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Zenos yae Galvus is not meant to be here.
Thancred had bemoaned for hours during the planning of the heist–it shouldn’t be you, it should be someone else, it should be me, send me in, I’m used to this sort of mission, haven’t you already exhausted yourself picking up everybody else’s slack?--and you had done your best to skate around it until he finally dropped the subject, retreating tetchily into himself once more in grief. He's right, but he's not in the right frame of mind to practice espionage. Yugiri had offered to find someone else but you both knew that she couldn’t; no one else possessed the intuition and raw skill to pull off an infiltration attempt so well. She at least had the tact to drop the attempt as soon as you shot it down.
The Empire, evidently, had a weapon of mass destruction it planned to utilize upon the front lines in Ala Mhigan territory. Fortunately its chief engineer would be attending a gala hosted by the Emperor. It was to be a gaudy night of nobility fawning over the deaths that would soon be upon their doorstep. It was to be singing for a great nation, a great country, while its dead-eyed host watched his poison spread thick and caustic. It was to be men shaking hands while standing waist-deep in blood. While Gridania would burn and Ala Mhigo would fall and Doma would bend the shaking knee.
“We will make sure this does not come to pass,” Yugiri had said to you solemnly the evening before, head tilted towards you conspiratorially. “He will bleed for the lives he would take should he live.”
So here you stand on a cold evening, glamoured into an unrecognizable Garlean perched daintily upon a parquet at some rich noble’s sprawling estate, idly drinking liquor that tastes like how an alchemical lantern looks. Your borrowed mien is designed to be attractive enough to merit a baseline trust but not enough to draw unwarranted attention–you’re to be the eyes on the floor. It was planned like clockwork, rehearsed like a dance–the engineer would drink his mulled wine that would make him ill, and as he excused himself from the party Yugiri would descend from the shadows to slit his throat and hide his corpse until daybreak at the earliest. No surprises, just straight assassination.
And yet, a wrench in the works.
Zenos yae Galvus is not meant to be here.
It doesn’t make sense. Why would he be at a gathering like this, of all places? Surely his time is better spent hunting a flight of fancy, or silently brooding away in a library, or even cutting down his sentries without a second thought. Reconnaissance had suggested he had taken station at Doma Castle as he was wont to do in the midst of a war. But he is here instead, towering bored and stone-faced above the swaying and mingling crowd. He had foregone his hulking armor for a formal black shirt and glittering gold shoulder pauldrons, decorated in unworn metals and braids; swathed in a cape intricately woven with the colors of Garlemald. He is given a wide berth as he strides unperturbed towards a chair next to his Lord-Father. Nobody tries to speak to him. Understandably so, given his penchant for wanton and random murder.
Tension releases from your shoulders slightly as you watch him stalk the floor. He cannot recognize you—you take refuge in this audacity, for being so deep behind enemy lines. He would not know you even if you were to end up in his unfortunate path.
You turn back towards the night beyond the balcony and raise your finger to your ear surreptitiously. “Yugiri,” you speak softly in Hingan, lest anyone creep up close enough to catch your words, “the Viceroy is here.”
Yugiri curses back in a staticky burst of noise, and you hear the singing of steel accompanying her as she battles what must be a guard or an unlucky onlooker. “He shouldn’t approach, but stay out of sight nonetheless. Do you still have eyes on the target?”
You cast a sideways gaze back to the party. The chief engineer still sits at a table nearby, his back to the windowed doorway you stand on the other side of, chatting animatedly with a Garlean woman who looks less than excited to be the target of his diatribe. His wine sits next to him in a crystal goblet. It remains untouched. “He hasn’t had a drink yet. Are you–do you need–”
Yugiri lets out a rallying cry and there’s an answering gurgle-thud as her opponent falls victim to her knives. “No, no; I need you there. It is only guards–nothing I cannot handle. Please, keep me updated on the engineer. The second he takes a sip I will need to know so I can get into position. Stay vigilant.”
