Cole…
He was reeling from Marcus’s words, all of which echoed in his mind as he laid down on his bed in the Inn they were staying at.
‘killed my mother…’ he had said.
He might have spoken with a sarcastic and rude tone to instigate Cole even further, but looking the man in the eyes, it wasn’t hard to tell that he felt haunted by what he had done.
Of course, Lyrra and Rosanne didn’t seem patient enough to look past the surface level of what he said. Lyrra seemed more interested in trying to get revenge and inflict as much pain on him as she could. Rosanne on the other hand, after hearing Marcus’s obviously exaggerated threat, seemed absolutely terrified of him.
Felkin was the only one who managed to keep a calm mind throughout the entire conversation.
“Hey, Cole. What are you thinking about right now?” Felkin asked as he sat up straight on his bed.
“I’m just…having a hard time accepting everything that Marcus told me. It feels like I just got hit by a truck,” he answered, though none of them seemed to understand what he meant.
Lyrra then chimed in, “Well, whatever the case, I’m gonna try my hardest to beat some sense into him when I reach him in the contest. Of course...that’s not to say that I’m stronger than you Cole. I’m sure...you fought your hardest.”
Rosanne glared at her and with sarcasm in her voice, she said, “Nice going. That will surely improve his confidence.”
“Even if you wanted to fight him Lyrra, you would need to make it past Ares. If what Cole said was right, then he is supposed to be Terra’s version of the God of War. It won’t be an easy to get past him just to fight Marcus,” Felkin said, to which Lyrra laughed.
“Oh come on, Ares can’t be that scary. As an Orc Warrior, I can smash my way through anything!”
Then Cole sighed as he said, “Lyrra, Ares is no pushover. If he is anything like his mythological counterpart, then he has the power to raze entire continents. I don’t know the full extent of Marcus’s strength, but I would be really surprised if even HE could beat him. Even then, if by some miracle you got past Ares, you would not survive against Marcus. The entire time I was fighting him, I was using my full strength and he wasn’t taking it serious at all. He didn’t release even a single one of his restraints on his power. If you fight him, he will kill you before you even know what happened to you. Please, do not instigate him.”
Lyrra’s expression softened and Rosanne looked back at him as she asked, “You can’t really be satisfied with accepting what he said as the truth, right? For all you know, he could be lying about his mother. It could have been an elaborate story he told to make you feel sorry for him and not go after him anymore.”
“I don’t know about that…,”
“Cole, he murdered your parents, right in front of you,” Rosanne said.
“For me, that was over seventy years ago. I’ve had my time to mourn and move past it,” he said in a quiet tone.
“Yet to him, it was still rather recent. He obviously hasn’t forgotten about it, and in fact, it looks like he enjoys inflicting pain on others.”
He remained quiet as he knew that no matter what words he tried to say to calm them down, their wrath in his stead would not easily be quelled.
“For the time being, will you let me handle it? I don’t want any of you doing something crazy and getting on his bad side any more than you already have. I don’t want to have to clean up the mess you’ll leave behind if you try to fight him even outside of the tournament,” he pleaded with them.
“But Cole-”
“NO!” he shouted as he stood up suddenly.
Lyrra and Rosanne flinched while Felkin shook his head.
Taking a moment to breath and calm down, he said, “For your own safety, just leave him alone. I won’t say it again.”
“Okay…,” Lyrra and Rosanne replied with a disappointed tone.
“For now, lets just get some rest,” he said as he put out the lamp on his bedside table and went to sleep.
Marcus…
When he returned home he met Thalia at the door who looked at him not with fear, for which he was thankful for, but with worry.
“Marcus…brother, are you okay?” she asked him as she took a step back to let him inside.
“I…I think I’m gonna go to bed,” he said with a weary tone.
“Okay...let me know if you need anything or if you want to talk,” she offered, speaking in a delicate manner as she watched him walk past her and into his bedroom.
As he crawled into bed, all the stress that came with talking to Cole and explaining his parent’s deaths hit him all at once. It felt like a crushing weight was being place on his chest just thinking about it.
After several agonizing hours of thinking and staring at the ceiling, he finally went to sleep.
Four years ago…
After he finished cleaning himself in the shower and stitching up his wounds, he left the spare bathroom and was about to head to his bedroom when someone wrapped their arms around his chest from behind. The suddenness of it caused him to flinch and he turned his head suddenly to see who had forced themselves on him.
It was Maria. The very same woman who had tried to lay her hands on him at any moment she could when he was younger and smaller. If not for Romano’s staff to keep an eye on her for all these years, she likely would have tried to rape him.
She was a pedophile, but not someone that he could kill and be done with so easily, for she was still Romano’s daughter.
“Hello there…,” she whispered in his ear in a manner that was meant to be seductive, but it only filled him with disgust.
With shuddered breathing, he asked, “What do you want?”
