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[Lord of the Mysteries] For the Ones We Left Behind 12/15 (5639 words)
Title: For the Ones We Left Behind 12/15
Fandom: Lord of the Mysteries
Character/Pairing(s): Audrey Hall, Leonard Mitchell, Melissa Moretti, Benson Moretti, Klein Moretti, Xio Derecha, Fors Wall
Rating: PG-13
Warning: none?
Summary: MI9 catches Benson Moretti, and end up with more than they expect.
Fors Wall was a sequence five Traveller of the Apprentice pathway, and a writer who liked to laze around and enjoy life rather than be burdened with the stress of deadlines and expectations. She once meant to be a doctor, but found that busy lifestyle didn’t suit her.
Rather than the pressure of saving lives, Fors would rather spend the evening with good food and wine, lounging and spending time with Xio.
So why was she in this situation?!
Fors Wall was a sequence five Traveller, and there was no way she could take on a demigod and— who knew! She certainly didn’t know the sequence that the second man was at, although he was likely to be a demigod as well!
As the fog lifted and the illusions disappeared, Fors almost squeaked her surprise when two sets of angry eyes turned her direction. Even Gehrman’s marionette animals stopped attacking, the viciousness fading into stillness.
Where did he go? Fors panicked, arms still raised from controlling the illusions over the plaza. Mr. World just disappeared!
How could that be? He wasn’t an illusion! And Fors didn’t keep another historical void spell because Mr. World was so confident that he would only need one, so she could use the other for herself!
Miss Audrey had Leymano’s Travels, and Xio was preoccupied looking after the Moretti siblings! An Apprentice pathway Beyonder didn’t have any offensive spells!
“You were the one controlling the illusions?” Celt asked in disbelief, and he straightened his suit lapels before saying, “Lies are not—”
In a burst of panic, Fors unleashed the highest spell she Recorded, and the dark but peaceful sky above them twisted with the gathering of a storm within moments, flashing lightning and booming thunder through the skies, lighting up the plaza in brief but intense moments of white light, with each strike of lightning next to them shattering cobblestones as it rained down.
It wasn’t concentrated, and there was no accuracy, but the spell she painstakingly copied from the Sea God Specter under the frighteningly still eyes of Gehrman Sparrow was enough to distract just long enough for Fors to turn from the men and run.
—
Benson couldn't understand anything anymore.
Being told of Beyonders and strange abilities was one thing; being abducted by MI9 and interrogated through supernatural means was one thing; yet being here now in the midst of the fight, even if the visibility was low– or perhaps especially because the visibility was low, was something else entirely.
It felt like a nightmare. The atmosphere, the ambience, felt like monsters from the abyss were ready to fall upon them from the sky and snatch them all up to swallow them down in one gulp.
No, that was too kind a description.
Despite being told not to worry about the supposed ‘monsters’ in advance, and with Miss Audrey having sat both him and Melissa down before this to give them some psychological counselling, everything still felt horrifying.
He stood under the light, holding onto Melissa tightly as they waited it out, told they would be guided away safe quickly into the battle, and hoped he wouldn't come to regret trusting this strange group.
But who else could he trust?
Benson thought that after this, he would go straight to the church after everything was over, and pray for guidance. Perhaps ask there, as well, of the strange groups within the church. Surely that would be a safer option!
He was– he was–
Suddenly, Miss Xio emerged from the thick fog, form nearly hidden under her dark cloak, and she ushered them away from battle, a hand on Melissa's arm.
“Come on,” she told them in a hushed voice, “let's get you out of here.”
Benson didn't understand why they had to be there in the first place. Couldn't they use their magical powers to make decoys of them? But he didn't protest being able to leave, especially in the middle of this madness!
“Teleportation is prohibited! Confinement!”
Benson heard multiple commands in the last several minutes, but this was the first time since earlier that evening that he felt the words straight down to his bones. Like a prison set for his soul, anchoring him to the plaza.
And like a prison, suddenly he felt like he couldn't leave, like he would hit a wall as soon as he tried to run.
“Everything in this place will return to its original form!”
A second command from another voice, and suddenly the majority of the fog protecting them within the plaza was gone. The monsters disappeared, leaving behind only a horde of rats that made Melissa gasp and step back. They could now see things clearer, and there were bodies on the floor groaning in pain or unconscious.
Benson hoped they were unconscious and not dead.
And then seconds later, before Benson could get over his shock, the dark skies roiled and turned turbulent, and within moments there was lightning coming down on the plaza, and Benson shielded Melissa as much as he could while he huddled down onto the ground to make as small a target as possible.
Miss Xio cursed loudly.
Within his arms, Melissa was muttering, “It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes any sense, does it? Why would people fight because of us? Even without the magic, why are we in this situation?”
Benson wasn’t sure it should be said aloud, but he found himself missing the calm respite when they spoke earlier, and agreeing more and more with Melissa’s panic.
Only a moment later, all the lightning disappeared, leaving smoking craters on the ground, but Benson couldn’t stop his racing heart as he peeked and saw Miss Xio standing over them, her face grim as she looked upward.
A sudden deadly lightning storm, the inability to leave, and now their supposedly safe hiding spot exposed by the dispersal of the fog…
In his heart he knew why they couldn’t leave— this was one of those magic spells, wasn’t it? But if these people were really here to help them, then why was he and Melissa caught in the thick of things? They couldn’t help, they couldn’t contribute, they couldn’t even be proper bait. He had seen another Miss Audrey here! If they could make copies of people, then they could have made copies of them! Benson and Melissa weren’t needed, they were just in danger here!
In his panic, he wondered if his so-called saviours deliberately brought them here to put them in danger, or to in fact hand them over to MI9 in order to appease them.
He stood up shakily along with Melissa, who still had her arm held by both himself and Miss Xio.
Melissa jerked away from Xio’s grasp, a dark look on her face that Benson felt in his heart.
“No, no,” Melissa said, almost in a trance. Her trust and thoughtfulness from earlier in the evening was almost entirely gone, and she shook with distrust. “We can’t go with you. All these strange things happen when we’re with you! No, it’s best to go with MI9. How can we trust you over the government? MI9 might have captured Benson, but they were going to let him go in the end, right? They wouldn’t have voluntarily brought us to a dangerous place like this. Aren’t you the ones putting us in more danger? Are you guys the reason why we’re on the run? Why can’t we go back? We can just clear our names and go home!”
Xio flinched back at the blatant distrust, her eyes wide. “Miss Melissa—?”
Melissa tugged on Benson’s arm, and turned her head toward the edge of the plaza, closer to the fight, and pointed with her other arm.
“The safest place should be where people don’t expect us to go, right?” She babbled. “The safest people are MI9, right? Shouldn’t we trust that man? Shouldn’t we, Benson?”
There was a strange glimmer in her eyes, a glaze to them, but Benson could barely notice with the way his entire being agreed with his sister.
