Chapter Ninety-One: Flower Power!
The next morning, when Xaphile's eyes opened, all he could do was stare sleepily at the ceiling.
The previous evening had probably been one of the best experiences he'd had in a while.
His seemingly-simple statement about the future had put everyone, even Gus, in a much better mood. Then, after explaining a few of the marvels from Earth, like theme parks and thrill rides, Amelia had eagerly prepared an enormous dinner despite the late hour.
For the first time since Ella's death, his heart had actually lightened enough for him to smile, even if it was only a little bit now and then.
The fact that he knew his traveling companions had somehow come to care about him when this whole journey had started out being totally random and a hot mess to boot was crazy.
Even crazier was his new body, and the fact that he was no longer the same as he'd been.
But his unexpectedly rapid progress with his bodily changes did make him feel good.
He lay there until he heard the chirping of the birds outside.
Everyone was still sleeping soundly, so he made sure to be extremely quiet when he finally got up and stretched. Yawning, he took a moment to braid his hair back, then headed outside and waited near the edge of the lake for Vordt to arrive.
He didn't have to wait long.
Xaphile's eyes flicked up when something that looked almost like a distant bird rose above the treeline on the opposite shore. He watched as the figure soared across the water, vaguely making out the sight of a long black tail and two spread arms arching upward majestically.
He blinked when the sun slid above the distant trees and illuminated his uncle's wings.
It was like looking at an angel.
The way Vordt flew was so regal and majestic-looking that he couldn't help but feel awed: even though he was a vile piece of shit, the guy certainly knew how to move in the air.
Then his uncle landed on the edge of the beach and folded his wings, aquamarine eyes blazing.
"I never once mentioned that I would be coming as early as I do. Yet you're here at the same time today, too."
"I'm used to getting up even earlier than this," Xaphile instantly explained, thinking back to his days on Earth when every morning had been a struggle to make it to school on time. "I'm here right now because this is around the same time that you arrived yesterday."
"You cut no corners, I see," Vordt muttered, narrowing his eyes. "Good."
"So, where are we training today? Same place as yesterday?"
"No. Today you're going to be training with me right here."
Xaphile was a little startled by that at first, but then, a deep stab of anxiety sank into his gut like a stone weight.
"I don't like that idea."
"You seem to have forgotten that I don't care," Vordt said with mock pleasantness, pulling something out of a pouch tied to his breeches; Xaphile watched as he lifted a single bell-flower up to the early morning sunlight. "I have my reasons for doing so. Don't question me, whelp."
Xaphile clenched his fists.
"Sorry, but I can assure you that I'll question you every single day until I'm certain you won't harm anyone I care about," he retorted, watching with apprehension as his uncle paused and slowly turned to look at him with a calculating squint. "Sounds a little familiar, doesn't it?"
"Caring for humans is a mistake," Vordt snipped. "You would do well to distance yourself from them."
"Excuse me?" Xaphile scoffed, unexpectedly finding his temper ignited by the hypocrisy. "Who the hell are you to give me advice on what is or isn't a mistake when you flat out told me to my face that my own fucking existence was a mistake?!"
"The King of Calcoon."
Xaphile scoffed.
"King or not," he muttered, "you have no right to tell me who I should or shouldn't care about after what you said to me. You wanted to kill me because you thought I didn't deserve to live!"
"Indeed I did," his uncle said simply, holding the flower out to him with a glare. "Whether that statement is true or false will be decided momentarily. And I can assure you, if this test I've prepared fails... your little human friends will be picking up the pieces of your corpse within the hour."
Xaphile narrowed his eyes, blood boiling for a few seconds, then he took a deep breath to calm himself down and slowly let it out.
For nearly a minute and a half, Vordt held the flower out to him, eyes locked on the petals, but after a time, confusion took over his features and Xaphile followed his gaze, looking at the plant with furrowed brows.
At a first glance, it looked like little more than a thin blue bulge of petal material, but the shape vaguely reminded him of Ella's favorite flower, Virginia Bluebells.
He was hit with a sudden flashback of the time that he had surprised her on her doorstep with a giant bouquet of them. There had been no special reason, no event that had warranted the action... only that he had been thinking about her, and he'd wanted to make her smile.
And boy, she had definitely smiled.
She'd taken one look at that bouquet and had thrown her arms around him.
The memory instilled a deep ache within his breast.
The happiness he'd experienced the previous day vanished as a wave of depression washed over him, but just as he was about to lower his eyes, the flower twitched and Vordt's face contorted with a look of intense disbelief.
His stunned expression only deepened when the plant began to move. Xaphile warily watched, eyes widening a bit, as the flower's bell slowly unfurled. In an almost delicate manner, it opened up until it lay flat, a white sun with a pink center and gorgeous blue that hid beneath.
