Arc F1.10 | Chapter 6: Nothing But Ice

Xavier would not flinch.

He would not.

It didn’t matter what this man did to him, Xavier refused to flinch for someone like him—that was the conclusion he had come to as he’d been dragged through the twisting tunnels by the man despite Izurial’s words still sitting within his head, heavy and full of the terrible thing that was reality and the unknown.

The world was an unknown. Each step through the world a chance to trip or fall into the arms of someone like Olivier’burat. It could be good. It could be terrible.

Xavier would rather regret being brave than give in to this man.

Currently, that refusal to give in was working for him, he thought.

“You…” Prex hissed, caging him in against the crumbling wall of the stinking place they’d come to, deep in the sewers. The man snarled, spittle splattering over Xavier’s face; still, he refused to flinch—refused to even let his jaw shake with suppressed sobs, digging themselves deep within his heart until they were spikes of pain that he was sure he would spend the rest of his life trying to tug free.

This place was where the man lived, he thought.

It was not a nice place to live.

In the corner, there was a sad little bed, and Xavier knew that plenty of little kids had been hurt there. Most had been killed, in the end. Some, he knew from Prex’s words as they moved, had been let go.

“That’s the best thing, you know? Breaking little brats and then sending them on their way. They go back to their parents, broken things, and there’s no one who will ever be able to help them,” the man had said as they moved, Xavier taking in each word even though they were terrible words because he needed to understand the man. He might be young, but he wouldn’t turn his eyes or mind away from the truth when something of a plan might be made from listening.

The things Prex had told him as they moved, unafraid of who might hear him because he would happily slit the throat of anyone who came across them, had been horrible. Xavier would be hearing those terrible things for the rest of his life, he thought.

He would also be hearing the cruelty of Mōra'sa's mommies, and somehow… the things they said and did were worse than everything Prex told him because they were mommies, and mommies were supposed to be good. Prex had always been a monster and would continue to be one until the day he died, and there was something sad in that. It was sad that this man who could be charming and pretty, if only he took better care of himself, couldn’t stop himself from having certain urges—Xavier remembered that from talking with Izurial’buran: someone like Prex has accepted the terrible things inside them. Not all people do; some people fight those urges that make them monsters forever. For someone like Prex, there was no talking him out of this life he had accepted, and Izurial’buran had made sure Xavier knew to not bother trying.

It was sad, in a strange way, though, to know that Prex had given in to the monster inside him and there was no coming back—assuming he had ever wanted to come back.

“Only death can stop someone like Prex from wanting to hurt more kids,” Izurial’buran had said, and Xavier needed to remember that.

Back when he had been thinking about all this, as they moved through the sewers, a slice of something had shattered through Xavier’s mind, blocking out some of the worst things Prex had been saying about everything he did to kids who found themselves within his embrace—the man was still escalating in what he did and told Xavier, trying to get a reaction out of him; therefore, he knew that whatever that something had blocked out had been terrible.

Xavier didn’t think it was something he needed to know.

At the same time, he didn’t really think he needed to see the… was it a vision? Some gift of future insight from the aether?

It was unclear. Xavier wasn’t sure he needed to see it, but… it had been nice. He wasn’t sure what to think of himself for thinking it a nice thing to see.

There had been Prex, and he thought that it might have been the current Prex—or, like, the Prex who would exist in a few days, maybe? The real Prex didn’t have a slice across his cheek, scabs pulling open and bleeding from being so fresh, the way the one in the vision did, but if Xavier saw him injured like that, then he’d know: this vision was coming, and soon.

“So… what did this guy do?” a man asked, and Xavier shouldn’t have known what he was saying because it wasn’t in Lüshanian and he was also pretty sure it wasn’t in Baalphorian because it didn’t sound at all like what Olivier’burat had said a few times, but somehow, he knew what was being said.

The man was pretty, with lovely grey eyes, but he’d also been a bit scary. Xavier didn’t know how he knew, but maybe that was because it was the aether—maybe—giving him a vision of the future. If the aether could give people information about the future, it could probably give them information in less obvious ways, right?