That was right. It wasn’t safe to go with Miss Xio. It was far safer to go with the man who had been watching them this entire time, seeing as he hadn’t lifted a hand to harm them at all.
In fact, he had given them…. Hadn’t he given them something?
Xio’s eyes followed where Melissa was pointing, and her face darkened into a scowl of understanding as she set eyes on the still man. Benson didn’t know what she understood when she saw the man, but when she turned to them again, Xio had a sweet smile on her face, a little reminiscent of Miss Audrey’s gentle smiles.
“Listen,” she told them, and this time around her voice was low and smooth, and there was something strong in her tone. Now, rather than appearing to be caught up in the battle, she looked like a victor, standing triumphantly above the bodies of the battlefield; a force of power that couldn’t be resisted. “You don’t want to trust that man. He’s the enemy, and he’s currently influencing your mind. He is—”
“You can’t trust her,” the man spoke up for the first time where he stood at the edge of the plaza, and he looked so misplaced there in the middle of the night. With the fog mostly dispersed, Benson could see him clearly for the first time— a young man with neat blonde hair and sincere blue eyes. He was dressed so elegantly, so orderly, of course they could trust him, couldn’t they? He looked the type of person one saw on the street and immediately knew they were trustworthy. “It’s as you said— it’s her fault you’re here. You could be at home right now… I can take you back to MI9. We can clear up this entire situation. You’ll be home before you know it.”
Yes, that sounded right. Benson found himself nodding along with the words, seeing Melissa do the same.
If only Miss Xio didn’t seem so frighteningly strong right now, like if she were to fight the man, she would win. It was enough that Benson couldn’t trust the well-being of his sister to this man, not if he was going to end up fighting Miss Xio. She would win, and then where would they be?
“Don’t you think she’s dangerous?” The man coaxed. Melissa moved a step away from Benson and Xio towards him. The man smiled at them, the glow of the gas lamp highlighting an honest and handsome face. He too stepped closer and reached out a hand for them to take. Benson moved a step closer to the man as if physically swayed by an invisible wind.
“He’s right, he’s right,” Benson muttered under his breath, moving away from Xio. “There’s no sense in us being here. Why take the risk? Just clear things up with MI9, for better or worse, and we can go back to our lives— why are we here? Why did we agree to this in the first place? It’s not safe. Why would I want to know about the horrible things that happen in the dark? It’s safer to live in ignorance.”
Xio’s eyes burned bright, and her hand was small as she grabbed onto his arm, but the grip itself was like steel.
“Because you want to know what happened to your brother,” Xio said with that same frightening tone, and it was the snap of a rubber band on his brain.
He did. Despite the dangers, despite the pain, he did want to know. He was—
There was something wrong with his thoughts!
Benson snapped to attention and gasped out, “Melissa—!”
Melissa had already taken another three steps toward that man, when suddenly the entire plaza was blanketed by an aura of calmness, enough that both Benson and Melissa nearly staggered, their heads hanging low for a moment as all thoughts and decisions escaped their minds.
Peace.
There was a sense of safety, like being in the warm glow of a hearth at home, and knowing that the day was over and done with, that rest was coming, and that he was safe. Why was he so worried? There was nothing to worry about, because everything was going to turn out alright.
Benson moved a step forward, and reached out to snag Melissa by her wrist, pulling her back.
That’s right, it was all okay. He just had to keep close to Melissa, and everything would be alright.
—
Audrey knew something went wrong the moment the fog dispersed and the illusory creatures disappeared. As she finished putting the last of the lower sequence MI9 agents to a deep state of unconsciousness susceptible to her changing their memories later, the sky flashed with lightning that struck the plaza in several areas, giving her such a fright that she felt dragon scales form on her limbs, and her eyes slitted as she gasped and drew back.
Then the lightning disappeared, and she saw Fors running in her direction with the two men she was restraining before now focused on her.
Seeing the greatest threat, Audrey directed Awe right into Amyrius’s mind, her abilities lessened by the rules set out before, but still effective enough to stagger him. And then she cast Awe again on the man behind Amyrius, this time a little more successful as that man stuttered to a stop and held his head in both hands.
Where was Mr. World? She worried, but didn’t have the time to think into it as Fors nearly collided with her since Audrey was still under psychological invisibility. She moved to catch Miss Magician around her shoulders, the woman panicking for a moment at the restriction before relaxing under a more familiar touch.
“Book, book,” Fors rambled and gestured with her hands, and Audrey handed Leymano’s Travels over to Fors’s shaking hands and watched as she flipped the pages.
“Miss Magician,” Audrey whispered, because Fors was perhaps the only one left that MI9 didn’t immediately know the identity of, “what just happened? What’s going on?”
This wasn’t a part of their plan. They had a very clear cut plan, with several contingencies in place!
“I don’t know!” Fors hissed back, the panic evident in her entire stance. “Historical projections aren’t illusions— right? But we need to stop them ourselves!”
She must have found the page she was looking for, as Fors held the small book in both hands and then asked Audrey, “How good is your singing?”
Oh, no. Audrey was a fair singer, but she wasn’t prepared for this! The question made her mind go blank, as if she had just been asked to pick a favourite of anything without being given any warning. Even if she was a good singer, her mind blanked at what song would be demanded of her.
“Ah…”
“Never mind, I’ll take this, and you bring them to a stop,” Fors blathered, and then turned in Audrey’s arms to face the MI9 demigods, humming a Church of Storms hymn in a low and shaky voice, one hand resting upon the page of the Siren Song.
Now understanding what she meant to do, Audrey focused her attention on the two Beyonders who were recovering from Audrey’s use of Awe, the irritation on their face slowly smoothing out as they adjusted to the mental disturbance.
Fors’ humming made their movements slow again, and the blank look once more passed into their eyes.
Awe barely worked, only slowing them down for a few seconds in the long run. Arbiters had higher mental resistance and her abilities were dampened the moment she stepped into the plaza, but she hoped they would be enough at the demigod level to stop them.
Apparently not.
As Fors’s humming finally kicked in to bring the two demigod opponents to a more susceptible state, Audrey made a decision.
If she couldn’t use something to stop them in their tracks because they had high resistance to it, then she would use an ability meant to help Beyonders.
Putting in more than twice the amount of spirituality as she normally would, Audrey cast a wide range Placate to calm the raging hearts of everyone in the plaza and bring them all to a sluggish stop.
—
Leymano’s Travels might be completely empty by the time this fight is over, Fors despaired for a moment, but then cheered herself up with the thought that it meant the book was a vital part of the fight, and she could likely ask everyone involved to help refill it again.
Her shaking hands calmed down, an inadvertent byproduct of Audrey’s skills, and even her eyelids were drooping, her entire body relaxed enough to fall asleep right there in the dark and open despite the enemies around them.
