Empires | Arc 1 | Chapter 8 | Swan’s Song of the Red Lake

As the clouds pass by, the full moon takes the central night sky. The late-night wind passes, Jarrod remains unconscious, face down on the ground.

Friling is gripped in Taglia‘s hands.

Taglia, while looking at the maroon-blooded skeleton, whispers, “Necromancer.”

Before anything can happen, in a split second as a wind current passes by the two, Taglia drops Friling, who falls onto the concrete. He uses his other hand to make a fist and lands it directly onto the sternum of the skeleton.

BOOM!

The skeleton does not just crack; it shatters into multiple pieces as the shockwave generated from that impact blows the street dust and small pebbles away behind its body.

But Taglia is not smirking. He is observing, and rightfully so. The moment the skeleton shatters, the pieces that blasted off to a certain distance into the air, stop, hovering mid-air.

How?

The maroon blood is working as a glue or some type of rubber band, and—

SLIIICK!

—the shattered pieces snap together, and the skeleton is formed again!

Taglia is looking at the absurdity of the moment when, out of the blue, someone kicks him in the back. Since he was looking to his side, genuinely surprised and startled by the skeleton’s regeneration, his focus was diverted. When the kick hits him, he gets thrown forward by a few steps.

To keep from falling onto the ground, he puts his hands on his knees to balance himself.

As Taglia finally turns, he sees Lesca.

Her eyes are entirely covered in blood; there is no pupil, no iris, no cornea. Her hands are at her sides, fingers curled into fists. She is standing right beside another maroon-blooded skeleton, the one that kicked Taglia. This one is exactly the same visually, but to Taglia‘s eyes, there is a difference.

The first one looked a little taller, almost like a man, but this one is a little smaller.

Taglia wonders, a woman, perhaps?

For the second time in under ten minutes, Taglia‘s eyes widen. There are two of them, as the first one that had been holding his arm steps forward, standing side-by-side with the second one.

Seeing Taglia frozen in place, Lesca slowly walks up to Friling, sits on the street, and lifts his head, putting it on her lap to check his pulse. The two skeletons step forward, positioning themselves between her, Friling, and Taglia.

Finding a pulse and making sure Friling is not dead, simply passed out from the pain with his eyes half-open, Lesca‘s blood-filled eyes return to normal.

She finally speaks.

How she is so calm, only she knows. Less than ten feet away stands a 6’2″ monster who moves at supersonic speed, yet she is cradling Friling like a baby, her guard entirely down.

She starts speaking, not even looking at Taglia, but looking at Friling.

“I slew our parents because they were harsh on my brother.” She wipes hair strands from Friling‘s face and strokes his hair.

Friling responds by moving his head a little deeper into her lap, so the pain around his neck and back hurts a little less.

She continues, “They were forcing him to become something he is not. Because he was the most just and gentle human being I know, and they clearly weren’t. And why?”

She finally snaps, not toward Taglia, but toward the two skeletons standing between them. “Because he had to one day manage this city as a male heir of the Head Family! Beating him. Verbally abusing him.”

She finally looks down at Friling, saying, “One night, things went out of hand… I tried to stop them, but they threw me aside!”

She closes her eyes and looks up into the night sky, saying, “I wanted them gone for hurting my brother… for hurting me!” She opens her eyes, looks past the skeletons toward Taglia, and says with an unearthly smile, “That is when my Heat activated!”

She nods her head toward the two skeletons, saying, “And they became these… at least in death they are being better parents, and doing what they are supposed to do!”

Taglia has spent this whole time looking at Lesca, genuinely baffled by her monologue in the middle of a battle, but he finally looks at the skeletons. They are eyeing Taglia like hawks. It feels like a slight twitch in his muscles and they will jump on him, but they stand completely still, like statues, as Lesca ends her monologue, saying, “Protect their children!”

While still sitting on the ground, she extends the hand that is facing Taglia. Most of her arm is under the sleeves of her princess coat, but Taglia can see the back of her palms.

