The Sight Beyond The Haze

Chapter 18: A Siren's Song For the Lustful

There were two people inside the room.

One of them oddly resembled my face. She has deep ebony hair like the night without the moon nor even the stars. Although I knew I was supposed to be taller than her, I was looking up to her as though I have shrunk in height which made a frown touch my face. The way the woman's brows arched up was also quite familiar to me.

An air of arrogance and the coldness of the first day of the first snow brought by the winter.

She was pursing her lips, much like the same way that I was doing, a mannerism of some sorts. The woman's back was straight as a ramrod, her poise was impeccable. It was like how a member of the monarch would act. With the air of arrogance, a perfect posture, and regal arc of brows, she looked exactly like one.

There was only a sliver of slit in the ancient keyhole of the room. Though it was narrow, it was enough for my small eyes to peek inside. Small, I described myself when I have never imagined myself as one, for the reason that I could not even reach the wooden drawer beside the closed door.

I was even tipping on my toes to reach the keyhole.

While I was done scrutinizing the woman who resembled me very much that I have felt that I was looking straight at the mirror, a more beautiful version of my adult self, the other person has the opposite shade of hair. It was a white halo on top of the other person's head and he was holding the woman's hands with his own pair.

I could not hear their voices, but I could feel the tension inside even through the small keyhole that I was peeping them on.

Thump!

Thump!

Thump!

Noisy footsteps echoed throughout the hallway. A few more incredibly noisy footsteps before another child joined me, he was huffing due to running and he was holding his chest as he heaved another deep breath of air inside his lungs.

I turned my attention to the other child, posing a properly behaving child rather than an eavesdropper child. I stopped from slouching and stared at him. Two black eyes looked back to me, also oddly resembling my own.

A jolt of shock and surprise went through my skin first before acknowledging the identity of the child in front of me. He was only older by a year or two, maybe two was a more accurate number, but the same features were on the face of this child that was too familiar to me.

"Brother Zachriel?" I asked, my voice was oddly small and squeky and only then was I became aware of the fire ball that I was holding on my right hand.

It was suspending atop my hand. The fire was burning brightly as ever with the hues of blue. How it has not singed the tips of my braided yet, I cannot fathom.

"What are you doing with the lighting flame on your hand open so recklessly?" the young boy asked me.

The sense of the calmness and the composed demeanor that I have associated with Zachriel Legrand that I have met when I first came to the academy was not reflected on this child though they have the same face.

A certain innocence touched his face that was pleasing to stare at.

"I was just testing if I could hold it for longer," I reasoned with him that he does not objected.

A cold trickle of sweat fell down the side my face and my eyes involuntarily gave a sideway glance at the door where I just saw two people together.

"Have you seen Lady Alaric and my dad?" the boy asked yet again after nodding at the response I gave to him earlier. "The Noble Families are waiting for us to start the banquet. I sneaked out to find them."

There was a puzzlement in my mind.

"Who is Alaric?" I asked him.

But Zachriel abruptly exploded into a dozen golden butterflies right in front of my face before he even had the second to answer me. The lighting fire that I was holding also turned into a butterfly within a blink of an eye and a wisp of glitters only lingered upon the air. I staggered backwards, my knees were somehow shaking and does not have any strength left any longer. I know, of course, that this but a dream, but I have an irritational fear of being stuck inside of one of these dreams.

It was just one of the exemplifications that signified of my fear of the uncertainty of these dreams, my inexplicable fright towards the unknown. With it came the manifestations of my fright towards a certain matter.

The masked person.

Deo whose mask still appeared and robes were bellowing inside my very dreams.

It was not that I was afraid of them, but it was that I was still rather startled of how come they were still staying by my side. I was terrified of the day that I will finally come to know their reasons. I do not know anything about Deo, and that in itself caused me anxiety. There were also the terror of the time that Deo will finally realized that there was not a single benefit on staying by my side to teach me to control magic.

Will the time come that they will end to the realization that they will rather leave me? It was frightening to think of that ver thought.

"You do not know her?" a deep voice asked me somewhere, accusing and criticizing. It was cold like the frosty weather it caused my body to be frozen all over.

I broke out of the dream in cold sweat.

It has been weeks since I have dreamt as intensely as that, but it was the first time that I dreamt of different people. I wondered internally if that was just a fragment of a forgotten memory. Then I remembered what Deo told me once during our class.

The things in the mind could be distorted.

Was my mind really distorted to the point I cannot distinguish reality from arranged memories anymore?

I reached to the butterfly flying from across me, it heeded my call and perched atop my finger. It was still dark, the sun has not yet risen and the butterfly was the only thing that was providing light to the room.

I looked over at Bianca's bed, she was still snoring peacefully, comfortably fast asleep and not a care on the world.

