by Quil Carter
Drake looked at Jack and then to Silas, the cicaro looked scared of the state his master was in, and for good reason; Drake had never seen Silas lose control and the mentally stunted chimera wouldn’t know how to handle it.
“Maybe it would make him happy to see my new pet?” Drake asked in a small voice.
“Do as I said, Drakonius,” Jack said sharply, and at that Drake disappeared into his room and the door slammed behind him.
Not too long after, the door behind Jack opened and Elish was there. Jack gave him a look as his oldest brother swept past him, but Elish had nothing to offer him in return. The golden boy was his frozen self, the mask of the emotionless chimera firmly on his face. What fears Elish had regarding his cicaro, or the plans unravelling between his fingers, had either been left behind or locked up tight where no one could access it. Jack both admired and hated him in that moment.
He calls Silas the mental shapeshifter but look at him, Jack said to himself as, with a heartbroken wail, Silas opened his arms for Elish to hold him. He plots his death and fills our minds with malice, but here he holds our king and becomes his rock. All with a devious and cold smirk on his face when the king isn’t looking.
I’m glad we ended our relationship when we did. Or else I would have become just as bad as he. I may have shot every emotion I had when Sanguine left me, for my own self-preservation, but at least I’m not underhanded and devious to those who depend on me for strength.
“Tell me we have more of him somewhere!”
Jack’s attention turned back to Silas when he heard his king cry out. “Please, Elish… tell me there’s something. This can’t be the end. This can’t be the end.”
Elish rubbed Silas’s back in small circles and made shushing noises. Jack’s stomach turned at the display.
“I’m sorry, love, but I’m afraid this is the end. Our only solution would be to quell the flames in the plaguelands and retrieve Reaver,” Elish said gently. “Do you want us to try that?”
“No.”
Jack saw Elish’s eyes narrow at this. Jack’s fists clenched when he saw it.
“Fuck Reaver,” Silas said, his voice a strangled cry. “Fuck him. Even if there was a way… fuck him. When the flames cool I want his bones encased in concrete. He’s the one that let that little blond shit destroy Sky’s O.L.S. He’s the one who held me back. I will never have him as my partner. I will revel in his pain when he wakes and Killian is long dead. Fuck him. Fuck Sky!” Silas let out an agonizing cry and his grip on Elish’s robes tightened. “FUCK SKY!” he suddenly screamed. He pushed himself away from Elish, his chest heaving. He tried to stand but stumbled back and only fell to the ground.
Silas tried to get up again but fell back down to his knees. He looked around like he was lost, like he didn’t know where he was. But as the king’s face dissolved and his eyes closed… Jack realized Silas was looking for comfort from someone who no longer existed.
Someone who had been dead for well over a century.
Jack held a hand to his mouth, and when Silas let out an agonizing cry, tears sprung to his eyes. Unable to hold back he ran to Silas and threw his arms around him, and when he made eye contact with Elish’s burning, bordering on threatening gaze…
… Jack glared right back.
Jack tightened his arms around Silas as the king sobbed in his shirt, and secured him in his hold.
“Get the hell out of here,” Jack said to Elish, frost forming on every word he said. “And don’t you dare touch him again with your blood-stained hands.”
Elish slowly rose, and to Jack he had never looked taller, or more threatening. He was the god of ice this one, and though a fifteen-year-old cicaro had managed to thaw that frozen heart; it was clear now that the boy’s impact had, perhaps, only maddened him further.
Elish before Jade was an intimidating sight of strength and pride.
Elish after Jade… was a terrifying tyrant, who would stop at nothing to keep his husband safe no matter whose soul he crushed underneath his boots.
And this fact was only proven when Elish smiled down at Jack. A smile that held behind it such a sinister and evil presence, Jack’s bravery shot right out of him, and it took all of him to not show it on his face.
“Ares and Siris…” Elish suddenly called. “You may bring him in now.”
Jack looked at him suspiciously before his eyes turned to the door.
If there was any bravery left inside of Jack, it vanished the moment Ares and Siris walked in… dragging a thrashing and snarling Sanguine behind them.
