“Sorry guys,” he called out as his two companions stood up and brushed the newly acquired dirt off themselves.
“Where are we?” Jim said, as he began looking around for identifying markers. Unfortunately there was a dearth of anything that seemed like it could point in the direction of civilisation. They were atop a barren plateau, surrounded by a cloudbank so thick that if they descended into it they would not be able to see even a metre in front of them.
“The location that Lyra gave us. I assume that the Absolution base is somewhere near here, but we can get moving once we’ve recuperated a bit”.
“True, I’ve been in hiding for about a year now, trying to think of a way out past the Adjudicator. I should’ve tried skipping him, but I didn’t have anywhere to go”. Jim slumped to the floor and lay down. “Phew, being an old man and letting people look after you is fun up to a point, you know? If that family thought I was any older they would definitely have given me some kind of maid to make sure I go to the loo straight”.
“You don’t enjoy that?” Peter asked, smirking as he retrieved Rose from his ring.
“Not at all! A little bit of pampering is fine now and again, but occasionally a man needs his private time you know?”
“Moving on swiftly,” Laurence said, quickly glancing at Fen before returning to his friend. “What was that all about? How did you get embroiled with such a nutcase?”
“Well I bumped into him when I was about nine years old and he’s helped me out of several scrapes throughout most of my life since then...” Jim trailed off, smirking at Laurence as he sat up. In response Laurence just leaned over and flicked Jim in the forehead before chuckling and joining him on the floor. “So, it all started about a year ago. I don’t know how, or even when, but someone from the Caesar clan found out I was an Order Immortal. They seem to have worked tirelessly to pin me down and then force me to have no recourse but to tie myself to the clan permanently. I don’t know when they realised I was in Thought, but my thralls began passing word back about people looking for me. I didn’t really think much of it, but by then my route out of the city was cut off”.
“Couldn't you have just done what I did? Transported out to a specific set of coordinates?”
“And go where? I never thought I would need this specific kind of escape process, because it takes some serious pull to swap an Adjudicator, and I make a habit of not angering the great clans”.
“Well, except your own,” Peter said with a smirk.
Jim sighed, pointedly ignoring Peter’s comment. “So I couldn't go anywhere specific, and I couldn't transport somewhere random, because that's a level of insanity that I think even you guys would shy away from. I might end up in the heart of a volcano or something, and despite being an Immortal that would probably still kill me”.
“If you had a strong enough oversoul then you could probably survive the very tower collapsing around you, you know that right?”
“The key word there is probably. And more to the point, I’d rather not have the blood of a thousand saints on my hands just so I could get away from my family”. As he looked at both Laurence and Peter, both men seemed to share an uncomfortable glance before returning to look at him. “What? I missed something there...”
“So...” Laurence began, scratching the back of his head as he looked at Jim bashfully.”About that... I broke my pact”.
“You what?” Jim exclaimed. “What did you do? How many people...? What happened?”
“It’s a long story, but I saved the new Hephaistian homeland from an army of Saints, Heaven rankers, and Immortals. They were trying to gain control of the red book... So I wiped them out. I built a weapon, and ended the lives of thousands of people”.
The sound of Laurence’s voice faded into the early morning sky of the world they were seated on, but the bitterness in his tone as he spoke was eminent. It was a regret that he would not be able to cleanse himself, not unless his crusade was a success. If the crusade was a success.
After a full minute, Laurence finally broke the silence. “But enough about me, what happened next?”
“Ah, so I realised something was going on back then, but it came to ahead when I was confronted by a woman with blonde hair. She reminded me of my father, and kinda terrified me because of that. At first, I was interested. She seemed like she wanted to just have some fun and that was fine by me, but she came on way too strong. After a couple of days she wouldn’t leave me alone. Every time I went out she was there, either in my face or following nearby. She began trying to sabotage my life, possess my thralls, perform takeovers of my businesses, all while relentlessly pursuing me. It was bizarre.
“After about four months of this, I gave up. I wasn’t going to let her win, but I couldn’t deal with her incessant butting into my life. I knew next to nothing about her, and that’s when I realised that there was something odd about the entire situation. I’ve seen people being stalked before and while this had all the hallmarks of a classic stalker, it was missing one thing. While she was trying to take control of my life, she wasn’t trying to make me a part of hers. She needed to control me, but unlike most of her actions would suggest, she wasn’t obsessed with me”.
“I dunno,” Peter said, “She seemed pretty obsessed when we were leaving the city”.
“I think she was angry. She had been slowly cutting away my support pillars over the last few months and you guys just butted in, broke apart her trap and rescued me from the fate of being brainwashed into being no better than one of my own thralls. I was a job for her, and I think she was ashamed that the situation was taking so long, that I was taking her so long to deal with”.
“Ah...”
“Yeah, I don’t think any of us deal with failure particularly well, but those of us still within the clan... They are entirely different beasts. They don’t just have to deal with Immortals from other clans and groups, they have to deal with internal struggles as well. And if the fate of my drunkard of a father is anything to go by, these competitions are horribly... well... competitive. Enough failures and your life is ruined”.
“It can’t be that bad,” Peter interjected. “I mean, I’m fine. My family adores me despite my failures”.
“You can probably only really be called a success by the metrics of a Mephisto though. By the age of nine you were a paragon of death and destruction. Your only failure was meeting Law, and...” Jim stopped as he realised he recognised the woman who stood as Peter’s permanent shadow. “Is that Rose?”
“Yeah, she’s in a similar situation to Cleo, so I thought Laurence could help me”.
“Are you what happened to the girl? I remember Cleo and Winoa talking about how she disappeared”. Jim frowned, as he looked at the odd couple. “I thought Law mentioned Rose, but I didn’t think... Wow. Just wow”.
“Our families okayed it, and we were forced to live together. Through our confinement we became one, and we were together until not too long ago when she was snatched from me by some renegade Immortals”. Peter looked at the beautiful woman behind him and smiled. “Someday soon you’ll sing again my love”.
The three men sat and chatted about their lives since they had last heard of each other, but as they watched the sun come up and the clouds disperse they saw a great city revealed below their feet. The marble stone of the building almost blinding them in the morning light.
Almost blinding immortals? Jeez...
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