What a powerful ability, Fors marvelled sluggishly. Is this what it means to be a demigod? I should work for sequence four as soon as possible…
She slumped against the semi-visible figure of Miss Audrey, only thinking of how warm and comforting the other woman felt.
And then a hand reached to squeeze at her arm, and Fors noticed scales all along Miss Audrey’s arm, and there was once again a sharp spike of fear.
She woke from her daze in a rush, her heart rate spiking until Fors gasped, and shrunk back to say, “Thanks.”
“It will only last for a few seconds more,” Audrey warned her. “And likely won’t work again once they’re prepared for it. I’ll keep them under for as long as I can, and you help Xio get the Morettis away from here.”
“You’ll keep them under by yourself?” Fors asked, horrified. She didn’t want to leave Miss Audrey alone with the enemy!
While it was difficult to see the noblewoman’s features under the psychological invisibility, her form only visible to Fors because she knew Audrey was there and her brain filled in the details that kept blurring again, Fors could almost feel her determination.
“Mr. World isn’t an illusion,” Audrey said, her tone firm. “He also would not abandon us. And no matter how busy Mr. Fool is, he has always watched over us and made time to inform us of important matters. The fact that we’ve not received divine revelations means that Mr. World has a plan, and everything is still within the parameters of it.”
There was a firm faith in her words that left Fors dumbfounded.
Miss Audrey was right! Gehrman Sparrow was the scariest person Fors ever met, and therefore he definitely had something up his sleeve because there was no way they could lose to MI9 with him on their side.
“Alright,” Fors responded, feeling more confident. She pushed herself to stand on her own feet again, and with a lingering hand over Audrey’s for a moment, said, “Be careful.”
“I will.” Audrey responded.
It only took twenty running steps to bring Fors into the midst of another fight.
Whatever tranquillity Audrey might have brought along the plaza was gone between Xio and another man who looked more than twice her size in the middle of a run and brawl.
While Melissa and Benson still looked dazed and calm under the brightness of the gas lamp, closer to the rubble that was once a stone statue Xio threw a rock the size of her head at the unknown man, who merely blocked it with an arm, the rock cracking before falling away.
Did the rule about weapons already fade away? Was it already broken? Fors thought in shock as she rushed to help Xio from a safe distance after affirming that Benson and Melissa would be fine where they stood in a daze.
As Fors rushed to find a place under cover for shelter should a projectile be aimed her direction, she thought about the mess that became of this fight. She couldn’t worry about Miss Audrey—Fors had to trust in her and Mr. World to win this, so right now she had to focus on helping Xio— but what could she do in a fight like this?
As the two darted around at high speeds, Fors reached out a hand to try something familiar now that her sequence was much higher: a Trickmaster could affect the things they touched, but what about a Traveller? She didn’t have to open a door to where they were fighting, no, but what if she could touch the area they were fighting, and—
With a twist of her hand, Fors smoothed out the ground underneath the unknown man until it was slippery as butter, the effect as basic as it had been at sequence eight since the only enhancement she made was to do it over a distance.
The man stumbled, not expecting interference in the fight, and Fors continued as he fell, emboldened by her success, reaching with her other hand to freeze the target in her sight, causing the man to twitch under the hold of her ability and falling hard onto his face.
Taking advantage of the man’s downed state, Xio twisted from where she had been running, and swung a leg over to kick down the gas lamp closest to her (Fors shrieked at the action, even if it hadn’t been the gas lamp that Benson and Melissa were under), the metal nearly screaming as it went down and landed on the downed man, sparks erupting as it hit the ground.
Fors could barely breathe at the scene, her eyes round with shock and her hands still up in the air like a buffoon.
Xio, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate at all as she rushed the man, and heard him groan as he tried to push himself up from under the weight of the gas lamp, his arms trembling.
Rather than wait for him, the blonde grabbed a large chunk of rubble and sank down to her knees next to him, shouting, “Go to sleep!” every time she hit him over the head with it.
After five or six hits, the man finally stopped moving. Fors choked on her own breath as Xio dropped the stone and let out an explosive sigh, collapsing back on her shaking hands.
“Is he…” Fors could barely ask it, still shocked at the actions of her best friend. “...Dead?”
“He’s fine,” Xio dismissed, as she raised a hand to wipe the sweat from her brow. After she took her time doing that, she finally looked down at the man crushed under the gas lamp, bleeding from the head, and stopped to check his condition for a moment. “He’s still breathing. He’s fine.”
Fors didn’t think he was fine, but then again from what she had seen, the man had enhanced physical abilities as part of his Beyonder pathway.
After ensuring that he wasn’t going to wake up any time soon, Fors and Xio made their way to the still dazed Moretti siblings.
Seeing them standing there calmly under the lamplight, their expressions more serene than she had seen all evening, Fors felt a little reluctant to break them from that state. Wasn’t it kinder to let them pass through this calmly?
Activating cogitation, Fors scanned the surroundings to find that the confinement rule was still active. They wouldn’t be able to leave, even through the spiritual realm.
(So how did Mr. World manage to disappear?)
Illusions were also still prohibited, although Fors wouldn’t be able to recreate that ability anyway…
She hesitated. Recreate? Sure, she couldn’t make illusions of monsters, but the most important part was the fog to hide their movements, and fog was something that a Trickmaster could create, one that wasn’t an illusion. Fors’s hands twitched. She still had a good amount of spirituality as well, having been replenished to her peak just a few minutes ago. But did they need the fog, or would she be using spirituality for no reason?
She decided to wait.
“Should we really shake them from this trance?” Fors asked Xio guiltily, standing next to Benson as Xio stood next to Melissa. “Maybe they’ll be happier to wake in a safe place, rather than back here.”
“Like this they’ll happily step into a trap,” Xio countered, “and we wouldn’t be able to stop them.”
Then Xio muttered an apology in advance, and lightly slapped Mr. Moretti on the face.
—
As she expected, even with Fors’s help, Audrey couldn’t subdue both Amyrius and Celt by herself, although she did manage to give herself enough time to set up another preliminary plan.
(“We don’t have to fight them directly,” Mr. World said as he pointed down at the papers with the information on MI9. “They will be prepared for direct attacks.”
“And mental ones,” Miss Judgement added, and looked at Audrey. “They’ll be most prepared for you.”
“Not if we fight the way they expect,” Mr. World said. “Get them to believe we’re too cautious to do the obvious, and then change the paradigm.”)
She took the time with them being disoriented to weave a deception in their minds, now unable to rely on illusions. She barely had time to target one person, and chose the man who was more affected by Siren Song, stepping behind Celt as he blinked away his disorientation and leaning in to whisper hypnotism in his ear, placing gentle fingertips on his shoulders to weave untruths into his perception.
She would stay grounded, as he was highly resistant to mental attacks, and add only a grain of sand into his oyster shell to let him build on the lies himself.
Your battle with the cultists has revealed one thing, Audrey whispered in his thoughts. The man before you right now is not the real Amyrius. He is your enemy.