It pointed straight at him, and he cringed away from it.
Plants that bloomed too quickly in the hands of someone like Vordt could never mean anything good for those he aimed them at.
"I don't believe it," Vordt hissed, mouth twitching. "It trusts you."
Xaphile swallowed, not really sure what to make of that.
"Trusts?"
"Yes," he muttered, holding the plant cupped between his palms and caressing its petals with a single sharp-looking black claw. "What you see here is what my kind call a 'friend flower,' one of the many sentient plants that thrive in Calcoon. It senses malice and closes tight against it, but it blooms for only the most positive energies. No human has ever seen it bloom."
"Really?" Xaphile asked, feeling a little confused; to his horror, however, the flower began to pull back in on itself, pursing its lips together like a tense mother's. "Oh..."
Vordt looked at him, then, and he stared back. His clawed hand clenched shut, and when it opened he saw a mangled white lump that leaked clear fluid like blood of glass.
"In fact, only two other males in our own clan have ever seen this flower bloom," his uncle said in a voice as soft as starlight. His eyes, on the other hand, were harder than molten rock. "I have seen the truth of your intent. But know this: I will not tolerate betrayal, nor will I abide dishonesty. My trust in you is a fragile thing. Do not give me cause to break it, or you."
Xaphile could only look at him.
His uncle's grim smile, one which banished the thunder from his gaze, made his head reel.
At such close proximity, he could see things in the man's irises that unnerved him, things that set him apart as something other, something uncommon and unexpected given the way they jumped and gleamed in a way that wasn't totally to blame on the sunlight.
He looked like intensity made solid, like his spirit was about to jump out of his skin or twitch like a wild thing behind his eyes.
"I'm only here to learn what I can about myself," Xaphile murmured, making his uncle finally blink and break the strange staring contest they'd been having. "I had no intention of doing anything to harm the faeries here, or even betray you. All I want is to learn what I can and leave."
Vordt's eyes instantly narrowed.
"I already know you plan to leave here whether you learn everything you need to know or not."
Xaphile stiffened, hair standing on end.
"Your point?"
"I won't allow it."
For a moment, he could only stare at the dirt.
But then, he lifted his head and looked his uncle dead in the eye.
"You won't be able to stop me," he said quietly, watching with a sense of icy disconnection as the faery straightened up and let out a growl. "Whether you allow it or not, I'm leaving your people to go look for my little brother in two to three weeks."
"You're not."
"I am."
"If you try to leave, I'll kill you."
"Then do it," Xaphile snorted, challenging him with his eyes and spreading his arms. "Rip my throat out. Break my neck. If you're going to make threats, act on them, because at this point the threat of death no longer scares me."
Within the span of a second, Vordt was standing so close to him that their chests touched.
Leaning down, he glared so nastily that it was a wonder his eyes didn't combust.
"Only a fool," Vordt hissed, "refuses to fear and respect death."
"Very true," Xaphile shot back, not lowering his eyes and glaring just as profusely, "but you seem to have forgotten that I've already died once, dumbass. In fact, I sought it out myself. And the ironic part is that I'm only here, right now, in this moment because of it. If you think about it hard, in a way, death brought me straight to you."
Vordt's angry expression twitched, then unexpectedly smoothed out.
"I have seen no proof of that," he growled, then pointed at a nearby boulder. "Sit."
"Why?" Xaphile rebelliously demanded. "Explain to me why I should?"
Vordt's eyes flashed bright red with magic.
"I said," he venomously hissed, baring his fangs, "SIT!"
And just like that, Xaphile's body jerked and an icy sensation swept through his limbs. Before he could process what was happening, he was walking toward the rock against his will. And he sat down, folding his legs, against his will.
Completely frozen within himself, all he could do was fume.
Vordt came so close that his legs touched Xaphile's feet.
"Zelphira showed me bits and pieces of the events from your world," he growled, "but she showed me nothing that validated what you've told me. I'm still not convinced, though, so I am going to discern whether or not you're telling the truth directly."
Xaphile had a bad hunch about where this was going.
To his relief, he still had the ability to talk, so he decided to ask.
"So, you're going to read my mind?"
"Yes."
He felt his stomach churn and a fit of nausea made his surroundings grow blurry.
Despite having predicted this turn of events, he was more than a little worried about the result.
"I'd ask you if you were opposed to this, but you honestly don't have much say in the matter," Vordt growled. "I've already tried to do this once, but apparently it's not effective when you're unconscious. I dragged out memories that weren't actually yours. Just stay still and it should be over in a few minutes. Resist mentally and I'll force my way inside, and you don't want that."
