Center of Attention

Cut Off

     'Be careful. We've been put on the hit list by Vandilliball. Everyone is going to come after us- even Viobin.'
     Dad was almost always cryptic about these things, keeping the major details to himself as the rest of us had to figure out exactly what he meant. This time, it didn't take me long to figure it out. My Vigva, the tool I never wanted and never used, had started to glow on my arm, and it read a report about us. All of us. Even our profiles showed up on the screen with warnings posted all over with perfect descriptions as to what we looked like. There was a part of me that even wondered how they got one of Viobin.
      I only started to curse under my breath in Faean. A few unnecessary spells had came from the same tongue as my book reacted to them, and I pushed them all away as I approached the front door of the capital building. The old, dusty castle that was on fire inside.
     The report was the last thing I wanted to worry about, but I had this strange feeling that Vandilliball was the one that had started this fire. He had to have been using it as a distraction for something bigger that we all didn't know about. My cold fingers pushed open the large castle doors in a similar fashion to the way it was done back in 4025. The automatic wheel was on fire, anyway.
     Fires spread across every wall and on the floor. The government had prided themselves with uptight security and everything being made of wood on the inside, but it all seemed to be gone with just one or two bombs that set fire to this place. Though there were many more than just two. My feet clacked against the hard floor until I was face-to-face with a large throne made out of industrial steel, and I stared at the fallen wood in the seat. As I was examining the damage, I heard someone slowly walking in my direction.
     "Keep your mouth shut."
     Whipping around to see my attacker, I saw the large man I knew was behind this. Dad's old boss. Vandilliball. I regretted even having his name slip passed me in my head, but then again why did it matter? He and I had always had our disagreements. Though I met him a few times when I tagged along next to Dad when he let me skip school, I had never liked him. He hated writing, the passion I had for it. There were a lot of times he would tell me to give up when Dad was busy doing something else. I was sure he was the reason that Brokilna had killed him in the first place, that the Dittas were after him. Stupid. Of course the culprit behind everything was an Enforcer. They're the problem.
     "Long time no see, Writer of the Apocalypse," he had smiled. I hated the nickname. "You seem to be... upset that I'm here."
     I was. My brow was furrowed. "Why burn the capital building? Blaming it on the humanoids?"
     "You catch on quick. If you couldn't tell, no humans were harmed in the making of this distraction. Only humanoids." He pointed to a body that was lying dead in the hallway. Just from the tusks coming out of its mouth alone, I knew that it was an orc. He continued on.            "Are you any better? You thought killing Firstien would help the world somehow, even fix the problems you have with your dead mother. Didn't work, did it?"
     No. It didn't. "That's none of your business to know if it did or did not work anyway. Besides, my plan was stupid."
     "So are you. Puny fourteen year-old."
     My age had nothing to do with anything, but I knew he thought that my age defined how smart I was. Clearing my throat, I held my book out to him.
     "So help me by the Gods that used to reign this earth, I will feed you to the blackened pages of this book the way I had done it to my other victims," I yelled at him. "Your pupils will fall from your eyes, and I will eat them the way I have done. Slowly. Every single vessel popping into my mouth as the blood trickles down my throat."
     He held a hand over his mouth. "Don't... say things like that."
     "Black magic involves a lot of gross things." I held the book open, my fingers running across the worn pages. My words were written here. Every single word, the masterpiece of the story that was happening right now, held so much power in them. "I suppose that one of those gross things is you, Vandilliball. Come at me."
     He pulled out a gun from within his belt, shooting out metallic bullets my way. I dodged every single one without a single moment's rest, and I started to recite my words back to him. My orb reacted to the elements I spat. Norvis. Lightning. Nobliae. Ice. Viagortsi. Fire. Lamis. Earth. There were so many other words that passed my tongue, and he was faster than I expected him to be. However, he tripped, and a stone had pinned his leg into the ground. Blood gushed from the wound, and he tried to struggle with every moment. It only cut open the wound more, and the smell of blood had hit my nose. His mistake.
     "You're lucky I don't absorb your entire body. Just the eyes will do," I sighed. "And the heart."
     He held his breath, but then he started to scream. "Don't! You can't possibly think of fixing everything that we've done! We have plans to do mass genocide in Ortim! Everyone here will die!"
     "No. Only you will die. And I'll be glad to see it. Vaesain oan niersillit. Assa noe kiavi. Bliase soea noesa lill omi voorkae."
     Hands made of shadow clawed their way from the dark pages, and they crawled over his body. He screamed. His cries were nothing more than music to my ears.
     I had a feeling that screams of terror would always sound like that to me.

