"For gods sake, Eldrin. I left this kingdom with you for ONE week, and this is the state I find it in?" Gaius's voice carried an edge sharp enough to cut. "You let a Fallen Demon into our territory, let Oswald freely go on a massacre, and even got him killed? Because of your stupidity, we've lost a valuable Ascended!"
Eldrin scowled with indignation.
"Your brother is dead, uncle, and this is what you're worried about? That we lost an Ascended?!"
Ashoka could sense the anger and contempt in his voice as he practically screamed at Gaius.
They were currently in an opulent meeting room in the northern part of the palace, discussing what had happened while Gaius and his men were on their expedition. There were 5 people present: Prince Gaius and Ascended Rurik, who had just returned; Eldrin and Ashoka, who were sitting on a sofa facing the other two; and finally Corvin, who was standing motionlessly behind Gaius, not saying a word.
Gaius scoffed at Eldrin coldly, "I was in the army with him, boy, and this isn't the first time I heard news of his death, though it will be the last." He turned his face and sighed, "I have already shed too many tears for him, and the type of man he died doesn't deserve anything anymore."
'Damn, is this bastard just bad at acting, or is he trying to sound indifferent to not give anything away?'
'Uh-huh, yeah, let's see.' Watching them argue, Ashoka, for a moment, had the familiar urge to annoy someone, just like he had when he met the young police officer.
So, as the two Royalties were busy bickering, Ashoka suddenly faked a cough, bringing his palm to cover his mouth. No one paid him any attention, and so he slowly moved it up to cover the left side of his face, mimicking Oswald's scarred face. Then, with half-lidded eyes, he slowly looked at Gaius.
He wasn't even sure why he was doing this, really. He already knew how tonight was going to end between them regardless — some things, once set into motion, simply followed their own course no matter what small provocations got added along the way. Still, some old, self-destructive part of him just couldn't resist.
For a second, nothing happened.
Gaius's gaze had drifted somewhere past Ashoka's shoulder, mid-argument with Eldrin, and for one drawn-out moment, Ashoka genuinely wondered if he'd wasted the gesture entirely. Then those eyes found him and stopped.
The aloof prince didn't move a muscle, didn't blink, didn't so much as shift his weight — yet somehow, Ashoka felt the room's temperature drop several degrees that existed only in his own chest. He kept his palm exactly where it was, half-lidded eyes locked on Gaius's face, and waited to find out whether he had just made the worst decision of his increasingly regrettable second life.
A full two seconds passed.
Then Gaius's composure finally cracked — the barest twitch at the corner of his eye, gone almost before it registered — and he turned back to Eldrin as though nothing had happened at all, evening out his voice mid-sentence.
"—and Alariv still hasn't returned from his mission. At this point, I'm starting to get worried."
Ashoka slowly lowered his hand, letting out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
Worth it, probably. He wasn't sure it changed anything waiting for him later. But it had been worth it.
'Wait, no.'
Ashoka's ears perked up as the tail end of Gaius's sentence caught up with him. Gaius continued,
"Eldrin, are you still getting the danger alert from the Crown?"
Eldrin slowly nodded, "Yes."
Hearing the answer, Gaius clicked his tongue and spoke in a tense tone, and for this once, Ashoka didn't think it was an act.
"So the real threat had always been the Devil and not the Tyrant..." He covered his face with a hand, showing the bandage covering his entire left arm, probably an injury from the fight with the Tyrant. "Damn it, I think we really need to send some reinforcement as fast as possible. Although I don't think Alariv will fall, his companions might very well do. We also need a team to scavenge all that we can from the Corrupted Tyrant's corpse before its minions devour it whole."
He paused for a second, then turned to Rurik beside him. "Would you mind joining the reinforcements for Alariv?"
Rurik hadn't said a single word since entering the room, and until Gaius turned to address him, Ashoka had seriously forgotten to study his features.
He sat leisurely right next to Gaius, dressed in traveling leathers so worn and mud-colored that they seemed to actively discourage the eye from lingering. He was neither tall nor broad. If Ashoka had passed him in a crowded market, he doubted he'd remember the man's face five seconds later—an oddly plain collection of features, forgettable even if paid attention to.
