Finding Contentus

Chapter 129: Chained

The interference circle was in full effect. His constricted pupils scanned the roaming primals, further in the forest. Ramsis's hooded followers roamed around as well. Their hounds were not howling. They were docile, quiet.

Afterimages of Genesia and Neosa, when they were ten years of age appeared before him. When the suppression spell had worked to lessen the radiation of their impulse dreams. So many moons and suns ago it seemed to him. How big were they at the moment? Whose features were more dominant? His or Bantii's?

He shook his head at that. The answer was painstakingly obvious. Both. It could only be both. They were equals. Bantii was the Cheating Mother after all.

The decaying leaves filled every inch of his and Minaleese's rooftop. A crunch could be heard with every footstep underneath his bare soles. The breathing whirlwinds were in turmoil, twisting about like columns of cylinders. On many occasions, he and Kakara had spent time up here and in the forest, just chilling, just bonding, not really talking much, not needing to talk much unless she wanted him to ramble.

From the corner of his eye, Renero saw Ramsis, sitting on a stool in his hooded black robe. The scarred, unrecognizable half of his face contrasted with the untouched, recognizable half.

"Pharaoh," Ramsis deduced. Pollution filled his emission.

"I know who he is. What he is, and what he wants to do for this planet," Renero said, still circling the roof.

"Can you defeat him?" Ramsis asked.

"I know what I have to do." Renero rerouted the question, fitting it to his own affirmation.

Well isn't that something. An adversary that the Chief cannot take down by himself. Ramsis wasn't surprised in the slightest. Nor did he give a fuck for that matter. His sights were on Renero, only him.

"Can you still hear them?" Ramsis shielded his face as he looked up at Renero. There was no spillage of blinding sunlight. But gazing upon his... whatever Renero was to him, hurt his eyeballs, branding them like heated iron.

Renero closed his eyes. He listened. He found the nightmarish noises. The cries of millions were inescapable. The harrowing screams haunted him, all the men, women and children that he butchered, devoured and slaughtered like sacks of valueless meat that his demonic body valued.

I am innocent and I am guilty. Renero groaned at the coinciding, clashing, conflicting judgments. "I never stopped hearing them," he stated, troubled by the spectres of carnage.

His ears twitched, hearing the eruption of Mount Killes. He heard himself, bathed in the lava, bursting out of the volcanic mountain, roaring, roaring, roaring. Volcanic lightning rose from the spewing ashes. The electrocuting strikes only made him angrier, more power hungry.

He let his eyes split open. "I never muted the horrors as you did. Leesey simply... helped me wash them down with the secluded rains that shower down from within." Suddenly, he frowned, surprised. When last did I drink a sedative potion for my restless slumber? Am I exempt?

"I was referring to them in particular." There was a peculiar shift in Ramsis's gaze.

Renero's eyebrows relaxed. He gave him his undivided attention. "Of course. Around you, your family rings the loudest."

He forced himself to listen once more, relieving the bleeding horror. "Forgive us, we forgive you! Forgive us, we forgive you! FORGIVE US, WE FORGIVE YOU!" The five of them had screamed at him, the revenant. It sounded like an incantation that would kill fear and give birth to fearlessness. They enlisted their cries to the ranks of courage in the face of their demise at his clawed hands.