The warm air was completely sucked from the room. The flame used for light extinguished. As Veronica spun around, the Seer, a witch from a realm still unknown to her people, stood wearing a black cloak which draped over her body. Beneath those drapes lay her piercing, glowing blue eyes, glaring down at her and passing their judgment.
“How dare you,” Veronica slammed, her voice hitting the Seer like a dagger to the chest. “My sons already feel I abandoned them, and now you add fuel to the flames.”
“Veronica,” the Seer shot back. “You know it’s dangerous to contact your boys. We know nothing of them, what they’ve become. They could end up leading La Mort straight to us. You need to think with your head, not with your heart.”
Veronica shot up, casting her chair back to the ground as she stood over the Seer. “Have I not given enough? I sacrificed the comforts of a queen to save my own people. But yet, I feel a debt to my people that is never-ending.”
The Seer had advised the witches of Calderon for eons. She had seen kings and queens rise and fall, always serving the "greater good." She was the oldest, the wisest, but she was a creature of logic. She could never truly grasp the weight of a mother’s heart or the agony of tearing it out for the sake of her people, people she had to watch parade their family and love in front of her every day, constantly reminding her of what she gave up for them to have it.
The Seer looked up, her gaze locking onto Veronica’s as she laid a supporting hand on her shoulder. “A queen’s debt to her people is never-ending, Veronica. It is the price one must pay as a leader. The great sacrifice only kings and queens can truly understand. I may not know the aching heart of a mother, but I understand the burden that a throne has on the people that sit upon it.”
Veronica laid a calm, resting hand on top of the Seer’s before firmly removing both. She began to walk toward the window, stopping mere inches from the glass. There, she looked up toward the night sky and the stars that shone. To others, they were mere constellations in the endless darkness of space, but to Veronica, they were coordinates to the other half of her heart.
She stood there locked in an intent gaze, hoping and praying that one day the gods would answer her prayers and she and her boys would be reunited. They may have been galaxies away, but to Veronica, they always felt close in here, her heart.
As the two brothers' eyes snapped open, finally free of the spell they had been locked in, Ezra lay there with a smile carved from corner to corner, unable to hide it even if he tried. He turned on his side, closing his eyes, and went straight back to sleep.
Cane, on the other hand, was sitting upright, his head tilted back, resting against the wall as he stared at the ceiling. His hand reached down slowly to his side, his palm twisting as it grabbed a chunk of his sheet. He began to squeeze and his expressionless features cracked until the mask finally broke, revealing a contorted face of blinding rage. He threw his sheet to the side, jumped from his bed, and headed toward the training room.
As he marched down the halls, the lights began to flicker to life. One by one, they matched his steps, lighting a clear path for him through the silence and darkness of the palace.
When he finally reached the training room doors, two men stood guard. They stood no taller than six feet and looked scrawny and scaggily in their uniforms. They were fresh, just beginning their night shift, but as Cane approached, they shrunk back against the training room doors.
But Cane could care less. He didn't even have the respect to look them in the eye. “Move,” he shot, his voice snapping as the threat left his lips, “or I will move you.”
“But Cane,” one of the guards asked, still pressed against the door, shaking. “What brings you to the training room at this hour? Surely it can wait until sunrise?”
His comrade’s head snapped toward him in pure disbelief. Realizing the death sentence that question carried, the second soldier stepped quickly to the side, clearing out of the picture entirely and leaving his friend to face the wrath of Cane alone.
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Cane stepped forward and the guard tried to step back, but there was no real estate behind him to move to. Now standing face-to-face, Cane looked the guard up and down with a face of stone. As his gaze cast over to the comrade, Cane grabbed a hold of the guard’s head and pulled him in.
“If I have to ask again, you won't see another night,” he whispered gently into the guard's ear. Startling him, the man began to shake uncontrollably. “Is that clear?”