Xavier’s daddy used to say that inspiration was a gift from the universe itself. Then, his mommy would laugh and tell his daddy that he was silly—she said that inspiration was a gift from the heart; a coming together of everything a person has seen and heard and of all the good and bad things they’ve experienced in their whole, whole life.

It would be nice if both parts existed, Xavier thought. There could be the things from the heart and the things from the universe—maybe, there could even be both at once!

It didn’t matter; all that mattered was that Xavier knew the strange man with his pretty grey eyes was a monster, but he was a good monster. Izurial’buran always said that Porsq’ha was a monster, but he didn’t have to be a bad monster.

“You don’t need to be afraid of being a monster,” Izurial’buran had told Porsq’ha a while ago, after Renton’buraf had told him he was one. It wasn’t very nice, and Xavier didn’t really know what to think of Renton’buraf. He could be nice, but he could also be really, really mean and judgmental. He definitely wasn’t nice to Porsq’ha very often.

“I don’t want people to think I’m a monster,” Porsq’ha had said, curling further into the corner of his room.

At times like this, it was clear that Izurial'buran was doing his best, but he really didn’t know what he was doing sometimes. The man tried to tell Porsq’ha that he had a really powerful ability, and that unfortunately, some people would always see him as a monster. “It’s your job to make sure that you’re a good monster,” he had tried to say.

Xavier was pretty sure it had just upset Porsq’ha more, and eventually, Izurial’buran had left, muttering something about just doing more harm than good.

“I know he’s just trying to help, but…” the older boy had whispered later, and at least he had let Xavier climb into his lap for snuggles. Porsq’ha gave really good snuggles, when he was in the mood to be touched.

Xavier could picture himself pushing himself back to peer into Porsq’ha’s sad blue eyes. They were so pretty, and Xavier could stare into them forever. “I’ll never think of you as a monster,” he had promised, knowing it was a lie—Porsq’ha had known that as well, his lips quirking.

“You just thought of me as a monster,” the older boy had teased because Porsq’ha was a monster, able to dip his fingers into minds and pull out all their intentions. So, he knew Xavier wanted to cheer him up and knew that he fully intended to think of him as a monster for as long he loved Porsq’ha. “You can think of me as a monster.”

“My monster,” Xavier had giggled, snuggling back into Porsq’ha, who was his monster a lot. If Porsq’ha could have killed the Mōra'sa's mommies, he would have. For him, Porsq’ha would be a monster, and Xavier could imagine what the older boy would say when he found out Xavier had been given to Prex: “If I ever see that man, I will destroy him.”

If the vision he’d had really was something from the future, Porsq’ha wouldn’t get the chance.

“I have no idea,” another man in the vision said, his face hidden from Xavier. For some reason, he was only in his underwear, his deep-black skin darker than any skin he’d ever seen, and almost everyone in Lüshan had really dark skin. The other guy’s skin wasn’t black or brown; instead, it was almost a little red, which… it was brown, he supposed, but maybe warmer than the skin tones he’d seen in Lüshan? Maybe he was wrong, though—it wasn’t like he’d met many people who weren’t chronically underfed and therefore didn’t look quite right.

Xavier hoped he got to see how everyone looked once they looked right.

Around the pair of men, there had been huge plants! So much green that he hadn’t known where to look. Xavier had known he needed to watched the men, both scary but safe and Xavier had especially known that the man whose face he couldn’t see would be someone he could trust, one day. It felt like that one day was a really long way away, though.

That was okay—it being far away just meant he’d live a really long time!

“You don’t know?” the grey-eyed man asked, a note of amusement in his voice as he asked if they were really going to torture some guy for unknown reasons. The man’s hair was grey too, but it didn’t seem like old-man grey, one of his eyebrows quirking as he looked back at the dark-skinned man.

“Nope~ no idea, and fuck yeah are we gonna torture him. Doesn’t he just have a face that’s asking to be tortured?” the other man said, cheerful despite the fact that Prex was kneeling there in front of them. He was wet, looking like he’d been dragged from the river nearby, and how had he gotten there? Was there a land nearby—up on the Lüshan of the surface or in a nearby nation—that was so wet and overgrown?