You murmur your assent and turn back towards the party. Zenos has disappeared into the crowd. You swirl your drink in your hand and lean back upon the ballister you have picked as your roost for the evening. No one has decided to join you out here–no doubt due to the Garlean winter’s chill sinking unforgiving into your bones–and so you relax slightly, fingernails tapping a wild pattern upon the stone beneath. It’s fine; swallow your nerves. It will be fine. The engineer will have his drink, and you and Yugiri will be out without issue, dissolving into the high moonlight, partygoers none the wiser–
The glass door before you is suddenly bathed in a frighteningly familiar shadow. Before you are able to react, it opens and Zenos yae Galvus steps neatly through, closing the door behind him with an audible ‘click’!
Your blood runs cold. Instinctually your free hand clutches the railing (it would be a quick blind flip backwards and the snow would hopefully break the fall–a retreat into another day, another attempt) but your mind tells you to wait . You wear a stranger’s face in a country you by all accounts would never set foot in. All that must be done is a reassessment and a different position to be found; perhaps upon the balcony above the grand hall? “Pardon me, sir,” you squeak out, and move to dart around him.
His hand shoots out and grabs your arm.
Fuck.
“My friend,” Zenos rumbles quietly, his back to the light of the gala hiding his face from view, but you can hear the dangerous smile in his voice, “how auspicious of me to find you here.”
“P-Pardon me , sir?” You repeat nervously, keeping your voice arid and high in the vain hopes of fooling him. You know it’s doomed—he’s already addressed you with the reviled title of ‘friend’ and you know in your heart of hearts that there are no others he would laud with that accolade.
“I had not thought you so bold as to appear in my country without having been dragged here,” he continues as if you had not spoken, long fingers clutched loosely around your bicep in a way that hides what a good grip he actually has on you. You are innately aware of how caught you, a hapless mouse in the coils of a python, really are–it sickens you to your core. It feels like prey; it feels like the hunt that you had wished would not reignite tonight. “Consider me impressed. Yet you are not the type to wile away with festivities upon the enemy doorstep. Are you here for a rematch? It would not take much to persuade me.”
You sigh a shaking beat and reach up, pinching the bridge of your nose, attempting to regain control of your wild heartbeat. No, it certainly would not take much—doubtful it would take anything at all beyond a thrown punch, or even a misspoken word. “Not everything is about you , Zenos,” you shoot back, allowing your voice to fall back into its natural timbre. Zenos chuckles in response. “I’m not here for you at all. Galas aren’t exactly your scene either. Why in the hells would you be here of all places? I thought you were in Doma.”
Your words come out in a waterfall of nerves, sentence falling over sentence so quickly that for a brief moment you’re not sure what you’ve said.
Zenos pulls you away from the door, back to where you had been standing initially, but he still keeps himself between you and the party. He releases you while thrusting you back and you stumble like a fawn, catching yourself against the stone palisade behind you. Now his features are thrown into a haunting relief from the moonlight; his smile has only grown wider. His dark blue eyes appraise you with a macabre interest. “I was drawn to you as a predator is drawn to the scent and writhe of its prey,” he drawls. “Some innate part of my own nature told me to find you at this banal gathering. Here you stand–and I am satisfied .”
He frowns at something and reaches out, touching a strand of your hair that has escaped the Garlean updo it was meticulously fashioned into. “This is not your face,” he murmurs thoughtfully. “I would look upon you as you are.”
Your hand snaps up to backhand his from your face. You put as much power into it as you dare–don’t draw attention!--but it ends up hurting you more than it seems to him. He’s solid . Your hand and wrist immediately ache upon the sharp thwack of contact with his outstretched fingers, a shooting pain reaching almost to your elbow. “You would not ,” you grit your teeth, casting a covert glance around his bulk, attempting to check on your quarry. The engineer seems to be right where you left him, chattering away about nothing, but his goblet is out of sight behind Zenos’ silhouette. Has he had his drink yet? Are you out of time? “Great, you’ve found me, and you can gloat about it later. Right now I’m… busy . Can we table…whatever this is?”
