18. Placing Plans (1/2)

title: of the darkness||chapter:characters: ryou, shou, camulachapters: 18-25||words: 1,058||total: 20,273genre: family, supernatural||rated: pg-13challenge: diversity writing challenge, ygo gx, j6, multi-chapter with 15-25 chaptersnotes: it's an au. it involves vampires.summary: shou invites his

other in after ryou returns from a long trip away. that is his first mistake. it only gets worse from there.

"what do you plan to do with this… queen vampire?" chaos hunter wanted to know as they moved through the shadows. this wasn't something that she enjoyed at all, but the shadow mage seemed used to it, and talking about plans gave her something else to think about instead of the fact she was doing something that by all rights no one mortal should be able to do.

"if she refuses to release ryou from her thrall, then we're going to dispose of her." the mage didn't say it in a way that indicated he was very happy about it. that reassured her to some extent; she'd not fallen in with bloodthirsty fools who would attempt to slaughter anything that got in their way.

"and if she does?"

that got a slim shrug. "we'll let her go, so long as she doesn't try to kill any more people. we want our friend to be happy, that's all there is to it. as happy as he can be anyway." a small smile tilted his lips upward. "ryou isn't one that settles for a simple kind of happiness, anyway. he's...difficult to please."

from what she knew of the local lord, that sounded right. she'd paid little enough attention to him before all of this started and now she'd only begun to make plans on how to kill him.

"how do you know he'd be better than she is once he's freed?" that was more important to her than anything. if he remained the kind of bloodthirsty monster that his 'mistress' clearly was, then what would be the use of freeing him from her in the first place?

"i know because i know ryou. i've known him since he and fubuki and i were all children and it's not like him to want to hurt people just for the fun of it." fujiwara shook his head a fraction. "he's a good person. he can be rough and he has issues on certain things but he's not a wanton killer."

she wasn't entirely certain she believed that, not to the depth that he did, but he did know the other better than she. she would withhold her judgment on that for now.

without warning the shadows peeled away, replaced by candlelight and lamplight. they now stood inside of a stone-walled room, hung with tapestries, and with a handful of other people there, all of whom looked up with no more concern than if they saw two people emerge from the darkness every day of their lives.

perhaps they did, if they associated with a wizard of the darkness.

one of them strummed a lute and looked up long enough to give them both a small nod as they appeared. "is this the one?"

"yes. she knows about ryou, and has been trying to get people to help," fujiwara said, going over to a side table to pour himself a glass of wine.

chaos hunter's gaze flicked from one of them to another. "and little enough success i've had with that. the entire village seems fixated on the notion that their liege lord couldn't harm a fly if his life depended on it."

"yeah, they're kind of stubborn like that. most of them saw him grow up from a child and even seeing him fight on their behalf doesn't always convince them of what he can do now," the musician said with a simple shrug. "but we can take care of that later. first thing to do is get him away from that vampire so he can make his own choices."