Post by Non Compos Mentis on May 9, 2016 17:59:11 GMT -5
Adalina Gatti had grown accustomed to certain things over the years: the warm weather of the Mediterranean, the power provided by her magic... copious amounts of sweet red wine. The weather was beginning to turn temperate, her spells had blessed me with power more becoming the man Calder wanted me to be, but the wine cellar was dry.
Idly she lounged by the an ornately dressed dining table, reluctantly nursing a glass of the finest double-malt in North Carolina. It wasn't terribly good, but alas it would do the job just as well in the end.
How she had found the apartment, somehow more beautiful of a dwelling than any other in the entire state, was beyond me. It sat above the Charlotte skyline, lingering closer to the clouds than I'd been in a long time. It was the tallest tower of a castle, as far from Cleric Calder as I could be without knowing where he was.
After all, that was why I was here.
”Couldn't find anything with a bit more colour?” I flicked the rubbery leaf of a depressed-looking house plant that anyone might have mistook for being plastic. I knew otherwise. It just couldn't be bothered to live with any vibrancy in its airtight home.
”I didn't take you for the green-fingered sort, Sean.” Adalina spoke with the slight airy quality that only the buzzed drunk can produce. My weathered hands held the leaf while hers held the near-empty glass.
Green fingers? Mine had always seemed to find the red a little more welcoming. But me and that depressed plant had a history going way back, a history I choked on before speaking. Family, outside off my own mind, was always a tough thing to talk about.
”I'm not. My mother kept Ficus plants in the house. She said they made it more homely...” At the other end of the dining table from Adalina sat the seed, the once pulsating pod that now remained quiet. The shell remained with it's shifting, kaleidoscopic visage, but the light thrown from it's heart had stopped for now. Perhaps it was happy, or perhaps it was feeling the same malaise as the Ficus. ”I guess I was never one for house plants. Didn't see the point in living things sitting around, sitting in the same place every day, just waiting to die.”
”Isn't that what you've been doing?” The Italian twang in her voice, mixed with the tipsy twang in her brain, made her voice have a joking tone, but she had a point.
”I'm not waiting to die.” I muttered in reply, but it was a tepid retort.
She tilted the tumbler from side to side in her hand nonchalantly, the look in her eyes spoke of mischief hidden behind truth, a pain shrouded by mirth. ”You stay in seedy hotel rooms across the country, waiting for either Altman to contact you or Calder to knock down the door. One day it won't be a slip of paper with an address or a name, and you know that. Still you wait there.”
”But I'm here now.” Again I let the words slip out but they were sluggish and not up to the job. I thought in the same tone about how I'd fought my recent battles. I was there, I was fighting, but where was the heart? What was I fighting for? Nathan Saniti, Justin Kaard, Mikey Wryght, Alexa Black... they fought for a cause, no matter how fucked up it might be. But me? I walked from city to city waiting, biding time until this whole ordeal with The Order was done.
”Do you really think that much has changed?” Adaline motioned around the room and sucked a mouthful of a newly-filled glass of double-malt into her mouth with spite rather than satisfaction. ”Different walls, some beautiful company, same situation.”
It didn't matter if it was the Polynesian Golf Resort in Myrtle Beach or the most expensive apartment in Charlotte, all across the state I'd wandered and the point was the same. Survive. Wait. Live until I could find Ezra or Calder found me.
I didn't care about wins anymore, I cared about nothing. I felt the hate slowly build inside but I channeled it into training, readying myself for the day when Altman would hand me the golden ticket and send me to go and fight the demons in the Order.
I walked down to the ring, I did what I needed to, and I left. Every crowd at a Trauma since February had seen me lose. My only victory since then was against Alexa Black, and even then I'd left Cleric Altman in disappointment by not leaving her in a heap.
”You told me Altman sent you to train me to use the seed, so that I can use it properly when the time comes.” She had, but that wasn't exactly why she was there either. She was waiting too, waiting for the opportunity to be welcomes back into the fold. She could question it but I knew the truth, Adalina and Altman had their deal just as I had with the Cleric.
”And he did, but he also wants to know you're ready before he gives you what you want most.” The riches of my wildest dreams? Titles and gold around my waist? No.
For a champion, it was a sad sentiment that I valued the gold around my waist less than a man in a jail cell that I couldn't see, feel or sense anymore.
What I wanted most was Ezra. ”And am I?”
”As close as you're going to get.” Uneasily Adalina set down the glass and pushed herself out her her seat. Slowly she made her way around the table to where I and the seed sat, it still waiting in comparative quiet. I felt the energy that it projected pulsing through me recently. I'd leaned more from Adalina than Cleric Altman could possibly have told me on his own. ”It is opening itself to you now, it wants to help... as much as it can want anything. You can do more with its magic now than I ever could.”
