Rivers of the Night

Theron had, indeed, noticed Dean Pennel. He hadn't been avoiding her—it was just that he couldn't be bothered to waste the time to understand what other reasons she could have for coming after him other than a vain attempt to stop him.

Of course, he had seen her battles with the same forces that had tried to stop him, but like he had said… he just didn't think much about it. He felt like the world around him was changing in ways he couldn't explain or describe, and he had much more important things to do than figure out why it was an old woman he had spent quite little time with, frankly, who was coming after him.

Hearing her words, though, he paused.

Her son? That must mean General Pennel. Was he being punished?

The problems of the Nightingale Empire seemed so small to him now. Not long ago, he had killed their Ancestor, and the Imperial Clan was probably not even aware that they had lost the right to stand amongst the other Imperial Clans of the continent.

All things considered, the Nightingale Empire—between Ancestor Thistle and Nightingale—had actually had more Divine Realm experts than most other subordinate Empires.

Now, they had none at all.

Theron took a step forward and helped the Dean to stand.

He didn't have an abundance of fond feelings for this family. Of them all, Teacher Fern was probably the closest with him, but she was also a large reason he had been placed on the radar of the Thistles in the first place.

It was easy to forget, but without her constant nagging and pestering, he would probably still be a silent student at the Branch Academy. It was her pushing that got him to participate in the debate. And without the debate, he would have never been noticed by the Thistles or targeted by the annoyance that was one of their fringe members.

For that matter, he would have never had any sort of relationship with Malaya at all, and wouldn't have roped her into such things.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he found himself becoming. Her overblown, inflated sense of importance and misplaced confidence in her ability to protect him had ruined everything.

Theron closed his eyes, the fury bubbling up within him quickly suppressed as he took a deep breath to calm himself down. He spent so long thinking about Teacher Fern that he didn't even seem to get to his thoughts on the General or the Dean at all.

All things considered, it was these two that truly tried to use him as though he was some sort of pawn. It was just that he had grown out of their control before they could even make the first move.

Because that was how things always went… he improved too fast. Maybe that was in part due to all the pressure he was always under, but it was certainly more than just that. He knew for sure.

In this world… he was an anomaly that he just couldn't explain.

And yet, he was somehow more infuriated with Teacher Fern than any one of them.

His eyes snapped open when he heard a small whimper of pain. He quickly let go of Dean Pennel's arm, his mind confused and his emotional state hard to measure.

These days, he found himself losing to his own thoughts more and more often. It just felt like…

Nothing mattered anymore.

Nothing but his revenge.

And wasn't the Nightingale Empire part of that?

His parents, his little sister, himself… they were all citizens of this Empire, were they not? The Nightingales had all this strength and yet did nothing to protect their own people?

Not only did they do nothing, but they swept it under the rug as though to help the Seijin Clan cover up their disgusting underbelly, forcing him to join an organization that had always been the antithesis of who and what he was… of the kind of person his parents had raised him to be.

He had always wanted to be an Imperial Scholar, to learn from books and smell their pages, to help foster the world into a better place—not with his fists or blades, but with his mind.

But that was all taken from him.

It was all taken from him.

BANG!

Dean Pennel was blown back, and she hurried to stand as swiftly as her aching bones and broken flesh would allow. But when she did, Theron was already long gone. For character sheets and glossaries, visit MV|LEMPYR.

Despair colored her features. Was she really going to have to watch her son die after all?

GONG. GONG.

Her eyes snapped up to the ceiling. The Imperial Academy had been shaking from its very foundations from the moment Theron started to cultivate—it was so much so that she couldn't even tell the difference between what Theron had caused and what the Imperial Bell was causing.

That bell… it would only be rung if…

Dean Pennel's eyes lit with hope again, and she rushed out.

…

The Imperial Palace stood tall and proud at the center of the Imperial City, its walls not as grand as those on the outside, but their sturdiness and presence were countless times more imposing nonetheless.

Theron walked forward with calm steps, his hand dragging along the corpse of an Imperial Guard that had tried to stop him as though using the latter's eye sockets like bowling ball holes.

His palm clenched into a fist, a surge of heft and great weight shattered the skull into blood and flesh that ran down his fingers and slicked the roads… only for the heavy rain to pool it all away and down to the sewage system.

Theron's steps came to a stop as he looked up. To his side, a kneeling Teacher Fern lay, her forehead pressed to the ground, and blood streaks of her own from the incessant banging were being washed away as well. Maybe she didn't even notice that Theron was there, but it hardly mattered as he raised his palm.

In that moment, all the rain across the entire city seemed to come to a halt.