It was becoming increasingly difficult for me to breathe, my chest constricting more and more by the minute. In my hands was a heavy wooden staff that had just been polished, and damn was it hard to hold on to. The muscles in my upper arms were straining, and the sweat that was starting to coat my palms definitely wasn’t helping.
Ignotius was standing across from me, a slightly amused expression on his face. He too held a staff in his hands, but he was busy twirling it between fingers, occasionally tossing it up in the air like a drum major. He was watching me out of the corner of his eyes, patiently.
I wasn’t quite sure what he was waiting for. I just knew that Ignotius had handed me the staff right when I’d finished stretching, shown me how to hold it properly, then backed away immediately after I’d gotten the hang of it. We’d been absolutely still for about five minutes, and I was starting to question the point of standing there, holding a stick.
“He’s waiting for you,” Adrian said, sitting at a desk he’d had brought in to the ballroom so he could watch us and do paperwork at the same time. He hadn’t bothered looking up, and was busy signing each sheet of paper from a stack that was at least ten feet high. “Hit him, if you can.”
I stared at him incredulously. “How am I supposed to hit someone who is faster, stronger, and more experienced, than I am?” I demanded, frowning.
Of course, Ignotius took the exact moment I finished my sentence to rap me across the knuckles with his staff. “You pay attention,” he interrupted, the corners of his mouth twitching. “And you hope that I am lenient enough to let you.”
Adrian cursed, his own knuckles blossoming red when the pen flew from his fingers. “Oi! Not so hard, would you? I’m trying to work here,” he complained, rubbing the pseudo-injury with his other hand. “I only have so many extra pens here, you know.”
Wait...he’d prepared to break some of his pens? Just what kind of ‘training’ was this supposed to be?
“Perhaps if you had attended to your work when you first received it, you would not have had to do it now,” Ignotius retorted with a light shake of his head. “I would apologize for the inconvenience, but truly, it is your own fault.”
I struck out, swinging the staff like a baseball bat. My arms were getting a bit too sore to hold it properly, and I had no idea how to use the darn thing otherwise.
Ignotius easily parried, somehow managing to tap both of my wrists in the process and knock my staff out of my hands. “You won’t hit anything wielding it like that, young lady. Try again.”
I glared at him. “How else am I supposed to use it then? To me, it’s just a long, heavy piece of wood. I don’t know what I’m doing with it,” I bit, bending to pick the unfamiliar weapon back up.
“That will not be a problem, Miss Taylor. You simply need to hit me. Finesse comes later.”
Later? “Hold on a second. Later? Nobody said anything about becoming proficient with a weapon,” I said warily, loosening my grip and scowling pointedly at said nobody.
Adrian snorted. “It was implied, Kathryne. It takes discipline to master anything, whether it’s self-defense, self-control, or magic. Showing you how to use a weapon is simply the easiest way of teaching you how to master yourself; something you’ll need to do before you start actively using your powers,” he replied, as if that would make me feel any better about it.
“What makes you think I have any intention of ever using magic?” I snapped angrily, not liking the assumption one bit. “It’s a pain in the ass, and sounds like it’s more trouble than it’s worth.” Not to mention it was the one thing, besides blood, that I have in common with the family I hated, and I want nothing to do with them.
Noticing that I’d stopped paying attention to him to bicker with Adrian, Ignotius planted the butt of his staff right in my solar plexus. “Don’t take your eyes off of your opponent. Ever,” he admonished.
Meanwhile, both Adrian and I were doubled over, wheezing. “Son of a bitch!” we both coughed in unison.
I stumbled backward, and in an attempt to regain my balance, tried to thrust the staff I was holding backward toward the ground. Except I didn’t hit the floor at all.
“Kathryne, would you kindly do me the favor of removing your new toy from my foot?” Hadyn’s scathing voice echoed throughout the room. There was a loud crack, and a dark, thick smoke appeared out of nowhere.
Oh no. “How is it on your foot if you’re incorporeal, though?” I asked, baffled. “And if you say that it’s because you are the smoke, I’m going to be really creeped out.” As an afterthought, I also lifted my staff up. I was probably already in trouble with the guy, and didn’t need to keep pissing him off.
“Just because I am yet to fully materialize, does not mean I cannot be injured,” the death god replied, the smoke billowing out for a brief second, before quickly pulling itself together and condensing into the all-too familiar form of Hadyn.
“So, the answer is yes, Kathryne. Death was in fact, the smoke,” Adrian piped up, looking both annoyed and amused at the same time. He was frowning, but his eyes glinted with mischief. There was something else too, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
I grimaced, my nose crinkling in disgust. “Don’t even start, Adrian.” If he was needling me, he was going to start annoying everybody else too, which was something that I did not want to deal with right now. I was more worried about what Hadyn was doing here in the first place, because the last few times I’d run into him had been either embarrassing or terrifying.
Hadyn’s mouth twitched. “Oh, no. Please, do continue. This will be excellent revenge for bruising my foot,” he drawled, dragging out each syllable in such a way that there was no doubt in my mind he was being sarcastic. He was also glaring at me, so there was that.
My lips thinned, my eyes narrowed, and I sighed heavily. “I’ve been grossed out enough today, thanks.”
He smiled maliciously. “Then allow me to redirect your attention.”
He waved a black-gloved hand, and pain sparked above my eye. I dropped the staff, barely hearing it clatter to the floor when my hands shot to my temples. The pain faded quickly, and I looked at the man, my vision blurred slightly. “What the hell did you do?” I slurred, my knees beginning to give way. Adrian was beside me in a flash, lowering us to the floor.
