Meeting with the Devil

Ain could feel his heart pounding against his chest. The ringing in his ears had faded, but he could still hear it faintly. Every bone in his body ached, every sliver of his skin radiated the heat of the flames that had nearly scorched him. Above all else, in front of him stands the man at the helm of it all. The leader of Primal Grace himself: Larc.

Ain had been taught never to speak his name, or what little they knew of it anyway. His parents, wherever they may be now, considered it a sin in their household. Not only them, but there wasn't a single person he knew who dared mutter the name. He sometimes wanted to imagine what the consequences might be if he did, but there was never anyone he knew who did it to be able to tell.

Now in front of him stood that very man. Speaking his name took every ounce of courage that Ain had within him, and he was prepared to either explode or get eaten alive by worms. In reality, nothing happened. There was only the two of them, and between them, a question.

"Just like you?" He repeated. His eyes shared his confusion. There is nothing alike between the two of them, nothing at all.

Regardless of the question, he knew that he should be scared out of his wits right now. He knows exactly who this guy was, the kinds of things he'd done. If Larc wanted, he can kill him with ease.

The mere thought of it frightens him, in his mind at least. He thinks that he's scared, his body feels scared, but strangely enough he doesn't feel scared. Instead, there is a serene calmness he feels in the presence of Larc. One that is keeping him from running off into the crumbled streets and being devoured soon thereafter like the rest of them.

That didn't make them similar, and he searches his thoughts in an attempt to learn what to this confusing feeling is.

"Yes, like me." Larc says with a nod of his head, easily able to decipher Ain's hesitation. "They speak to you, don't they? And you can hear them. You can hear their calls and their cries, can't you?"

Ain looks towards the wolf, who is sitting still and wagging his tail. He looks back at Larc and gives him a nod, "Sometimes I do."

"Just sometimes?"

"All the time."

"I thought so." Larc says, pulling his hand away from Ain's arm and holding his hands together. They are coated in dried blood, so much so that it's hard to see his rough skin below the red. "When did it start?"

Ain didn't know why he was being asked so many questions, but now wasn't really a time for him to refuse. "Uh... A year ago."

"So a late bloomer then." Larc replies in a quiet mutter. A lot later than himself, at least. That didn't make the boy any less dangerous, "Can you only hear them?"

"What?" Ain replies, not understanding what Larc asked.

"Can you only hear them or can you do anything else?" Larc asks again, this time his eyes meeting Ain's. A threatening look as he waits for an answer.

". . . N-No," Ain replies, suddenly feeling the fright that had been avoiding him for so long, "I can talk to them too sometimes. But they don't always understand me."

"So that's how it is then." Larc says, shutting his eyes and looking at the ground with a sigh. He then pulls his hands away and stands up, looming over Ain with the ends of his cloak drifting over the concrete floor. He looks down at him in thought.

This boy is just like him. Maybe a bit later to grow his abilities, but Larc knew exactly what he could grow into. He'd done it himself. Which meant that the best and safest option would be to kill the boy right here, right now.

Larc turns around, whistling as the wolf snaps to attention and stands up to follow him.

Ain stands in disbelief, not really having expected to make it out of that situation so safely. Beyond that though, he is left at a complete loss, "W-Wait, what are you going to do?"

"Leave." Larc replies, already taking a few more steps forward. He stops, feeling the boys eyes like lasers into his back as he turns around and faces him again. "I told you. I don't intend to kill you." And yet he had just finished laying the world around the boy to rubble.

"Why me?" Ain says, tears welling up in his eyes. He had nothing left, the home he had once known was in ruin, and now he is supposedly about to be left here. All on his own, even without the friend he had made out of the wolf. His only true companion in the chaos of Larc's assault on Remnoff.

"I already told you." Larc says with a sigh. He had a desire to explain everything to the boy. To tell him of what he will be capable of in the future, and just how far his abilities will take him. To tell him the truth behind those abilities, a truth he had grappled with for so long before coming to terms with. But he was just a boy, he would not understand. "You and I are the same."

"We're not!" Ain yells back at him in retaliation, hands shifting into shaking fists at his sides. The strange calmness he had once felt had left him, and he was left with an overwhelming amount of despair and anger at the man responsible for all this suffering.

"Yes, we are." Larc says, his tone calm and unnerving unlike Ain's. "You felt it too, I know you did. When you and I come into contact, or draw close, it's there. You can't shake the feeling, or understand it. But it's there."

". . ." Ain pauses, his voice stuck in his throat as he searches for words to say, "What is it?"

"It's our connection. We share the same truth, and so the world connects us to one another. Just like how you feel around my friend here." Larc looks down at the wolf, petting him as he wags his tail, "And just like any other friends of your own. But for us it's stronger. For us, it's a rope tying you to me. You'd do best to accept that as soon as you can." Larc says, turning back around again away from Ain.

"For your own good, don't seek me out." Larc says, and before Ain can find another word to say, walks away and turns down a dark alleyway. A whistle chimes through the rubble, as the wolf soon follows after.

But how could a boy, who had just watched everything he cared for fall at the hands of such a man, listen to such a request?

. . .

"Thank you." A timid, tired voice sounds. Although exhausted, it is full of the kind of life that only comes with youth. Larc looks down at the wolf with a weirded out glare.

"Don't thank me." Larc says, keeping his focus on the path in front of him through the twists and turns of the alleys. Anyone could come out from the shadows at any time in a last ditch effort to slay him, so it did him best to keep his guard up.

"But you let the nice one live! That's plenty to thank you for!" The wolf at his side says, voice lined with that excited bubbly tone that Larc heard so little of. Soldiers never spoke like that.

"I let him live for now. He will have to live through this tragedy, and he will have to bear with all it's suffering on his shoulders. His life will never be the same. It will be full of sadness, grief, and pain. I did him no good service." Larc says, his voice snapping at the wolf.

The wolf's tail goes between his legs, his ears drooping down as well as his eyes to the ground, "If that's true, then you would have done him better just to kill him."

"I thought you just wished for him to keep his life?" Larc responds, a questioning tone to his voice. Although it is filled with more sarcasm than actual curiosity.

"I thought you were trying to be kind." The wolf responds, head still drooping low. He hears the buckling laugh of the large man beside him. An uncomfortable laugh. One that filled the streets, roads, sidewalks, alleys, and every other nook and cranny of this city with a plague of it's lingering presence.

"You're young." Larc says after he finishes with his fit of laughter, hand on his belly. "Young, and naive."

"Then why?" The wolf finally brought it's head up, looking up at Larc. "Why would you let him live? You killed all the others like him. What makes him any different?"

Larc wasn't returning the look to the wolf. Instead, he was still staring straight forward into the darkness. The laughter had dissipated, and he was left lingering in the silence of the question for a few moments before he spoke in a much quieter voice.

"Nothing does. I'd like to see how this one grows." Larc says, the two of them finally reaching the light of the streets as they make their way up to the main building in the center of the city. Their work was not yet finished. Not at Remnoff, and not in this world.