The Wanderer - 210 (Patreon)

Chapter 210 – Pillar

[2009 – October]

My every step stirring up the cold ashes on the ground, I left the place.

Ultimately, I had chosen to eradicate the whole base. I could not allow someone that wantonly drew on my strength to live, or more accurately, I did not want to allow such a thing.

I did not care that he wouldn't be aware of what he was doing since his whole existence violated the rules to which I willingly adhered as the Realm Lord of the Darkforce Dimension.

I allowed others to draw on my strength but never was there someone that didn't have to pay the price for doing so. And as a higher being, how could I allow an unrelated mortal to take advantage of me?

This wasn't just a point of pride though as I had been able to sense the faintest potential of a threat from Mister Negative, his unique ability to transform Darkforce into an energy force that belonged solely to him by fusing it with Lightforce, seemingly representing a counter to my Darkforce-related abilities

Naturally, this was only the case if he could have grown a thousand, a million times stronger, which was nearly impossible. Still, why would I raise a cat that might someday turn into a tiger and act against me?

Not really believing in mercy, I had thus not hesitated for long before I had decided to ruthlessly rip the life from said mortal.

Eliminating the problem at its root, I had directly razed the whole laboratory.

This also gave Tandy and Tyrone a chance to naturally awaken their abilities and escape HYDRA's clutches for the time being, which was the whole extent of my help.

If this wasn't enough of an opportunity for them to survive, and maybe turn into figures of power and renown, then that was simply fate.

Their life and death weren't really of any concern to me, so I didn't bother to spread my senses in an effort to locate them or just find out if they even were in New York. I had only remembered them by chance, in the first place.

Walking down the dark street, the street lights flickering, I vanished into a cloud of Darkforce, reappearing in Emma's penthouse the next instant.

Standing by the large window that functioned as the exterior wall of the large living and kitchen area, her almost skin-tight, pastel-green business suit hugged her perfect womanly curves flawlessly as she turned her head to face me.

Her gorgeous features carried an indecipherable expression under a mask of calm, though there was a hint of mild surprise and clinical curiosity in the depths of her crystal eyes as if she knew what I had done but didn't understand why I had done it.

“Let's talk about the meeting with the Professor and Erik.”, I suggested calmly.

Pausing for a moment, a small yet heart-stealing smile appeared on Emma's face as she stepped closer to sit back down at the table, not voicing out any of the thoughts that were clearly on her mind.

"Sure.", she said invitingly as I helped her take a seat by moving her chair closer to the table, which resulted in a hint of gentleness sneaking into her expression instead of the pure charm that she otherwise exuded.

…

Seeing Elijah's figure appear with a cloud of dark smoke, his shadowed gaze carrying an almost physical weight, Emma couldn't help but marvel for a moment at her younger brother's incredible charm.

Unkempt dark hair framed his sharp features, his tall and perfectly muscled figure filling out his black hoodie and his dark jeans handsomely.

Elijah didn't just have the Frost family's good looks, he also had this ethereal aura of mystery, quiet danger, and silent strength.

His charm could only be described as devilish and Emma had no problem understanding why a lot of her students were silently pining for him, even if they had only seen him a rare few times when he walked through the main building of the Massachusetts Academy to reach her office.

Her own charm was a weapon that she had honed in the pits of despair, suffering having acted as her whetstone. She had learned how to wield her charm to her absolute advantage, manipulating people even without her telepathic powers.

Elijah was very different than her in this aspect as he had no interest in manipulation and power struggles, his raw strength making him an existence that just naturally incited fear in even the most powerful humans.

And yet, his charm wasn't any less than hers.

It made her feel a strange sense of familial kinship even if she knew that her younger brother would never think to weaponize this particular 'strength' of his.

Still, she pushed aside these thoughts almost at the same time that they appeared, her focus turning to what her psychic senses had just told her.

Being an Omega-level telepath, her psychic range could easily cover the whole city even if she couldn't read every living person's mind in her range at the same time. This though didn't stop her from sensing a cluster of dozens of mental signatures just disappearing in an instant.

She didn't know who these mental signatures had belonged to but Emma instinctively knew that it was Elijah that had just wiped them out.

Curious, and a tad bit surprised since her younger brother wasn't usually keen on displaying his power in such an unrestrained manner if not forced, she could only speculate why he had just taken these lives.

At the same time, she naturally made a mental note to have the area where she had just sensed this disturbance investigated before returning her thoughts to the present while gazing at her younger brother.

“Let's talk about the meeting with the Professor and Erik.”, Elijah voiced out calmly, and she could smile in agreement, admiring his impassive ruthlessness.

No one would ever be able to guess it if they had seen her younger brother with his lover, his gentle and loving temperament when he was around her able to mislead even the keenest observer.

But, despite his chosen path as an ethereal spectator, Elijah was a destroyer. It was seemingly in his nature to ruthlessly shatter every unavoidable obstacle in his path, thoughts of mercy being something foreign to him.

He wasn't blindly violent though, instead, he was serene at heart and just had no interest in schemes or strategies.

There was purity in his strength and Emma, not unlike her daughter, found comfort and a sense of safety with him even though she was the older sibling.

Without a doubt, she was the leader of the Frost family but in her mind, Elijah had already replaced her as the family's pillar.

Unable to stop the gentle smile from drawing up the corners of her lips when her younger brother effortlessly lifted her chair a bit and brought her closer to the heavy wooden table in front of her, a sense of warmth coursed through her icy heart, Elijah's silent care for her not lost to her eyes.