"It seems I've a few surprises left in store after all."
The Man's teeth bared to show a sinister smile, tossing the seat he previously rested upon with enough force to crash against the floor, the ensuing sound of crumbling wood scattering fear through the eyes and hearts of those that watched. A fear that gripped me most of all.
Leading up to this moment, a dark expanse pulled itself over my thoughts and inhibitions. The hope of death teeming with enough possibility to cast aside any grievance I had. Now that I was here, standing vulnerably beneath that smile, all I could do was curse my naivety.
"Why don't we take our conversation somewhere else. Leave these people to their means."
As he spoke, I felt a phantom hand grip my throat. As soon as the phenomenon overtook me, I noticed I was being lifted into the air, every inch of verticality applying equally grievous pressure to my trachea. Those that watched could only continue to do so, the peace they experienced just moments prior rending them useless amidst the sudden alteration.
Fighting back unconsciousness, I managed to steal a glance towards the Golden-eyed man sequestered behind the bar, my vision leaking out of me as I made the attempt. Through fluttering eyes I managed to see his stalwart expression, eyes alight with anger. Towards the man that disturbed his abode, or at me, I couldn't know.
Suddenly, as if being ejected from a pressurized chamber, the phantom grip released it's hold from my neck. Instead of landing gracefully on the ground beneath me, I found myself soaring through the air in a scattershot line through the far window that crashed against the mounting force of my descent.
The dim interior of the Tavern gave way to the outside, the harsh sunlight the least of my concerns as I felt shards of glass flecked amidst my skin and through my cardigan and slacks. Blood pooled onto the concrete floor from a particularly deep wound at the back of my head. Steady drops from others ruminated alongside it, covering me in it's crimson ephemera.
Laying blankly on the stone-crossed road hosting the market square, noticing the sudden cries and shouts of passerby, all I could manage was to lazily hoist myself up to a kneeling position, looking idly through the broken window as I awaited the Man.
"Your field of vision is Weak." Against all metrics of logic, his voice appeared behind me. Before I could turn to acknowledge it, a force swept me off my feet as I tumbled a good dozen meters to our right, every roll and tumble I took drawing even more blood, staining the street in grim patches along my path. Those that still remained watched with hesitant faces, giving a suitable distance from the scuffle at a wide birth.
Soon the Garrison would arrive, given the commotion. Any of the hundreds of passerby were sure to call for their aid. Hopefully after the Man had his way with me.
Sauntering towards me, that same dark gleam in his coiled eyes, a smile just as menacing on his lips, the Man gripped and unfurled his fists at least a dozen times, pressing the skin of his palms with what I could only assume was anger.
"Not even a speck of life in you boy. By the Gods, at least give me a showing!"
I wouldn't give him one. My purpose was plain as day, even if he couldn't see it. Those that watched, faces filled with horror and unabashed curiosity, might've been closer to ascertaining it.
Now within earshot of me, he bent down, his frame encompassing the sun and the expanse of multicolored shops and storefronts around him. Grabbing a hand-filled tuft of my hair in his gargantuan hands, he pulled me close to whisper in my bloodied ear.
"Everything about your kind irks me to no end. You pick a fight you have no hope of winning, and expect the world to see you as Victims in the end. Disgraceful."
As if to emphasize his point, the Man lifted my head and brought it forcefully to the ground. A painful sounding crack resounded loud enough to reverberate around the space sequestered within the Market District. Scattered individuals huddled close together, looking on only to satiate their depraved curiosity. Sure that the danger wouldn't reach them.
"All of you, watching with dripping eyes! A boy not even of age has the spirit to face against the Absolute, and yet you all squirm like insects as you watch!" The words he spoke brimmed with malice, every gnashing syllable juxtaposed with utter silence, his targets seemingly awestruck at his words.
"L-let the boy go. You've made your point, sir." One of them timidly offered. I couldn't bear to look at him, bleeding profusely from my face as I was, but I could tell the interloper was frightened beyond belief.
"Yeah. There's nothing to gain from beating a child down." Another voice rang clear, seemingly burgeoned on by the first.
"Gain? Gain!? He attacked me first! I'm simply showing him his place. After all, that is the right of the Strong! What can any of you do to oppose!?" As if to prove his point, he continued his previous assault, slamming my head against the cold ground, every instance sending scattered remnants of sanguine essence in disparate directions.
"This is what I love about you Arleans! You'll sit there and die with a sword in your throat, and claim to be Victorious! Even as we slaughter your kind by the thousands! What a lovely trounce!" His voice quaking with insanity, the man eked closer to me, close enough for me to feel his hot breath cascading across the side of my head.
"I'll kill you, boy. I've done it countless times. Then I'll take your horns as a trophy, and be done with this town. That's all this confrontation is to me. Just a step on the road." Forcing my head to face him, his grip tighter than ever, his once rowdy expression diminishing to one far more displeased once he saw my own.
"What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you be smiling in such a situation?"
Indeed, I had been smiling. Not because of the pain, surely not. It hurt more than when my Mother was killed. More than my sternum being crushed onto itself.
Rather, within that pain, I saw her. Dressed in that same autumnal blouse that complemented her eyes and passive demeanor all too well. I was close, closer than I could ever have been than in the waking world. The Place between, where she lay, was just within reach.
Logic couldn't define, reason couldn't examine it. But there she was, just besides me. Her flaxen hair swaying idly in the breeze with a calm smile radiating from her face.
"M-mother..." I managed to speak, the words followed by a gasp filled with blood. Just behind the man that intended to kill me, her smile illuminated over me. It was all I could focus on, all that anchored me to the realm of the living.
