Rage and Ruin | 2

6 | 9

D E L P H I N I U M

      I didn't know what to do with myself. I felt like I should be doing something to fight Imperium, not simply waiting here for our leaders to come to a conclusion. To me, it seemed as if we were sitting here idly as Imperium grew stronger without opposition.

In the two days since we'd spoken to Hunt at the ONNT headquarters, I'd done nothing but practice in the training room. I'd used every weapon there on dummies and targets until my body was sore and my mind thought of nothing but the day I'd finally get to spill the blood of my old associates. My knives screamed for the blood of Benny, Orion, the Tribunal. And Tsolvskein, if he was still alive.

My power pumped through my veins and flowed under my skin, ready to be expelled. I was uncharacteristically antsy, seemingly unable to sit still. So I put my energy into bettering myself, preparing for the inevitable fight. It was just days away now. Maybe less.

The others had been doing the same. No one had spoken much to each other, though the tension in the room when we were all together was considerably lower. That tension now was more out of fear for what was to come than of anger at each other. It seemed that no one wanted to admit that we could all be thrust into the middle of a war in just mere days.

Jaxon had been permitted to return home earlier today. Everyone had been especially welcoming to him and catering to his every need. Of course, he'd been his usual charming self about it, but I saw the hollow look in his eyes when he turned away to go to his room, claiming to be tired. Part of his body had been forcefully cut away and I feared that some part of himself had disappeared with it.

I punctuated that last thought by throwing a knife into a circular target across the room. Releasing it when my arm snapped outward, it flew across the room and sunk into the innermost ring of the target. Not quite a bullseye.

There was another reason I was so tense, something else besides the obvious. I hadn't wanted to admit it to myself, but I'd been avoiding it for the past two days.

Before we'd left the ONNT headquarters, Hunt had advised us to get in contact with our family or friends, anyone that we'd want to have one last conversation with in case we didn't come back from the fortress raid. Finn had sent a message to his foster parents and Kane had called his mother. No one else had any sort of parent or parental figure.

But I used to. My grandmother. I had kept her from my mind for a while now. It had been a long time since I'd thought of her and I knew the feeling was mutual. She was probably happier without me in her home.

Once, we'd been a happy family. She was a bit proud and businesslike then too, but at least I knew that she'd cared for all of us. We all loved each other like a normal family. But when our four family members were murdered and she arrived home from a business trip to their dead bodies in our home, something inside her broke. It had never been fixed since. They'd been dead a year before I escaped and saw her again, but she wasn't the same person I once knew. She'd thrown herself into her massive empire as a way to cope with her loss and never mentioned their names again, acting almost as if they'd never existed.

      Our family's deaths had changed us both: she'd become cold and unloving and I had turned into a paranoid shell of my former self.

Something inside me told me to get the compound landline phone and call her up. She might not hear from me again, if not for this. I had much that I wanted to say to her, things that I couldn't say when I was in that broken state after my escape.

I flung my last throwing knife toward the target, my eye on the red dot in the center. I imagined it to be Orion's face. My aim was true and the knife cut a straight line through the air. There was a thud. A perfect bullseye.