"I don't want you in my head in general," he shot back; kneeling down, his uncle stared at him as if he were nothing more than a bug beneath a magnifying glass. "Don't do this."
"Why?"
Xaphile didn't want to admit it, especially at a time like this, but he was extremely pissed off: he didn't want strange people poking around inside his head, let alone possible enemies who were liable to draw really odd conclusions from snippets of incomplete memories.
Vordt's eyes bored into his like chips of reinforced aquamarine.
"Clear your mind," he finally said, eyes drooping shut, "and keep your eyes closed."
Xaphile let out a sigh and obediently did as he said, knowing there was no way out of it. He tried to tune out the swishing of the breeze and his discomfort, but thoughts like this is stupid and I wonder how long this is gonna take kept escaping his mental filters.
"Those thoughts of yours are grating," Vordt suddenly growled. "Shut them up."
Xaphile hadn't realized his uncle had delved into his mind yet since there hadn't been an itch or anything to signify the arrival. His eyes flew open, but Vordt merely let out a wild growl.
"Eyes. Shut," he hissed, and Xaphile squeezed his lids together until he saw stars; a good five minutes of failed mind-clearing later he said, "stupid whelp."
"I'm trying," Xaphile grumbled.
"Not very hard, obviously."
His teeth clenched like a bear trap.
"Oh, shut up!" he snapped. "You're supposed to be some all-powerful guy who can bend the whole world to his whim, so why can't you get inside my damn head?! Jesus, I can't even think right when you talk down to me, so stop it!"
"No. Because first and foremost, right now, you're not even supposed to think."
Xaphile said nothing. Neither did Vordt.
"Try focusing on an object," the man said at last, "or a word."
Xaphile didn't respond verbally. Drawing up the memory of playing his harp for Ella back in Ordin, he focused on the lyrics of the song Hirari Hirari. The feelings he'd experienced that night washed over him again and the whole process of clearing his head suddenly seemed very easy.
He did it every time he made music.
He didn't know what to expect when Vordt began to sift through his memories, though, since the last few times he'd been thrust into a situation like this... well, the end results had been bizarre.
Ella had fallen in love with him, and he'd found what he thought was a real best friend in Vrael.
His memories had made a girl who'd originally hated his guts do a complete one eighty, and had nearly brought the son of an elf to tears.
But now?
He had no clue what to expect.
He winced when he felt a wave of itchy red energy begin to glide around inside his head, poking and prodding at pieces of his memory and psyche with care he hadn't expected to receive from the grumpy fae before him.
Images flashed through his brain like strips of film from different movies that had been grafted together by a six-year-old.
Vordt started on the most recent memories, focusing for a minute or so on the interactions between him and his companions. He paid a heavy amount of attention to the argument he'd had with Ella about marking her.
"That tickles," Xaphile muttered, squeezing his eyes. "Seriously, stop... the itch is awful."
As if the words brought him back to reality, Vordt moved on like a roaming whisper.
He flashed through the memories of their journey across Aerika, backtracking across all the events that had led to their current situation. While this was happening, he sensed no change whatsoever in his uncle's magic until he made it to the memories from before Ella's change of heart.
The prickle of his magic grew more intense and the red color brightened as they flew back across the time when he'd still been sore from all the abuse he'd received. He flashed even further... and when the memories of being caged like an animal surfaced, Vordt growled.
Then he saw the memories of the day he'd been whipped.
A deafening roar erupted from Vordt's mouth, coming out more like a lion's than a man's.
The sound made Xaphile wince.
"You claim to care for these humans when they do nothing but harm you," the man hissed, grabbing his hair and dragging him off the stone. With a muffled thump, he was slammed down on his back, wings pressed against the damp pebbles of the lake shore. "You are a fool."
"That was then," he croaked, "this is now."
"Why do you delude yourself into going along with their folly?!"
"As I've said before, we started this journey with one goal in mind: to find someone who could summon Ella's soul and validate my situation," Xaphile bitterly shot back, finally opening his eyes, "but my main goal now is to find my little brother. Once he's safe, I'm going to continue searching for someone who can conjure Ella's soul, but to do that, I need them."
"So you're using them?" Vordt asked, narrowing his eyes. "To suit your own purpose?"
"No," he complained, irritated by the fact that the asshole kept trying to make him out to be some sort of creep. "When we first set out, I was so fucking confused and unhappy that I wasn't capable of doing much, even something as simple as that. All I could really manage was keeping my head down and trying to deal with shit one step at a time."
"And yet you've become friendly with the same group of humans who tortured you."
"People change," Xaphile growled, finally getting pissed, "and most importantly, I'm not the kind of person who can hold a grudge. Believe me, if I was... you can bet that I wouldn't have killed myself back on Earth. I'd have killed the bastard who murdered my soulmate instead."
