Latent Troubles II: Tangled Bonds

A/N: Warning, character-centric. Warning, slow build up. Warning, messy and sporadic writing. Warning, amateur.

Just writing to waste time irl.

(WIP)

Cyzarine squinted her tired eyes at the Scroll, forcing herself to read through the glaring light emitted from the screen. White, stormy morning had come, but the skies were as still dark as the sky last night. The snowstorm would last for the next few hours, the news said, so going out was clearly not an option.

Today was the day she was supposed to pick up eight crates of Dusts she had ordered from the shop two days ago. Cyzarine needed those for a week-long, marathon training. Because of this weather, her uncomplicated plan had been unceremoniously thrown out of the window.

Sighing, the green-haired girl turned the Scroll off, depriving the bathroom of bright light as she tossed the gadget carelessly into the bathtub with a loud clank. She slouched against the cold ceramic as she gazed at the window in front of her, watching the snow rage on mercilessly and blanket the landscape in a white thick slab.

Her lengthy stay at the hospital had severely dulled her Dust manipulation skills, unlike her motor skills which were quick to return to their prime within two weeks. It was like relearning how to read musical notes, and memorizing each of their pitch and tempo again before playing the recital piece that one had always played before. Muscle memory and playing by ear could work, but these wouldn't be effective if one wished to play a new recital piece - a new spell, of sorts.

It could take her a while before she was back in shape. Within a month, hopefully, if she kept herself training at the highest standard possible. The Bluthardt family didn't like keeping idle assets, or burdensome people, for lack of a better term, at their disposal. They might send her to another mission soon, if that would accelerate her progress, regardless of whether she was ready or not. If not, then the question of whether she could survive or not would be her problem.

If you cannot survive alone then you are not fit to protect the family, was their saying. But if studied closely, its meaning wouldn't be any different from failures are not fit to represent the family.

Not that she was afraid of becoming one. She was already a failure the moment she was dragged down into her knees. A true Bluthardt is invulnerable and dauntless. She was neither one of those.

At that thought, the young girl curled up tightly, and turned to her side. She pulled up her thick hood, and pressed it over her closed eyes to shut off all semblances of light streaming from the curtained window.

Not even two minutes had passed when Cyzarine growled suddenly and then turned to the other side.

It was 2:15 in the morning. She'd been wide awake since 2 am.

Perhaps a bit of exercise could give her the sleep she was looking for, she thought, as she grabbed the edges of the bathtub.

Cyzarine took careful steps as she descended down the long marble staircase, cool and smooth with the barest of specks of dust beneath her nimble bare feet. She didn't have a flashlight, nor did she want to turn on the chandeliers dangling above her. She might wake up the Keepers - the servants and bodyguards of the family - of the mansion. Instead, she relied on the specks of dull gray light spilling from the gothic arch windows above to guide her way.

The young girl turned left upon reaching the first floor. Cyzarine circled around the staircase, entering a spacious room with a pair of red leather sofas facing each other and a glass coffee table in between. Her eyes fell on a grand piano's open fallboard, and a violin case resting on its feet. They all faced the sides of the sofas, and were accentuated by the pale lights from the windows. Their arrangement was mainly for entertaining the household’s visitors with soothing music as they wait for the host. But if there wasn't one, then the residents here could use them for practice. Some of the members of the family could play at least one or two musical instruments. It was both an inherent talent and a tradition of their aristocracy passed down without fail, excluding Cyzarine. She wasn’t as talented as her siblings in the field of music.

No wonder she was given more “termination” tasks than they were. Even so, she'd enjoyed learning new things unreleated to fighting and music, especially when she was with-

''Forget it. It's not worth it anymore'', she told herself bitterly, pursing her lips.

Her hands balled into fists, and then loosened, stretching them as she walked across the room straight to a wooden door. It would be better to leave the past behind, she thought. There would be nothing to gain from thinking about a past irrelevant to the present and the future.

Cyzarine hovered a hand over a small screen next to the door. A few seconds later-

[Where to, Miss Cyzarine?],  a robotic voice asked suddenly.