And within that smile, came a voice. Silent, yet booming.
'Of all the things we gave you, this is how you repay us?'
That smile broke away into a haunting frown, her face contorting diametrically into one filled with grief.
"What are you muttering, boy? Have you gone mad!" The Man dropped me from his grasp, leaving me cold and despondent on the brick-stone road where Carts and people had tumbled endlessly through just moments prior.
Pulling my attention back towards her, that same voice rang out. No one seemed to notice, least of all my would-be executioner.
'If you are to die, die like a Man. What purpose does this childness fulfill?'
Never before had she admonished me so thoroughly before. I felt as if the remnants of my heart crumbled alongside her icy words.
"Anyone else seem fit to die an early death? Any of you capable of using the Power, at least?" The Man stood gallantly over me, his fists dripping with fresh blood. Those who spoke up earlier seemed reticent to reply, his hatred now searing through them as it had through me.
If I was of a clearer mind, I would force his attention back onto me. But all I could manage was the unravelment of my Mother's bygone voice.
Even if it was childish, the alternative seemed too great a task to overcome. To live without her guidance, her confident stride alongside mine. It was a hole too large to ever be filled again. There was no difference between a life without her and a life worth living, in my eyes.
I simply wanted my family to be whole again.
As if responding to my thoughts, the transparent effigy of my Mother shimmered closer, just a few inches away from my battered form, that same angelic smile returning to her lips.
'Wherever you go, I will follow. In times of strife and hardship, I will be but a moment's breath away.'
"That's enough, Galan!"
A tattered shout rang clear from towards the Tavern's entrance. The same voice I recognized belonging to one of the Man's Acquaintances. Turning on his heel, hot breathes escaping endlessly from his slack jaw, Galan titled his heads upwards in esterification towards the source.
"You always take the long path 'round, Dol. Me, I'm simply cutting through the muck." Their conversation boomed through the shuttered boulevard, the dream of hope arriving long gone by this point. The people that still remained did so only out of mere frightful obligation. The Man before them, and as they could only assume, the group he now bargained with, could ravage them just as easily as he had me. So they waited in pensive terror for a break in the insanity.
My Mother's words, a memory of bygone days, struck me so profoundly as to stifle the pain that burned and suffocated. She had spoken them so many times before, and yet somehow, I had forgotten them. Either through my grief or lack of remembrance, that idea left me just as swiftly as she did. But her being here was proof enough. Even if it would never be what I hoped for.
'This world doesn't work in absolutes. But you, my son, are different. Me and your Father knew from the beginning. That you were special.'
"Years of preparation, Galan! Subterfuge that would make a weaker man crumble, lies and schemes enough to bring down Van Turan in it's shattering! All for this!? A Boy without the means to even protect himself!?"
"Can you imagine the Morn I spent keeping the Garrison at Bay! This would've been our Epoch, Galan! A land of Milk and Honey, just as the Stories proclaimed it to be! And now, all of it, every ounce of effort, wasted, utterly and completely!" Dol's words were tinged with a spiteful fury, the meaning behind them lost on me and those who continued to frighteningly hold their attention to them.
'That's why I'm here. And will remain here, at arms length. But only just. Because this World is cruel.'
"Don't speak as if you hadn't planned my obsolescence! What kind of fool do you take me for! A Gathering of the region's most prolific Imperators, and for what, an Idle Chat! I came for blood, Dol, and I will receive it!" As Galan spoke those words, a dark glimmer filled with bloodlust shining through his eyes, he brought his right arm level to the crowd that gathered a dozen meters away, their eyes filled with horror as their presence became his sole arbiter of attention.
Within the palm of his hand grew a light, bright enough even to shadow the sun itself in it's luminosity. Seconds passed, and as they did so, the light grew larger, churning and boiling as the Man tightened his grip. The Space around him grew darker alongside the light, seemingly obliterated under it's weight, crackles of lightning-wisped energy spiking alongside the spherical anomaly he had formed.
'And in A World such as this, Giving in would be paramount to admitting defeat.'
"Galan, No!!"
The Interloper's words arriving far too late, the light within Galan's palm tunneled in on itself in one final, radiant display of power, before truncating into a massive blast of impossible power that soared into the crowd of horrified onlookers. The recoil of such an attack caused his arm to reel back slightly, but still he held his stance.
Within moments, the blazing inferno that traveled such a distance in an impossibly quick time bore through those that stood watching it, incinerating them both adroitly and completely as it tumbled ever-forward. The burning trail it made within the brick-stone street revealed only scarred ash in it's wake.
Upon making landfall with the Clocktower sequestered at the Middle of the far-off Intersection conjoining this street with multiple others, it exploded into a Spherical death-globe of righteous energy, scarring and mutilating both the buildings and the people it came in contact with. Those who idled alongside, unaware of the terror that transpired close to the Tavern, were unambiguously incinerated without pause or condolence.
The Figment of my Mother's form evaporated slightly under the waves of pressure emanating from the blast's aftereffects, pulsating winds chewing through everything that hadn't been nailed down. Street-signs and guideposts fluttered unintuitively through the surrounding space, carts and Stock-mares diving through adjacent buildings and confused passerby.
'So fight, my Son. Live to see the day where sadness no longer holds it's grip around you.'
And with those parting words, as sudden as she had appeared, her ghostly figure vanished, following close behind by the sudden impact of a chunk of serrated rooftop crashing just meters away from where she stood, and where I now fought for the last remnants of life within me.
"What worth do underhanded measures have, when All-encompassing wrath accomplishes so much more!" Galan moaned surreptitiously, the backdrop of the destruction he caused only acting as fuel for the fire that now raged within him.