It was only when Rurik finally looked up, and his eyes met Ashoka's for the briefest instant, that the illusion cracked.
They were pale, colorless things that moved like they were reading something, left to right as if moving through the words on a page. Ashoka felt, for one deeply uncomfortable second, as though the man had already catalogued his height, his weight, the number of times he'd shifted his posture in the last ten minutes, and several other details Ashoka would have preferred to keep to himself.
Oh, and he wasn't so unassuming anymore. His hair—which Ashoka would have sworn a moment ago was some drab, indeterminate brown—had gone pale wheat-gold under the light, near-white where it caught the lamp. That, coupled with the face that seemed more like a beautifully carved statue, was enough to turn faces on the street. Right now though, the face bore an exhausted expression.
'All this, just to get mogged by an Awakened Kai!'
Then Rurik blinked, and the sensation vanished, and he was simply an unremarkable, dust-colored man sitting quietly. Ashoka blinked as well, confused by the strange feeling.
From what he knew, Rurik's aspect was a mix of an amped-up antimemetic trait that made it hard for anyone to notice him, along with a low affinity to prophecy of some kind that was useful in investigation as long as lingering traces were present.
He hadn't touched his tea since sitting down. He hadn't touched anything, actually—not the armrest, not the table's edge, nothing that might leave a trace of where he'd been.
When he raised his hand to scratch the back of his head, Ashoka noticed there was no indentation on the cloth of the armrest where his arm had rested.
No, actually, there was a trace, but it had either literally just erased itself, or Ashoka's senses were refusing to register it at all.
"Uh... I do mind, actually. I'm also injured, you know, and still suffering from essence exhaustion."
Gaius sighed but didn't push further. Ashoka realized that Gaius was attempting to get Rurik out of Casamir to make sure he didn't somehow discover Gaius's hidden tunnel and ruin their plans. Since it failed, he would either be sent to the ward for healing or assigned to a faraway location from the site.
Just then, Eldrin asked, "Actually, what was the Tyrant like, and how did you guys kill it?"
Gaius turned to him and then explained calmly, "It was an earth-based monster, usually preferring to stay and travel from underground. It was still easy to spot, though, because most of its minions couldn't keep up with its speed underground, so they had to travel above ground to follow it instead. Additionally, wherever it passed, the temperature above would rise to boiling points. In the end, I used my ability to mark it and overwhelm its senses, forcing it to surface within a body of water. From there, I and the other Ascended and awakened stalled it and its minions while Rurik and another awakened sneaked up on its nape, where its armor was the thinnest, to deal it a fatal blow."
Just like that, their conversation went on for a few more minutes before, finally, Gaius stood up suddenly, staring right at Ashoka. "I would like to have a private talk with Ashoka for a moment."
A shudder ran through Ashoka's body as he heard that voice, because perhaps only he felt the coldness hidden beneath the calm and even facade of those words.
He closed his eyes slowly and gritted his teeth.
'It's just pain, damn it!'
He knew this was going to happen when he made that decision days ago.
He had prepared himself for this.
Standing up, Ashoka quietly followed behind him as they exited the room and entered into the hallway. Eventually, they rounded a corner and stepped into an empty narrow corridor.
"I know what you might think, but I had nothing to do with the accident with Cathal's family."
Gaius didn't react to his word. His palm slowly passed over the wall, and his nails dug a deep groove into it. As soon as he did that, the air in the corridor turned inexplicably thick and stagnant. Ashoka knew that not a single sound would escape this sealed corridor.
"I spread the bloodtrail to the path we agreed upon, but the monster seemed to have gone past it and followed its own—" before he could finish his sentence, Gaius turned around and stared at him with murderous wrath. All his bloodlust and fury washed over Ashoka like a vast and dreadful ocean, freezing him in place.
In the next second, Gaius's hand flashed, and Ashoka Could only watch with terror as he was lifted into the air by an iron grip, suffocating him mercilessly. The air left his lungs and all the blood drained from his face, turning his skin a pale yellow.
