Consort

Chapter Four: City of Sin

Chapter Four

     "So, Rune, tell us, you seriously don't have a clue where you are?" The turquoise-eyed man driving the car asked suspiciously. He hardly sounded convinced.

"I...I don't know at all." Rune replied, throat still burning with what these two strange men called bloodlust. What on earth could that mean? One surely could not develop a lust for human blood? It was simply cannibalistic!

"You, my dear fellow, are in the grand city of Damnatalia." The blue-eyed man said, his voice filled with sarcasm as he referred to the city as 'grand'.

"Once grand." The other man sighed, driving slightly quicker with every passing minute - the sun was creeping lower and lower, the sky turning dark and starless as the drove. "It was once a beautiful city, until that blasted Aras, and Sybilan and his government got their grubby mitts 'pon the palace and the parliament. Now everything's just divided."

Still battling his burning insides, Rune narrowed his eyes in question. "Divided? Into what?"

"Depends. How much do you want to know?"

"Shush, Anderson. He doesn't need to know the full ruddy Damnatalian history. Besides, we're hardly meant to tell outsiders, in case He hears us, or this 'uns not one of us. All you need to know," the turquoise-eyed man told Rune, "is that this place we're in's the ruins of the city. Outside where we're meant to be just now. King Aras - the latest ruler of our city - divided the nation into Vultura and Damnatalia, and all else is just fukka ruin. No one else knows what it's like out there; the Prime Minister, Sybilan, convinced Aras that it was dangerous, and the ruddy pair makes sure all us lot get kept inside the valley."

As the blue-eyed man, presumably Anderson, began driving up a thin pathway and up a hill, Rune could see that the sky had grown considerably darker than before. The small and beautiful airships that had graced the sky only a short while before were now gone, replaced with larger, dark-coloured airships, with the sign of an arrow piercing a shield displayed upon their sides. They seemed more ominous to Rune, and he shuddered slightly.

"Them's the Emolitians." The turquoise-eyed man told him, obviously catching his curious stare. "Guards of the King and the parliament. They stop anyone getting in, and anyone getting out. Simple enough job, 'part from the fact you got to be a fukka elite swordsman. Ruthless, they are."

"Emolitians..." Rune mused, before his throat began to sting and he was forced to grip at the skin again in agony. "What in mother's fuckery is this?!" He gasped, and Anderson laughed.

"You're a bloodsucker, my boy. They changed you whilst you were...wherever the hell you were before we found you."

And then Rune remembered. "I was in a building! There...there were bright corridors...and a dark room filled with people, and blood...they were all drinking it, and there was a masked man that told me to leave, and-"

"A masked man, you say? By Christ, you don't think it could be one of them bloody Emolitians, eh Douglas?"

The turquoise-eyed man, who seemed to be called Douglas, shrugged.

"Maybe. But why would they be outside the quarantined area of the city unless something was up that they wasn't letting onto? It's 'gainst the king's laws to be outside the gates if not on official business, you see. We'd best quickly get back to the city anyway, just in case there's any more of them sleazy bastards 'round here."

"What's so bad about the- Aah!" Rune clutched his throat and chest tighter, the sensation much like daggers piercing through his flesh, and Douglas tossed something at the boy with a stubborn grunt. Rune looked through red-hazed eyes at the small pouch of red liquid on the seat beside him, and felt suddenly sick.