The guard crumbled to the ground but was still able to pull himself out of the way of the door. “Understood, Your Majesty. It will never happen again.”
As the doors to the training room opened, Cane stood in the doorway for a moment, casting his head back and down toward the soldier. “See that it doesn't, Soldier 62981.”
The hall began to close in on the soldier. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide; he couldn't breathe with Cane's proverbial foot on his neck.
"Because my photographic memory never forgets."
The guard took a huge gulp. Cane walked through the door toward the combo dummy on the other side of the training room.
The training room still carried the stains of blood etched into the walls from all those that fell victim to him in that room, but his eyes locked onto the center. And there it was, a familiar foe, his trusted training partner that he had put in thousands of hours with. And yet, it still stood the test of time. It was the only training partner Cane could rely on that never broke, nor wavered under the pressure of his blows.
He stepped in front of the rows of dummies and the memory of all those that shared this training room with him flooded his mind. Those that strove to be the best and change their lives had all stepped into this training room, yet so few returned. He looked at his dummy; its surface wore its battle scars with pride. It may have been weathered, but it performed as good as new. It didn't fear him like his men or cower under the pressure of his blows; it welcomed the carnage. It welcomed the sadistic, twisted evil Cane brought to it every single time and refused to take a step back.
It just stood there weathering the storm, welcoming his pain, his anger, and his confused, twisted mind. It was the one place he could unleash his pain without judgment.
Cane’s head dropped down, his gaze falling upon the floor beneath his feet, scarred with the scuff marks of thousands of battles. His arm began to glow an ominous green as it traced his markings until every line was filled. His head rose slowly until his gaze once again found the dummy. He took one deep breath, then unleashed a firearm strike into the neck of the dummy. Left. Right. Left. Right.
The dummy took every blow, its head snapping back and forth. It was a tango that it played well every time, but this time was different.
Cane unleashed a barrage of strikes. An uppercut landed first, followed by a right hook, then the combination finished with a straight right. Cane hit this combination over and over until flesh tore from bone and the floor was covered in his own blood. As he looked down through the glistening puddle, he got a small glimpse of himself and threw hell and leather in response.
But no matter how hard he hit the dummy, his pain wouldn't subside. Tears streamed from his eyes as he unleashed a final barrage of hooks.
“Arghhh!!!”
A scream of a deeper pain than one on the surface ripped from his throat. He dropped down to his knees, not knowing what to do with himself. He stayed there for a moment, the blood from his knuckles dripping into the puddle on the floor. His reflection stared back at him, distorted, green-lit, and weeping. He hated that face. He hated the tears. He hated that no matter how much he broke his body, the memory of her voice would not fade.
The dummy stood there, silent and still. It had weathered the storm once more, but this time, his training partner couldn't weather it with him. Cane was lost, drowning under the feelings he’d spent so many years telling himself never existed.
He wiped his face with the back of his bloodied hand, leaving a smear of red across his cheek. He stood up slowly. His legs were shaky, but his eyes were wide and manic. The dummy was a witness, the only friend he ever thought he needed in life, the one that never talked back and always answered the call to better him as a fighter. But the one thing Cane wanted right now was to stop thinking, to stop feeling. That was something the dummy was incapable of.
"Not enough," he rasped, his voice breaking in the large training room.
And then it dawned on him: the super-soldier robots his father’s scientists had been working on. They had told him they weren't ready, but Cane didn't care. Not tonight. They didn't have a choice but to be ready.
He turned toward the command console embedded in the blood-stained wall. With a trembling, glowing finger, he punched in a high-clearance override code. The doors behind him began to open. As he swung around, large metal robots made out of the toughest metals the scientists could find started to pour into the room.
Cane stood his ground in the center of the room, his blood-stained hands glowing an ominous green. He watched them fan out, circling him like a pack of wolves.
"Finally," Cane whispered, a jagged, painful smile cutting through the tears on his face. "Something that can hit back. This should be interesting."
