Dragon Bound

Chapter 32

“Please listen, while I may not have been forthcoming about my identity, I want you to know that I have the best intentions in mind, for you both honestly, I’m for you and not against you” Damien said to the two, he knew now that the only way he could actually make it out of this situation was to tell the truth and still work them into believing him and not just believing him but agreeing with him enough to following him as well, this was looking like an impossible feat already though, because Ryoka was beyond furious.

“Was any of the stuffs you told me true? You hid who you are from me, so who is to say you haven’t been weaving lies all these while as well, who are you really?” Ryoka demanded in a dead calm tone, the alarm going off in her head was silent now, it had achieved its purpose and exposed its target to truly not be who he claimed to be.

Damien swallowed hard, how had it come to this? he kept thinking, everything had suddenly gone from partial to the worse possible situation and he had already promised to be successful in bringing Ryoka in for the WIC, looking at her now, dead calm in her ferocity, he knew there was no way she would agree on anything with him not to talk of following him to change sides.

One more thing was touching him hard and messing with him, right at this moment with her anger all over her face, Ryoka looked so beautiful, so much so like her mother, it hurt Damien to look at her and see her mother, heck he loved both of them, so what was he going to do? If he took Ryoka back with force as well, she would never yield, and so she would most probably be locked up, he can’t afford to have her as well locked up behind a cell where his fingertips wouldn’t even be able to touch her.

He fell on his knees and with all the willpower he had, he looked away from her and down to the floor where the tears that had welled up in his reptilian eyes dropped.

“Go now, run quickly, and never look back, I’ve compromised you and exposed you, you are in danger just by being here with me, so please flee” Damien said.

Ryoka knelt down in front of him as well, she had been shocked to see him tearing up and falling to his knees, it was then she knew he was going through a whole lot that she might not out rightly understand.

Her anger had dissolved for the time being, she took his hands and he was even more surprised that she was, Adrian stood in a pose that showed he was ready for any threat from outside or within even, he looked at the two with a hawk gaze, ready to interfere at the slightest hint of things going south.

“First, you tell us everything Damien, Don’t leave a single detail out, please” Ryoka asked him gently, she now sees that at this point being angry and shouting will not solve anything, heck it’ll only lead to further provocation, which won’t be good enough seeing as she needs information, as much as she can get, and right now, seeing the state he was, Damien is a ripe source at the moment.

Damien looked up at her and tears streamed down his face as he started to explain it all to Ryoka, how he had been born in captivity of the WIC because his mother was held captive as well, and how he was experimented on right from onset, then he told them of how he was saved by his Aunt who adamantly refused to back down until they stopped experimenting on him.

He as well explained how this same Aunt took him under her wings and trained him in everything he knew from combat to survival to etiquette, he told the duo how even though he was young, he had fallen for his savior, mentor and teacher and how he harbored a bit of an hatred for his mother for abandoning him at the hands of the WIC.

Damien further explained to Ryoka and Adrian that it was still his Aunt that settled the issue between he and his mother and he found a way to forgive her after which they were close and mother and son once again, he couldn’t enjoy it for long though because he was drafted into a squad in the WIC army, and he got to be under the commanding officer who was the lover of his Aunt.

At first, he didn’t like his commander because he saw him as his rival, but eventually after receiving the same fatherly treatment from him, he got to not only like and trust his commander but also look up to him, just as his Aunt had given him a motherly treatment which made him to really lover her.

Then he got to the part where things started to fall apart, his Aunt was pregnant and his commander now spent more time with her, the pregnancy was a secret and he only got to know because of his closeness to them, he explained how he started to get solo assignments and even leading whole squads because of this development.

Eventually he started to get jealous again and this time he acted by secretly informing the heads about the pregnancy even though it was a bit late and his Aunt had given birth that day, of course the higher ups were furious, usually when an original Eldrian is pregnant, they start monitoring the pregnancy and conducting tests and experiments till the day of birth, that means this birthing was a pure one, one that hasn’t been tampered with and so the baby would be as close to being an original as possible since the genes had not been tweaked to reduce its potential.