After all, he’s already seen that people were not who they seemed in this fight. Be it Gehrman Sparrow’s shapeshifting, Fors’s illusions, or Audrey’s virtual personas… who knew what the ‘Amyrius’ in front of him really was? But he was powerful, and he was dangerous. Far more dangerous than Audrey, who hadn’t revealed herself so far, or Xio and Fors, who weren’t at the level of a demigod.
He is the most powerful and experienced person here right now, Audrey reminded him of a truth. The most dangerous.
If he gets away, who knows what will happen to your comrades? To MI9? To the government? To the entire kingdom of Loen?
That was enough, and Audrey drew back from Celt to melt back into her psychological invisibility and let things play out on their own now.
—
Melissa felt like her thoughts were wading through warm and soothing molasses. Looking down at her hands as she stretched and retracted her fingers, the world felt dream-like, and her body didn’t entirely belong to her. Was she really the one commanding herself to move?
Next to her, she could hear Miss Fors talking to Miss Xio about breaking something. A space?
“I can’t,” Miss Xio responded unhappily. “There’s only so much that Territory can do, and it’s useless against demigods. But if Mr. World—”
“We can’t keep relying on him to break us out of every problem!” Miss Fors exclaimed, a hysterical note to her voice. “What if we pray?”
“So we rely on divine intervention?!”
“I don’t have any better ideas,” Miss Fors admitted.
Melissa lifted her head with some difficulty and saw her brother on her other side, also looking quite dazed. However, for Melissa, the more she listened to the women banter, the more she felt the numbness fade away. The sensations coming back were quick and overwhelming.
The coolness of mist against exposed skin, her feet aching from being out too long today, the one strip across her shoulders that was protesting from carrying her heavy bag around for too long, damp sweat on her back from fear, and fatigue on her scalp not having taken her hair down yet for the day.
Oh, Melissa thought, I don’t feel so well.
She was tired, and aching, and there was a mental exhaustion from her panic earlier in the day that now lingered in the back of her mind. Memories of what just happened were flooding back to her— it wasn’t that she forgot what happened, but she forgot to care about what happened, and now that she could again, Melissa was horrified.
No one mentioned that the strange superpowers would be— more than crushing rocks or sleeping less! More than—
Melissa screamed when she heard the gunshots, and then saw the fight through the mists, where two men were fighting with blood dripping down their forms.
“Use of firearms is restricted! Those using firearms will be punished!” One bellowed, holding on to his bleeding side. The other man, armed with the gun, staggered as if physically struck, and then retorted.
“Mysticism is weakened here and reality strengthened!”
“Oh,” Miss Xio breathed out, and then didn’t wait as she pulled both Melissa and Benson to her with inhuman strength, “this will help!”
The strange feeling of being trapped, of not being able to leave, was starting to lift, and Melissa allowed herself to be dragged along as they got past the gas lamps, away from the plaza and toward the destroyed buildings where they could—
She screamed again as another gunshot rang out, this time accompanied by the sound of ricochet too close to her ear. Melissa couldn’t help the violent flinch, yanking away from both Xio and Benson even as Benson turned to shout, finally shaking off the last of that strange lethargy when Melissa’s hand slipped from his.
The men weren’t shooting at each other anymore, they were shooting at them!
At that moment, the thin mists thickened once more, and a strange oppression settled over the area, even as Miss Xio and Miss Fors pulled Benson and Melissa toward some rubble for cover. Melissa felt the thundering of her heart as she curled up into a ball behind a broken wall, clutching onto Benson’s hand once more as Miss Fors and Miss Xio covered them.
All of a sudden, all the noises in the night disappeared, and in the silence Melissa could hear only her own breathing and heartbeat, as well as the quiet ones of her companions next to her. No more gunshots, no more footsteps, no more movements in the night—
She couldn’t help it! A few seconds of the oppressive silence was somehow so much worse than sounds of being pursued, and Melissa struggled to move her huddled body so that she could peer over the short wall alongside the others.
The fog in the plaza had once again rolled in, like a wall of clouds from the darkness, a tidal wave that swallowed one lit gas lamp after another until it truly resembled a solid wall from one side, covering some of the unconscious bodies on the ground.
And from the wall of fog, Melissa could almost see movement. How could she, though? It was so dark within, but somehow it looked like there was a red glow— or several red glows, actually, like moving fire…
She couldn’t differentiate at first, because of the darkness, but it looked like a creature of shadow stepped out from the fog, first one limb, then another— and then an elongated head full of teeth, pulling and stretching back until she could see the red, glowing eyes lit like flames and there was still teeth, teeth, with a mouth that gaped all the way back to the ears.
As more of the body appeared, another shadow creature was coming out from the fog as well, and then another, and another. They looked like— like monsters, but if monsters were modelled after canines with eyes on fire and a mouth that opened its entire head while wrapped entirely in wispy shadows, and Melissa shook from the power and danger that she could feel radiating off the creatures. These weren’t the illusions that Miss Audrey had warned her about! These creatures weren’t illusions at all, they were—
Between the shadowed monsters, a man stepped out alongside them, dressed in an impeccable suit and with a scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face, his top hat pulled low over his brow. All around him, more and more of the monsters also stepped out of the fog, nearly a dozen in total before the man stopped, and all the monsters stopped with him.
The man bleeding from a gunshot wound to his ribs bellowed out, “Summons are prohibited!”
The words merely caused several of the monsters to snarl at him, one opening its impossibly wide mouth to bare its teeth threateningly until the man standing next to them pressed a hand atop the terrifying creature’s head, and it slowly closed its menacing jaws.
Melissa thought that the man glanced in her direction, that he met her wide eyes for a moment under the shadow of his hat, before he said to the monsters, “Protect the others.”
His voice was soft and deep and gravelly, but something about it made Melissa draw a sharp breath.
Something about his demeanour must have spoken to Miss Xio and Miss Fors as well, as they stood up straighter and gasped out, “Mr. World!”
No, no, that voice was far too familiar, and even thinking about it made Melissa’s stomach clench because those were the silliest thoughts, only spurred by the fact that she learned today that magic exists. Spurred by her emotions and her hope and her desperation.
“Are those things from the spirit realm?”
Melissa just barely heard Miss Xio whisper to Miss Fors, who responded in the negative, “No, they would be considered summons in that case…”
And then the man from the fog moved, dashing toward the two men with weapons.
A/N: No, I didn't forget Luan. He was just hiding in the shadows waiting for his chance, and now Xio's beaten him unconscious, lol.
This last image with Klein stepping out of the fog surrounded by the Hounds of Fulgrim, here to rescue his siblings... that was the image that inspired this entire story. I took longer than normal reading LotM because I kept daydreaming while reading, and afterwards when I decided to write something for November, I decided on this image. Now we're finally here!!
--Yes, the gunshots continued even after guns were prohibited. That's because Celt came to his senses, and why would Amyrius hold onto that law when now they're the ones with the weapons?