From those tiny sweat and oil pores, an absurd amount of maroon blood starts to pour onto the ground as her eyes go bloody again. In that thick liquid, there is another color: a creamy off-white.

A guy like Taglia, who has definitely broken some bones, doesn’t need an encyclopedia to figure out that it is bone dust.

Right in front of Taglia‘s eyes, the liquid and dust pour onto the ground. After a particular amount is gathered, they start boiling together and jump up vertically. There is another one—a third maroon-blooded skeleton.

Lesca takes off her coat, she wears a silken shirt and pants underneath the coat, rolls the coat up up to make a pillow, and places it under Friling‘s head. She gently lays his head down over the coat pillow. Friling reacts with a little groan; he might be unconscious, but his body reacts when her warmth is gone.

Without a single verbal command or gesture from her, that newly formed third skeleton takes her place. It is apparent it is there to guard Friling.

As the two previously summoned skeletons step aside, Lesca steps forward, standing a few feet away from Taglia, face-to-face.

Gently, unlike how Leon or Friling say their Heat names, but calmly, like reciting a verse from a poem, she says, “Swan’s Song of the Red Lake!“

She then smiles innocently, saying, “To your left!”

Taglia, processing the name of her Heat, snaps to his left, and there is another skeleton—the fourth one. This one is tall and wider in bone density. Though Taglia might not know it, it looks awfully similar to the build of one of the intruders that Jarrod defeated a few days ago.

Taglia‘s thinking goes from Swan’s Song to When the fuck did she summon that?!

That thing is holding a piece of concrete that Taglia or Jarrod shattered earlier during their fight. What is surprising is that it is holding the piece overhead, like a bodybuilder in a press position. It is as if it was waiting for Taglia to look, and the moment he does—

DHUSHHHH!

Taglia literally gets slapped in the face by the concrete block. It shatters on his face, and he flies into a nearby building from the sheer impact.

Lesca, serenely watching this whole scene, turns toward the building and says, loud enough to easily be heard from inside the rubble, “I murdered my parents for hurting my big brother… You tried to mutilate him… What do you think I will do to you?”

Moments pass by.

Nothing.

It is almost way too quiet. Only the rustling of the wind, the electric hum inside the street lights—those that still stand, at least—and the TUP TUP sounds of small liquid droppings falling from the skeletons’ bodies onto the concrete floor.

Then,

a laugh comes out from inside the darkness of the building.

Finally a voice. The tone is not particularly mocking, but condescending. It says, “A protective sister, are we?”

Then, a sound.

DHUMP. DHUMP.

It’s not just footsteps; it is like two feet that are made of boulders. As the sound gets close to the moonlight and street lamps,

Lesca sees Taglia has changed for the third time in a single night.

Massive, separated pecs sit like breastplates. The mountain slope of his traps merges his neck to his shoulder delts in a single sloppy formation. All the wiry veins of his arms are gone; instead, his forearms and upper arms look like General Sherman tree branches. His knuckles, too, have some type of coating—a calcified enamel like humans have on their teeth. It is apparent now he can literally punch through concrete without hurting himself. There is no six- or eight-pack abs; instead, he has a log-like waist. Because of his massive traps and pecs, his upper body looks like a King Cobra’s hood. His legs are not fat or thick, but rather long and defined like steel cables which suggests weight without heaviness.

The cargo pants he is wearing were always bigger than his original leg size, so when he got bigger, they remained intact, but the way they stretch around his thighs leaves little to the imagination.

Taglia finally steps into the night light. He extends his arms, keeping his elbows close to his torso. Tilting his head to his right, he uses the exact same calm tone that Lesca used, saying, “Primal Mode, 75 percent!“

Taglia does not waste a moment. He charges toward Lesca like a rhino.

He is fast, but there are no sonic booms or shockwaves. Instead, his feet are so heavy that wherever he steps, he punches mini-holes into the concrete, leaving spiderweb cracks around them.