     "Fuck this!"
     Brokilna brought out a gun, pointing it towards Smallik. I bent down low, rushing him right into his stomach until he fell back into Sobollum. The bullet still fired. It still hit Smallik. I decided not to care about what was behind me, and I pulled on the potion that Sobollum had on him. I opened the cork, the terrible smell wafting through the air like a candle would do when you set it on fire. I knew about candles now. That excited me. Pouring the strange substance onto Brokilna, I realized that I was learning a lot of things I would never of known of had I not died to Brokilna the first time.
     Brokilna started to move rapidly in seizures as the liquid had hit his face. He clenched the wall, holding on to any brick he could keep a hold of. My eyes spurred to Smallik, who had been shot in the chest moments ago. The bullet... It was gone, discarded on the floor like bent metal that was wasted. I stared into Smallik's eyes. He was terrified of what was happening to Brokilna, and he was terrified of what was happening to him.
      "B-b-b..." Brokilna had started saying. Foam was coming out from the inside of his mouth. "V-V-Vand... Mas-ma-mass... g-g-eno-..."
     "Mass genocide?" Sobollum had inquired. "Is that what you've planned to do in Ortim while we were being distracted by you? Pitiful." Sobollum turned to me, flicking his long ears. "Dittas. You two have to find the group called Dittas because they're the same group that Brokilna and Vandilliball had themselves involved in."
     "Where?" Smallik asked, clearly still shocked from the bullet.
     "That's not a question I can answer."
      Brokilna had furrowed his brows, reaching out to try and grab up weakly. "V... Vand... K-k-kill... y-y-"
      My Vigva started to glow in a vibrant manner. It was Ogillitiy. Though it came as a shock to see him using it, I knew that this was an emergency, and he probably needed my help. I answered the video call. However, I wasn't looking at the face of my son. It was a dead body, lying face down. I knew from the large stature and no hair who exactly it was that was lying on the ground. The camera turned back to Ogillitiy, and he held two eyeballs by their threads.
     "Vandilliball is dead," he said. "Tell your friends, and tell Brokilna that I'll gladly eat his eyes and his heart without so much as a glance at what was done."
     Eat his eyes? I knew that Ogillitiy was the one behind the eyeless bodies, but what he was saying was too much for me to think about.
     "You hear about the mass genocide, too?" I asked him.
      He nodded. "Said he's trying to destroy all of Ortim. I'm going to take a guess and say you're looking for Dittas?"
     "You know more than I do, kid."
     "They're all around from what I know, but you need to go back to that abandoned building across from our house. That's where a lot of them are."
      I nodded, motioning to Smallik to lock arms with me so I could lead him to where we needed to go. I turned back to Ogillitiy on the screen. "You coming?"
     "No," he sighed. "I'm going to override the servers on the Vigva interface to erase that warning, and then I'm going to help the people here. Revolution, and all."
      "Be careful, okay? I don't care if you're the strongest person alive. You're still my son, and you're still the only thing in my family I have left, okay?"
      He nodded. "Okay."
     He left me on that note, and I turned to Smallik who seemed to still be shaken by the bullet. I couldn't blame him. Even in my head, I was still shaken by the events.
     Brokilna lied against the wall with the foam dripping onto his pants, and Sobollum had started to explain the potion was that of a poison he managed to control. He had explained that it wouldn't take long for him to die, and he was going to take Brokilna back to Viobin's domain. Leaving him to walk with Smallik, I was starting to realize that we had the upper hand. We took down Vandilliball. We took down Brokilna. This was our fight, and we were going to finally take back the world even if it took us forever to do so.
      "We'll be fine," I whispered to myself. "We're going to make it out of this alive, and then we can work on everything else after getting rid of the problem that was suppressing us."
      Smallik flickered his wings as he heard me. "We can work on getting those trees back and fixing Viobin's domain."
      "No more clipping wings."
       He nodded. "No more anything we didn't ask for."