "And I'll worry about myself when I figure out what to do next. No point in feeling sorry for myself until I know what I can do. And speaking of Riley," He glanced down at his remaining hand, scowling. "Her bitch mother owes me an arm. I don't know what she did to Riley, but I want her dead for it."
Fion would never admit it out loud, but internally, he was lost. In one night, he'd lost his arm to the girl he may or may not have had feelings for after her mother had done something to her mind, and then he came to see his hometown destroyed and his family most likely decimated. All he could think of right now was that Riley's mother was the one at fault for everything. Killing that bitch was the only thing he could think of to even begin to fix this situation at the moment.
"Emotion isn't a weakness, you know. In fact, you're all the more pitiful for keeping it all in..." A silence overcame him as he thought out his next words carefully. "I, um, I have a confession. I was... in the room as that girl from before and she had been talking to a scarred woman who I can only assume was her mother..." he stopped talking and looked at Fion to gauge his reaction.
"Really, now?" Fion raised an eyebrow. "Interesting. You pick up on what they were saying?"
"Um, no," he decided to say, "but I was watching seeing as how they were the most peculiar pair in the bar.
"This 'Riley' had arrived first with that weapon of hers, and only a few moments later did the scarred woman appear. At first, there was yelling, and visible anger, but after, well, she looked happy- they looked happy," he smiled at the memory, "They looked like a happy family... but there had been no mind-altering magics at play, no magic until those things came bursting through that ceiling and roof. I would have known, and I have found such vulgar magics to be almost impossible to hide in the proximity we were in... Are you so sure it was this girl's mother? What was even that girl's purpose of meeting with the woman if she was as vile as to change her own daughter as you say she did?"
Fion rubbed his forehead in frustration, sighing. "Three weeks ago, Riley was chomping at the bit to go murder her mother, even though we were in the middle of Talze Utera, mana depleted, and would've been swarmed by monsters if we'd tried. The first part I can understand. The part where she looks happy? Must've been when her mother did something to her. And hell, I don't know why she decided meeting her mother would've been a good idea. Maybe she had a brief absence of sanity again. Seems to happen quite often when her mother's involved." And the two turned the corner, walking up to the gates of the Seyour estate...which was ruined, but strangely absent of corpses for the most part, aside from a few of the servants. Fion stared at the destruction for a moment, looking over the bodies that remained as he desperately searched for a certain one.
The man clicked his tongue in anger, despite them arriving at the carnage that must have been traumatizing to Fion. "Things change, though. People change. Can you really claim to have known her when you didn't know why she was doing what she was doing? Can you say you even cared for her if you didn't even ask how she was doing; what she was thinking at any given moment? You may think you had an idea of who this girl was, but in reality, what if all you knew about her was an assumption based on how she 'acted'?" His voice was angry, hurt; his voice scratchy from the sore throat that resulted from held back tears. Fion was accusing his mother of doing something to her, and she knew that it couldn't be true, despite there being some sense to his words. They had just made up, he had just reclaimed the mother who he had never really had; how could she believe such things? "You idiot..." his voice finally wavered as he ran past Fion and past the wreckage that was his estate, hoping Araki was somewhere inside.
Fion barely registered the man's speech as he dashed into the ruined estate himself, frantically searching the wreckage room by room until he finally found it. The corpse of an old man in a butler's uniform lay battered and broken in a side courtyard, still clutching his prized greatsword from his time as a soldier. Sinking to his knees, Fion collapsed next to the body, eyes wide in shock.
"Richard..." He whispered hoarsely. And what was left of his control finally snapped. After losing his arm, losing Riley, coming back to a ruined Cykes, and now losing the man who had been more of a father to him than his actual one had ever been, Fion couldn't hold it in any longer. Tears streaked down his face as he cried silently before waving his hand at the wall, sending a burst of wind crashing through it.
"Damn it!" He screamed, letting his Sword Arts loose as he drew his scimitar in his left hand, slashing through what was left of a pillar while razor winds swirled around him, tearing everything in the courtyard apart aside from Richard's body. His little rampage continued on for some time until he'd exhausted himself emotionally, sinking back down next to Richard's body as the last of his tears streaked down his face.
Member
Xaltwind
Fish of Oblivion
Savo
The World
Antlers
Scrawl Banditta
Bacon
Jinxxed
Lunamaria Hawke