Previous || Next
Fandom: Lord of the Mysteries
Character/Pairing(s): Audrey Hall, Leonard Mitchell, Melissa Moretti, Benson Moretti, Klein Moretti, Xio Derecha, Fors Wall
Rating: PG-13
Warning: none?
Summary: MI9 catches Benson Moretti, and end up with more than they expect.
Fors Wall was a sequence five Traveller of the Apprentice pathway, and a writer who liked to laze around and enjoy life rather than be burdened with the stress of deadlines and expectations. She once meant to be a doctor, but found that busy lifestyle didn’t suit her.
Rather than the pressure of saving lives, Fors would rather spend the evening with good food and wine, lounging and spending time with Xio.
So why was she in this situation?!
Fors Wall was a sequence five Traveller, and there was no way she could take on a demigod and— who knew! She certainly didn’t know the sequence that the second man was at, although he was likely to be a demigod as well!
As the fog lifted and the illusions disappeared, Fors almost squeaked her surprise when two sets of angry eyes turned her direction. Even Gehrman’s marionette animals stopped attacking, the viciousness fading into stillness.
Where did he go? Fors panicked, arms still raised from controlling the illusions over the plaza. Mr. World just disappeared!
How could that be? He wasn’t an illusion! And Fors didn’t keep another historical void spell because Mr. World was so confident that he would only need one, so she could use the other for herself!
Miss Audrey had Leymano’s Travels, and Xio was preoccupied looking after the Moretti siblings! An Apprentice pathway Beyonder didn’t have any offensive spells!
“You were the one controlling the illusions?” Celt asked in disbelief, and he straightened his suit lapels before saying, “Lies are not—”
In a burst of panic, Fors unleashed the highest spell she Recorded, and the dark but peaceful sky above them twisted with the gathering of a storm within moments, flashing lightning and booming thunder through the skies, lighting up the plaza in brief but intense moments of white light, with each strike of lightning next to them shattering cobblestones as it rained down.
It wasn’t concentrated, and there was no accuracy, but the spell she painstakingly copied from the Sea God Specter under the frighteningly still eyes of Gehrman Sparrow was enough to distract just long enough for Fors to turn from the men and run.
—
Benson couldn't understand anything anymore.
Being told of Beyonders and strange abilities was one thing; being abducted by MI9 and interrogated through supernatural means was one thing; yet being here now in the midst of the fight, even if the visibility was low– or perhaps especially because the visibility was low, was something else entirely.
It felt like a nightmare. The atmosphere, the ambience, felt like monsters from the abyss were ready to fall upon them from the sky and snatch them all up to swallow them down in one gulp.
No, that was too kind a description.
Despite being told not to worry about the supposed ‘monsters’ in advance, and with Miss Audrey having sat both him and Melissa down before this to give them some psychological counselling, everything still felt horrifying.
He stood under the light, holding onto Melissa tightly as they waited it out, told they would be guided away safe quickly into the battle, and hoped he wouldn't come to regret trusting this strange group.
But who else could he trust?
Benson thought that after this, he would go straight to the church after everything was over, and pray for guidance. Perhaps ask there, as well, of the strange groups within the church. Surely that would be a safer option!
He was– he was–
Suddenly, Miss Xio emerged from the thick fog, form nearly hidden under her dark cloak, and she ushered them away from battle, a hand on Melissa's arm.
“Come on,” she told them in a hushed voice, “let's get you out of here.”
Benson didn't understand why they had to be there in the first place. Couldn't they use their magical powers to make decoys of them? But he didn't protest being able to leave, especially in the middle of this madness!
“Teleportation is prohibited! Confinement!”
Benson heard multiple commands in the last several minutes, but this was the first time since earlier that evening that he felt the words straight down to his bones. Like a prison set for his soul, anchoring him to the plaza.
And like a prison, suddenly he felt like he couldn't leave, like he would hit a wall as soon as he tried to run.
“Everything in this place will return to its original form!”
A second command from another voice, and suddenly the majority of the fog protecting them within the plaza was gone. The monsters disappeared, leaving behind only a horde of rats that made Melissa gasp and step back. They could now see things clearer, and there were bodies on the floor groaning in pain or unconscious.
Benson hoped they were unconscious and not dead.
And then seconds later, before Benson could get over his shock, the dark skies roiled and turned turbulent, and within moments there was lightning coming down on the plaza, and Benson shielded Melissa as much as he could while he huddled down onto the ground to make as small a target as possible.
Miss Xio cursed loudly.
Within his arms, Melissa was muttering, “It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes any sense, does it? Why would people fight because of us? Even without the magic, why are we in this situation?”
Benson wasn’t sure it should be said aloud, but he found himself missing the calm respite when they spoke earlier, and agreeing more and more with Melissa’s panic.
Only a moment later, all the lightning disappeared, leaving smoking craters on the ground, but Benson couldn’t stop his racing heart as he peeked and saw Miss Xio standing over them, her face grim as she looked upward.
A sudden deadly lightning storm, the inability to leave, and now their supposedly safe hiding spot exposed by the dispersal of the fog…
In his heart he knew why they couldn’t leave— this was one of those magic spells, wasn’t it? But if these people were really here to help them, then why was he and Melissa caught in the thick of things? They couldn’t help, they couldn’t contribute, they couldn’t even be proper bait. He had seen another Miss Audrey here! If they could make copies of people, then they could have made copies of them! Benson and Melissa weren’t needed, they were just in danger here!
In his panic, he wondered if his so-called saviours deliberately brought them here to put them in danger, or to in fact hand them over to MI9 in order to appease them.
He stood up shakily along with Melissa, who still had her arm held by both himself and Miss Xio.
Melissa jerked away from Xio’s grasp, a dark look on her face that Benson felt in his heart.
“No, no,” Melissa said, almost in a trance. Her trust and thoughtfulness from earlier in the evening was almost entirely gone, and she shook with distrust. “We can’t go with you. All these strange things happen when we’re with you! No, it’s best to go with MI9. How can we trust you over the government? MI9 might have captured Benson, but they were going to let him go in the end, right? They wouldn’t have voluntarily brought us to a dangerous place like this. Aren’t you the ones putting us in more danger? Are you guys the reason why we’re on the run? Why can’t we go back? We can just clear our names and go home!”
Xio flinched back at the blatant distrust, her eyes wide. “Miss Melissa—?”
Melissa tugged on Benson’s arm, and turned her head toward the edge of the plaza, closer to the fight, and pointed with her other arm.
“The safest place should be where people don’t expect us to go, right?” She babbled. “The safest people are MI9, right? Shouldn’t we trust that man? Shouldn’t we, Benson?”
There was a strange glimmer in her eyes, a glaze to them, but Benson could barely notice with the way his entire being agreed with his sister.