Sweat slipped down along the shoulder blades of the mystery man, but the grey-eyed man seemed to be doing better—his clothes were weird, so maybe they were helping him stay dry?

“I was just… pulled here, to this man,” the man said, more serious, and through his vision, Xavier had been able to feel the glee within him—some sort of knowledge that was coming from somewhere that Prex had hurt someone, many someones, and needed to die, to suffer. “He needs to be exterminated.”

“Why?” the grey-eyed man asked, but his question wasn’t for the other man but for Prex, and Xavier had only been able to taste brief moments of what came after: Prex, lying; Prex, having the truth forced out of him by these monstrous men, using their abilities to learn of every depraved thing he had ever done—every depraved thing he was forcing Xavier to hear he had done.

The vision had splintered, leaving Xavier to know that the men made Prex suffer for him and every other child the man had hurt; then, Prex was laying there, broken and breathing and being tied up, rolled into the water.

“People think the væt are the most dangerous things to ever appear in this place, but that’s only because væt will attack the living and moving,” the grey-eyed man said, urging the mystery man back and away from the water. “There are plenty of creatures who always live here, who will easily attack anything that reeks of blood and food. Væt are vicious but rare—you will also hear them coming. These things… they are scavengers, and once they have marked their prey…”

One moment, Prex was floating there, gurgling, the next, jaws were cracking out of the water’s surface. There were screams. There was blood filling the water. In the background, the living, breathing Prex rattled on and one about all the terrible things he did to children who found their way to him.

“You, of course, have to be returned in mostly one piece,” the man had lamented in those moments when Xavier came back to himself, the vision fading into the background of his mind as he gave Xavier a harsh tug. It hadn’t been the first tug nor the last, and Xavier thought his shoulder would be really sore tomorrow. At least his bone hadn’t popped out—that had happened to Izurial’buran once, after one of the men he was given to was too rough with him. Renton’buraf had to pop it back into place, and he hadn’t complained about having to do so—that was part of why Xavier was never sure what to think about the man. He was nice to everyone except Porsq’ha.

“Don’t worry,” Prex had assured him, giving him a smile that Xavier could use to understand how so many kids had wandered away with this man—as long as you didn’t look at it too closely, it was a nice smile: kind, pretty, capable of hiding the horrible person who owned it underneath. If you stared too long, then you started to see the horror of the man: the missing teeth, the rotting gums, the glaze of crazy in his eyes.

Above him, the real Prex seethed, angry that Xavier was refusing to be afraid. It didn’t matter how much he knew about the terrible things this man had done to hundreds of children before him and would happily do to him: Xavier had seen him snivelling as he had nightmares and torture forced through him again and again, and he hadn’t seen more than glimpses of what might be done to him by those men.

There was no proof that what he saw was real; it seemed too detailed for him to have made it up in his head.

One day, Prex would be ripped apart by monsters both human and animal. He would wet himself, scream, beg.

“Did you give your victims mercy when they pissed themselves? When they bled around your cock? Why should we give you mercy, and not force as much horror into your last moments on this plane of existence, you fucking piece of shit. You should be glad we aren’t tossing you into a den of criminals, so they can have their way with you. Fortunately for you, we of the Zarlarson do not allow criminals to live, and moving you to a place that does would be allowing you far too much time to live,” the grey-eyed man said, sliding his blade through the skin on Prex’s thigh and peeling it back, revealing raw tendons of muscle and it was soooo gross, but Xavier didn’t mind: Prex had done worse to some of the children he had hurt, raped, mutilated, tortured, killed.

It was impossible to be afraid of this man, knowing he would be nothing but a scared child, begging for relief and promising to never hurt anyone ever again as though those two men couldn’t taste the lies slipping off his tongue. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but one day, Prex would die a death he deserved, and no matter what came, Xavier refused to give him what he wanted.

Xavier refused to give this piece of shit anything but ice.