While I cannot sleep, not even a wink. I was too unsettled to just lie on my warm bed. These dreams about how Zachriel knew me in some distant reality. It was baffling the innermost part of my mind. I stood up from where I was lying on the bed, my blanket has been swept to the side which was neatly pulled back yet again over the bed.

I changed from my night clothes to a warmer and more appropriate clothing. I put on a loose shirt, then a cardigan over it, and another layer of coat when I was not satisfied. It was getting colder as the days past by and the days that the sun were shining were getting shorter.

Autumn has descended on the academy slowly and the leaves have started to fall on the ground, tainting the pavements with dried leaves and shredding the bushy and lively greens of the trees bald.

It still looked like it was still the night. Even the moon from the above was still speeking from behind the clouds. The wind blew rather harshly and I shivered despite the many layers of clothing hanging on my body.

I started walking outside the dormitory building. The crisp dried leaves were crackling from beneath the shoes I was wearing. Only the lamp posts gave me the slightest light combined with the fluttering pair of wings around me.

I smiled gently at the delicate creature, even my lips were crackling with the sharp coolness of the wind. If it started raining right now, it would be sad or I would probably die of frostbite and hypothermia.

Or maybe not.

"It is cold, is it not?" I told the butterfly that was following me, I cupped my palm so I could let it be warmed by my hands ir maybe it would be the other way. "Where are the others?" I talked to it. "What a lonely butterfly you are," I even commented.

Instead of flying around me or showing off the exquisite unique design of its wings, the golden butterfly dimmed its lights and went straight to my long black hair where I could feel it pulse and still shine. On the consideration of what it wanted to do, I put and snaked the scarf that I was holding on to with my two hands to my neck.

"Is it warm now?" I asked it gently and only got a faint thumping light on my neck.

It was warm like it was a heating pad, except it was more effective; its warmth spreading throughout my whole body. I snuggled at it closer to my face, rubbing my cheek against the material of my cheap battered scarf.

What was curious about it all was that Deo's garden never experience the same weather changes of the outside world. It looked remote now compared to the falling leaves of the trees, an opposite of the abundant leaves that were still intact on each of the branches of the trees. The flowers were never dying, their scents were as fragrant as the first day I was strayed to that place. The colors never age and the same ambiance was maintained.

Maybe Deo was using some strong magic to nourish that particular land. I have never really asked them about how they managed to find that certain garden.

"I see your guardian is not here," a voice suddenly said on my right.

My hand warmed with the flow of sudden energy to it that I released. The one thing that I could never forget that Deo taught me about was how to properly distribute my energy to the parts of my body.

Even just the tips of my fingers could do much damage to a person who would attempt to harm me. It was a simple trick of combination of defense and attack magic. Quite effective, and if it was refined, could be deadly.

"It was the technique I have been using," Deo shared to me and held out a couple of slender but cold fingers at me. With a gentle flick of their thumb and forefinger, I was already flying away from them.

It was a good thing that Deo was not using Haziel as a disguise, else Haziel's petite frame would never be able to support me. Before I crash into anything that would harm, Deo was already catching up to me.

"It could not only just increase strength and speed," Deo said obviously to but I only nodded, understanding that it must have been a reflex to them and there was no need to tease them on it. "But the proper distribution of magic energy through the entirety of your body could also be your first line of defense. A perfect defense and an effective offense."

"Am I a warrior?" I asked Deo. "Or am I a mage?"

Their mask, whose lips' tips were half pointing down and up, trained its attention to me. There was a small twitch on their right hand, reaching to me and I was almost extending my hand to them when they abruptly withdrew it from my sight.

"You can be anything you would want," Deo finally answered me, turning their back on me.

I felt pain then.

A sense of pain that stabbed me when Deo still refused my touch.

But I never said it.

What was happening in the reality though has not got any connection to Deo. Maybe it would be better if I could put them at the deepest corners of my mind. When I was supposed to be ramming my hand to whoever it was that suddenly appear, a hand was already reaching to my elbow. That hand put pressure on where it was holding me and the next second, I was being hurtled away from where I was standing.

Air got knock out of my chest and I was not able to breath for a while until my nose was able to breath in some air. I rose my hands in front of me, a some kind of shield as a defense though my back was painfully exposed.

It was dark and the lamp posts just went out, the bulb atop it suddenly exploded and the light was snuffed while I could hear the glass breaking into shards and hitting the ground.

I remained tensed, perking my ears up in case of any noise.

"Cover your ears!" someone told me on a distant proximity, but I already heard something else and it was too late.

A song.

My knees instantly buckled at the sudden weight of my whole body. The energy that I have been conserving on my hand was accidentally released out of my body and if I were to base it on the sound of the crash, it hit a large thing.

The voice that was singing such an incredibly alluring made me feel a lot of things. Most of all though, it made me want to go to the direction where the whole sing was coming from. My eyes contracted and slackened. The gaze that I was trying with difficulty to retain was behind my lowered lashes that was dropping slowly.

