The Element of Shadow

Title: The Element of Shadow.< br> Author: Shaded Mazoku.< br> Email: herukatto@hotmail.com.< br> Part: 1/1.< br> Disclaimer: Characters are the property of Square Enix. I merely borrow them for some harmless fun. Well, non-profit fun, at least.< br> Warnings: Angst, dark themes, violence, torture, sexual themes.< br> Rating: NC-17.< br> Summary: There is a first time for everything. Some leave more of a mark than others. Being chosen by the shadows leaves stains on the soul. Janus is about to learn that nothing comes without a price. For the "Fill the Holes" contest at Yaoiville.net.< br> Pairing(s): Magus/Flea.< br> Fandom: Chrono Trigger.< br>

*

The room was dark, dry, and very cold, giving the impression of darkness grasping him as he entered. Maybe it was; he had always had an affinity for the dark. Maybe it was welcoming him home, like a long-lost family member. Janus shivered and pulled his robe closer around his body to ward off the cold and such thoughts both.

Flea, who was a warm presence next to him, a source of heat to step unconsciously towards when things moved and sounded in the dark, spoke up, putting a slender, razor-nailed hand on his arm. “It has to be cold in here,” he said, his voice a soft murmur in the dark, caught between male and female timbre. “It keeps things fresh, you see.”

Janus shivered again, but it had little to do with the cold. It was easy to forget just what Flea was; the effeminate mage looked and acted very human. Most of the time. But he wasn’t human, and like most Mystics, took his pleasures in activities far different from what humans did. Janus had learned this quite intimately over the years.

This was different, though. It was definitely a Mystic thing, but it wasn’t for Flea’s benefit, it was for Janus’. An ancient coming of age ritual they still used. Flea was only there to guide him, as any teacher should guide his student. Though no other teachers Janus knew of would choose to wear a clinging white and silver gown with slits up both sides, high enough to show pretty much everything, to an official ritual.

Flea smiled up at him, that particularly smug smile that said “I’m older than you and I know things you don’t,” leading him through the room. The darkness seemed to swirl around them again, and Janus silently willed it to stop and go away. To his surprise, it did. He could feel Flea chuckling, shaking silently against him, even though there was no sound. Just silent darkness.

Janus couldn’t see where he was going, but he could feel it, somehow, and Flea certainly seemed to know where they were walking. Mystics could see in the dark, though not in the same way that humans did, but though Janus was taking on Mystic qualities, he hadn’t gained that particular ability yet. He would, he’d been told, but for now, he had to rely on the surprisingly sentient darkness, and on the unstable mage clinging to his arm.

Finally, they came to a halt, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, Flea letting go of his arm to cast a spell, a ball of fire appearing effortlessly in his hands, illuminating the chamber in warm, orange light. Janus usually felt a stab of jealousy when he watched his teacher use magic, because while he had to focus, Flea cast spells like it was second nature for him. It probably was.

This time, though, the jealousy lasted only until his eyes had adjusted to the light before fading away in a mix of horror and fascination. A young woman was sitting on the floor, heavy chains fastened to her wrists and ankles. She was a bit older than him, maybe in her early twenties, with matted pale hair that matched the stained dress she wore, which appeared to have been white once.

She cringed away from the source of light, whimpering and looking up at Janus with pleading eyes, reaching out to grasp the edge of his robes. Janus frowned and stepped back to avoid her hand, looking questioningly at Flea.

“Who is she?” He asked, looking down at her again. She had probably been pretty, even beautiful once, but she just looked bedraggled and pathetic right now.

Flea chuckled, hanging his ball of fire in the midair, which left his hands free to pet the girl’s hair condescendingly. “Just something we caught a while ago,” he said with a smile. “She was quite mouthy, then, calling us all filthy beasts and declaring that we weren’t worthy to breathe the same air as her.” Another chuckle, as his fingers trailed down to her shoulder, digging into her skin and drawing blood. “We convinced her otherwise, of course.”

With a grimace, he pulled his hand away and looked at it in disdain, before wiping it clean on the woman’s dress. The woman cringed away, scuttling towards the wall and pressing against it, as if she believed they couldn’t see her if she did.

Janus raised an eyebrow, eyes moving from Flea to the woman and back to Flea again. “For what purpose?” He asked, unable to see what good a frightened woman could be for anything.

Smiling, Flea disappeared, only to appear again behind Janus. “For the ritual, of course,” he murmured into Janus’ ear, revealing that he was levitating to even out their height differences. Pressing close to Janus’ back, Flea muttered a spell softly, so softly even Janus’ excellent hearing only caught parts of it.

The chains holding the woman turned to dust, leaving her free to move. She didn’t seem to notice, still pressing close against the wall, lips moving in an inaudible chant, quite likely a prayer.

“Kill her,” Flea said softly, switching from the Mystic tongue to the human tongue, deliberately letting her understand them. “Prove that you’re ready to be considered an adult.”

Janus froze for a moment. It was one thing to note that she was pathetic, he’d always considered most of humanity pathetic anyway, but to be faced with the task to kill another human, one who was without any defence and too broken to be harmful, was an unexpected turn of events.

