Chapter 23
Emile was blessed and cursed with an acute olfactory memory. In normal person terms, Emile remembered every smell he ever encountered. It had been helping him as a diver and a warrior before that. Old enemies could not sneak up on him. It was easy for him to keep track of opponents. It could even help him find friends in unfamiliar places.
This scent drove him wild. He had been hunting it for decades, and he had finally found it. In a labyrinth of all places Emile found the scent and he was dashing for it. It brought back the past. A young man that fought. A young man that danced.
Lilac and honey. It was an aroma that hurled Emile back to times and places he had long since forsaken. He was sprinting toward the very smell that embodied such nostalgia. He remembered the barroom where he first encountered it.
Then he remembered a home destroyed, blood, and the foul stench of death from a young man who no longer existed. It flushed away all the warmth of nostalgia and replaced it with cold fury.
"Zola," he breathed out as he kept running down the hallways. How had he ended up there? He could not remember now. Lilac and honey were the only things on his mind. Where was he? He did not care. At the end of his path would be vengeance.
At the end of this path would be the meal he had been craving.
After what felt like minutes of unrestrained sprinting, he had reached the source of the smell. It was a large chamber, spanning at least a hundred meters from end to end. It was wide, and there were stone pillars that only reached halfway up the ceiling and destroyed benches. There were no lilacs or honeybees, but Emile knew the smell did not come from them.
It was the perfume belonging to the person in the center of the room. One of them anyway. There was an extra in a red coat and pants with a goofy looking hat. He did not matter to Emile. No. His goal was the woman standing next to him.
She was facing Emile because his fate would not allow him to avoid her face. She was gorgeous, undeniably the kind of woman a younger Emile would have done any number of things to get a hello from.
Her slick black hair was in a tight bun atop her head. Her armor was dark as night, and artwork of white spiderwebs covered her shoulderguards and midsection. She still had the dark eyes of the Savorian she once was, and her gentle smile showed the beginnings of a pair of razor sharp teeth.
"Milady," the man with the hat said as Emile approached slowly. There would be no subterfuge. No dirty tricks. No. To Emile, he could only use honor to destroy the one who violated his everything.
"I see him," the woman replied. Her voice was the same as it had been when Emile last heard it fifty years ago. So soft, yet so cold. "Did you miss me so much, Emile, that you had to track me down to my hole in the ground?"
"I've been looking for you, dearest," Emile replied. He was ten meters away, still out of range to do anything to Zola. He had to be careful. He had waited so long for it. "I see you've met someone else. Care to introduce me?"
"This is Hamli," Zola answered. The man took a bow, removing his hat to reveal to Emile an entirely featureless head except for his mouth. "He is one of my bound daemons, and the lord of Veranus as it so happens. Appointed by me of course."
"Another daemon," Emile said. He only glanced at Hamli for another second. He had suspected as much, but he could not worry about that. He was still trying to find the best way to close the distance and tear out Zola's throat. "Whose child did you sacrifice to get him?"
There was something. A noise from the entrance of the room. Emile paid it no mind. He was too close to Zola to let anything stop him.
"Still holding that against me?" Zola asked. She was smirking. Oh how Emile wished he could grab her lips and rip them off. "You know, I asked him if he wanted to help his mother with something. He said yes. You did always say Lerault should be nicer to his mother."
"You wretched bitch," Emile growled out between his teeth. "Don't you dare speak his name. Doing what you did. You don't deserve to call yourself a mother."
"I am eternally grateful to my son." Emile had been inching closer as Zola spoke. Just a bit longer. He needed to maintain enough calmness for a few more paces. Then he would do it. He would bite Zola's face off.
"My sweet Apolline is gone," Emile stated. "And my dear Lerault. They were eaten by demons."
"My love," Zola whispered out. Emile had blinked and she had closed the distance between them before his eyes opened again. She ran a fingertip slowly along his jawline. When Apolline had done that to him, it made Emile melt.
Zola looked too much like her.
Emile blinked again, and then he was on his back. Zola had an armor clad boot on his chest, leaning down to whisper more of her venom. Emile twisted and writhed, but to no avail. Zola was still too strong for him.
"Handle the other intruders, Hamli," Zola ordered. Lord Hamli bowed to her again and walked out of Emile's sight.
"I put those shackles on you to teach you a lesson," Zola hissed out with a sickly smile. "You needed to learn that even as a mighty Savorian warrior, you had limits. Limits that you would never pass no matter how long you trained."
"You're a heartless bitch who killed our son," Emile spat back, craning his neck again. If he could get his teeth on her leg, he could at least rip that off.
"Our? Hm. I haven't thought of him that way since my first daemon binding. I guess I did give birth to him." Zola ground her heel down on him again, drawing out a pained groan from Emile at last. "You are such a lovely fool, Emile. You've chased me this whole time? I think if I could still feel your mortal emotions, I'd be flattered."
"So he's nothing to you anymore," Emile hissed out. His next words were a roar. A roar of a father's fury, buried under sorrow for so long. "HE WAS MY EVERYTHING!" Something was running down his face.
Tears.
"Then you will once again lose everything," Zola whispered. She leaned down, brushing away his tears. "I will let you die suffering. And I will let you die knowing that you brought three more innocent children to me to die."
Zola waved her hand and cast a spell on the floor beneath Emile. The stone itself rose in strands like dozens of snakes. They wrapped around Emile's body, and then coiled tightly. Then Zola waved her hand again, and a man sized flame erupted from the floor next to them.
"My magic stops me from drying out," Zola said. She was chuckling. Chuckling as she restrained Emile next to the roaring fire. "Can you imagine that, Emile? A Savorian, unafraid of flames. This power surprises me more everyday."
"You," Emile muttered out. He was growing weaker, his throat barely able to force out the air to speak. He could hear the sounds of nearby battle. His friends. Cort. Lond. Haley. Ashen. They were fighting without him. "Let them go. Between me and you."
"Goodbye, my lost love," Zola said. She walked out of sight. Emile could just listen and watch. His friends could be dying for all he knew, and the flame beside him was too hot.
He could not even cry.