Come to me, little maiden

I heard the voice sung with an exceedingly beautiful but powerful voice. It was high but retain the lowness of a voice of a male. It was then that I realized there was no music or even a beat that was accompanying it. It was just a pure voice that was overwhelming enough to devour the senses of a person.

Taste the forbidden seed.

A sense of ecstasy,

A promise of satisfaction.

Come to me, my little one

To create a night together.

Bodies melding into one

On the soft abyss of rapture.

Finally, I have fallen on my knees. The scrapes on them, the blood that could be seen on both, and the faint pain that was inflicted to my body were nothing compare to the shock that I have felt when I realized what the song was telling me to do. I clawed at the surface of my arm's skin in panic, not knowing what else could I do.

The pain on both of my arms was not enough to truly lift the heaviness that have settled on me. The least it could do to me was to inflict a sense of being awake.

My face was against the ground, collecting dirt when I saw a pair of boots walking towards me. I saw the butterfly that was hidden on the folds of my scarf came out. It touched my face gently, but the song was still ongoing and it did nothing to alleviate the heaviness on me.

"Your guardian is not around?" the pair of boots asked me which was just gibberish words to my ears, indistinguishable and illogical on my brain. "Tsk, I told you to cover your ears, didn't I? So stubborn, now look at you."

The only thing I could hear though was the singing voice. I felt as though it was sending heat towards me. I quivered and shuddered. It was cold earlier, but it abruptly turned the opposite.

A euphoria like no other

Of going back and forth.

There was dance

That even animals would do

Between two bodies lying

I felt a sudden wetness down below, and I quivered again. My while body curled into a fetus form, and the owner of the pair of boots that was still in front of me, rather blurry but very much real, bent down to reveal two intense pair of blue eyes. He looked familiar and the way his eyes swept on my form was also oddly similiar to some memory of mine of a person that was at the back of my mind, seemingly like knocking to a door— begging to be remembered.

"C-cocytus..." I croaked, my throat felt as though it was burning with both fire and ice. The contrast of the two was startling. "Amitiel," I finished with difficulty.

He was blurry in my sight, but I could almost see the mocking expression on his face that I might be able to squash if I was not just too out of it.

"It is just the siren's song," he said indistinguishably to me, but I could never really understand him.

The butterfly on my cheek was beating its wings erratically, waking me up from my dazed state. I promised Deo that I would be more careful, that if they taught me more I would be able to protect myself. I internally winced while I maintained the good neutral expression on my face. I was fighting off the warmth that I was being directed at.

Why the owner of the pair of boots, who was actually Cocytus Amitiel, was not affected with the alluring song, I wanted to know badly.

I gritted my teeth behind a pursed lips, clenching and unclenching my jaw that wanted to go slack because of the daze. It was quite an embarrassing sentiment to be sure, but the only thing I could do was to mask the expression being shown on my face with a placid one, enduring the pain of the stiffness of my muscles.

A small groan escaped from my throat, an almost hoarse plead. I immediately wrapped my hands on my neck, preventing any noise from escaping.

Do not make any unnatural sound!

That was the thought that I kept on repeating inside my stubborn head. I was too distracted that I was not able to notice that a fight was amidst, and I was exactly in the middle of it.

I was still curled on a fetal form when I was abruptly picked up by someone. I sensed the expansive sleeves of Deo wrapped me in a cocoon of comfort. That was when I relaxed, moving my face closer to them to hide my shameful face full of heat.

"D-deo," I croaked at them and gripped their white robes tighter, my arms coming close to them as an embrace.

With the sudden flash of the bright golden light of the butterfly's wings, I could see just from the above of my face that Deo was wearing their mask in a deep ebony black shade. It was unlike the mask that they have been wearing in the past days.

And their lips were pointing downwards, the tips of the crescent shape looked as though they were frowning. They were not looking at me, but at the boy standing just across from us.

"Deo," I called them out again, with urgency that I was not certain where it came from, "Deo."

"Cocytus Amitiel," Deo said instead of answering me, "thank you for coming to Lady Seraphin's aid."

"The guardian," I heard Cocytus say in an amused tone, "I was only watching until I stumbled upon her, obliviously listening to a siren's song, Lord Deo."

There was a silence, only broken by my whimpering of Deo's name which, as I recalled later on my life, was rather shameless and mortifying. At this time though, I did nothing about that and I did not think anything about that.

It was to relieve myself of the heavy emotion swirling on my belly, tickling but also lashing.

"The Amitiels are hunting down the person singing the siren's song, of course," Deo stated, even I, who was in an hallucinating state, was aware of the threat on their tone.

There was the last part that Deo never uttered out loud. The or else portion of it.

"We are," I heard Cocytus Amitiel answered Deo, "of course," he repeated, "I understand why must you bring her here, but the safety that you sought after— it might've been compromised. I implore you to be careful."