More than feeling the energy in my body, I could control it. I could feel what magic there was in the stone and I could direct it. What Altman promised was a possibility, to use the seed to kill the Wrath in Alexa and Calder.
Was it possible that I'd have what I wanted soon? That I was ready for a fight again? ”So you'll tell Altman I'm ready? That I can take on Calder and Black again?”
Adalina sidled around the table and got close. Her body drunkenly fell against me as she traced a finger around the perimeter of the seed. It let out a display, a controlled flurry of colour that portrayed happiness. As Adalina leant down beside me, she whispered in my ear with a tone I had not head in a long time. ”Sweetie, I already have. That's why we're here. Different walls, same situation. Remember?”
Her hand slid down the side of my leg and the tone in her voice became an all too real motion. Two people who had lost so much, and yet sat with expectation and hope. One with a stomach full of alcohol, the other full of bitterness and hate. One who wanted love, the other who wanted vengeance.
”This isn't what either of us want.” I whispered back as her hand went curved in toward my groin. I shuffled uncomfortably but Adalina was persistent in her drunken affection.
”Forget want, what do you need?” Her voice was almost non-existent as she pushed closer, her sweet scent invading my senses.
It would have been easy for my men. But I wasn't one of them. My mind had been focused on one thing for so long and I couldn't allow it to be pushed aside for anything. Justin Kaard, Mikey Wryght... they were side-thoughts to the real people I needed to fight.
With the World Champion and the International Champion in the ring, it was likely May would begin just as March and April had. But I'd still be there, still fighting even if I was bound to lose. Still my eyes would be looking into the crowd, looking to see if that night would be the night Calder took me. Looking to see if Altman had more information for me.
I'd always be thinking of Ezra. ”You need to move away from me, Adalina. I don't want this. There's only one thing I want.”
I heard the sigh utter from her lips as she backed away, the frustration. As Adalina slid her hand back I saw the slow, rhythmic pulsing of the seed on the table. It felt something, and I knew now it was satisfaction. There was good in the seed, but also a strain of sickness.
And then there was a noise at the door. So low, perhaps, that Adalina failed to hear it or perhaps she didn't care as she shambled off toward a bedroom. As she went she muttered, something about boys and not enough red wine, while I looked to the door. On the floor was what I had been waiting for: another slip of paper. The last.
Idly she lounged by the an ornately dressed dining table, reluctantly nursing a glass of the finest double-malt in North Carolina. It wasn't terribly good, but alas it would do the job just as well in the end.
How she had found the apartment, somehow more beautiful of a dwelling than any other in the entire state, was beyond me. It sat above the Charlotte skyline, lingering closer to the clouds than I'd been in a long time. It was the tallest tower of a castle, as far from Cleric Calder as I could be without knowing where he was.
After all, that was why I was here.
”Couldn't find anything with a bit more colour?” I flicked the rubbery leaf of a depressed-looking house plant that anyone might have mistook for being plastic. I knew otherwise. It just couldn't be bothered to live with any vibrancy in its airtight home.
”I didn't take you for the green-fingered sort, Sean.” Adalina spoke with the slight airy quality that only the buzzed drunk can produce. My weathered hands held the leaf while hers held the near-empty glass.
Green fingers? Mine had always seemed to find the red a little more welcoming. But me and that depressed plant had a history going way back, a history I choked on before speaking. Family, outside off my own mind, was always a tough thing to talk about.
”I'm not. My mother kept Ficus plants in the house. She said they made it more homely...” At the other end of the dining table from Adalina sat the seed, the once pulsating pod that now remained quiet. The shell remained with it's shifting, kaleidoscopic visage, but the light thrown from it's heart had stopped for now. Perhaps it was happy, or perhaps it was feeling the same malaise as the Ficus. ”I guess I was never one for house plants. Didn't see the point in living things sitting around, sitting in the same place every day, just waiting to die.”
”Isn't that what you've been doing?” The Italian twang in her voice, mixed with the tipsy twang in her brain, made her voice have a joking tone, but she had a point.
”I'm not waiting to die.” I muttered in reply, but it was a tepid retort.
She tilted the tumbler from side to side in her hand nonchalantly, the look in her eyes spoke of mischief hidden behind truth, a pain shrouded by mirth. ”You stay in seedy hotel rooms across the country, waiting for either Altman to contact you or Calder to knock down the door. One day it won't be a slip of paper with an address or a name, and you know that. Still you wait there.”
