Ruin Maketh Me

65 - Shadow's unleashing

Note: Apologies for the late update. There's a time skip in Ralphus's POV, but I will go back and write in Cynder's POV from when he was sold in the later chapters.

Ralphus

     He doesn't know what's compelling him to wander down the corridor, certainly not anything good, no, it's become like that old nightmare again. His vision is covered in darkness, and even the shine of the moon through the windows is ashen grey without a spark its usual light. He knows it's an error on his side, breathing's become so hard everyday, and he's walking through shadows again. But it isn't his mother's sharp face painted with blood he sees out of the corners of his eyes, it's Cynder. His beloved Cynder, face pale, eyes red, struggling in the holds of the males and females holding him down. He can't unsee it. He can't unthink it. And now he's walking down this corridor with the shadows curling up his throat, and he knows he's gone past the line again.
     The only peace of warmth he holds in the last holiness of his heart is the image of his smiling, laughing beloved, but that too is being tainted with this nightmare reality. Sometimes he struggles even to realise whether all of this is real, is that flailing, tortured Cynder truly an illusion conjured by his pained mind? But everytime he succumbs to the image, his hands grip on nothing, and Cynder's not there, not anywhere. The artificial well of flat calm has long since been ripped apart, it's been ripped apart since the first day Cynder disappeared.
     A wave of nausea surges drily through his guts. Again and again, he had been told to keep his beloved close, close at heart, close at hand. But he had lost Cynder despite all the warnings and lessons. It had been his fault. Now, he's being torn apart. He doesn't know anymore, the right and the wrong, they're blurring all together like a stewed mess of entrails. He had always thought protecting family was right, protecting love was right, protecting Mal was right.
     'Blood and honour', that had always been the Caesluphius motto alongside 'Cherish tender, rest in peace'.   
     But these two, they're fighting against each other now. These words in his mother's voice are ringing non-stop, one each ear. "Cherish", "Blood", "Cherish", "Blood", "Cherish", "Blood". He had put Mal first, and he had not thought it wrong, but he had lost Cynder. Now, now, he couldn't discern what for. Why had he put Mal first? Why had he protected the Kades, Julius? They killed his mother, they put himself through so much humiliation, they had laughed at his dreams, so why had his sword wavered to cut Declan down? Let the empire crush Mal, let the Kades fall to ruin, it all sounds so sweet now.
     It hadn't been clear to him from the start, but it's either one or the other isn't it? Just like his mother, she protected Mal and gave up his father and died. Had she refused, had she lived, where would he be now? Certainly not here, certainly not at breaking point.
He wouldn't have met Cynder.
     Crushing pain radiates through his heart, and he stops to take a gasping breath of air. The only sacrilegious place hidden inside of him shifts and trembles in the bloodless invasion of darkness. The shadow eats its way into his mind, wraps its tail around the strings of his thoughts, and he stumbles forwards. To where, he doesn't know, but his feet know and the shadow knows.
     Ralphus pushes open the door without knocking. The room he steps into is barely lit - the curtains are fully drawn, only a candle flame flickers weakly on the desk. Wet moans flood the stuffy air, and the scent of mindless arousal tickles his nose like the corrosion of metal. Julius's red eyes don't look up to meet his approaching figure, they don't seem to even look down at the human boy he's kissing.
     The boy however, looks up. Grey hair, grey eyes, and for a moment the two images overlap in his addled brain, and he opens his mouth to call his name, but the candle light veers and the likeness ends. The mouth is too soft, the face a slight too wide, and there's no recognition in the blank pools of his eyes. A sudden fit of rage overcomes him, and he lifts Julius's empty wine glass from the desk and throws it at the wall above the couple's heads.
     Smash. Thousands of fragments of sharp, luminous glass showers over their heads, and the mindless boy screams, distangling his arms from around Julius's back to shelter his face. Only now, do those liquid red eyes lift from the dark crowded distance to meet his face.
     "What is it?" Julius's voice has become yet colder.
Ralphus grabs the boy by the wrist and yanks him from Julius's lap. A terrible yelping tumbles from the boy's lips into the tight space of his mind. His grip tightens, and another tumult of irritation scratches through his heart. The shape of the wrist is all wrong, the texture is all wrong, too soft and yet too knobbly. He throws open the door and hurls the human out, and the boy hits the corridor wall with a tremendous thump. Finally the horrible yapping stops.