“No,” Zenos answers easily and you sigh again, balancing your own drink upon the rail as you cross your arms huffily over your thudding chest. You can’t help it–it’s annoying, to put it lightly, when plans fall through so entirely. Yugiri is counting on you and here you are trading barbs with a barbarian. You remain silent but glower as hard as you dare at him, fingertips tapping out every second that slips by upon your pounding ribcage. Can he hear the beating, loud and raw, of your trepidation? Your fear? What will set him off to close the distance and wrap his wretched hands about your throat?
He merely watches you studiously, that smug smile never leaving his pale lips. “Surely the wonders of Garlemald are not enough to draw your ravenous attention,” he says, sarcasm tainting the taunt in his words, “and with your changed appearance I can only assume this is an extermination of some distasteful vermin.”
“Perhaps,” you snipe back.
Zenos huffs out an approving chuckle, deep and foreboding. “I am wounded that it is not directed towards me. But…I would much rather your direct focus than an ill-formed assassination attempt.”
“Whatever makes you think this is ‘ill-formed’ ? Do you really think I came all this way to Garlemald, alone, to stand out in the cold and wait to kill some guy?” You scoff, feeling hot anger rising within your chest. Gods, he’s the worst. In any other situation you’d curse yourself for revealing your secrets but something tells you Zenos will not be running to tattle to his father any time soon. “Regardless, I’d have thought that an acrimonious, loathsome monster like you would find some sport in espionage, considering your proclivities towards death.”
You cannot help the words you spit and they crawl out one after the other. He riles and unsettles you so easily–he burrows under your skin and sits there like a disease, instantly forcing you on the terror-filled defensive. Vile miscreation, bane of Garlemald and Eorzea alike. He hums thoughtfully in response to your condemnation, taking a step forwards that you instinctively mirror, lower back now pressed hard upon the waist-high railing behind you. “I can see the appeal,” he agrees, “but it does not suit a beast such as yourself. You are meant for the ringing of steel, the mindless rage of a head-on assault…a duel.”
“You don’t know what I’m meant for,” you hiss. “You don’t know me at all.”
Zenos tilts his head inquisitively, and a flicker of real confusion darts across his face as his smile fades. “I know you more than anybody,” he replies. “I know you, and your head, and your heart. I know the darkness that sits upon your soul. I know the light you force yourself to wear, like a vice; like a noose . I know the gnaw of hunger that eats away at your morals, quandary after quandary overcome with violence–and the joy that feeding that starvation brings. I know you , warrior of light. Even with a face not your own, I would know you anywhere.”
It’s jarring how he dissolves into real, albeit faint, emotion when he speaks of you and you hate it even more than the insanity that consumes him when you fight. A man like this shouldn’t feel anything, least of all towards you . “You only know my hatred and repulsion,” you state, attempting to peer around him once more but now that he’s closer you can’t even see your mark let alone the gala beyond, “and nothing else. You will never know anything else. You’ll die bleeding by my hand.”
You’re compromised regardless and you’re letting yourself get angry. It’s time to leave.
As if he can read your thoughts he takes another step forward, and instinct takes over before you can reassess. You move to flip yourself backwards, hands beginning to go up and behind you in a perfect arc, drop below be damned; but he’s quicker as he always has been and grabs you, throwing your arms back down at your sides so violently that for a moment it feels like he’s dislocated both of your shoulders in one fell swoop. He surrounds you by placing his arms on either side of you, moving to lean over you while effectively boxing you in. His hands crash into the palisade so powerfully that the entire parquet shakes beneath. It’s loud, but in the heavy moment after as raw agony seeps through your arms and shoulder blades, no one comes to investigate
You resist the urge to cry out and instead lean back as far as you dare for fear of pitching blind into the snow beneath. He looms over you ominously. There is nothing beyond Zenos, now, no escaping him–he consumes your entire view and sidles just too close for comfort. That insane smile is back in full force, eyes alight with an excitement that makes your blood boil. “I would have it all,” he murmurs coolly, wholly unaffected by the throbbing burn and exertion you feel, your hot breath coming out in small pointed clouds painted by the frigid air. “I will and would take your rage, gladly, but I would have all of you should the opportunity to take it arise.”