“No!” Jack cried. As Silas pulled away from him, Jack jumped to his feet. But as he ran towards Sanguine, he felt Elish grab the collar of his shirt, and after a short struggle, Elish successfully pinned Jack’s arms behind his back, crushing them into Elish’s torso so he was unable to move.
Jack screamed at Ares and Siris to let him go, and that scream only got shriller when Sanguine looked up, blood covering his face and dripping down his hairline.
No, no, it wasn’t Sanguine… it was Crow. It was fucking Crow!
“Let go of me, you asshole. Or I’ll tell him everything!” Jack snarled. He whirled around to bite Elish’s arm but he wasn’t even close; his teeth only clipped together, and with that, another scream broke his throat.
“You won’t, because you’re a pathetic little coward,” Elish hissed in his ear. “You won’t because you know if you do… Sanguine falls right along with me, and you, and Garrett; Juni as well. And that’s if he believes you which he never will. But I regress… call my bluff, Anubis, sing your song for the king.”
Another cry sounded from Jack, until it dissolved into a sob and he felt himself collapse, only Elish was holding him up now.
“What is wrong with him?” Silas’s dead voice asked. Jack looked over to see Silas, once again standing, looking at Sanguine with nothing behind his eyes but the ghosts of a thousand long dead emotions.
“He’s the one behind trapping us in the greywastes,” Elish replied, and as Jack screamed at him to stop, he felt a hand over his mouth. “We were stranded for ten days while Sanguine freed Nero and Ceph. Those two, plus Kiki, who he put up to stealing our Falconer while we were in the plaguelands, are now gone. Juni and Luca activated Crow to learn where we were, and rescued all of us. Something seems to be wrong with your little crucio though… he seems to be stuck in his madness. How unfortunate.”
Suddenly a low and horrifically insane laugh sounded. All eyes shot to Crow as the madman looked up from under his brow to Silas, Elish, and Jack.
“Oh, that’s not all he did, familia mea,” Crow chuckled. He smiled his closed mouth smile and his eyes squinted in the dim lighting. “I’m afraid I must apologize for them, my king. For Nero and Sanguine freed someone else. He is quite the mystery though. Who was that odd-eyed man?”
Jack was struck when he felt Elish’s heart give a leap, but before Elish could give any audible reaction, Silas’s own expression drew everyone’s gaze.
Silas was frozen again, but instead of a look of heartbreaking sadness, it was like someone had walked up to him and slapped him.
“W-what…?” Silas said in a dropped tone. The change was so drastic Jack felt Elish let go of him, but Jack made no motion to run to Sanguine, or even move. Everyone in the room, including Ares and Siris, had their eyes on Silas.
The complete turn in attitude had everyone suddenly standing on cracking glass.
“He…” Silas took a step backwards and his head shook back and forth. “You…” Silas looked past Sanguine, and without another word, he ran out of the room.
With their malice temporarily forgotten, everyone in the room, save Crow, exchanged fleeting looks before Jack, Elish, Ares, and Siris all followed behind Silas. The king led them to the stairs and Jack knew with a vice on his heart just where Silas was leading them, to the twenty-fourth floor.
What the hell just happened…?
Elish was ahead of them, no one dared push themselves in front,
not even Jack. Jack was only a half-step behind him though, and that was the reason why he slammed into Elish’s back when his oldest brother stopped in his tracks; and with a grunt of pain Ares, and then Siris, slammed into him too.
Jack squeezed himself out from between Elish’s back and Ares’s front, and tried to walk into the room, but Elish held out a hand to stop him. When Jack looked into the room he knew why.
It was like the greywastes had been brought to Alegria, there was crumbling concrete all around the room and the heavy smell of dust and dirt.
But as Jack counted, he could only see that two concrete slabs had been removed.
Elish entered the room and walked to the concrete coffin in the corner, Silas right beside him. The king had his back turned to Jack but he saw him raise a hand and touch the concrete tomb that Jack, the entire family actually, had always thought was empty or only holding remains.
Silas’s hand pulled away from the tomb like touching it had become painful, and that hand then was held to his mouth.
Silas turned and looked down, his green eyes sweeping the concrete on the ground before he bent down and picked up a small chunk.