And the scariest part of that statement was the fact that it was actually true.
He had gone through a brief period of unholy rage after Ella's funeral. He'd somehow managed to drag his ass to school, even with a bullet hole in his shoulder and his arm in a sling, for an entire week before it had hit him. He'd seen the face of Ella's killer on television.
And just like that, he'd partially blacked out with rage.
He had, for the first time in his life, considered finding and killing someone.
But when he'd come out of his fury, he'd realized the depth of what he'd been thinking, and as a result, had known deep down that things would never be right inside him again.
That was what had led to him skipping school and staying holed up into his bedroom.
For several minutes, Vordt just stared at him.
Then, he closed his eyes.
Almost abruptly, the itch came back, picking up right where he had dropped off. He sifted through the memories of fighting the demons to protect Gus, then waking up in the forest, and then he moved on to... .well, nothing. Xaphile's mind was suffused in black for a few moments.
Then his memory started up again and he caught a mental visual of a gun in his hand.
A hand without claws.
Vordt's grip instantly loosened on his hair, and his lips parted for a moment. He didn't open his eyes, but Xaphile could see in his face that he was stunned.
He closed his own eyes to block out the sight of his uncle's shocked expression.
Vordt breezed away from the day he'd died and flashed backwards, back over the time he'd spent with Connie. Then, only three days into his old memories... his uncle froze on a specific one.
The hand in his hair unexpectedly squeezed.
Xaphile, however, didn't even twitch.
He met the memory with vague recognition and little emotion.
His father, beating the living shit out of him. Repeatedly punching him in the face and making several frightening attempts at strangling him for getting himself expelled, only to let go and hit him some more whilst screaming in Russian. He hadn't even felt the blows, had barely heard his father's enraged insults... it had been nothing new, after all.
When Vordt backtracked, he was forced to relive more of the old abuse.
As each memory passed, he vaguely wondered why he'd been so scared of his dad. After everything he'd seen and experienced on Atlas, his old fears seemed pretty stupid.
He'd gone to such great lengths hiding the extent of his bruises with baggy pants and over sized hoodies that it was pretty ridiculous in retrospect.
Vordt continued backward, watching the alternating cycle of spending his time with Ella and then returning home, where he'd stepped on eggshells to avoid getting the tar kicked out of him. The faery saw images of his time in high school, then middle school, then his childhood...
Until he arrived at the day that had changed Xaphile forever.
The day he'd been kicked through the glass doors.
The day the words that haunted him even now had been spoken.
"Zhut up, Xaphile. Your birth vas a mistake."
After backtracking a bit further, Vordt saw bits and pieces of life after his mother's death, and like lightning, the red energy in his head moved away from those memories and back toward the present, settling down during his time in high school.
Vordt started looking at things Xaphile wouldn't have considered important, such as the music he'd always listened to on Earth.
The music he'd made for Ella.
He watched for a few minutes more before breaking away from his mind entirely.
It felt like the red itch drained out of his ears.
"Can I open my eyes now?"
"Yes."
When he did, he found his uncle staring at him again.
He fidgeted beneath the strange vacancy of emotion within that normally stony gaze.
"Your lessons for today are simple," the faery finally droned, face weirdly blank. "For the next five hours, you are going to attempt to lift yourself off the ground using only your wings. Your goal is to keep yourself aloft for ten minutes straight. Whether you complete this task will determine whether or not you are given a more difficult goal tomorrow. Failure will not be tolerated."
When he stood back up and flapped his wings, Xaphile finally sat up and glared at him.
"That's it?" he asked, planting his hands on the pebbly ground behind him and giving the man an expectant expression. "You're not going to explain what the hell just happened?"
"Nothing more needs to be said," Vordt icily retorted, beating his wings. "Once the time frame I've given you to achieve your goal has elapsed, you will rest and eat. Then you will return here, and I will come back to teach you the proper way to maintain and care for your wings."
"Where are you going?" Xaphile snapped. "You owe me an explanation!"
Vordt snorted, then glared down at him.
"I owe you nothing," he shot back, "but if you must know, I'm going to have a chat with my idiot sister. There are many things I must discuss with her. First and foremost, where you came from, your history, the odd gap in your memory... there are too many peculiarities."
He trailed off, looking contemplative and oddly at ease.
There was a dangerous edge deep within those eyes, too, though, and Xaphile was once again reminded of the sharp intelligence behind them.
"By peculiarities," he murmured, furrowing his brows, "you mean my situation?"
"More like it's dangerous to let something as odd as you get away without close examination."
Xaphile's mind began to race at the implications of his words. It was that sentence, moreso than any of the threats he'd received so far, that made him realize for the first time since this whole mess had begun just how dangerous living in a pool of sharks might actually be.