You merely stare at him, incredulous and wrathful and confused and still so frightened all at once.
Zenos gives you a coy half-shrug. “You are not fit for the consumption of lesser beings,” he says as if in explanation. “Only I, who is able to see through you, can fully lay claim to the beast you are.”
“You keep calling me a beast,” you snarl, finding the rage buried under your hesitation, leaning forward ever so slightly in an attempt to regain the upper hand. You regret it almost immediately–all he does is mirror you, inching ever closer. He’s so close, only a fulm away at most; he is closer than any fight would take the two of you, and without the armor between you it makes your skin itch and your face uncomfortably hot. You should not know any kind of intimacy with a man like this. “You do not know me if you think me some brute, swinging wild and blind.”
“But it is your nature.” Zenos’ face softens slightly, his smile turning almost indulgent, a hollow emotionless husk lit perverse and wrong. “Why would I not call a spade a spade? Man is man, and nothing but, constantly mired within perceived struggles of hope and anguish. You stand above the average, with your might and your rage. I call you a beast not only to appeal to that ire within you, but because you are much more than the peons you aim to protect.”
He tilts his head ever so slightly and inspects your false face, eyes running over you intently as if hoping to find meaning in your unsettled gaze. “I mean it as no mere wanton cruelty,” he explains. “I mean it as the highest compliment I dare to give.”
You can’t stand it anymore; the flickers of emotion, the strange softness of a villain sworn to end your life, the proximity, any of it. You lean back again to make space–and immediately remember where you are, and the gravity of your mistake.
You have leant backwards too far, and you begin to pitch head-over-heels into the blackness of the night.
Zenos’ hand shoots out and catches you, his palm flat and unnervingly warm against the small of your back as he brings you back into his orbit, your feet securely touching the ground once more. He at least has the decency to pull away slightly now that he’s assisted you–he straightens up and regards you with impassivity as you gasp for air in your sudden shock and relief. Your breath hitches into your throat, fingers finding purchase on the stone behind you and white-knuckling it for fear of falling unprepared again.
“Careless, and unlike you,” he comments quietly as you take another heaving breath, your free hand coming up and covering your chest as if to staunch the hammering thud of your heart. “Do I truly distract you so that you would forget your surroundings?”
“Too close ,” you choke out, focusing your glare on the dully glinting medals adorning his shirt in lieu of his face. “Back up.”
“If you cannot stand the propinquity of a clandestine meeting then I shudder to think what sport you will provide in the future.”
More callous sarcasm. Like you’re friends . Like he’s anything more than a corpse just begging to be made. You exhale sharply and take stock of the situation. Still cornered in the midst of the enemies–still waiting for a call from Yugiri. Zenos pinning you to a wall like a butterfly, set for careful examination of every ripple and edge. All in all, it couldn’t be going worse.
But something’s changed. There’s a palpable shift of tension in the air, and Zenos takes in a deep breath that draws your attention back to reality. What would cause him to react like that? Something certainly is off; ever so slightly, a miniscule alteration of aetheric balance in the air. You conduct a quick search of your aether, pulsing it quick and inquisitive throughout your body, and– oh . It appears that in your sudden blind panic you have released the glamour and now stand, with Zenos between, bare-faced before a crowd of people who desire your death more than anything. And you haven’t brought any glamour prisms for fear of being searched upon arrival.
Fuck! The balcony will have to be the exit, the freezing wilderness in the dark below your only way of escaping unseen. The sooner the better; if Zenos will let you go without a fight.