Silas moved the chunk around in his hand and Jack saw what he was observing. One side of the piece had a shiny surface to it, like it had been coated in a thin metal.
There was silence in the room, all but the scraping and crunching of the disturbed concrete, and it was because of that silence that everyone observed Silas’s lips purse and his expression suddenly turn dark.
As Silas’s fist closed around the egg-sized brick of concrete, there was a crunching sound. Then Silas raised his hand and let the crushed concrete, now just sand, fall to the floor.
Jack stared and took step backs, until his own back hit one of the twins’ bodies.
“You didn’t answer me, King Siley-pie,” Crow’s voice suddenly sang behind them. Jack felt nauseas as Crow strolled down the hallway with a smile on his face. “Just who is this odd-eyed man?”
Silas’s eyes flashed when he saw Crow. A look of pure hatred came to his face, and to Jack’s horror, he saw his king step back into the same maddened state he had seen him in earlier.
Though this wasn’t one drawn up by inconsolable sadness, this was anger.
The man who ended the world… was angry.
Jack spun around grabbed Crow by his black vest. He tried to shove him away, a desperate cry sounding from him. “Run. RUN! RUN!!” he suddenly shrieked as he kept pushing him. “BABY, RUN!”
“GRAB HIM!” Silas screamed. “GRAB HIM!”
Siris grabbed Crow, and as Jack held onto Crow’s vest with an iron grip, Ares roughly pulled him away. The strength of the pull ripped two of Jack’s fingernails from his fingers, but successfully tore his hold from the man in Sanguine’s body.
Jack shook his head back and forth. “No, no, no,” he whimpered as Siris marched Crow to the king; and when Crow was in front of him, Siris kicked the back of his legs until he fell to his knees.
“Yes?” Crow said in a cheerful voice, unfazed by the emotion that was ripping through the air like lightning. “What can I help you with, love?”
Silas glared down at him; his body trembling with anger and his eyes cradling flames.
“I should have never, ever taken you out of that house,” Silas said in a whispered and deadly tone. “I should have let you continue to be Jasper’s whore, you damaged, worthless creature.”
“NO!” Jack screamed. “NO!”
Silas didn’t acknowledge Jack’s cries or even blink. His gaze burned Crow as the mad man kneeled before him, the insane chimera himself not moving under the king’s scathing words.
Then Jack heard a chuckle, a dry raspy laugh. “You damaged him, lovely. You do not like what you created?”
Silas slowly shook his head. “I am not above making mistakes, crucio, and I am one to admit when I have made them.” His eyes flickered to Siris. “Take him back where we found him. Chain him and make sure he cannot be freed from Jasper’s basement. If he insists on writhing in his own madness he can do it where the madness began. Go.”
“NO!” Jack had never screamed so loudly in his life. A panic set into him that made him thrash and desperately try to pull himself away from Ares. “SILAS! PLEASE!” Jack sobbed. “I’m begging you, not that, not that! Not–”
“You… you can’t put us back in there.”
Jack looked at Crow who was being dragged behind Silas by Siris. He cried out and put a hand over his mouth when he saw something unbelievable to him…
Crow scared.
“You can’t put us back – back in there…” Crow stammered, his red eyes wide.
Then they shot to Jack. “Stop him… you know what it’ll do to Sanguine. Why are you just standing there? STOP HIM!”
“SILAS!” Jack pleaded. He broke down sobbing, unable to control himself. “Don’t do this to him. He didn’t mean it! PLEASE!”
But Silas was gone, disappeared down the hallway with Crow stammering and pleading.
And then… and then Crow started screaming.
“SILAS? MASTER!” Crow’s cries echoed in the stairwell. “Please… not this. Not this. Not this.”
Not this.
Not this.
Jack dropped to his knees, and to his surprise, he heard a sniff behind him and a forehead rest against his shoulder. Ares… Ares was crying into him.
“I’m sorry, puka,” Jack heard Ares whisper. “I had to follow orders.” The brute chimera squeezed Jack to him but all the Grim could do was stare at the last place he’d seen Sanguine.
