“How did you even get tangled with that organization, anyway? Is there anything you can tell me about it? Do you guys have a name?” Lavimo hovered while they began following Elray’s concept of luck, Alroy doing all of the talking, of course. He’d managed to convince this brat to just walk them to the back of the dungeon so that they could break the wall and escape out the back, but now he had to deal with all these questions.
“Well, the organization is called Sinbrek, and it’s filled with all sorts of people. Sinicus is the worst of them, as I’m sure you can guess. He named us after himself, too, so you can see the ego. As for myself and my brother, we were orphaned when we were around ten years old. No parents to guide us, you know? Sinbrek takes advantage of things like that. Though, honestly, as for what I can tell you… I’m not really part of the inner circle…” Alroy gave a half-hearted chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck like he was embarrassed, though everything was an act. Well, sure, he might’ve been orphaned at ten years old… that much was true, but no way was he telling this gullible prince any of the real details. “But uhh, I guess the main thing we’re trying to do is start the apocalypse… everyone there is pretty strong, and they’ve all got powerful concepts… I’m really not sure anyone can stand a chance against them… they’re just too strong,” he went on, bluffing his way out as he played up his helplessness.
But seriously, why was this kid staring at him like that? Like he was genuinely concerned. Lavimo’s eyes were wide, his brow tense and fixated. His mouth was slightly gaping, like he was seriously trying to hold back how concerned for him he felt. Like he really did feel all these intense emotions for Alroy’s fake sob story. Now that had to be an act, too.
“And you plan to go back?! But think about what else they’ll make you do…” Lavimo wavered, hands wavering in front of his mouth as he carefully reached out to Alroy. “I know you’re not a bad person, so you should think carefully about what you do next… isn’t there any way you can save your brother without dirtying your hands like that? There must be a way…”
“Hah! Gimme a break,” he slapped the man’s hand back to where it belonged, Alroy not able to help the glare he shot at Lavimo while Elray quietly guided them around a corner, only partially listening. “There’s no way out. Once you’re in, you’re in for life. There’s no getting me out of there, and there’s no saving my brother. I’m sure he’s being trained as some child soldier anyways, or maybe Orvana’s already made him one of her slaves…”
“No, you shouldn’t think like that!” Lavimo took his shoulder, his passion undeniably intense as Alroy stiffened in the face of it. What was this kid even trying to say? “There’s got to be a way! Trust me, if I could get my family back, I’d do anything! You shouldn’t give up on yourself, and you shouldn’t give up on your brother, either! Especially if your parents are gone, that means he’s all you two have left! You need to protect him!”
“Fuck, protect him by doing what?!” Alroy demanded, turning himself around to grab onto Lavimo’s wrist, forcing it away from him as he backed the other into a wall, both of them dealing mad glares at each other. “In order to save my brother, in order to fight back like you’re saying I should as if it’s so damn easy, I’d have to get through mountains of people that outclass me and would kill on sight! The inner circle isn’t something you wanna mess with, kid! You wanna know who you’d have to fight?! Do you wanna know who you’d have to kill to even see my brother’s face again? You’d have to get through Aura, a fucking psychopath who’s been fucking up the leylines for centuries! You’ve got Teth, a madman who can trap people in mindscapes and make them gamble if they want to live! There’s Sinika, a cannibalistic bitch who eats people as fuel to make more fuckin’ monsters! And don’t forget Orvana, some ol’ witch from some damn old legends that will stop at nothing to make sure your funky little Cirrus dies! And then worst of all, the most vile man you’ll ever meet, we got Sinicus. He wields the concept of evil, ya know. Wanna know all he’s done?! Do you wanna know what that man’s done to me?!” Alroy screamed in his face, Lavimo’s back hitting against the solid concrete as Elray apathetically turned to watch them, slightly suspicious.
But the smaller man still looked determined, fist balled up in Alroy’s grip as he glared back just as fiercely. “So what?! If my family were still alive, I’d fight anyone for them! And I’ve still got my cousins and my aunt and uncle, so if one of them were being used as a hostage, I’d fight any of those guys!”