Suddenly the baby became the priority, the WIC just had to get their hands on it, but the couple were both immensely powerful on their own not to talk of when they were together, they fought their way out and as a last resort, the WIC brought forth his Aunt’s sister, his own mother to stop her along with some of their relatives hoping that seeing the last family she had would out a stop to her advance and she would yield, but his Aunt wasn’t one to yield in such circumstances.

She fought with the last members of her family and tore them to shreds, she killed her own sister, Damien’s mother and under the cover of the battle, her lover, Damien’s commander had escaped with the baby.

Damien expressed how he became so bitter that his Aunt would choose to be liberated, rather for her child to be liberated than for all of them to continue to be a family right in there under the captivity of the WIC, this was what she explained to him when she was apologizing to him as they were locking her up after he had been able to capture her, she was already weak from the previous fight and he did not give her a chance to rest or even know what was going on, come to think of it she had been in labor and had delivered a child that very day as well, without these conditions, Damien admitted he would never have been able to beat her.

Damien then explained how through the influence of the WIC, he had taken up the duty of hunting down his commander and the child of the commander, the precious spark dragon of the WIC as they do refer to it, even though he has no idea what that meant.

At that point of his explanation, Ryoka had dropped his hands and moved back, standing up on her feet as she put it all together from his explanation with an horrified expression on her face.

“You’re here for me? All these while I was your target? But then why wait? I was vulnerable when you first met me, why go to the trouble of running around with me, training me even, what kind of a sick twisted humor was that to you?” Ryoka asked, she was not just horrified and shocked but she was irritated as well, not to talk of the ton of questions she wanted to ask, she had just found out that her mother was alive after all, is she still in captivity and where is she?

“No, no, no, believe me Ryoka, that wasn’t what I intended, I only did what I did because I didn’t have the resolve to hand you over to the WIC just like that, something about how your mother herself had helped me when I was defenseless and weak” Damien said.

One other thing occurred to Ryoka, “You said my father sent you, but now that we know he didn’t, what happened to him?” she asked even though she had a hint already.

“Your father probably fought his hardest on the very day you both were discovered and chased, he took down many agents and dn mutants and I was only able to take him down because I knew a secret of his, a blind spot of his that he always had me covering anytime we were fighting an overwhelming battle, same way he and his sister covered each other up in their battles together to make them probably the most formidable commanders in the history of the WIC’s dn mutants” Damien explained.

Ryoka started shaking, her mother was in captivity, same as her father, both at the hands of the very man before her, she tried to calm her resentment towards him at the moment, she tried to remember that the WIC is the hand and he is just the weapon, a very effective weapon though, one other thing she couldn’t completely wrap her head around was the fact that they were cousins.

“Why…!?” Ryoka asked in a trembling voice “Why did you allow them use you like this? Why did you let it get this way, and why lead me in such a twisted tale?” she asked not really knowing how to feel.

“I’m sorry, Ry… Ryoka, I’m really sorry, please forgive me” Damien started to tear up the more

“Why should I ever forgive, you tore up our family more than my mother did, she did it for the right reasons but you, you did it for all the wrong reasons, so tell me, why should I ever forgive you?” Ryoka spat.

“I, I, I’m… I love y…” Damien said but couldn’t finish his sentence because Adrian suddenly perked up and exclaimed as he ran to check the window and came back to report that there were white garments scattered about in a hunt formation.

“We gotta go Ryoka!” Adrian said with haste in a harsh whisper as he started to grab Ryoka’s hands to pull her towards their escape route, a tunnel in the house that led to the sewers of the next town.

Ryoka tried to refuse, there was more she wanted to ask Damien, more she wanted to know, and what was he about to say? That twisted sucker.

“Where are they? Where are they!? Where…?!” Ryoka asked as she was struggling with Adrian who muscled her away, Damien just knelt right at that same spot though, not answering and unmoving.

Ryoka got even more angry, at that point before they could make it into the room with the tunnel, the WIC agents flooded in from every entrance, window and even roof, Ryoka’s rage boiled over at seeing the white clothed agents all drifting in, they had interrupted this moment too, typical, they had stopped her from truly learning where her parents were.

She wasn’t thinking through her rage as she made the energy hand seal and screamed very loudly in defiance, as she did, a powerful shockwave ripped through the whole house, disrupting and destroying everything in its path, Ryoka’s scream turned into a roar and following that was an inferno so immense and devastating that it exploded out of every part of the house.