Zenos’ slit of a smirk has returned and he gazes down at you rapturously, his hand still pressed against your lower back so intimately you cannot help the shudder that oozes through you. “There you are,” he comments, almost affably. “You are no longer marred by the stranger you wore. It did not suit your radiance, regardless.”
“You and your… compliments ,” you sigh, but the quake in your voice belies your nerves fraying. Yugiri hasn’t reached out to you since your initial contact but you have no idea if the proverbial window of opportunity has already closed. Damn the window; she would understand that your anonymity and safety is paramount and so you’ll have to slam it closed yourself. “I’m–I’m going to have to leave, with nothing to show for it, thanks to your fucking meddling–”
The door behind him opens, sounds of revelry flooding the small space and devouring the end of your sentence. Zenos pulls you into him; at the same time, you bunch yourself against him in an attempt to hide from view, making yourself as small as possible and praying to the gods that whoever has stepped out here does not dare come to his side. Misconduct, assassinations and active warzones; you’re really not in the mood to add killing Garlean civilians or nobility to that list. Too much noise. Too much distraction.
“S-Sir,” a trembling voice calls, almost lost in the background buzzing of noise from the manor, “the E-Emperor has requested your p-presence…in th-the dining room.”
Zenos’ hand against your spine curls into a fist, slow and methodical. You look up at him as much as you dare from your vantage point crushed against his chest. A muted rage now mars his regal features that chills you to the bone. Thank the twelve it’s not currently directed at you. He turns his head and his profile is illuminated by the golden light pouring from within; he casts a scathingly condescending gaze back towards the poor servant no doubt cowering in fright in the open doorway. “ Leave, ” he enunciates quietly, the promise of violence more than implied underneath his general malaise.
The stranger needn’t be told twice. The door all but slams shut, shaking the entirety of its glass frame, enveloping you both in silence once more.
You release a heavy breath you did not know you were holding, and a pressure releases itself from your lungs. Instantly you move to peel away towards his side, but he is rigid and unmoving, hand still treacherously placed against your back. “Be still for one more moment,” he commands, gaze locked out towards the horizon, face impassive and hard in the cold moonlight, long fingers keeping you cradled against his body.
Someone else must be approaching out of your sight line that he’s noticed. You sigh but acquiesce, cheek pressed awkwardly against your hands resting on his chest as you wait out whatever other intruder he’s heard. It’s by sheer luck alone that the first person didn’t spot you; it’s impossible to tell whether you’ll get lucky again. Perhaps Yugiri may call soon to let you know she’s somehow successfully pulled the assassination off while you have been rudely interrupted, and you can slide away from this abhorrent situation as soon as possible. What a scandal it would be to any Garlean peering in–what an annoyance, more like, to be caught practically in the arms of the crown prince who you so loathe.
At least from here you can leach his warmth. “Why would your father be looking for you?”
“He has deemed my absence troubling,” Zenos murmurs in response, still staring hard out at the trees, “and so takes it upon himself to locate me once again.”
No doubt to (rightfully) reign him in. You don’t bother deigning him with a response, still too perturbed by his physical closeness to bother engaging him in pleasantries. That hot redness hasn’t left your cheeks yet–the way you are angled, you can hear the steady unbothered thrum of his own heartbeat, something that you would only want to hear if it was on its last thuds of life. Even dressed to the nines there is a faint scent of blood on him; all the gold in the world cannot truly hide his nature.
You’re too close. These are things that should remain unknown about this man.
“Did you hear someone else?” You finally say after a long, grueling moment, teeth beginning to chatter from being still in the cold for so long. “Have they left?”
Zenos smiles, a cruel cut across his face, his eyes closing into a light breeze. The hand that is currently pressed against you begins to idly play with a tassel on the back of your clothing in a nauseating pantomime of affection. “Nobody else approaches. Are you so keen on keeping the two of us alone, warrior of light?”
