Silence.
It was more oppressive and disturbing than the previous commotion. There were no noises except the frantic gasps of the guards and the moaning of the city wind cleaning the rocky ruins.
Akira was there in the middle of that silence, a transformed man in one, awful second. The phantom flavor of the decadent body of the Plague-Hound still remained in his mouth- ozone, iron, and something unspecifiably other. The hungry ache in his stomach was, at least, appeased. Yet it was watchful, wary fullness, as though it were a sleeping predator, who might at any time, wake up.
His flesh had a stolen vitality aching his body. His bones were no longer paining in a chronic way, but instead of pain there was a coiled power that was strange and familiar at the same time. He curled his fingers, and was astonished by the ease with which he could do it, by the definition of muscle that could now be seen through his now-clean skin. The gloss of moisture and ethereal gore of the consuming was already evaporating, and absorbed like the rest.
The grizzled man, Vorlag, who was the captain of the guard, at length got a voice. "Y-Your Highness...? What... what sorcery was that?"
The term sorcery was a stimulus. The rest of the guards tightened up their weapons, the fear quickly turning into the awe. The unknown had been a more anatman in a kingdom that was expiring by degrees than the Plague-Hounds.
Akira looked at Vorlag and the captain blushed. The eyes of the prince, dead and unhealthy brown, were now faintly crimson in gleam like embers in a smithy.
It was not witchcraft, Captain," Akira said, and his voice was unwavering and deep, no longer rasp-like. "It was necessity. It was survival."
<...survive... hunt...>
The voice was a small, wolfish cord in the rear of his head. The Plague-Hound's echo. It was not clever, it was merely a chain of low instinct and the experience of hurt. Akira suppressed it, a strange and alien power that he was mastering on the second.
Clear this area, I said, the authoritiveness in my voice knowing no reply. It was a note which the old Akira could not have gathered. And tell not what thou didst see. To anyone. Is that understood?"
Vorlag was a soldier to the end and even his fear of the command responded. He snapped a stiff bow. "By your will, Your Highness."
When the guards ran to give him the orders, he fired him twitching glances, and Akira went back to the keep. He walked with confidence and straight posture. He didn't look back.
The stroll along the draughty, abandoned passages of the royal wing was a masterpiece in surrealism. He was able to see the world in a new light. He might hear the rats in the walls, smell the slight rot in the timber, touch the slightest trembling of the broken heart of the castle. The Devour and Rule Protocol was not only a consuming protocol, but a basic improvement to his vessel.
He met a servant-girl with tray--the same stale bread and thin broth. She choked in reaction to his changed look, and almost dropped the tray into her arms. He only shook his head and went past her. The mere sight of the food now caused no feeling of hunger, but of disgust. He had tasted real power. He would not go back to scraps.
His way was to his chambers, which he was prevented before reaching.
"Well, well. The ghost walks."
It was a silky drawl with condescension. Akira looked around to see his elder brother, Crown Prince Ryota, leaning over a doorway. He was all that Akira was not, tall, robust, dressed in good silks, with a mask of handsome arrogance on his face. Two of his personal guards were by his side, and cold-eyed.
Brother, said Akira, without intonation.
Ryota drove himself back, gazing up and down the doorframe at Akira with an open lack of respect which changed very swiftly into a squinting suspicion. The doctors reported that you were on your deathbed. Yet here you stand. And you look... different. Corvin told me you have a hysterical fit and ran away. What nonsense hast thou been about?
Akira stood still and the dim crimson in the eyes of his own self appeared to come home. "I took a walk. The atmosphere in my rooms was stuffy.
Ryota's lip curled. "Do not play the fool with me. I heard somebody kicking up a commotion in the lower yard. A beast. And then you come, you seem to have been... refreshed. He moved still nearer and his voice was a venomous whisper. And what have you done, little brother? Thrust a bargain with some gutter-demon? Keep your soul to sell you a few days more breathing?
So near was the truth of the accusation that it was nearly laughable. Akira didn't flinch. I did what was needed to keep on breathing. Something that you appear to have a problem with.
The composure which Ryota had been using broke down a moment, and he saw the crude enmity behind it. You are as much a drain on this kingdom by your breathing. The fact that you exist is an embarrassment. Shouldst thou have conspired with the dark things, I shall have thee revealed and executed before thou may cause more havoc to us.
<...threat... kill the rival...>
The beast-whisper came out, colored to a sympathetic aggression. Akira stamped it with a low smile on his lips. It was an incisive, hazardous expression which ought not to have been there on the face of the invalid prince. Then do it by all means, brother, said he. "Try."
He didn't wait for a response. He walked off and went down the hall with the searing eyes of Ryota eating his back. The battle was an act of declaration of war and Akira did not even mind. The game had changed. He was not a part of the board anymore, he was a different player, with different rules.
Devour. Rule.
In his repressed silence, back in his room, he closed the door and leant against it. The adrenaline was wearing off and he was exposed to the brutality of his circumstances. He was an usurper in a falling body, in a falling kingdom, with a Godlike grinding machine eating his heart.
He looked at his hands again. He had made himself the owner of the beast, its uncivilized mutated strength. The Feast System was his savior of everything, of power, of life.
But there was always the reminder in his mind of how expensive it was by the whisper. At each meal a ghost remained at the table. Each step in the direction would be laid out with the spirit of what he had drunk.
He strolled to the window, where he was looking over the plague-stricken, twilight city of Veridia. The hunger awoke once more, a thrumming monotony. It was not simply an empty space that needed to be occupied. It was a compass.
His next meal was somewhere out there, in the rotting centre of his kingdom. And he would find it.
The Prince was dead. Long live the Devourer.