The Placeholder (World Hopping)

1.11 - Wet Behind the Ears

Sometimes I ask myself... am I Ruxin with Augusta's memories?

Or am I Augusta with Ruxin's memories?

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"She would be so creeped out if she knew! The person she saved had these feelings for her? A married woman with child?" Durante's face blanched and Ruxin knew the time drew nigh. "Let you in on a little secret... she saw you as nothing but a burden."

Ruxin stepped up to the man in a butler suit.

"She didn't want to bring you in, yet you wouldn't take a hint! Poor Augusta, she had her hands full with the clan and her child but out of kindness she yielded when you begged."

There was but several feet between them.

"She saved you, took you in, fed you, clothed you, taught you. To what end? A betrayal like this?!"

"I would never betray her!"

He wanted to argue but she wouldn't let him. The key to overcoming this ordeal and gaining something out of it was to hold the reins. Tight.

"LIAR!" Ruxin held Durante's thick wrist in a vice-like grip and shook it before his crimson eyes. "What did you do with this hand? Maybe if i didn't come you'd have attacked Augusta anyway... Alas, the poor, unsuspecting soul! And the rest? Her son, Lucero? Ebony? Nouha? Mia? Did you want them dead from the start?"

Durante's veins popped at Augusta's name but didn't react to any other.

Ruxin nodded.

/Ruxin: That's another in the clear.

/Vois: Just from that?

/Ruxin: I can't speak for him in the following weeks but at least right now he doesn't want to kill Ebony. Most people can't control their microexpressions when they're agitated. And if all this is acting... you picked the wrong host.

/Vois: We'll see.

/Ruxin: Is that a challenge I hear? You're on.

The short amount of time Ruxin loosened the reins gave Durante pause and he flung Ruxin's hand away, "Whatever your game may be, I won't stand for these insults!"

Durante moved, the bear-like man's speed almost too fast for Ruxin to react to. Training gave her better control of Augusta's body but the rift between human and moonperson was too wide to cross in a week. Thankfully, she was prepared.

Absolute zero.

A large magick circle under her feet shone and icicles snapped up from the ground like the jaws of an ancient beast, shielding her within them. The smell of blood filled the air as the ice marked out a gash on his arm. The man wasn't daunted, however. He threw his body at the icy cage, slamming his shoulder against it over and again.

Mad dogs are not cute.

"This room is warded; we can rampage as we like but no one outside can hear. No one will know if I kill you." Ruxin unwrapped a long whip of arctic blue from her waist and struck. It flew at Durante, coldly glimmering. He threw himself sideways and attempted to catch the whip but the movements of a snake weren't so easy to read. The blue length coiled around Durante's neck, eagerly drinking his mana. He struggled and tugged but that only quickens the absorption.

"But don't make me do it," Ruxin tightened her hold. This darned man was struggling too much. How had his temper not changed in 40 years? "Because she wouldn't have wanted—" Ruxin faked a raspy cough. "—that."

"..."

The gears in Ruxin's mind spun rapidly, "Catastrophe is a-coming. The Alcmene clan would fall, its people hunted."

"Did you take me for a fool?" Durante growled.

Ruxin shrugged. Their businesses among the humans were thriving, their food sources were secured and they had peace for decades. No one had foreseen it, but it was on its way. The golden age for magickal and supernatural creatures had long passed.

"The truth won't change by your belief... or lack thereof."

The red in Ruxin's eyes brightened and inky words of an age-old language crawled across her face, "With Räsl atop and Styx beneath as witnesses, I, Bu Ruxin, swear that the following words are true and sure."

"... Veracity's Oath." Should the swearer lie, their soul would be enslaved by death's hand—experiencing every possible way death could come till the day the world ends.

"The already diminishing moonpeople would cease to exist. Your oh-so-precious mistress would die."

Durante didn't want to, but he had to believe her.

"And this is where I come in; the fate Augusta can't change, I can." Ruxin cocked her chin and Durante tensed, sensing sovereignty of a sort different from his mistress'. This witch was weak and pretentious but could not be looked down on.

Ruxin's mana fluctuated and the magick circle dimmed. The icicles created with mana shattered, and myriad ice crystals reflect Augusta's body and Durante. "Come at me," Ruxin unfurled the whip around his neck, "if you want all that she worked for to come to dust."

"..." Durante took an uncertain step.

"Don't underestimate her too much. Weakened she may be, how could I be in her body without permit?"

"Why... didn't she tell me?"

"You'd have stopped her."

/Vois: She couldn't, dead as she was.

/Ruxin: He doesn't have to know that, amirite?

"Will she come back?"

That was a question Ruxin would like the answer to, as well. But an answer that wouldn't change the outcome wasn't worthy of using one of the few questions Vois promised.

The bleakness she heard in his voice made certain that with or without Veracity's Oath, she wouldn't have lied to him. "... I don't know. But everything comes at a price. And Augusta was willing to pay it for the clan."

"Always putting herself last..."

"She needs a lesson or two on selfishness from the kiddo."

"Lucero?" Durante chewed the name. "That brat doesn't deserve her."

"Totally with you on that. Did he save a country in his past life or something?"

"It must have been the world."

"... At least we're in agreement about something." 

Ruxin crossed her arms, still holding the metal handle of the whip. "So are you with or against Augusta's cause?"

The black strands of his hair were tangled, his glasses askew and his pressed uniform torn. What would this sorry sight of a man choose? She didn't want to kill him but if he insisted on fighting... she wasn't one to leave dangerous elements be. And if he relented...

The burly man opened his mouth, the sharp fangs within glinting dangerously. "Fine. But once you work your trickery or harm her in any way—"

Ruxin tried to smirk but Augusta's facial muscles were too stiff and anyone looking would read it as a frown. "That's a senseless worry; keeping this body safe is our common goal." Until it runs out of time, that is. "Now that we're allies—"

Durante quirked a brow, "First I heard of that."

Ruxin ignored his remark, "I have a pressing job for you. It concerns Augusta's health."

Durante's scoff morphed into solemnity when she brought up Augusta. He'd never take anything related to her lightly.

"Deal with the mounds of paperwork."

"..."