You jerk away like a fish on a line and shove his chest backwards; this time he moves a few fulms away from you, careful to separate you from the party once more, still smiling so snidely. Bastard. Another way he slides right under your skin like a splinter. He has no right to tease so; like you’re not after his jugular and the cold death tearing it out would bring. He mocks you and the shivers of an unstoppable anger beginning to paint the base of your spine. “Get off me, then,” you hiss with justified heat. “Why did you–why didn’t you–”
Before he can respond or you can finish, a quiet buzzing in your ear shocks you back to reality. “Do you have any updates?” Yugiri comes in, tinny and electronic in your head. “The silence is making me nervous. It’s been some time since we’ve spoken.”
The mission–the assassination! You all but throw Zenos to the side, forgetting your fear in one cold plunging moment to take a bound forward, yet still utilizing him as cover as you glance around him into the manor. The villa is still in full-swing, the tiled floors filled to the brim with dancers, golden motion a hazy blur through the patterned glass.
Your target is missing. His wine glass is drained.
“I’m so sorry,” you babble back to Yugiri, words stumbling over themselves as your blood runs glacial through your veins, “I’m so sorry, Yugiri. I-I lost sight of him. He’s gone. He drank the wine, and I don’t know–I don’t know how long ago–”
Yugiri gives a sharp gasp of chagrin in response. “I will find him,” she promises, a low resolution in her tired voice, and your stomach twists in an apology she does not stay on the linkpearl to hear. The line promptly goes dead. She has, no doubt, sprung into action in the ways that you did not, covering for your mishaps while you disregard the entire reason for being here. A real warrior of light wouldn’t have allowed themselves to fraternize so shamelessly–or, even, to be cornered so ardently, with no real fight or fire burning within.
“Losing your quarry is indeed lamentable,” Zenos comments emotionlessly, as you slump forward in both shame and frustration, the heels of your palms pressed hard into your eyes as if to hide all traces of the prince from sight. “Though I suppose I shall take satisfaction in knowing I have devoured a good part of your evening.”
“Shut up,” you growl out, exhaustion and disappointment giving way to an easy rage, a real heat building up from the pit of your stomach and shooting red across your vision. Fear concedes to anger so quickly, a spark to a line of gunpowder, and you turn back towards him, a snarl growing up the side of your cheek like a weed. You will ignite the flame of ire yourself and rend it upon him in the worst of ways. Fucking bastard. “Get out of my way, or I’ll make you get out of–”
Zenos moves so quickly that in the dim light you don’t even make out the blur of motion; his hand slamming into your chin and grabbing your face is a genuine surprise. You cannot help the yelp that escapes your throat in fright–the meat of his palm crashes into your jaw so hard you’re certain it’s bruised as soon as it lands. Four fingers line one of your cheeks and his thumb digs into the other. He’s forced you back again, but this time so far that your upper body dangles over the edge of the balcony, only the tips of your toes remaining upon the stone floor. His manic grin blooms once again across his face. “ Yes ,” he hisses, inspecting you with a fervor as you latch hard onto his forearm with your two hands, nails digging into the expensive fabric, both to try and peel away and to stop yourself from pitching backwards once more. “This is the rage I have learned to expect from you, my beast, my friend! I have ruined your plans and now you seek vengeance! What will you do to me–what horrors do you intend to rend upon myself in the throes of battle?”
Without warning, and before you can even bother responding to his disturbed diatribe, his thumb is suddenly shoved into your mouth, running exploratory over the crowns of your teeth. He presses down painfully hard on a canine and you immediately taste a familiar coppery tang bursting atop your tongue. “You should know my taste, for your hunt,” he croons, as you splutter and choke on the sudden onslaught, overstimulated by the actions, his blood, his closeness. “Commit this slight to memory, my warrior of light. Find me. Hunt me. Wound me, and I will reciprocate–I will give you my all, my everything.”