”But I'm here now.” Again I let the words slip out but they were sluggish and not up to the job. I thought in the same tone about how I'd fought my recent battles. I was there, I was fighting, but where was the heart? What was I fighting for? Nathan Saniti, Justin Kaard, Mikey Wryght, Alexa Black... they fought for a cause, no matter how fucked up it might be. But me? I walked from city to city waiting, biding time until this whole ordeal with The Order was done.
”Do you really think that much has changed?” Adaline motioned around the room and sucked a mouthful of a newly-filled glass of double-malt into her mouth with spite rather than satisfaction. ”Different walls, some beautiful company, same situation.”
It didn't matter if it was the Polynesian Golf Resort in Myrtle Beach or the most expensive apartment in Charlotte, all across the state I'd wandered and the point was the same. Survive. Wait. Live until I could find Ezra or Calder found me.
I didn't care about wins anymore, I cared about nothing. I felt the hate slowly build inside but I channeled it into training, readying myself for the day when Altman would hand me the golden ticket and send me to go and fight the demons in the Order.
I walked down to the ring, I did what I needed to, and I left. Every crowd at a Trauma since February had seen me lose. My only victory since then was against Alexa Black, and even then I'd left Cleric Altman in disappointment by not leaving her in a heap.
”You told me Altman sent you to train me to use the seed, so that I can use it properly when the time comes.” She had, but that wasn't exactly why she was there either. She was waiting too, waiting for the opportunity to be welcomes back into the fold. She could question it but I knew the truth, Adalina and Altman had their deal just as I had with the Cleric.
”And he did, but he also wants to know you're ready before he gives you what you want most.” The riches of my wildest dreams? Titles and gold around my waist? No.
For a champion, it was a sad sentiment that I valued the gold around my waist less than a man in a jail cell that I couldn't see, feel or sense anymore.
What I wanted most was Ezra. ”And am I?”
”As close as you're going to get.” Uneasily Adalina set down the glass and pushed herself out her her seat. Slowly she made her way around the table to where I and the seed sat, it still waiting in comparative quiet. I felt the energy that it projected pulsing through me recently. I'd leaned more from Adalina than Cleric Altman could possibly have told me on his own. ”It is opening itself to you now, it wants to help... as much as it can want anything. You can do more with its magic now than I ever could.”
More than feeling the energy in my body, I could control it. I could feel what magic there was in the stone and I could direct it. What Altman promised was a possibility, to use the seed to kill the Wrath in Alexa and Calder.
Was it possible that I'd have what I wanted soon? That I was ready for a fight again? ”So you'll tell Altman I'm ready? That I can take on Calder and Black again?”
Adalina sidled around the table and got close. Her body drunkenly fell against me as she traced a finger around the perimeter of the seed. It let out a display, a controlled flurry of colour that portrayed happiness. As Adalina leant down beside me, she whispered in my ear with a tone I had not head in a long time. ”Sweetie, I already have. That's why we're here. Different walls, same situation. Remember?”
Her hand slid down the side of my leg and the tone in her voice became an all too real motion. Two people who had lost so much, and yet sat with expectation and hope. One with a stomach full of alcohol, the other full of bitterness and hate. One who wanted love, the other who wanted vengeance.
”This isn't what either of us want.” I whispered back as her hand went curved in toward my groin. I shuffled uncomfortably but Adalina was persistent in her drunken affection.
”Forget want, what do you need?” Her voice was almost non-existent as she pushed closer, her sweet scent invading my senses.
It would have been easy for my men. But I wasn't one of them. My mind had been focused on one thing for so long and I couldn't allow it to be pushed aside for anything. Justin Kaard, Mikey Wryght... they were side-thoughts to the real people I needed to fight.
With the World Champion and the International Champion in the ring, it was likely May would begin just as March and April had. But I'd still be there, still fighting even if I was bound to lose. Still my eyes would be looking into the crowd, looking to see if that night would be the night Calder took me. Looking to see if Altman had more information for me.
I'd always be thinking of Ezra. ”You need to move away from me, Adalina. I don't want this. There's only one thing I want.”
I heard the sigh utter from her lips as she backed away, the frustration. As Adalina slid her hand back I saw the slow, rhythmic pulsing of the seed on the table. It felt something, and I knew now it was satisfaction. There was good in the seed, but also a strain of sickness.
And then there was a noise at the door. So low, perhaps, that Adalina failed to hear it or perhaps she didn't care as she shambled off toward a bedroom. As she went she muttered, something about boys and not enough red wine, while I looked to the door. On the floor was what I had been waiting for: another slip of paper. The last.