DHUH! DHUH! DHUH! DHUH!

Lesca can clearly follow his speed. He is charging toward her, but she does not budge, neither does she order the skeletons to stand between them.

The gap is closed in under six seconds, and then—

DHI – SLACH!

Lesca was looking at Taglia, but after she hears the sound, she looks down at her torso and sees Taglia has put his fist through her guts. Piercing, or more specifically, punching a perfect hole through her navel area.

Taglia‘s fist went completely through her body, perfectly impaling her. The hit was clean. Because his knuckles are so hard, Taglia felt like he just punched through a newly made sandcastle that is still wet! Lesca‘s intestines and tissues fall out of her back onto the floor; some are still hanging from her body.

He says, “You pushed me… this far! But alas, rage and protectiveness aren’t enough for revenge! You need a sharp mind and a lot of power, matching the emotion, to extract revenge!”

Lesca slowly lifts her head. She is smiling as blood comes out of her nose and mouth. Taglia notices one odd thing: her blood is not red like Jarrod‘s or Friling‘s. Her blood is maroon, exactly like her skeletons—who, by the way, haven’t moved an inch, simply staring at Taglia and Lesca!

She says, “You dumb fuck. Who said it is over?”

As the words leave her mouth, her blood and guts on the floor dissolve, turning entirely into maroon blood. It literally boils and gets pulled back toward her torso. The liquid moves like a snake, wrapping around Lesca’s legs to climb back up. It is the same liquid that runs through the cracks and openings of her skeletons, and it starts to rapidly fill the hole in her torso!

That visual alone forces Taglia to try and take a step back, but as he tries to remove his hand, it’s stuck.

Her flesh is reforming tightly around his wrist while his fist is still buried inside her gut! That’s not all. The gap is filling rapidly, and the liquid? It’s hot, like molten iron. It is not enough to completely burn through his thickened wrists, but it burns agonizingly nonetheless, and it is hardening fast.

In that moment, Taglia contemplates ripping his hand out by force, but he hesitates.

Honestly, he is bewitched by Lesca, and maybe that is why he isn’t desperately swatting her away.

The three skeletons move. The first the intruder who slapped Taglia with the concrete and the second one the father who held back Taglia‘s arm, position themselves on both flanks of Taglia, pushing him down onto his knees, while the third one—the mother that kicked him in the beginning—grabs his throat and holds him there.

Though there is no need.

Taglia is too mesmerized and too stuck inside Lesca‘s body to move. That is when Lesca launches herself onto him, causing Taglia to fall backward, flat onto the concrete.

Friling‘s eyes finally fully open. He tries to balance himself on his elbows, but his vision is blurry. He cannot move the right side of his body, so he balances entirely on his left, and through blurry eyes, he sees the visual.

Taglia is lying on the ground, his fist still buried inside Lesca‘s torso. Lesca is sitting on top of Taglia’s chest.

Friling just watches. He is hardly shocked; rather, he is frozen for two reasons. First, the pain is demanding so much of his energy that he has none left to delegate to his other emotions. Second, the sheer level of presence radiating from those two is suffocating.

It is the smell of jasmine and carcass. It is a killing blow to the human nose—heavy and undeniable!

As Lesca leans down, there is barely a gap between their lips. She is looking directly into his eyes, and Taglia is looking directly into hers. Her sharp nails scratch his left pec, directly over his heart, almost piercing his thickened flesh.

She whispers, “Shall I take it?”

She pushes her fingers deep into his flesh, piercing the rhino-hide of his skin. Some of her nails break off, but they boil over, turn into blood, and instantly reform again as she says, “Maybe then you will feel what it’s like to have your heart taken away from you!”

As she finishes, Taglia finally smiles. Not a laugh, not a grin, not a cackle. Hell, not even a chuckle. A simple, all-accepting smile.

He pulls his own head closer to her mouth, stares deep into her red eyes, and finally whispers with that exact same accepting smile that Jarrod had when the building was falling on him.

“Take it!”