That was right. It wasn’t safe to go with Miss Xio. It was far safer to go with the man who had been watching them this entire time, seeing as he hadn’t lifted a hand to harm them at all.
In fact, he had given them…. Hadn’t he given them something?
Xio’s eyes followed where Melissa was pointing, and her face darkened into a scowl of understanding as she set eyes on the still man. Benson didn’t know what she understood when she saw the man, but when she turned to them again, Xio had a sweet smile on her face, a little reminiscent of Miss Audrey’s gentle smiles.
“Listen,” she told them, and this time around her voice was low and smooth, and there was something strong in her tone. Now, rather than appearing to be caught up in the battle, she looked like a victor, standing triumphantly above the bodies of the battlefield; a force of power that couldn’t be resisted. “You don’t want to trust that man. He’s the enemy, and he’s currently influencing your mind. He is—”
“You can’t trust her,” the man spoke up for the first time where he stood at the edge of the plaza, and he looked so misplaced there in the middle of the night. With the fog mostly dispersed, Benson could see him clearly for the first time— a young man with neat blonde hair and sincere blue eyes. He was dressed so elegantly, so orderly, of course they could trust him, couldn’t they? He looked the type of person one saw on the street and immediately knew they were trustworthy. “It’s as you said— it’s her fault you’re here. You could be at home right now… I can take you back to MI9. We can clear up this entire situation. You’ll be home before you know it.”
Yes, that sounded right. Benson found himself nodding along with the words, seeing Melissa do the same.
If only Miss Xio didn’t seem so frighteningly strong right now, like if she were to fight the man, she would win. It was enough that Benson couldn’t trust the well-being of his sister to this man, not if he was going to end up fighting Miss Xio. She would win, and then where would they be?
“Don’t you think she’s dangerous?” The man coaxed. Melissa moved a step away from Benson and Xio towards him. The man smiled at them, the glow of the gas lamp highlighting an honest and handsome face. He too stepped closer and reached out a hand for them to take. Benson moved a step closer to the man as if physically swayed by an invisible wind.
“He’s right, he’s right,” Benson muttered under his breath, moving away from Xio. “There’s no sense in us being here. Why take the risk? Just clear things up with MI9, for better or worse, and we can go back to our lives— why are we here? Why did we agree to this in the first place? It’s not safe. Why would I want to know about the horrible things that happen in the dark? It’s safer to live in ignorance.”
Xio’s eyes burned bright, and her hand was small as she grabbed onto his arm, but the grip itself was like steel.
“Because you want to know what happened to your brother,” Xio said with that same frightening tone, and it was the snap of a rubber band on his brain.
He did. Despite the dangers, despite the pain, he did want to know. He was—
There was something wrong with his thoughts!
Benson snapped to attention and gasped out, “Melissa—!”
Melissa had already taken another three steps toward that man, when suddenly the entire plaza was blanketed by an aura of calmness, enough that both Benson and Melissa nearly staggered, their heads hanging low for a moment as all thoughts and decisions escaped their minds.
Peace.
There was a sense of safety, like being in the warm glow of a hearth at home, and knowing that the day was over and done with, that rest was coming, and that he was safe. Why was he so worried? There was nothing to worry about, because everything was going to turn out alright.
Benson moved a step forward, and reached out to snag Melissa by her wrist, pulling her back.
That’s right, it was all okay. He just had to keep close to Melissa, and everything would be alright.
—
Audrey knew something went wrong the moment the fog dispersed and the illusory creatures disappeared. As she finished putting the last of the lower sequence MI9 agents to a deep state of unconsciousness susceptible to her changing their memories later, the sky flashed with lightning that struck the plaza in several areas, giving her such a fright that she felt dragon scales form on her limbs, and her eyes slitted as she gasped and drew back.
Then the lightning disappeared, and she saw Fors running in her direction with the two men she was restraining before now focused on her.
Seeing the greatest threat, Audrey directed Awe right into Amyrius’s mind, her abilities lessened by the rules set out before, but still effective enough to stagger him. And then she cast Awe again on the man behind Amyrius, this time a little more successful as that man stuttered to a stop and held his head in both hands.
Where was Mr. World? She worried, but didn’t have the time to think into it as Fors nearly collided with her since Audrey was still under psychological invisibility. She moved to catch Miss Magician around her shoulders, the woman panicking for a moment at the restriction before relaxing under a more familiar touch.
“Book, book,” Fors rambled and gestured with her hands, and Audrey handed Leymano’s Travels over to Fors’s shaking hands and watched as she flipped the pages.
“Miss Magician,” Audrey whispered, because Fors was perhaps the only one left that MI9 didn’t immediately know the identity of, “what just happened? What’s going on?”
This wasn’t a part of their plan. They had a very clear cut plan, with several contingencies in place!
“I don’t know!” Fors hissed back, the panic evident in her entire stance. “Historical projections aren’t illusions— right? But we need to stop them ourselves!”
She must have found the page she was looking for, as Fors held the small book in both hands and then asked Audrey, “How good is your singing?”
Oh, no. Audrey was a fair singer, but she wasn’t prepared for this! The question made her mind go blank, as if she had just been asked to pick a favourite of anything without being given any warning. Even if she was a good singer, her mind blanked at what song would be demanded of her.
“Ah…”
“Never mind, I’ll take this, and you bring them to a stop,” Fors blathered, and then turned in Audrey’s arms to face the MI9 demigods, humming a Church of Storms hymn in a low and shaky voice, one hand resting upon the page of the Siren Song.
Now understanding what she meant to do, Audrey focused her attention on the two Beyonders who were recovering from Audrey’s use of Awe, the irritation on their face slowly smoothing out as they adjusted to the mental disturbance.
Fors’ humming made their movements slow again, and the blank look once more passed into their eyes.
Awe barely worked, only slowing them down for a few seconds in the long run. Arbiters had higher mental resistance and her abilities were dampened the moment she stepped into the plaza, but she hoped they would be enough at the demigod level to stop them.
Apparently not.
As Fors’s humming finally kicked in to bring the two demigod opponents to a more susceptible state, Audrey made a decision.
If she couldn’t use something to stop them in their tracks because they had high resistance to it, then she would use an ability meant to help Beyonders.
Putting in more than twice the amount of spirituality as she normally would, Audrey cast a wide range Placate to calm the raging hearts of everyone in the plaza and bring them all to a sluggish stop.
—
Leymano’s Travels might be completely empty by the time this fight is over, Fors despaired for a moment, but then cheered herself up with the thought that it meant the book was a vital part of the fight, and she could likely ask everyone involved to help refill it again.
Her shaking hands calmed down, an inadvertent byproduct of Audrey’s skills, and even her eyelids were drooping, her entire body relaxed enough to fall asleep right there in the dark and open despite the enemies around them.
What a powerful ability, Fors marvelled sluggishly. Is this what it means to be a demigod? I should work for sequence four as soon as possible…
She slumped against the semi-visible figure of Miss Audrey, only thinking of how warm and comforting the other woman felt.