You slam your jaw closed as hard as you can with a loud snap but he’s already withdrawn quick as a flash, and his arm is torn from your grip, leaving you reeling in a sick freefall for half a moment. You’re able to catch the railing, forced to sit atop it as he continues to dominate your space, his legs and thighs now pushed into your knees, his long hair curtaining the rest of the world from view. He gives you a manic, awestruck smile as he closely inspects his now bleeding digit in the pale light. “Would that they were sharper,” he says, nearly wistful, and lifts his thumb to his mouth to gently slide the mixture of blood and saliva over his own parted lips, slipping it into his own mouth. Crimson glints black in the light and a long trail oozes down and around his thumb, crawling a cooling trail down towards the pale skin of his wrist. Your stomach does a flip, tying itself in the most peculiar of loops. “Proper fangs, for a beast. For my beast.”
It’s spoken with a genuine affection that makes you shudder more than him invading your mouth did.
Okay. It’s more than time to go.
A quick glance down and behind tells you the drop is about thirty fulms beneath you, and you whip yourself around, kicking your legs out over the darkness beyond as you wrench your body away and jump down into the unknown. He thankfully does not stop you, but he laughs like broken ice and it echoes around you as you fall.
You land hard after a few tense moments–your aether and Hydaelyn’s gifts protect you from the brunt of any damage incurred by natural accidents but it still shoots jolts of pain up your legs and thighs as you drop and touch down in a crouching position, landing in only about a fulm of snow. It looked deeper from higher up. It’s cold, and it stings your legs as you straighten up and sprint towards the woods before you. Your face is still a ruddy red; your shame hangs over you like a shroud. How could you have let yourself stay there for that long? How could you have let him shove you, corner you, touch you?
You stop as soon as you reach the tree line, panting hard. Half in disbelief and half in disgust, you reach up to where Zenos’ blood still coats your tongue and lip, rolling it around your mouth as if you’ll find an answer in the metallic taste haunting you. Your stomach is still firmly tangled into knots, and your heart is thudding wild in your chest like you really are the beast he likens you to, forced into fight-or-flight by its natural predator. The right thing to do would be spit out any taste of him clogging your senses–
And you almost immediately swallow.
You gag and cough, doubled-over, in an attempt to take back what you’ve done, but it’s to no avail. Your body will not rescind its gut-churning gift. The idea of part of Zenos being inside you, in your stomach…it feels like fish hooks have sunk underneath your sternum and grasp at your insides, pulling them in every which way. It’s disgusting. It disgusts you, wholly and entirely.
Right? Then why would you have swallowed so easily, like it’s second nature?
Before you can do any further introspection, the linkpearl buzzes to life once more. “I found him,” Yugiri pants triumphantly. “He has died. I have located the engineer. He died quickly and without issue. You needn’t worry, warrior of light.”
Relief floods through you, cutting through the shame for a brief moment. “You have? Oh, gods , Yugiri, I cannot tell you how sorry I am–”
“None of that,” Yugiri reprimands you, gentle but firm. “Your intel was correct. He had only just risen when you had called me, based on where I had found him after he left the ballroom. You have done everything perfectly. I could not have hoped for a better outcome.”
Divine intervention. Thank the twelve. And she sounds proud, almost, through the robotic crackling of the linkpearl. “I-I…I’m glad,” you respond through a shaking breath, pushing a few strands of hair from your eyes. “I’m so sorry, Yugiri. Really. I got…ah, tied up, and–”
“Truly, none of that,” Yugiri responds fondly. “I mean it. Are you on your way to the rendezvous point? I am here now, waiting for you. We can discuss this later, face-to-face.”
You sigh and brace yourself against a nearby tree, casting a final parting glance to the manor in the distance behind you. Zenos’ silhouette remains, unmoving, long blonde hair tousled slightly by the frigid wind, no doubt watching you make your escape. “I’ll be there soon,” you promise her, glaring at the monster across the lawn.
You make a promise to yourself as you depart, staring hard at him through the moonlight–the next time he steals close to you so brazenly, you will rip his throat out with your teeth.