“Removed Eric’s limiter,” he replied simply, a manic glint in his eyes.
My eyebrows shot straight to my hairline. “...What?”
Adrian shook with anger, ready to spew forth a stream of obscenities I knew, but Ignotius stepped forward instead, no longer holding his staff, and laid a hand on Adrian’s shoulder. “Master Adrian, please, allow me. This fool has done more than you realize, and put us in quite the dire straits.”
The whole conversation was flying over my head. “Is anybody going to bother explaining what our resident floating death god meant?” I asked sleepily, my eyes starting to droop.
“Don’t think, Kathryne,” Adrian said hurriedly. “Mind your thoughts.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s just removed the limiter Eric had placed on you after the incident where you’d flung me out the window. With your powers based on your overactive imagination, we definitely don’t want them getting out of control.”
Anger sparked in my chest, pushing back the dizziness. “Don’t think? Don’t think! How do you expect me not to- oh shit.”
A bright white light filled the room, an ear-splitting crack sounded, and Ignotius was swept off of his feet, his ass slamming into the floor. A loud trumpeting sound echoed in the ballroom, and I saw Hadyn’s face light up in amusement.
Ignotius sat up just as Adrian and I turned around to look behind us, and my jaw dropped. A giant pink fucking elephant was standing in the center of the ballroom, with a small monkey holding cymbals standing on its head. The elephant trumpeted again, and the monkey’s cymbals clashed.
I stoop up in a flash, only then noticing that Adrian’s clothes were gone. Ignotius got up as well, rolling his eyes, I could have sworn there was the tiniest of smiles on his face. “Kathryne, may I have my clothes back please?” Adrian whined, standing up, seemingly uncaring about the fact that he was stark naked.
I felt my cheeks heat up. “I just imagine you with clothes on, right?” I squeaked, biting my lower lip. I quickly went to work thinking about one of the most embarrassing outfits possible.
Another sharp, ear-rupturing crack pierced the air, and I was brought to my knees again. My head was spinning, and I could’ve sworn my nose was bleeding.
“How is this any better!” Adrian exclaimed, pointing to his waist. Now he was wearing a leather speedo, with yellow fur stripes. It was quite the tight fit too.
That probably explained the nosebleed. “I never said it was,” I replied with a grin, stumbling backwards. He caught me around the waist, my chest pressed tightly to his.
He frowned slightly. “You’re bleeding,” he said, running a thumb across the top of my lip. “Oooh, that’s not good.”
“What’s not good?” Everything was starting to go blurry again, and it was driving me nuts.
Adrian paled. “Ignoti-” he started, but he was cut off by a loud crash.
We turned to find one of Amædus' statues on the floor, the cement head rolling across the hardwood. “You're nothing but a bastard!” Hadyn growled, well, more like yelled, though it still contained his raspy trademark. “And that's all you'll ever be!”
Ignotius backflipped through the air, Hadyn's shining scythe slicing through the air where the servant had been not more than a millisecond before. “I’m the bastard?” Ignotius quipped. “Which of us has been pining for a dead woman for five centuries?”
“You do not speak of her!” Hadyn roared, dematerializing in a puff of smoke, only to reappear a second later right behind Ignotius, his weapon speeding for the man's back.
With what seemed like no effort, Ignotius bent at the knees, his shoulders touching the floor in a back bend, evading the deadly blade. “She was my mother, I shall say whatever I please. Speaking of which, why do you stress so? She left you centuries before she died, and ran to the arms of another.”
Hadyn roared once more, and if he said anything it was lost on me. The blade came down, and Ignotius rolled out of the way, laughing when the tip became lodged in the wood below. “That's how I came to be, if I remember correctly. This many thousands of years later, you're still not over it? My god, man, take up a hobby.”
Hadyn grunted, and dislodged the tip of his scythe, swinging it laterally at the acrobatic vampire, who once again evaded by somersaulting backward. Smoke swirled around Ignotius’ hand while Hayden wound up again, and Ignotius threw something, a dark red orb, toward the god.
Hadyn went on defense, slicing the orb in two, and was immediately pelted with small bits from the interior of the object. One of the bits scattered across the floor to land at my feet, and I bent to find it was a pomegranate seed. "Dammit, Ignotius, Adrian moaned, picking up the seed. "Do you have to taunt him?"
Ignotius dodged a few more empty blows from Hadyn, while I asked Adrian what the seeds were about, but he ignored me. Finally, he picked up the cement head of his father and chucking it at the god, yelled at the top of his lungs, “Enough!”
Both servant and god froze, the head passed through Hadyn's body without leaving so much as a mark, and the god turned murderous eyes on us. “You dare interfere?”
Adrian crossed his arms, which I found hilarious considering his attire. “You are in my realm, my home, fighting in front of my woman. How dare you disrespect me, and more importantly, her? You forget yourself, Thanatos.”
The god seemed to calm down, for the moment. His dark and malicious aura dissipated. “My apologies, boy,” Hadyn forced a very shallow bow. Pulling a thin object from within his robes, he tossed it at us. “I’ve done what I came here to do, I shall take my leave.” His words were very stiff and unlike him. As if he were holding back several hundred emotions.
Not that I could exactly blame him. He had just been at the height of his fury.
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A/N: Ta-da! Chapter twenty, as promised! I had so much help from GhostNinja on this one, because I had trouble figuring out the rest of the chapter, but his help is greatly appreciated. Especially since he helped me come up with some of the lore. :D
And now, to watch LoTR...probably. I'm not sure.
Love you guys! :-)
Caitlin A. Patton