     "I didn't think you'd care so much for a slave." Julius's eyes stare out at the dim outline of the crumpled boy in the corridor, but Ralphus knows it's a different boy he's talking about.
     The flames dim, and the cruel emptiness of the imminent unleashing overtakes everything again, "You too."
     Julius takes a sliver of glass between his fingers and slowly shakes his head, "No."
     Casting a thread of gold, Ralphus slams the vision of the boy and a crying Cynder outside, "Deny it all you want. Twenty slaves, and you still haven't found what you're looking for."
     The jagged ridges of the glass sink into Julius's pale fingers, and crimson blood brighter even than his eyes washes his hands slickly. Julius opens his mouth, but it's not a denial that comes out, "Yes, I haven't found it." The corners of his lips turn down crueller and yet with strange sorrow, "Ralphus, tell me, have I become sick?"
     Those scarlet eyes drip down the trail of blood and finally lift to his, smudged with bruises dully shining with a barely hidden fear and savagery. A laugh echoes through his head. At last, has Julius Kade tasted the bitter ravaging of suffering?
     "Every night I dream of them, and my heart squeezes in such terrible pain, it's like I've been cursed. I buy those slaves, capture their lips, take their bodies, but it's all horribly desperate, and when I think I've eased the curse, they come back again in the night, particularly that boy." Julius stands up and away from the candle light, yet every crucifix of his features are as clear as if in moonlight, "I'm tired. I can't sleep. Tell me what the cure is."
     Silence the colour of the flickering candle light smokes the tortured breath between them.
     A flood of bitter delight seeps into the Shadow, and it's too late, he can feel it loosening like a key turning in a lock, "You've never lived, and now that you are, you can't bear it. It's too late, you've lost your chance. You sit here, and yet Declan and those bastard twins are still alive."
     Julius shakes his head again, bolts of raven silk sweeping the hard surface of the chair, "I never took you as a fool. Don't waste your breath, you see the implications as clearly as I do."
     "Implications," He breaths, another tinge of darkness washing over the room until even the candle flame is but a black smudge, "The emperor's always been looking for a reason to invade, but surely a war suits your ambitions? Or do you think Mal would truly succumb to the human empire?"
     Those eyes that are still tinted red even in his dimming vision sharpen, and the ashen cherries of Julius's scent deepen with a hint of warning.
     "Why have you come here?"
     But he's too far gone to care. Perhaps, the shadow tainted thoughts swim dully, this is true justice. Never had he ever doubted his fate, but now that he is doubting, all his previous justifications have become flimsy and utterly incomprehensible, "I don't know why I've come here." The breath leaves him, and all facades and meaningless words fade from his tongue. Suddenly all he wants to do is tell the truth, "I've been driven mad. Five weeks, Julius, it's been five weeks, and the academy won't let me leave even when Cynder needs me. There's another six weeks left until the end of the season, do you know what that would mean for Cynder? Do you know those implications? And I have to live through this uselessness everyday knowing that Declan is still alive when he should be dead." He breaks off, laughing a little, "I doubt. I doubt it all now. What is the meaning behind being a Knight when I cannot even protect the one person I love? And the only answer I received is that it's meaningless. I've been ignorant this whole time."
     Ralphus's feet half turn, and he runs a hand through the strands of hair Cynder so loved to touch. Darker. Everything's become a shade darker again, but he cannot stop now, "I don't see much worth saving in Mal, not since that Otherworlder took the title of Queen. Do you think any of us Caesluphiuses think Mal's worth saving? No." He shakes his head, eyes fixing on the figure he once found so dazzling, "I'm going to kill Declan, I've come to tell you that."
     The thrum of magic sound in the very blood of Ralphus's ears, and Julius's eyes have become barren wastelands of sand and cracked earth.
     "You would sacrifice your duty and your homeland and your lord for a human being who would grow old and die before you grow a single white hair?" Julius presses forwards, feet loud and deadened against the muted floor.
     The shadow extends its hands full of turmoil and covers Ralphus's eyes, "It's the cure to heartbreak that you seek, and I took too long to come to this conclusion." He lifts his chin, straightens his back, "And Julius, I refuse to die of heartbreak and regret."