“You’re man enough to know what I want, from you,” she said with a brief pause as her hand traced the hem of his pants.
He took in a sharp breath as he could feel her fingertips touch his skin and he grabbed her arms and broke free of her.
He then spun around and tried to make some distance between the two of them but felt dizzy as a result. He had lost too much blood during his last job and started to feel anemic as he stumbled and fell to the floor.
Without a second to waste, Maria threw herself on top of him, put her hands on his shoulders, and shifted her weight into them as she pinned him to the ground. Before he had time to recover, she then grabbed his wrists and held them in place.
“No no, you aren’t getting away from me,” she said with a wide eyed predatory stare before she looked towards the door.
He struggled to turn his head to it as he noticed it was closed and locked.
“Nobody is going to interrupt us this time,” she said.
His heart started racing as he stared up at her with blurry vision.
She then smiled as she said, “Its a real shame that you grew up so quickly. By the time you were fourteen you had already gained the body of a man.”
“What’s so wrong about that? Was I not weak enough for you could take advantage of?”
Her eyes narrowed but her smile remained. A sick, twisted, and demented smile.
“I always knew that you were so smart.”
“Why are you so fixated on me?” he asked as he struggled against her but was still too weak to move.
“Do you really not know the answer to that? A cute little boy like you? With that long black hair, those pretty blue eyes…and that murderous reputation of yours? For a woman like me to have my way with a not so innocent ‘Enderman’ like you? How could I resist?”
Understanding her logic was sickening, but it clicked.
“So you’ve known about that the entire time?”
“Of course. It wasn’t hard to figure out, especially after you went missing for almost two years. I had the patience of a saint waiting for you to come back, and now you’re here, and you’re all mine.”
“You want to be the one to ‘claim’ the Enderman’s virginity, is that it? To be the one to brag about being my first time?”
She then leaned in closer to his face and as much as he tried to move away, her lips found their way to his as she forced herself on him. She held that forced kiss for ten seconds before she moved to his ear.
She then whispered, “I want to be the one that tamed you. I want to make you mine.”
As awful as it was to have to listen to her, to be left so helpless and weak against her, and to have her forcing herself on him, he couldn’t help but laugh in her face.
She slowly pulled her head away from his and looked down at him in confusion as he continued to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” she asked in an annoyed tone.
“Nothing…its just, you’re a tad too late for that.”
Her entire body went still as she said, “What do you mean?”
“I mean that your moment of truth, the opportunity that you were waiting so patiently for, is gone,” he said in an amused tone as he could see the anger in her eyes.
“No…”
“Someone else has already laid claim to me. I’m little more than used goods to you now,” he said, hoping that it would dissuade her from trying to rape him.
However, it seemed that she was even more motivated as she spat out, “I don’t care if you’re ‘used goods’ now. I’ll get what I came for, and after I’m done, I’m going to hunt down that little bitch that took from me what was rightfully mine.”
As soon as her hands left his wrists and tried to rip off his clothes, he wrapped his hands around her throat and started to squeeze.
Despite his blood loss, despite the aches and pain in his body, the adrenaline and anger were more than enough to give him the strength to strangle her to death.
Her hands began to flail as she tried to fight against him. She started punching, slapping, and chopping down at him but he took every blow like they were nothing.
He then sat up straight before shifting his own weight so he could force her to the ground the same way she did to him. He then continued to squeeze until he could see her eyes roll into the back of her head from the lack of oxygen.
But before he could finish her off, the fear of what might happen if he followed through with killing her overwhelmed him.
If he killed her, there was not a doubt in his mind that Romano would send his men after him and his sister.
He would be dead before he left the estate.
So he let go of her and she started coughing violently.
The moment she started to breathe normally again, he slammed his right fist into her face and broke her nose.
He then grabbed her face and leaned in close as he said to her, “If you ever threaten her life again, I’ll skin you alive. Do you understand me?”
He waited for a response but the fear in her eyes caused her to go into shock.
He then shouted in her face at the top of his lungs as he repeated his question, “I SAID DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!”
With a whimper in her voice, she finally answered him, “Yes! Yes! I promise! Please, don’t kill me! Please!”
A knock echoed through the room as one of the staff tried to open the door.
“Is everything okay in there?” a voice asked.
Marcus covered Maria’s mouth so as not to let her scream as he said, “Everything is fine.”
He then returned his attention to her as he said, “Either keep quiet or I’ll sew your mouth shut.”
With those final words to her, he got off of her as he stood up and left the room. As soon as the staff realized it was him walking out, they backed away as quickly as possible and let him pass.
The anger and adrenaline were the only things allowing him to walk until he finally made it to his room and he fainted on his bed.
Now…
He woke up suddenly in a cold sweat as he recalled that horrible memory.
Why am I dreaming about this now of all times? He thought to himself as he left his house for some fresh air.