Only The Strong Survive- Interlude One

Ari strode up to Zurina and her sisters’ simple home, fiery golden eyes alight with his own sick expectations. And although Zurina was blind, he knew that she knew he was approaching the Knight Sisters’.

He broadened his shoulders and collected his wits about him, looking at the simple one bedroom house that was on the outer edge of his camp. The house was small and homely, with tall steeple rooflines and pealing ashy paint. Once inside he looked around, as the inside was dark as usual, as he had commanded. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he picked out the low couch in the corner and the hand-drawn pencil sketches on the walls, scenes from the memories of the sisters. But on the couch he saw the leaned over figures of three near adult girls, one of them swaying slightly while the others were still as statues.

“Do you continue to doubt the skills of my sisters and me? I could think of no other reason you would visit us after we have done the job you wanted of us.” The eloquence in which the Knight Sisters spoke put Ari off, not to mention that the girl who was speaking was Zurina- and her blind white eyes didn’t help.

“Zurina my dear woman-” Ari started.

“Do I look like your dear woman?” Zurina asked dangerously, cocking her head, seeing him with her blank eyes. “Now I would like you to call me that once more, humor me, I’m begging you.”

Wisely Ari declined, thinking of how to rephrase what he was going to say. “Zurina I don’t doubt that the three of you are capable, I only doubt that you did it… with your ties to the AAGN as it is.” Ari kept his response cryptic, hinting at a much darker and deeper knowledge that did not sit well with the Knight Sisters. But at once he knew he shouldn’t have mentioned, or even hinted at, the Knight Sisters’ ties to the AAGN.

“And you’re ties?” The other still girl said softly. “Not only you’re brother, but the spy. Do you trust your spy enough to allow her to give you credible information? She’s pliable… Pliable is nothing you want. I can see it in your heart.”

He spun round at the girl, Mirai, with calculating eyes. “Nobody trusts a spy. But she gives us noteworthy intelligence- that’s enough for me.” He recalled the chilling, luminous, pale eyes of his spy.

For the moment he finished speaking he had the stone cold gazes of the three sisters. “Things are not as they seem in the AAGN,” Zurina spoke just as cryptically. Her white eyes, Amaia’s pale blue eyes, and Mirai’s dark blue eyes pierced into Ari’s without intimidation. All the girls were pale as porcelain with raven black hair, giving Ari a feeling of fright he was not accustomed to.

“If we are trying to break them apart they better get them,” was all Ari said in his defense. He knew ‘them’ was the dreams he ordered and designed to be sent.

“Why must you force us to work in the dark?” the eldest sister, Amaia, said in her faint mousy voice, her head bent down with her raven hair down in front of her face. The strands of hair in front of her lips blew in and out slowly with each breath.

“I am not like you girls. In the dim lighting I can see whether or not your skills worked.” Ari’s eagle eyes drifted down to the ethereal white wolfhound, muscular and content, in the corner of the room with its head on Mirai’s lap. The dog lifted its head momentarily to pierce Ari’s gaze, the same gaze that he ordered to haunt the AAGN. She was stroking the mist of its head gingerly. “And I can see you have.”

“Your pleasure at our minimal effort is only adequately amusing.” After her dry response Zurina put a hand on Amaia’s shoulder, the powers being contained within the core racking Amaia’s body with spasms of raw energy. “Why don’t you let her use herself, you won’t have to worry about those pesky AAGNs anymore.”

It was not a question, and Ari knew this, feeling like he was losing control of the conversation. “We practically lost a member the last time Amaia let loose on anyone, and it was only by the grace of Mirai’s skill that Zephyr survived. I will not allow Amaia to use herself anywhere near the Rebellion and our members. Be glad we let you all create Zephyr- he’s shaping up well.”

Mirai blinked once, not daring to look at her eldest sister, averting her eyes to the hound’s head on her lap. Her dark eyes didn’t show any emotion, but a thin smile graced her lips at the thought of their creation, the boy Zephyr.

In a hoarser voice, Amaia spoke. “I like playing with Zephyr. He is young and I can toss him around with his pretty red wings. I’m glad we created him.”

Ari knew this was Amaia’s split personality emerging, the one that fitted the meaning of her name- ‘the end.’ What Ari also knew was that meant that it was time to leave the Knight Sisters alone. “Before I finally go, you did send them right?”

Zurina’s blind eyes followed Ari’s every move, and Amaia’s hoarse voice replied, “Oh yes my leader, Angelo got his dream. The dreams have been sent.”