     Julius stands as still as if he had no life. An empty despair fizzes through his mind-breakingly beautiful features, and slowly, slowly like the speed at which flowers wilt and fall, the relinquishment of emotion drains from his body, and he's left a husk of hard stone and thoughtless duty, "I won't allow it." Magic ripples from his hand.
     The shadow presses its formless mouth to Ralphus's ear, "Leave it all to me." It says, and so he le t   S      G    O
                                             Into a state of peace where there's no Cynder begging for help and no mother stained with blood—
     And
     —alphus!"
     —alphus! Do you know how sad Cynder will be if you die? He'll never forgive either of us!"
     H     E         G   R a bs on again.
     Pain fires through every nerve in his body, and Aureus is in his hand, stained to the hilt with blood and gore. His vision blurs in and out of focus, but it's the cold night and fallen debris that surrounds him. A gush of bitter iron seeps from his throat, and he coughs the stream of blood onto the skeletal white stones beneath him. Did he... do this? He stumbles forwards towards a twisting river of onyx black covering a blood red stone. What? A thread of detached light spools from the heavens above, but his ears are ringing, and he can't quite keep his eyes open. What is that? The twisting river seems as soft as silk, and it seems to frame a pale elevation of stone that smells of burnt magic and sour fruit.
     The unforgiving shroud of the sky yields and moonlight splashes like ambrosia upon the circle of destruction. Blindingly clear he sees that the river is not a river, but unbound hair spilling over the rocks, and the pale elevation he thought was rock, is the hard-cut beauty of Julius's face. Numbness radiates through his lips, and his feet stagger one step and another towards the broken body and the Lilith.
     "Thank Merlow you've come back." The Beastian chokes, not separating his eyes from the expanding magic circle below his hands.
     A sense of conclusion settles against his skin, and his eyes slowly draw an arc to Julius bathed in moonlight. His abdomen is completely ripped apart, bloodied entrails and organs exposed to the ruthless glint of light. Even under the effects of Lilith's high tier healing spell, the skin struggles to close at the seams.
     His knees give out from beneath him. He truly did it this time.
     Red eyes flutter open, and they rove around the stone wasteland in delirious frenzy, "Ralphus."
     A new torrent of red blood floods through the hole and dribbles down the pale marble of Julius's face, starkly bright.
     "Don't talk." Lilith's faint voice rises above the dark night.
     "I apologised to him— Julius's voice trails off into a rattling breath, "I said sorry. Sorry. I'm sorry."
     Aureus clangs to the dust ridden ground, and Ralphus cups his head in his hands, fire burning through his blood, "Don't talk." He lifts his blurring vision towards Lilith, "Where's Zus and Set?"
     "Unconscious but still alive."
     A heavy breath spirals from Ralphus's mouth to the moon. He feels the life spilling from him as if he too had been gorged. He's going to die isn't he? Julius, he isn't going to make it through. He lifts his head to the boiling colours of the sky, "Is this the end?"
     "No." Lilith bites severely, "I'm preserving his soul, neither of you are going to die."
     The pounding of his heartbeat weakens and slows until he can hardly hear the familiar thump, thump, thump in his ears, "Tell him I'm sorry. Tell him I tried, and that I love him, and that I didn't mean to be cruel to him when we first met." The scene of desolation fades blearily, and he grasps on with the last of his will.
I would have liked to see you one last time, Cynder.
     Thump, th u  m   P,       T         H           U              M                 —Blood surges, heart strengthens, and the night view gushes in blinding detail back to his eyes. What's happening? But before his mind can catch up to his heightened senses, the body strewn across the stone like the sacrifice it is burns up in piercing white flames. Ralphus throws up a hand, and when the world dims back to the gentle liquor of the moon's grace, Julius's body on the blood stained stone is completely whole and flawless in detail again.
     Chilling red eyes snap open, and Julius rises upon the stone with an inhumane ease like a martyr given back his life. He surveys the entire fragmented landscape with a cool analysis, and when his eyes swing to meet his, there's no clear emotion but a sombre appraisal, piercing but blank in meaning.
     Ralphus's fingers find the hilt of Aureus again, "Who are you?"