Not this.
Then a cold chuckle. Jack looked up to see Elish walk out of the room, until he was standing in front of Jack.
The cold chimera crossed his arms, and his mouth rose in a taunting smile so frozen Jack could practically see the ice on his lips.
“Quid nuc, Anubis?” Elish said through his smile. “I hope we learned our lesson.” Then, with a sweep of his robes, he disappeared down the hallway.
What now, Anubis?
Jack stared at the hall, at the dusted footprints now broken up by the streaks of Sanguine’s dragged body.
What now, Anubis?
Jack’s gaze dropped to his hands and he saw blood dripping from his ripped off fingernails onto the grey floor; the red contrasting the grey, it looked… it looked beautiful.
“What now?” Jack said faintly. He rose and took a stumbling step into the hall. He turned around to where Ares was, an expression of devastation on his tear-streaked face.
Quid nuc, Anubis?
Jack made it one last step, before his legs gave out from under him and he fell to the floor. He looked down as the dizziness swept him, and as he stared at his hands, his mind cleared.
“What now?” Jack whispered. His gaze rose to the ceiling and he closed his eyes. He saw Crow’s own eyes slaying him with their unsuppressed fear. He saw Sanguine’s mournful, psychosis-filled howls when he woke up back at Jasper’s.
He saw Sanguine as the scared and timid teenager he’d first seen in class, then the mentally ill man he’d watched him become as Elish and Silas crippled his wings one after the other.
So what now, brother?
Now, Elish, I think it is time… that you are stopped.
Drake
Drake sat on the top of the steps licking a popsicle and occasionally checking out his tongue in a handheld mirror he’d stolen from Ellis. He snorted a laugh when he saw that his lips had now turned blue, along with his blue-stained tongue.
He had just come back from milling around the sengils’ kitchens to snitch some extra food. He had to give two blowjobs for the sack full of snacks, but he didn’t mind. He’d wanted to experiment and see if their dicks would turn blue and, sure enough, they did. He even got some pretty enthusiastic squeals when he put his cold mouth over their heads. It was always fun getting the sengils to make those noises, his brothers rarely made those noises unless they were teenagers or cicaros. The older they
got, the more stiff they got.
Except me. I’ll never be too concerned about that bullshit. Drake bit the end of the popsicle and crunched it, before he reached over and grabbed a marshmallow cookie. Then, as if remembering why he’d gotten the snacks in the first place, he rose to his feet.
But the moment he turned around he heard a faint scream. Drake’s eyebrows knitted together and he craned his head to listen.
Another scream, this one closer. Drake leaned over the railing to look down the stairs and heard a door slam and the screaming continue. It was coming closer and closer and…
Oh no. It was Sanguine. Drake frowned and leaned against the metal door that led to Silas’s hallway and apartment. He got out of the way when he saw Siris pulling a screaming and thrashing Sanguine.
Oh… nope. It’s Crow. Crow’s bad. Drake tilted his head to the side. “Come back soon, Sanguine. I love you,” he called and waved his hand, then he blew him a kiss. I hope he gets well soon and comes back. I miss him already.
Drake put the popsicle back into his mouth and sucked on it some more. Then he saw Elish stalking up the stairs and took it out.
“Hey, do you want to see my new pet?” Drake asked excitedly.
“No one wants to see your fucking pet!” Elish said sharply. “Get back into the apartment and stay there.”
Drake cowered down and sighed. With a shrug of his shoulders he grabbed his bag from the kitchen sengils and opened the metal door back into Silas’s apartment.
None of the stupid family ever spent time with him, like personal good time, except Sanguine and now he was gone.
Drake roughly plunged his hand into the box of cookies, pulled two out, and angrily crunched on them.
No wonder he had to get a new pet. He was lonely. His master had been deading in his bed ever since he came back, and the moment he wakes up he doesn’t even fucking say hello. They just scream at him to go away, and then they scream at each other, then drag someone away screaming, and no one even says hello to Drake.
Fucking assholes, all of them. Why did Crow have to come and be taken away? I want Sanguine, he’s my best brother. Sanguine would’ve seen my new pet and probably liked him too.