In My Hands, Know Suffering

45: May You Be At Death's Mercy

Worrywarts existed because the world always knew how to cause trouble no matter how cautious a person was. There was hurt where warnings lay on unavoidable circumstances. Where help was seldom heard, it would take one's life of innocence and grief to tumble aside. Bullets can effortlessly take speed, not once noticing what it would penetrate through, like some people who wouldn't be the right source for a reference either.

Worry, like most sympathetic mothers do, brought stress, probably even strain, but to buckle through that force would be a different subject. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, that was the only thing in it. Although, when rambles from the wrong people started spreading, it would only mean that not enough information was really going around.

Kerxis received a distress alarm two days ago, it would be the third day now. He tried to reach for Castellone's phone, but the fuzzball never answered any of his calls. His brother should have already been home by now for the spring break, he briefly wondered what was taking him, he was sure Castellone must be busy trying to accomplish clearances that were due before the campus closed for recess.

He understood why Castellone didn't want to be treated like a child, but then the same feeling of dread had shaken him when he wasn't picking up his phone. The very same thing he felt when Flarion wasn't answering his calls. Not again.

He immediately contacted his brother's friends but all Blaze and Genon gave him was a shrug of the remote unknown. They told him he was probably with his girlfriend. That was news to him. He raised a brow, but then ended it with furrowed ones. Clearly, his friends could be lying?

"Relax, Kerxis, they might just be back in the university trying to finish a few clearance requirements." Blaze said, already reassuring him of a possible statement, but he wasn't quite sure about that either.

"Or they could be in each other's rooms doing...stuff that you already know." Genon said tactlessly which didn't help at all.

"Shut up." Blaze pushed Genon's face off the screen.

Kerxis gave them a humorless stare over the screen. They were implored by that look to give him a proper answer before he lost his cool, it was a sensitive matter.

In the end, Blaze and Genon told him who Abrielle was and all other details they knew about their hushed relationship. All except the fact that they didn't know where he was aside from the last detail of him being in the university. Which he wasn't.

"Sorry, Kerxy, but that's all we know. He wasn't even returning our calls for the plans we had for Clawde." Blaze said.

"Thanks, I'll let him know about that once I get to him. You guys take care." Kerxis said before hanging up. With a deep frown, he sighed in aggravation over the worry that the M.I.A. gave him. Even if Castellone often left without notice, he would never go somewhere for three days without telling him of his whereabouts.

He decided to head for the university. The minute he settled inside the car, his phone made a beeping sound while vibrating. His GPS flashed in the screen and the application showed a topographic map of the area from their neighborhood in Old Maletique all the way to a radiating red dot somewhere in, as the satellite informed him, Fort Vyglia.

He narrowed his gaze after seeing a series of numerical characters over the red dot. It was an overhead indicator that told him of Castellone's phone number, a sort of control code. He immediately knew what it was aside from being his brother's coordinates. GPS.

It was Castellone's beacon of security measure when he went to a place he was unfamiliar with. Once, just once, he had used it back when he was in grade school and they were required to camp in unfamiliar places during field trips just in case he got lost. It was only connected to him because he didn't want their parents to know what trouble he'd gotten himself into.