And then a hand reached to squeeze at her arm, and Fors noticed scales all along Miss Audrey’s arm, and there was once again a sharp spike of fear.
She woke from her daze in a rush, her heart rate spiking until Fors gasped, and shrunk back to say, “Thanks.”
“It will only last for a few seconds more,” Audrey warned her. “And likely won’t work again once they’re prepared for it. I’ll keep them under for as long as I can, and you help Xio get the Morettis away from here.”
“You’ll keep them under by yourself?” Fors asked, horrified. She didn’t want to leave Miss Audrey alone with the enemy!
While it was difficult to see the noblewoman’s features under the psychological invisibility, her form only visible to Fors because she knew Audrey was there and her brain filled in the details that kept blurring again, Fors could almost feel her determination.
“Mr. World isn’t an illusion,” Audrey said, her tone firm. “He also would not abandon us. And no matter how busy Mr. Fool is, he has always watched over us and made time to inform us of important matters. The fact that we’ve not received divine revelations means that Mr. World has a plan, and everything is still within the parameters of it.”
There was a firm faith in her words that left Fors dumbfounded.
Miss Audrey was right! Gehrman Sparrow was the scariest person Fors ever met, and therefore he definitely had something up his sleeve because there was no way they could lose to MI9 with him on their side.
“Alright,” Fors responded, feeling more confident. She pushed herself to stand on her own feet again, and with a lingering hand over Audrey’s for a moment, said, “Be careful.”
“I will.” Audrey responded.
It only took twenty running steps to bring Fors into the midst of another fight.
Whatever tranquillity Audrey might have brought along the plaza was gone between Xio and another man who looked more than twice her size in the middle of a run and brawl.
While Melissa and Benson still looked dazed and calm under the brightness of the gas lamp, closer to the rubble that was once a stone statue Xio threw a rock the size of her head at the unknown man, who merely blocked it with an arm, the rock cracking before falling away.
Did the rule about weapons already fade away? Was it already broken? Fors thought in shock as she rushed to help Xio from a safe distance after affirming that Benson and Melissa would be fine where they stood in a daze.
As Fors rushed to find a place under cover for shelter should a projectile be aimed her direction, she thought about the mess that became of this fight. She couldn’t worry about Miss Audrey—Fors had to trust in her and Mr. World to win this, so right now she had to focus on helping Xio— but what could she do in a fight like this?
As the two darted around at high speeds, Fors reached out a hand to try something familiar now that her sequence was much higher: a Trickmaster could affect the things they touched, but what about a Traveller? She didn’t have to open a door to where they were fighting, no, but what if she could touch the area they were fighting, and—
With a twist of her hand, Fors smoothed out the ground underneath the unknown man until it was slippery as butter, the effect as basic as it had been at sequence eight since the only enhancement she made was to do it over a distance.
The man stumbled, not expecting interference in the fight, and Fors continued as he fell, emboldened by her success, reaching with her other hand to freeze the target in her sight, causing the man to twitch under the hold of her ability and falling hard onto his face.
Taking advantage of the man’s downed state, Xio twisted from where she had been running, and swung a leg over to kick down the gas lamp closest to her (Fors shrieked at the action, even if it hadn’t been the gas lamp that Benson and Melissa were under), the metal nearly screaming as it went down and landed on the downed man, sparks erupting as it hit the ground.
Fors could barely breathe at the scene, her eyes round with shock and her hands still up in the air like a buffoon.
Xio, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate at all as she rushed the man, and heard him groan as he tried to push himself up from under the weight of the gas lamp, his arms trembling.
Rather than wait for him, the blonde grabbed a large chunk of rubble and sank down to her knees next to him, shouting, “Go to sleep!” every time she hit him over the head with it.
After five or six hits, the man finally stopped moving. Fors choked on her own breath as Xio dropped the stone and let out an explosive sigh, collapsing back on her shaking hands.
“Is he…” Fors could barely ask it, still shocked at the actions of her best friend. “...Dead?”
“He’s fine,” Xio dismissed, as she raised a hand to wipe the sweat from her brow. After she took her time doing that, she finally looked down at the man crushed under the gas lamp, bleeding from the head, and stopped to check his condition for a moment. “He’s still breathing. He’s fine.”
Fors didn’t think he was fine, but then again from what she had seen, the man had enhanced physical abilities as part of his Beyonder pathway.
After ensuring that he wasn’t going to wake up any time soon, Fors and Xio made their way to the still dazed Moretti siblings.
Seeing them standing there calmly under the lamplight, their expressions more serene than she had seen all evening, Fors felt a little reluctant to break them from that state. Wasn’t it kinder to let them pass through this calmly?
Activating cogitation, Fors scanned the surroundings to find that the confinement rule was still active. They wouldn’t be able to leave, even through the spiritual realm.
(So how did Mr. World manage to disappear?)
Illusions were also still prohibited, although Fors wouldn’t be able to recreate that ability anyway…
She hesitated. Recreate? Sure, she couldn’t make illusions of monsters, but the most important part was the fog to hide their movements, and fog was something that a Trickmaster could create, one that wasn’t an illusion. Fors’s hands twitched. She still had a good amount of spirituality as well, having been replenished to her peak just a few minutes ago. But did they need the fog, or would she be using spirituality for no reason?
She decided to wait.
“Should we really shake them from this trance?” Fors asked Xio guiltily, standing next to Benson as Xio stood next to Melissa. “Maybe they’ll be happier to wake in a safe place, rather than back here.”
“Like this they’ll happily step into a trap,” Xio countered, “and we wouldn’t be able to stop them.”
Then Xio muttered an apology in advance, and lightly slapped Mr. Moretti on the face.
—
As she expected, even with Fors’s help, Audrey couldn’t subdue both Amyrius and Celt by herself, although she did manage to give herself enough time to set up another preliminary plan.
(“We don’t have to fight them directly,” Mr. World said as he pointed down at the papers with the information on MI9. “They will be prepared for direct attacks.”
“And mental ones,” Miss Judgement added, and looked at Audrey. “They’ll be most prepared for you.”
“Not if we fight the way they expect,” Mr. World said. “Get them to believe we’re too cautious to do the obvious, and then change the paradigm.”)
She took the time with them being disoriented to weave a deception in their minds, now unable to rely on illusions. She barely had time to target one person, and chose the man who was more affected by Siren Song, stepping behind Celt as he blinked away his disorientation and leaning in to whisper hypnotism in his ear, placing gentle fingertips on his shoulders to weave untruths into his perception.
She would stay grounded, as he was highly resistant to mental attacks, and add only a grain of sand into his oyster shell to let him build on the lies himself.
Your battle with the cultists has revealed one thing, Audrey whispered in his thoughts. The man before you right now is not the real Amyrius. He is your enemy.