"The training room," she replied, and the door slid open, revealing a metallic interior with bluish lines running vertically- an elevator. The young girl entered the lift before putting a hand over her purple headphones.

"Ready Grand Magus for me, no Dust. Do you still have the sniper bullets from yesterday?"

[Yes, Miss.]

"Good. Load 'em all to the drones,"

Cyzarine fiddled with a button on her headphones, adjusting the device’s “automatic sound mitigation level” to check whether its settings was properly synced with her weakened hearing tolerance. The last thing she wanted to happen was her hyperacusis to overwhelm her. Imagine a soft plop of water from a faucet sounding like a ping of steel against steel clashing dangerously close to ears. A terrible experience indeed. She didn't want it to happen again.

[Understood. Time duration of the training?]

The young girl didn’t reply, or perhaps she didn’t hear the question, because she'd kept tinkering with the headphones. She took a deep breath, sensing the elevator's smooth descent to the underground and listening to the hum of the circuits around her. As she waited, the young girl began removing the unnecessary articles on her body. She have had always done this when alone before training. She felt lighter without them, and less restrained in movement.

Cyzarine started with the black scarf worn around her neck, which she brushed with her damp thumbs briefly. Then she slowly untangled it, laying bare a long, jagged scar etched on her seemingly deformed skin on the front neck. The young girl proceeded to clutch the bottom of her jacket, and lifted it over her head, leaving her figure clad only in black sports bra and shorts, and more marks of deformity.

One of the most distinct scars was the seemingly out-of-place portion of her skin over her chest. It was almost round in shape, patched up by white stitches to hide her titanium sternum underneath. Another scar was on her left waist, sloped, thin, almost dark, and running from her front to back comparable to a letter “u” when viewed from the top. Then there was a pair of strikingly similar thick lacerations that crossed vertically over her collarbones like shoulder straps. The rest were mere incisions, bruises, and small avulsions.

Immediately after stripping, she could feel the cold air from the ventilation grazing her skin, sending chills down to her spine and stiffening the muscles all over her body. Cyzarine dropped her articles and stretched her neck, her nails digging into her moist skin and Aura as she focused on the chilly air touching her.

The ice rink.... was colder than this, she thought suddenly, swallowing her saliva forcefully as an image of red ice flashed in her mind. Cyzarine held her breath at that moment, her eyes dilating.

Red ice. She'd witnessed how it formed, once. There was a heart, recently ripped from its place, oozing and pumping abundant blood near her shackled ankles back then. The young girl's consciousness had its eyes set on it, watching the red liquid harden slowly and blend into the blood ice rink as she tried to detach herself from reality.

Cyzarine remembered the blistering serrated knife stroking her left breast, tracing down to her stomach, and slowly drew invisible circles on her pale skin. A pitch-black silhouette had blocked the lights above. But she could see its bloodied teeth, its lips dripping with red liquid curled to a smile. The strong stench of blood sneaked into her lungs and stomach, almost choking and depriving her of fresh air to breath.

Your skin is so soft, a caressing voice whispered as her ear was bitten and licked alternately.

I want to eat it raw

Slowly but surely, the knife sunk into her skin. It wasn't too deep that she would bleed profusely, nor it was too shallow that only her skin would be stripped of. But deep enough to peel off the tenders of her fibers. The knife angled, and then proceeded to move  across her ribs, just under her breasts. Blood trickled, and a large, reddish flesh came in contact with air.

Meat next to the bone is more flavorful

Let her go!

[-ss Cyzarine, how long will you train?]

Huh?

[Miss Cyzarine, should I call the Keepers?]

At the mention of the "Keepers", the young girl's eyes refocused back to the present. Cyzarine shook her head, both pushing away lingering things in her head and answering the AI. It seemed that she'd been asked the question many times that the AI suggested waking up the guardians to attend to her.

"No, don't do that. Just.... repeat what were you asking earlier."

[Understood. How long will you train, Miss Cyzarine?]

"Uh, thirty minutes."

(WIP)