This Is My Town

Chapter Twenty Five ~ Enzo

"NO!"

Rye screamed and shouted, cried and pleaded to every God out there. No one was answering. Kiara really was gone.

"Rye, it is done," Enzo murmured, trying to sound understanding so his friend wouldn't get mad and use his powers out of anger. He was going to have to get used to Kiara being gone sooner or later.

"I will not let her go!" Rye snapped, whirling on Enzo. Enzo kept his golden eyes downcast. It hurt to look at Rye how he was. It was going to hurt looking at Rye all the time from that day forth. All Enzo could think of when he looked at Rye was Kiara. Of their adventures together; of their times together. When she was alive. When she was real. Because she wasn't anymore, and her face was already beginning to blur in his mind.

"Rye, we must act rational," Enzo told him firmly. "Pandora is gone; we must return to Crinya with hast. The sooner my parents know about this, the better; they will let everyone know what is to happen and there will be no chaotic acts. We need to think logically now, Rye."

"And we are just to forget about Kiara?" Rye demanded, and Enzo shook his head.

"No, we will not forget her," he replied steadily, "nor will we sit around moping for her. She would have wanted us to keep moving, so that is exactly what we are going to do. We are going to keep moving."

Rye hesitated, but Enzo was already walking for the door out of the throne room; he partly didn't care if Rye was following him or not. He would find his own way back, and he understood that Kiara's death was a little harder on Rye than it was on himself. Because Rye loved her not as Enzo did, but as he should have. Now she was gone and neither men could do anything about it, other than alert everyone in Frate of Pandora's dismissal.

"Imagine the fear," Rye whispered as they walked down the dark corridors in the Palace of the late manipulating evil. "Imagine what she would have felt, to realise that she... she did not exist? Imagine the horror..."

"Do not dwell on how everything turned out," Enzo told his friend gently but tiredly. "It was Fate, and it was meant to be."

"Why does it hurt so much?" Rye asked quietly, and when Enzo looked at him, he saw the glassiness in his friend's eyes, and he saw that he was on the verge of tears. "Why does this happen? Fate is horrible; I cannot imagine how pleasure could be derived from orchestrating life when there is such pain behind every little thing done."

"Calm, my friend," Enzo murmured, a hand on Rye's shoulder. "We shall survive; Fate does happen for a reason, but we have made it out with nothing but scars. If it were us in there, and not her, the pain would be identical. Would you want her to feel this same level of pain if you were gone?"

Rye didn't answer but Enzo knew that he had gotten through to him. He just had to try and do that for the rest of his death, right up until Rye began to not care anymore. It would come, and Enzo simply had to prepare him for it. He was not going down without a fight, and he was definitely not letting Rye go through the rest of his miserable time on this planet with pain and anguish following him wherever he went. He just wasn't ready to give up on his first friend quite yet.

"Rye, we need to get to Crinya fast," Enzo urged on, changing the subject as Rye nodded his agreement to him solemnly. "Before anyone realises that Pandora has moved on. Can you take us there? To the palace?"

"I can," Rye answered quietly, grasping Enzo's shoulder before screwing his eyes closed, shifting the world beneath them hastily and without care. Enzo thought that they had been close to falling off the edge of their land at one point, but they got to Crinya in a matter of minutes with Rye's newfound abilities. The front of the Palace loomed up in front of Enzo menacingly, with intimidation and anxiety falling from its walls to drown Enzo with all these thoughts. To try and scare him away. But he was not so easily beaten.