Rituals, Regrets, and Really Dumb People

Chapter 5: Badly Done Children's Art, Part 1

Half a day's walk and we ended up at the Penitent's fort. It'd been night for a couple hours before we'd even hit the gates, I'd refuse to stop for anything. My tireless pursuit to reach the kid and those goddamn Penitent monks was giving me more purpose and drive then my first, original, intent of dominating the world. When your mind has been fucked with, you'll jump any hurdle to fix it. Well, for most of us anyways.

Lilly, Dimitri, and I stood in front of the place of my slight, at this place of great—and unfortunate—change. The gates were still down, though the fires had been put out long before now. I could see lights in the houses inside, the ones that were not destroyed, giving comfort to whoever occupied them. My little war against the Penitent had not killed all of them it seemed—luckily.

"We are here," Dimitri said. Obviously. "Are you sure you wish to go through with this?"

"Yes," I told him, not daring to turn my eyes away from the monastery-fort. Nothing else was of concern. "I will not be this simp or fool any longer. I will not abide by the notion that I should be a buffoon."

"I don't get it," Dimitri said in his deep, dark voice. "All of this because you are able to feel something now?"

"I felt before; I felt good being a tyrant. I felt the thrill of battle. I don't like the sort of feelings the priestess has given me; they are not improvements; they are things to hold me back from my potential."

"That's not true," Lilly said to me in a gentle voice. My head slightly turned, and I looked back at her from the corners of my eyes. "You perceive it to be weakness. It's not. You can be different, Sanguine."

"I don't want to be different," I told her. "I don't want to be weak."

I stepped forward and walked towards the sundered gates, regardless of if they would follow me. They did, of course, but not like simple dogs. Dimitri accosted my arm and tugged me past the gate, to the side of the entrance. I pushed on him, got my hand around his neck. It was my right hand, the one with the blood and stuff; my blood coated my fingers and hardened into segmented claws. Instead of him leading me, I ended up shoving Dimtri against the wall while Lilly tugged at my other arm. My anger and my fear had overridden any sort of logic and reasoning inside my head.

"Do not touch me," I told him expressly.

"You're paranoid, milord," Dimitri said as he grabbed my arm. I was aware enough to know he could have drawn his sword and held it to my gut, yet he didn't. "I only wish to talk."

"I know what your intentions are," I replied quickly, my temperament a little less friendly after what happened in Sanctuary. "I know what men like you wish to do when a man like me is weakened."

"Stop it," Lilly said, tugging at me again. This time she displayed her strength, jerked me away from him.

I stumbled a few steps back from her pull. I immediately rolled my blood talons out, on display for Dimitri. I was not weak. "What, then, do you wish to say? I will not alter my course, Dimitri. I cannot be bothered any longer to be a slave to my emotions."

He reached up to his neck and ran his hands under the mask, over the skin and muscle. I had not scratched him it seemed—that was a mixed thing to me. My irritation with my life had caused me to act rather irrationally and think stupid thoughts. I was conflicted; I don't want to hurt people, yet in a moment of anger I could be a killer. I was a killer. I turned around and licked into my partially chapped lips, my eyes straining. What the hel am I doing anymore?

"Sanguine," he said to me, trying to get me to look back to him. "Milord, you got to understand, it isn't what you think. I am not the man who will assassinate you. You think me bad, ready to attack, 'cause you would have done the same back before this, but it isn't that."