Flea chuckled darkly. “This is twice as important that you do, Janus,” he said, in a tone so smug that Janus could hear the smirk in his voice without turning to look at his teacher. “You need to prove your allegiance to the Mystics. To prove that you’re not going to let sympathies for your race get in our way.” His voice seemed to fade on the end of the sentence. “Kill her.”

Turning to look, Janus realised that his teacher had teleported away, leaving him with the woman.

He sighed. He had been wondering about the nature of this ritual, but he hadn’t expected something like this. Though he had gone hunting before, he had never killed another human being or any other sentient creature.

The woman seemed to calm down a little now that Flea had left, obviously more intimidated by the Mystic mage than by Janus, even if Flea wasn’t very scary physically. She had stopped pressing into the wall and was watching him instead, as if though she half-expected him to tear off a mask and be a monster underneath.

Janus had to grin slightly at that. If it was one thing he knew, it was that the worst monsters were always the ones that looked the least monstrous. He studied her as he thought about things. She was older than he’d thought at first, but she looked younger, her skin and hands bearing no sign of ever having done physical work. A noblewoman, no doubt. She was around the same age as his sister had been the last time he saw her, he realised.

He wasn’t sure he liked that. A human noblewoman his sister’s age, and, when he looked closer, also close to his sister in height and build. That was a lot of coincidences. Enough to make him wonder, but he’d never told anyone here where he came from or who he was, so they couldn’t possibly know. Then again, Flea used charm magic all the time. There was no knowing what he could have made Janus tell him without him knowing.

Thinking about his sister had been a mistake, Janus decided. He couldn’t kill a human woman while thinking like that. Schala would be devastated if she had learned about her brother killing a helpless human. She’d been a big protector of the Earthbound ones, none of whom had been as defenceless as this woman was. She’d forgive him, of course, she always did, but there would always be that deep disappointment in her eyes whenever she looked at him, the look telling him he’d hurt her badly.

Apparently noticing that he was hesitating, the woman crawled forwards and tugged at the hem of Janus’ robes, looking up at him with those wide, pleading eyes. “Please,” she croaked. “Pleasepleaseplease…” She trailed of, clutching the fabric in her hands as though her life depended on it.

Janus tugged his robe loose from her fingers. She was nothing like Schala, he decided. His sister wasn’t this pathetic. She’d never be. Unlike this woman, Schala was a graceful, serene princess. Then again, there was nobody like Schala. And Janus had no need for the rest of the humanity. He knew the rest of humanity, foolish creatures, who, like this one, acted like idiots and who was too stuck in their own little world to see the true world.

Smiling darkly, he opened himself to his magic, feeling it gather in his body. The woman looked at him, at first looking relieved, but as she looked closer at his smile, her expression turned to one of pure terror, and she scrambled backwards towards the wall again. Janus let her scramble around for a while; amused and disgusted at how easily she was reduced to such fearfulness. Nothing like Schala at all.

He crossed the space between them swiftly, keeping his eyes on his prey. A while back, he’d found a spell in one of Flea’s books that he’d been eager to try out. It required too much concentration and fine control to use in battle, and was too deadly to use in sparring, but it would work just perfectly here. Holding his hand over her chest, he spoke the words to invoke the spell, watching as blood welled up in her mouth and poured out, running down her face. As he uttered the last syllables of the spell, her heart exploded, leaving a gaping hole in her chest and splatters all over Janus’ robe.

Janus looked at the corpse, feeling surprisingly little, considering what he had just done. She shouldn’t have reminded him of his sister.

A touch on his arm made him aware that Flea was back, so he turned to face his teacher, silently challenging him to say something. Anything. Flea was watching him with satisfaction, though, wrapping a warm blue cloak around Janus’ shoulders before dropping to his knees, much to Janus’ surprise.

Flea smiled up at him, leaning in to lick Janus’ hand, still covered in the prey’s blood. “Welcome amongst the adults,” he murmured between licks, his tongue warm and wet in the chilly chamber. “Magus.”

Janus gave a little shiver, still not due to the cold. He’d known that Mystics gained new names during the ritual, but a name like that was highly unusual. He liked it. It was a powerful name, the name of someone meant for great things.

“Flea…”

The Mystic chuckled in the back of his throat and continued cleaning the blood off of the younger man’s hand, closing his mouth around one of the digits to suck at it, occasionally circling it with his tongue.

Looking down at his teacher, who seemed a lot less superior when he was kneeling to him, Janus decided that Magus was the kind of person who thought nothing of killing a weak human. The kind of person who wielded the very shadows themselves as his tools, and who could dominate even a skilled Chaos Mage like Flea. His teacher, who would no longer be his teacher, looked good on his knees. It made him wonder how he’d look other places, like sprawled on his bed. Magus would make him kneel to him often. He would make the entire world bow to him. Even Lavos.

Magus certainly wasn’t a mediocre mageling like Janus. He had powers Janus couldn’t even imagine, after all. The powers to get what he wanted when he wanted. Lavos, eventually. The creature would taste his revenge and die in agony. But right now, his desires were more carnal, and involved seeing what else he could make his pretty former teacher do. He wasn’t about to turn down an offer like the one Flea was making, still sucking on his finger wantonly.

As Magus twined his free hand into Flea’s hair, the shadows in the room twisted and expanded so suddenly that they were audible, giving of a sound that sounded most of all like a triumphant, demented cackle. But it was the shadow in his mind that led them on.