Chapter 66

Chapter 66

“What the hell is going on?” Fontaine grumbled to himself.

The dungeon area had gone painfully silent. Even the guards who had been stationed outside of his cell were gone. Searching carefully around himself, Fontaine began to work at the manacles around his ankles. But before he could make even a sliver of progress, the sound of the outer dungeon gate slowly opening caused his ears to prick up.

Creeeaak.

Halting for a moment, Fontaine peered through the metal bars of his cell door. His face immediately twisted into a scowl upon seeing who had come for him.

Deon was surveying the area just outside of Fontaine’s cell when his lazy gaze finally fell on his older half-brother. His interest, however, remained elsewhere.

“Where’s Lante?”

“What? He isn’t ‘Father’ anymore?” Upon seeing that his attempt at sarcasm failed to produce a reaction from his younger brother, Fontaine decided to be more candid. “If he isn’t in his cell, he must’ve flown the coop.”

Afraid he might voice his anger, Fontaine ground his teeth in silence. Looking as if he was already at death’s door, Lante had joined him in the dungeons from the judgment room only an hour before. For that entire hour, Fontaine had to listen to his father cursing the names of his own offspring. But then he had suddenly fallen silent, which led his eldest son to assume he must have fainted from the exhaustion of being tortured.

He escaped alone? Damn him.

“Listen, Deon. Since you all used me to usurp Father’s throne, how about playing nice now, huh?” As a first stab at regaining his freedom, Fontaine decided to appeal to Deon’s reason. “Honestly, I never aspired to become the clan’s master. It’s just, you know... I got manipulated by that witch Roxana and sort of lost my head there for a while.”

When he was dragged in front of Lante to be nearly pummeled to death, Fontaine had thought it was the end, but things had taken a very strange turn afterwards. A turn that didn’t seem to be completely to his disadvantage. In fact, he welcomed it.

Look at him acting so haughty... You and I were after the same thing, Deon. Upon realizing how much easier it would be to deal with someone by being transparent like Deon, Fontaine almost laughed out loud at his half-brother.

Convincing Deon to free him should be much easier now.

When he was first brought down to his cell, he was surprised that the guards only used manacles on him rather than chains. Of course, having the manacles wasn’t any sort of blessing, but it hadn’t been the fatal ending he had pictured for himself while cowering in the puddle of his blood back in the judgment room.

“If you let me go now, I will personally chop off Father’s head. I also have quite the bone to pick with him. And honestly, I’d rather have you as clan master than him.” Fontaine had no actual intention of remaining under Deon’s command though. “I’m a man who knows when he’s beaten, so I concede.”

The most important thing to him at that moment was his survival. He could always hold out and hope that an opportunity for revenge would present itself to him one day.

“I will leave the compound if you want and lead a quiet life far away from here. I’ll even sign a statement saying so, if you want. I will never get in your way again, okay?”

Unfortunately for Fontaine, however, Deon wasn’t having any of it.

“What a monumental misconception you seem to have. You? An obstacle to me?”

“W-What?” Fontaine stuttered.

“Get one thing straight in that thick head of yours. Nothing you’ve done till now, nor anything you will do in the future, could ever ‘get in my way’ as you say.”

Deon’s insulting words lanced Fontaine like spears and made the veins on his forehead bulge as his eyes burned with rage. But Fontaine knew he couldn’t risk losing control, at least not outwardly, so he merely squeaked out a response.

“If that’s the case, then it’s all the more the reason why you should let me go. Like you said—my being here or not is irrelevant, right? If I don’t pose a threat, then there’s no sense in keeping me locked up down here, right?!”

But Deon didn’t answer. He merely watched as his older brother continued to desperately beg for his life.

What the hell are you waiting for?! Fontaine’s nerves and patience had reached their limit.

“Is it really that difficult to make up your mind? It’s as simple as I just explained.” As the eldest Agrece child glared at his younger sibling, the younger of the two eventually opened his mouth.

“I was just contemplating if I should go in there and kill you now or not,” Deon said.

“What...?”

“I don’t think I ever liked you all that much.”

“W-Wait a minute.”

“In fact, I often imagined gouging out those eyes of yours.”

So this really is the end for me... Fontaine couldn’t work out what had caused Deon to suddenly become so hostile toward him, but the two had never been chummy with one another.

Deon neared the cell door while his face remained devoid of any feeling. His next move, however, was incredibly threatening to Fontaine.

Crush!

Clang!

Deon had broken the cell’s padlock in his bare hand as if such a security measure would no longer be necessary.

“What are you doing?! You can’t be serious!” Fontaine had gone blanch as it began to set in that he was about to be murdered.

Creeeaak.

The sound of his cell door opening was suddenly the most ominous sound he had ever heard. Deon took a step inside without invitation. His icy stare bearing down on his older half-brother.

Vwoooong!

The blaring noise erupted so suddenly, Fontaine flinched despite himself. It sounded rather close as it drifted in past the main dungeon gates that Deon had left open on his way in. It was the compound’s intruder alarm.

Deon stopped in his tracks, then turned to look toward the dungeon entrance. Wary of his younger brother’s next move, Fontaine had stopped breathing.

Step.

He instinctively flinched again at the sound of Deon’s footstep, before realizing that it wasn’t coming in his direction.

That was close. Fontaine finally breathed a sigh of relief as Deon took off toward the entrance. Then once he could no longer see or hear his half-brother, he heard himself breathe a sigh of relief.

* * *

“What the hell could that be?” Jeremy tilted his head toward the sound of the alarm as he stopped halfway to the annex building.

Vwoooong!

From where he stood, the sound was so loud that he imagined his eardrums bursting. It was then that he realized there was a commotion taking place outside. As he turned around, he noticed smoke and flames billowing up from the side of the building he had just left.

Dropping the unconscious servant on the ground, Jeremy raced at lightspeed back toward the fire. Back to where he had left Roxana.

He had no doubt that she could take care of herself, but the intruder alarm made him uneasy. With so much uncertainty, he had to at least go make sure that his sister was safe. Unlike the false alarm they had experienced a few years back, there was no questioning that the current invasion was real. Even from inside he could see outsiders wielding weapons against the Agrece guards.

“Out of my way!” With a quick evasive maneuver, Jeremy rammed a would-be assailant clean in the torso. On any other occasion he would have lingered on the battlefield to inflict more damage on the enemy, but not this time. His only thought was to get back to Roxana as quickly as his legs would carry him. But more and more invaders began to come for him and blocked his path until it was essentially impossible to advance.

Clang!

Clang!

The battle between the intruder forces and the Agrece guards had devolved into an all-out bloodbath. However, in the midst of the clash a crimson flurry appeared. The soldiers and guards seemed to freeze in place as a curtain of blood-red hovered over their heads.

Jeremy was the only one to witness the ominous floating mass who knew it was anything but harmless. He immediately turned his gaze toward the direction Roxana’s butterflies had come from, but before he could decide what to do next, he found himself enveloped in total darkness.