After all, he’s already seen that people were not who they seemed in this fight. Be it Gehrman Sparrow’s shapeshifting, Fors’s illusions, or Audrey’s virtual personas… who knew what the ‘Amyrius’ in front of him really was? But he was powerful, and he was dangerous. Far more dangerous than Audrey, who hadn’t revealed herself so far, or Xio and Fors, who weren’t at the level of a demigod.
He is the most powerful and experienced person here right now, Audrey reminded him of a truth. The most dangerous.
If he gets away, who knows what will happen to your comrades? To MI9? To the government? To the entire kingdom of Loen?
That was enough, and Audrey drew back from Celt to melt back into her psychological invisibility and let things play out on their own now.
—
Melissa felt like her thoughts were wading through warm and soothing molasses. Looking down at her hands as she stretched and retracted her fingers, the world felt dream-like, and her body didn’t entirely belong to her. Was she really the one commanding herself to move?
Next to her, she could hear Miss Fors talking to Miss Xio about breaking something. A space?
“I can’t,” Miss Xio responded unhappily. “There’s only so much that Territory can do, and it’s useless against demigods. But if Mr. World—”
“We can’t keep relying on him to break us out of every problem!” Miss Fors exclaimed, a hysterical note to her voice. “What if we pray?”
“So we rely on divine intervention?!”
“I don’t have any better ideas,” Miss Fors admitted.
Melissa lifted her head with some difficulty and saw her brother on her other side, also looking quite dazed. However, for Melissa, the more she listened to the women banter, the more she felt the numbness fade away. The sensations coming back were quick and overwhelming.
The coolness of mist against exposed skin, her feet aching from being out too long today, the one strip across her shoulders that was protesting from carrying her heavy bag around for too long, damp sweat on her back from fear, and fatigue on her scalp not having taken her hair down yet for the day.
Oh, Melissa thought, I don’t feel so well.
She was tired, and aching, and there was a mental exhaustion from her panic earlier in the day that now lingered in the back of her mind. Memories of what just happened were flooding back to her— it wasn’t that she forgot what happened, but she forgot to care about what happened, and now that she could again, Melissa was horrified.
No one mentioned that the strange superpowers would be— more than crushing rocks or sleeping less! More than—
Melissa screamed when she heard the gunshots, and then saw the fight through the mists, where two men were fighting with blood dripping down their forms.
“Use of firearms is restricted! Those using firearms will be punished!” One bellowed, holding on to his bleeding side. The other man, armed with the gun, staggered as if physically struck, and then retorted.
“Mysticism is weakened here and reality strengthened!”
“Oh,” Miss Xio breathed out, and then didn’t wait as she pulled both Melissa and Benson to her with inhuman strength, “this will help!”
The strange feeling of being trapped, of not being able to leave, was starting to lift, and Melissa allowed herself to be dragged along as they got past the gas lamps, away from the plaza and toward the destroyed buildings where they could—
She screamed again as another gunshot rang out, this time accompanied by the sound of ricochet too close to her ear. Melissa couldn’t help the violent flinch, yanking away from both Xio and Benson even as Benson turned to shout, finally shaking off the last of that strange lethargy when Melissa’s hand slipped from his.
The men weren’t shooting at each other anymore, they were shooting at them!
At that moment, the thin mists thickened once more, and a strange oppression settled over the area, even as Miss Xio and Miss Fors pulled Benson and Melissa toward some rubble for cover. Melissa felt the thundering of her heart as she curled up into a ball behind a broken wall, clutching onto Benson’s hand once more as Miss Fors and Miss Xio covered them.
All of a sudden, all the noises in the night disappeared, and in the silence Melissa could hear only her own breathing and heartbeat, as well as the quiet ones of her companions next to her. No more gunshots, no more footsteps, no more movements in the night—
She couldn’t help it! A few seconds of the oppressive silence was somehow so much worse than sounds of being pursued, and Melissa struggled to move her huddled body so that she could peer over the short wall alongside the others.
The fog in the plaza had once again rolled in, like a wall of clouds from the darkness, a tidal wave that swallowed one lit gas lamp after another until it truly resembled a solid wall from one side, covering some of the unconscious bodies on the ground.
And from the wall of fog, Melissa could almost see movement. How could she, though? It was so dark within, but somehow it looked like there was a red glow— or several red glows, actually, like moving fire…
She couldn’t differentiate at first, because of the darkness, but it looked like a creature of shadow stepped out from the fog, first one limb, then another— and then an elongated head full of teeth, pulling and stretching back until she could see the red, glowing eyes lit like flames and there was still teeth, teeth, with a mouth that gaped all the way back to the ears.
As more of the body appeared, another shadow creature was coming out from the fog as well, and then another, and another. They looked like— like monsters, but if monsters were modelled after canines with eyes on fire and a mouth that opened its entire head while wrapped entirely in wispy shadows, and Melissa shook from the power and danger that she could feel radiating off the creatures. These weren’t the illusions that Miss Audrey had warned her about! These creatures weren’t illusions at all, they were—
Between the shadowed monsters, a man stepped out alongside them, dressed in an impeccable suit and with a scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face, his top hat pulled low over his brow. All around him, more and more of the monsters also stepped out of the fog, nearly a dozen in total before the man stopped, and all the monsters stopped with him.
The man bleeding from a gunshot wound to his ribs bellowed out, “Summons are prohibited!”
The words merely caused several of the monsters to snarl at him, one opening its impossibly wide mouth to bare its teeth threateningly until the man standing next to them pressed a hand atop the terrifying creature’s head, and it slowly closed its menacing jaws.
Melissa thought that the man glanced in her direction, that he met her wide eyes for a moment under the shadow of his hat, before he said to the monsters, “Protect the others.”
His voice was soft and deep and gravelly, but something about it made Melissa draw a sharp breath.
Something about his demeanour must have spoken to Miss Xio and Miss Fors as well, as they stood up straighter and gasped out, “Mr. World!”
No, no, that voice was far too familiar, and even thinking about it made Melissa’s stomach clench because those were the silliest thoughts, only spurred by the fact that she learned today that magic exists. Spurred by her emotions and her hope and her desperation.
“Are those things from the spirit realm?”
Melissa just barely heard Miss Xio whisper to Miss Fors, who responded in the negative, “No, they would be considered summons in that case…”
And then the man from the fog moved, dashing toward the two men with weapons.
A/N: No, I didn't forget Luan. He was just hiding in the shadows waiting for his chance, and now Xio's beaten him unconscious, lol.
This last image with Klein stepping out of the fog surrounded by the Hounds of Fulgrim, here to rescue his siblings... that was the image that inspired this entire story. I took longer than normal reading LotM because I kept daydreaming while reading, and afterwards when I decided to write something for November, I decided on this image. Now we're finally here!!
--Yes, the gunshots continued even after guns were prohibited. That's because Celt came to his senses, and why would Amyrius hold onto that law when now they're the ones with the weapons?