Chapter 5 - Interest
Pyre turned back.
"What?"
Phos looked into the Fire Lord's eyes. As he expected: They were empty with the depth of two brain cells.
"You… You really think I'm dead." He spit the blood out of his mouth. "Pyre, Lord of Fire. Stop f*cking with me."
A heavy silence descended between the two like a veil.
"Are you not dead?" Pyre brought his blindfold to his eyes, blatantly ignoring Phos.
Just before he could put it on, though, Phos struggled violently against his chains, causing more blood loss on his end and a look of surprise from the Fire Lord.
"Look at the amount of blood I lost and tell me how I'm not dead." Phos's breathing staggered as he hoarsely shouted at the man.
The blindfold went down once again, and Pyre had an expression of relief.
"So you are dead. Why didn't you tell me sooner?" He walked up to Phos, crouched, and twisted the metal chains until they bent in on themselves under the heat of his hands.
Phos fell onto Pyre's arm, which had just retracted back to his sides after he broke the chains. With a thud, the Light Lord landed directly on the ground, a puddle of blood surrounding him like a flower.
He had a fleeting thought:
If he stayed any longer, he might actually die. Not just from blood loss, but from the Fire Lord's stupidity as well.
Meanwhile, Pyre stood stunned for a moment before he gently reached down and grabbed Phos by the neckline of his unbuttoned pyjamas. He pulled him up to a standing position, holding him in place when his knees buckled involuntarily.
"What are you doing?" Phos trembled, struggling to free himself.
"I've never seen a corpse move so much before." Pyre held an iron grip on the Light Lord. "They usually shrivel up in the fire and die."
Phos shuddered involuntarily. Various remarks flew through his head, but he just couldn't answer.
"So… are you really dead?" As if confirming, Pyre brought Phos up and down like a coin purse—as if he were looking for money.
"Yes… yes." Vision fogging, Phos hung limp in surrender. "You've been alive for millions upon millions of years; how have you not seen an intact corpse at all…."
The chains fastened to his wrists grew heavier by the second, and Phos felt his arms on the verge of tearing off.
"Mr. Sharpshooter, could you take me back to my cottage? If you do, then I'll obediently bury myself in my backyard." His voice weakened to a whisper.
"Hm? Alright." A puzzled innocence overwrote Pyre's suspicious eyes. "Kass said he picked you up from your cottage. I'm sure I can find my way back."
"Mhm, you definitely will. So… I'll leave myself in your care…."
Pyre looked down. His little victim fainted again? He sighed, then shifted Phos to a more comfortable position in his arms before leaping directly through the thin stone rooftop and into the air. Blood matted Pyre's black trenchcoat, but he didn't mind. Rather, he looked a little bit happy.
After all, this served as concrete evidence: That Phos's life was completely in his hands.
The bit of stupidness in Pyre's eyes dissipated, replaced by a calculated sharpness as he glanced down at the little Light Lord in his arms. He pushed aside the shimmering white hair clumped together by coagulated blood from Phos's forehead, revealing a paper-white, ashen face.
He'd originally intended to kill Phos immediately. But he surprisingly found the man a little bit interesting; endearing, even. Pyre flew over the mountains and rivers of Anima Mundi, landing with a light tap on a small, dreamy, out-of-place cottage near the dark woods.
They'd play again another time—Pyre just wished that when Phos awoke, he wouldn't lose any of his rebellious charm.
Else he'd shoot first.
Phos lay listless on his fluffy bed. Somehow, when he woke up, he found his wounds bandaged, his scarf washed and dried clean, and a new pair of pyjamas both hung up in his closet and dressed on his body. He even felt refreshed, like he'd drank a lot of water then applied moisturizer all over his dry skin.
Clearly the work of that stupid Fire Lord.
Even after mulling over the man's actions for a long time, Phos still couldn't understand just how an immortal like Pyre could be so… clueless. Did he really need to confirm whether Phos was dead or alive? Although he'd lost copious amounts of blood, he was still breathing—hell, he'd had an entire conversation with the man—and yet the Lord of Fire still insisted on checking off his status as 'deceased.'
If this wasn't plain idiocy, Phos didn't know what else it could be.
He raised a heavily bandaged arm to the sky. It was slung in a cast and bound so thick that he couldn't see his individual fingertips. Lowering it, he felt his ribs aching again, and lamented that his smooth, unblemished skin would likely have scars from the carving.
Right… who was the one that etched such a hideous line into his chest again?
Kass.
If Phos could, he'd directly march over to Nymph's place and proudly present all of the evidence he'd acquired to bring Nymph's fantasies back to cruel reality. Kass was not someone she should talk about with such a dreamy tone-of-voice.
Rather, he should just walk over! His legs hadn't been injured too much, or at least he didn't think so.
When Phos tried to move his legs, he realized he couldn't feel them at all. Numbness had spread across every joint from his thighs below—likely due to prolonged kneeling. He didn't know whether he should feel angry or relieved, one for being tortured and the other for waking up just before he was saved.
Saved by his enemy.
He felt his relief fly out the window, replaced by inextinguishable fury.
He'd get his revenge; get his revenge and make Kass and Pyre kneel before his cottage for eternity.