"Ugh..." He let out a pained groan, fruitlessly trying to claw at the hand wrapped around his neck.
"Don't think me a fool, boy. Don't think I can't know what you did." His cold and ruthless eyes bore into him, and Ashoka was forced to look straight into their endless, abyssal depth. "I saw the path of destruction that monster left, and I know exactly how far you deviated from the original path. Another lie out of that filthy mouth of yours, and I might just cut off your tongue and feed it to you!"
After a second, the grip around Ashoka's neck loosened slightly, just enough to let him breathe. A sharp gasp escaped his throat as he greedily sucked in all the sweet air that he could. It had never felt like a luxury to be able to breathe, but now, it was as though he had been holding his breath for an eternity.
The feeling didn't last for long, because he quickly broke into a coughing fit. As soon as he calmed it down, he slowly looked down at Gaius.
Then, a mocking grin appeared on his pale face.
"What... weren't you the one preaching to me... about the price of ambition? Hah... What's two more... to an already 12 list of corpses... Or does it only matter when it's someone you knew...?"
Those were perhaps not the wisest words to say in that situation, but Ashoka had said them out of spite, not reason.
Gaius's grip around his neck tightened once again, stronger than ever, and Ashoka's eyes bulged. He felt his airway cave under the monstrous pressure, and his fingers slowly lost their strength, turning numb and cold.
"Right..." Gaius snarled. "And what's one more corpse among 14 others..."
'Agh—!...What a stupid way to die!'
Ashoka struggled desperately, kicking his feet into the air as if trying to reach something. By now, even they had gone numb. His hands tried to pull at the arm strangling him, but they remained unmoving and uncaring like a monolith.
"You can't... Kill me!" He finally rasped. "I am the only one—Hhh-uhk! — With a backdoor... to the Crown's function! You can't become the King without me!"
At last, Gaius's expression finally changed, but nevertheless, his grip remained firm. Ashoka's vision slowly turned dark, and all thoughts began to fade away.
Just as he thought he was really about to die, Gaius cursed. Before Ashoka could even react, he was flung towards the wall at startling speeds.
In the next second... He found himself crumpled to the ground. Ashoka found it hard to breathe properly, and something cold, wet, and sticky was flowing down the back of his head.
'... I'm having a concussion...'
He did not feel any pain at the moment, only an aching numbness that seemed to have engulfed his entire being. His thoughts came slow and muddled, as if he were drowning in a sea.
There was the muffled sound of footsteps, growing fainter and fainter by the second. Weakly, he tried to look up and saw that Gaius had already left.
Slowly, and with some difficulty, he sat up straight, leaning slightly on the wall. After some hesitation, he brought a trembling hand to touch the back of his head.
A split second later, a sharp sting spread from the point of contact, and his entire body flinched.
Grimacing, he brought his palm forward, only to see it covered in a thin layer of blood.
"Right, what did I expect..."
Finally, the pain broke through the wall of adrenaline and spread to every corner of his body. He couldn't help but let out a pained moan.
He looked up, staring at the ceiling with an unreadable expression, and sighed helplessly.
"Fuck... How did my life become like this?"
It was just so complicated now, everything really.
Every step he took was a possible gate for pain. Every decision he made was a possible path to death.
His vision had turned blurry at some point.
"Damn, I miss home."
He knew this wasn't even the most complicated thing he was going to have to face after his Nightmare ended. There were still Transcendent warriors, legacy and great clans, and literal Supremes waiting outside. His pathway even made sure that he'd get tangled in all that mess eventually.
His life... Was going to be complicated...
He used the back of his hand to wipe the tears, but all it achieved was smearing blood all over his face.
He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.
'It's just pain, damn it!'
He knew this was going to happen when he had made that decision days ago.
He had prepared himself for this.
...But it still fucking hurt!
He once again wiped the tears off his face, this time using the other hand.
He did not know whether they had appeared because of the pain, the shame, or the feeling of powerlessness he felt.