Infernal Academia

Chapter 26 - Suyas' Big Day: Part 1 (Sulfur Bloods)

"I will not stand to be fettered again."

Cobalt wasn't supposed to know what he knew. About the terrible fate of all Incubi. His mother and sisters did all they could to hide it from him, but he found out eventually. It came as something of a terrible shock, to learn that his life was on a timer. That the moment he reached the age of twenty-one, it would all be over...

He couldn't remember much of his younger years. Perhaps poor recollection on his part, but sometimes he could remember events that didn't link up properly, or he would find himself forgetting things he definitely should know. Outcomes to actions he had never taken. Answers to questions he didn't ask. Thinking back on his life was a difficult thing for Cobalt to do, because when he put it into perspective of the gradual countdown until twenty-one, well...

It scared him.

He still remembered the call he got, that day in Oxford, begging him to return to Hell right away. It was his birthday, after all, and he couldn't deny the horrible truth. Rather than undergo the Rite of Maturation surrounded by friends and family, he was sedated by his own mother, and dragged off to a cold, sterile facility that he didn't recognised. Where he should have been receiving presents for his birthday, all Cobalt remembered getting that year was a straitjacket to bind his limbs and a muzzle to bind his mouth. And when he should have received the Rite personally from a minister, the incantation was instead spoken through a steel-reinforced intercom system.

They watched from behind mirrored glass as the magic took hold. They watched as Cobalt disappeared in a ball of glowing light. And they watched as the Rite failed.

His mother brought him home from that cold facility the same night, and she held him close, crying all the while. Crying and crying, on and on, clinging to her son and thanking hellfire's grace for sparing her baby boy. All the while, Cobalt just sat there, unable to think. He had given up by then. He had to.

And now, he was okay. Just like that, his cruel fate was gone, and he was okay.

It took a long time to recover, but one thing Cobalt told himself was that he would never again allow himself to resign himself to such a fate. To teach at B.I.D. was his dream, and though he would bear the brunt of his students' assaults, weather the harsh words of his colleagues and be subjected to the wrath of his employer, he would never - never - suffer the hopeless feeling of having restraints clasped around his wrists, shackles around his ankles, or a collar around his throat.

Never.

Dark thoughts had taken hold of Cobalt, and he was having a hard time focusing on anything positive.  As the joyful snowfall gave way to harsh blizzards, the Incubus found himself stewing in his room most nights, thinking long and hard about his confrontation with Mistress Viola.  He had said so many things that were out of line, but that wasn't what he was regretting.  It was a fact that Karazelle had heard it all.  That she had caught a glimpse of what an Incubus really was...

She had tried to talk with him about it, but Cobalt just wasn't ready to let her in on that particular kind of information.  His past years spent fretting over what he thought was a damned future... He didn't care much for it, and he wasn't about to let Karazelle start worrying about it.  So whenever she tried to broach the subject of his argument with her mother, he did his best to just change the subject.

It was better for everyone that way.

Shaking his head, Cobalt rolled over in his futon, shivering as the winter winds howled outside.  The weather had gotten so bad that the support beams had all been completely covered in a thick layer of ice, making the prospect of crossing them hazardous at best, and downright deadly at worst.  This of course meant that he was given some reprieve from Karazelle's constant intrusions, but in a strange way, the Incubus was almost missing her warmth...