“Oh… hah… hahaha, that’s rich,” Alroy laughed, voice dripping with a sense of insanity you couldn’t fake, slowly releasing the grip he had on Lavimo as he tilted himself towards his twin. “Elray, do you catch this guy? He thinks he can fight Sinicus. I doubt he could even win against Wisteria!”
“...I don’t care. Just ignore him,” they spoke dully, scanning over the two people with slight annoyance.
Alroy was acting weird. He didn’t usually get this emotional. Was it just part of the act? But it seemed more real than the rest of it. Should they just kill that guy? Well, he was only a nuisance, and if he was bothering Alroy, then… they might as well. Their violet eyes narrowed, their palm gaining a small spiral of wind as they prepared to aim it at Lavimo’s neck, before the man said something so absolutely outrageous that even they had to pause to think about it.
“I could! I think you’re just being cowardly!” Lavimo screamed, back still against the wall as he glared at them both. “I’d fight Sinicus! I’d fight him if he was here! You’re just scared! Your brother’s not gonna get safe that way!”
“Eh… what the fuck is wrong with you?” Alroy whipped around, his mask finally slipping completely off as he went and stomped towards this ultimate idiot. “Did you not hear anything I said? He’s the strongest of us all, and he wields the concept of evil. The! Concept! Of! Evil! You can’t beat that, kid.”
“Sure I can! And why do you keep calling me a kid?”
“Uhh I dunno, I just assumed that I was older than you… how old are you?”
“I’m four-hundred and twenty-three.”
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“I… uh, what the fuck,” Alroy spat, Elray’s wind disappearing as he inched closer towards his brother.
“He’s older than us…”
“He’s an old man.”
“A grandpa…”
“An ancient arse!”
“If we were living in the ancient days of all those legends, he’d be dead…”
“Well of fucking course he’d be dead, Elray. People didn’t live past two hundred in those days!”
“Uh, wait, hold on,” Lavimo squinted, moving his hands to massage his temples as he focused back in on the two people in front of him. “Uh, I’m pretty sure they didn’t live past one-hundered and thirty. No one even made it anywhere close to two hundred back then.”
“Nerd,” Alroy jabbed at the same time Elray lowered their head and muttered, “What a know-it-all…”
“Hey, okay, that’s it! You two can’t be that much younger than me! How old are you?!” Lavimo demanded, Elray immediately looking back to the path to guide them further down now that things seemed to be more relaxed.
But there was no way he was disclosing his real age to this… old man. Alroy really preferred his privacy, and there was no way he wanted some random guy with too much of an ego to know that he actually wasn’t even past one hundred yet. He didn’t need people knowing he was still a kid. He’d just lie about it. “I’m in my three hundreds,” he lifted his head confidently, walking along the path with clear purpose as Lavimo stared at him.
“I don’t believe that…”
“Then ya got trust issues, my dude!”
“...adults don’t say stuff like that.”
“Sure they do! I’m saying it right now.”
“How old are you really?”
“What are you, a cop?”
“...”
“We’re here,” Elray expressed suddenly, interrupting them both from… well, whatever they were doing… to look at a flat wall that split off into two different hallways. But the slender, androgynous person went up and placed their hand against the flat of the rock, tapping at it slightly as they turned towards Alroy. “This is it. Should I break it?”
