IGNATIUS The Colors of Rage

Chapter 2 e Judgment

As the three walked past her, the flesh under Iggy’s bandage stung. Consumed with the discomfort, he let go of Nansen’s shirt and pushed his palm against the side of his face. Beneath the rustling, he heard a low, feminine chuckle, and a whisper that said, “simply beautiful.” He rounded his eyes and looked around, seeing a barrage of blurry figures swaying before him. His hand lay empty. Where Nansen was, he didn’t know. The panic was rushing through him. The dizziness was making the situation worse.

Emi snuck up to his side. “What are you waiting for?” She snagged his arm in her’s and tugged him along. She brought him back to Nansen’s side, but did not desert him. She stood firm against his other side.  

When Baine walked through the doorway everyone settled and the room became calm. Silence. All that could be heard was his hard shoe soles clicking against the stone floor. As he came nearer, Nansen shifted away from the table and went to his own assigned seat a few chairs down the table. Iggy felt him go, but didn’t fret because he knew Baine had taken his place. 

Now, Baine stood at the head of the table next to Iggy and Emi, appearing larger than the two of them combined. A man nearby looked up and asked him, “is this the pair?”

Baine turned to him briefly and shook his head. “There is another issue that we must address first.” He opened his hand and gestured across the table toward the woman from the garden, the intruder, as if he was axing her. “State your name.”

“Marina.” She rolled r’s, similar to how Emi spoke. 

“State your reason for coming here.”

She pursed her lips and scanned the audience around her. “I was sent with the message that the Silgria house had been invaded and needed rescue. I did just as ordered!”

“And. What. Else?”

She exhaled through her nose and shook out her face. “I simply hopped over the wall and brought the message.”

Baine smacked the table hard, but not as hard as he could have. “Dammit! You hopped over the outer wall, killed a citizen, hopped over our wall, and attempted to kill our New Generation!” 

“Two citizens,” Amare corrected from nearby. 

As the group gasped in disbelief, Marina lifted up and targeted all of her attention back onto the audience. Her wavy eyebrows shivered and she shrugged her shoulders. “The red got to me, I didn’t have any control! Surely, you won’t prosecute me for that!” 

Emi hollered, “that’s a lie!” Her voice was small, yet loud enough to echo off the walls. She jabbed her index finger through the air. “And you know it! You already killed a citizen before even meeting him.”

“Two citizens,” Amare corrected, again. 

Emi continued fiercely, “you were already satisfied. You attacked him with the intention of torturing him!”

Marina spat across the table. “Shut up, you little brat! If it weren’t for me, you’d be dead!”

Emi held up one clenched fist and stabbed it into the tabletop much like Baine had. “Don’t pretend that we don’t have history together! Don’t try to win over these people with your dishonesty! I know you! I know what you are capable of!” 

Marina tilted her head. “And what are you going to propose, Emi? That they kill me? I saved you. I came here, brought the message, received a beating, and here you are! Throwing me away! Your loyalty is flimsy like paper; it always has been! You simply talk, you don’t do any of the walking.” A vicious grin appeared. “It was you who ran away while your entire family got butchered… You!” 

Iggy felt Emi’s arm squeeze his. She stopped looking at Marina, and sought out the others surrounding the table. “If she were at the mercy of the thirst reflex, then she would have bit him in an artery, not in the face. Please listen to me, this woman is not a good person! The fact that she brought an S.O.S. message is only an attempt of self-redemption for not helping me herself.”

Baine’s fingers pressed hard into the tabletop and he leant into his straightened arms. “Emi is right,” he confirmed. “You were in control of yourself, proven by the fact that you bit Iggy on his face. I also want to add that the antibiotics used to prevent your poison from killing him have taken the rest of his eyesight and will most likely increase his seizures, which is a nuisance in itself that I’d kill you for anyway.”

Emi looked up at Baine, realizing now that she was not in a democratic situation, but a dictatorship. That she didn’t need to convince everyone, only Baine. She sighed in relief and dropped her chin. The battle had already been won.

Marina groaned and rolled her head to glare at the ceiling. “That’s crap!” she responded. “Are you trying to make me feel guilty for this? What’s the difference? He’ll simply put up with it for a few more years, and there’s simply no harm in that!” 

Baine lowered his chin and dug his knuckles into the tabletop. He glared at her, ready to tear her head off himself, right then and there. Everyone expected him to do something, but then, Nansen kicked back away from the table, smiling. A bright glimmer in his golden eyes enlightened his whole face. Ignoring everyone, he went right up to her and stood with his back turned toward the table. “Hello, Marissa,” he said, tilting his cheek toward his shoulder.

Her eyes enlarged and she looked up at him. Her mouth opened, “its Marina-”

“I was really hoping to give you a second chance,” he interrupted. “I loved your attitude, up until I saw how easily it betrayed you today. I worked it out with Baine that if you told the truth, clear and simple, we’d just banish you. Not kill you. Banish you.”

She lowered her chin and whispered, “you said that I would get out of this. You don’t remember?”