“No, I can do it for us,” Lavimo offered quickly, moving forward to use his concept of corruption once again to crumble the rock to black ash, giving them a wide spread to a high cliff overlooking the river that ran under Lilino’s castle. Ah, the concept of corruption… was perhaps the only cool thing this guy knew how to do, Alroy thought. The concept of corruption wasn’t anything easy to master, and it could only surface in people who had suffered deep trauma that resulted in extreme self-loathing and a feeling that your identity and sense of self had been broken and degraded so far it felt like it’d been completely tarnished… and of course, Lavimo had fit those traits from the very start. Which was exactly why Orvana and Sinicus had decided to target him. But Alroy didn’t tell him about that. He didn't tell Lavimo that he was still a target, and that the masterminds behind Sinbrek had their eyes on him and were most certainly going to try and hurt him further. Because that wasn’t his problem. Alroy was going to trample all over him, too. Anyone who was foolish enough to declare they would fight Sinicus was on a whole other level of foolish, and he didn’t feel like protecting anyone who would say such a thing so carelessly. No, it was his job to destroy people like that. Besides, it wasn’t like Lavimo genuinely cared about him either… Alroy didn’t believe that good people existed in the first place, and Lavimo’s naivety was bound to get him killed by Sinicus sooner or later, so it didn’t matter.
Yet, before he could turn away, before he could morph into a giant griffin and fly off with Elray in his claws… that very man he had just insulting twice over grabbed his shoulder… and was giving him a very earnest smile. “I hope you get out of there someday,” Lavimo told him sincerely, Alroy’s expression shaking as he took that in. “I know I can’t defeat Sinicus. And I know you probably can’t either. But that doesn’t mean you should be okay with corrupting yourself by doing all of these bad things. Because I don’t think that’s all there is to you. You have more to you than your mistakes, so… I believe that if you want to, both you and Elray can break free from that place, and you can save your little brother, too. You shouldn’t be so certain that it’s impossible when neither of you have tried, right?” he encouraged, Alroy’s golden eyes blinking down to glance at the hand on his arm.
It was all so superficial. None of that was true. Lavimo was the fool here for believing all his lies so easily. What would he say if Alroy admitted that none of it was true? He’d probably turn on him as quick as the wind. But for now, he put on a smile. Because falsehoods were best met with smiles, he’d learned. So he replied kindly, “Thanks. I know we’ve had our differences in this short time, but I’ll keep what you say in mind. I hope you find that path you’re searching for as well. We’ll be off now.”
And then his body began to morph, Lavimo taking a careful step back to watch as Alroy’s body grew, grew, and grew. Fluffy grey wings sprouted from his soft white back now covered in feathers, a lion’s pelt coating his lower half as he picked up Elray by their arms with his eagle’s claws. And then he was off, flying down below the rock so that he wasn’t spotted by anyone from Lilino, carefully beginning his flight to the nearest teleportation waypoint that was only a few miles off Lilino’s capital. It would be a smooth ride from there.
“...why didn’t you want me to kill him?” Elray asked after a moment of flight, Alroy’s voice still coming through clear as day despite his beak. Another aspect of his concept, if you will.
“Because Orvana still has plans for him.”
“Do you really care about her plans?”
“Well, I can’t say I’m not interested. She thinks she can use Lavimo as another trigger of the apocalypse.”
“You mean like what they did with Feather?”
“Exactly,” Alroy agreed, soaring over the blue waters as Elray comfortably relaxed.
A trigger of the apocalypse… it was a scary thing to think about. At least, it was scary if you were a normal person. But if they actually managed to succeed in making Lavimo the second trigger like Orvana intended, the apocalypse would begin to spread even faster. If that happened, it didn’t matter what kind of prophecy thousands of prophets all around the Udimeia had witnessed, it would be too late. Cirrus wouldn’t be able to stop anything by that point. Or at least that’s what Orvana believed. She was a prophet as well, and it was important to note that the future was never set in stone, no matter what kind of prophecy someone saw… prophets could only look into the future and find likely possible outcomes to predict, or they could take it upon themselves to influence events themselves so that their prophecies came true. Ruba and Orvana were both the type of prophet who liked to mess with things, and they were currently competing to see who could influence reality the most to get their desired future to come true. Would it be Ruba, who wanted Cirrus to succeed? Or Orvana, who only wanted to destroy everything because Cirrus existed in the first place? Who was to say? Though, in the end, it didn’t matter to him… as long as he could make Elray happy in this horrible world of theirs… that would be enough for him.
Is Sinbrek a cool name (please say yes)
