[Private - Requiem & Zhyriad] Crossing Paths

Come on…for the few seconds Glyde spent waiting for a response, his eyes falred with a begging sort of look, him wanting the answer to be a straight “yes.” In a way, he waned to leave something behind in his wake; and what better to leave behind than a trial of Academy operatives felled by his hands? He knew deep down that his hopes were foolish. The Masters would not be dissuaded by his killing off their agents and peers. If anything, the act would trigger a greater manhunt, and probably, Glyde’s (and Malisa’s if she stuck through it) death. So it was more so a desire to further showcases his seriousness, and the fact that he wasn’t about to go down without fighting first. “Well?” he said after a short second or two. “What are we gonna--?”

He cut part way into her sentence before he actually started to listen. All he caught of it was “I have a better idea.” That was all he needed to hear to know that there would be no more deaths. It was also his cue (as well as the gathering of energy around his “partner”) that he would do best to remove himself from her line of fire. As he stepped away, backing behind Malisa, he, quite narrowly, avoided the spell cast upon the guard. He watched, with a slight pouting look on his face, as the spell worked itself upon the guard with ease.

“Yeah, not so tough now your woman’s g--.” The guard had started to speak, trailing off into a deep sleep, as the spell itself seemed to briefly envelop him. He fell to the ground with a soft thud. Not even a moment later, he was suspended above the ground by Malisa’s spell circle.

“I guess that works,” Glyde mumbled with half a breath. Then, more so to himself, he added on “note to self: remember to learn a few tricks from her while you can.”

“What in the hell is going on here?” said a sharp, demanding female voice.

Now, Glyde faced not some deranged, battered, and ugly to boot grunt, but an almost stunningly pretty woman. She was a small person, reaching only about chest height on Glyde (who wasn’t all that tall himself). Her hair was light brown and waist long maintained with some significant. Despite her shortness, and small size, she stood with an authority unlike most of the men that Glyde had met in his life. The second his eyes met with her eagle-like gaze, he looked away, as though it would do something to ward her scrutiny away.

“Get in.” even with a higher pitched voice, the woman’s words carried with the weight of a sledgehammer against Glyde’s chest. “And drop him,” she said to Malisa, nodding toward the guard suspended in the spell circle. “Never mind.” I’ll do it. You get inside as well.”​

 

Glyde did as he was told, and went into the house, walking down a short, narrow corridor that let out into the living room space. It was a small room, like every one in the Masters' condos were; small, yes, but more cozy than anything the Apprentices, or the Knights were ever given. Glyde had been in his old teacher's house only once before, during his training. Although he had only seen the kitchen and the living room that time, he knew for a fact that nothing about the house had changed since then. The living room floor was still lined with the firm, beige carpeting, and still housed the same brown armchairs and couch placed around a small fire pit. The walls, as they had always been, were matched to the floor, and had no decoration or hangings. If his teacher had been compelled to redecorate, she'd have certainly updated everything in her house out of her "no stragglers" methodology.

He flopped himself down lazily into one of the two armchairs, and from there, didn't bother with trying to sit up straight and proper. He was starting feel like coming back to the Academy was a bad decision on his part, particularly coming to someone who knew him so well; for all he knew, she could have resolved to bring him back in herself when she found out what was happening.

When Malisa came striding in joyously about the young Keyblade Master, he let out a humorous chuckle. "Yeah," he said, "she's a bit like that. Half the male Masters are downright afraid of her sometimes. And the other half are, at best, uneasy when she gets into the mix. Don't think I've ever met someone else that ran such a hard ship. And yeah," he said in finishing, "she did teach me to use the Keyblade. Though, actually, it was something more like teaching me how to teach myself. A lot of 'independent study' with her." He let out another chuckle. He wasn't so much taught to teach himself as much he was forced to, slapped in the middle of some unforgiving situation, where he either had to figure it out, or get injured or otherwise killed. Just a classic fly or fall sort of program, though luckily, no one he knew had fallen.

"Well?"

Glyde looked up properly now, and looked at the young woman, standing in front of his armchair with her arms folded across her chest, and a stern expression dominating her face. He sat up straighter, and tried to match her displeasure with a sort of self-righteousness. It wasn't very easy, since he knew he was only bluffing, and she did too. It was like a staring contest, or a game of chicken, and in the end, Glyde was the one that broke. "Mistress Thal--." As soon as he started to speak, he was railed upside the head by the surprisingly steel-hard fists of the woman. He didn't think it was possible, but another glance up at the woman showed him a face more angry than the one before.

"Don't 'Mistress Thalia' me, Glyde Adrian Savian!" she said, repressing the shouting voice that was no-doubt welled inside her lungs. "Do you have any idea what they're going to do to you if they find you? I mean, what were thinking coming back here? And more so, bringing HER along into the mess?" her gaze fixed on Malisa, then back to Glyde a second later, and after that, she backed up into a position from where she would be able to address both of them together. "Did either of you think ANYTHING before coming here?"​

 

Mistress Thalia's glaring sharpened upon Malisa; the look on her face was one that seemed to issue a challenge to the young sorceress. "Find out the 'goings on,' you say?" Thalia demanded. "Have you been under a rock the whole time you've been with him? The goings on have been that you." She turned back to Glyde, and added, "and you." She took a light breath to calm herself before continuing. "Are wanted as criminals." She turned back to Malisa, dropping her hands to a grip around her hips. "Glyde's wanted for treason, because he didn't kill you as ordered. You, for that matter, are wanted for the simple fact that you didn't die, and now, it seems, for consorting with someone convicted of treason."

Slowly, she backed down from her onslaught of words, and pulled the second armchair in closer. Almost exasperated by the ordeal, she dropped into the chair, and leaned forward in thought. "You should know, and I mean the both of you should know, that I'm bound by the laws of The Academy to bring the two of you in to the other Masters, to stand further trial for your crimes." She took a moment's pause for thought, and continued. "If it weren't for my personal ideaology of not turning my own students, and their... close companions, I'd be fixed to do so. However, I can, and will be allowing the both of you walk free from here, provided that you can clear what you need to say in short."

"Wait a minute!" from somewhere, though he couldn't say where exactly, Glyde had regained his confidence, and spoken up. You're helping us then?"

"You sound surprised," Thalia said. "You know for a fact that I don't forfeit my own students. So yes, for lack of a better term, I am helping you, at least right now."

"But you've always said that the laws of The Academy were the most pivotal and--."

"And that was several years ago that I taught you that. Times have changed, and people have changed. You've never been able to easily stomach things like that Glyde, though to your credit, you survive considerably well despite it. Things have been different in more recent days. The High Masters, in particular The Grandmaster of The Academy, have been growing into a blinded state. They see the Light, but it's far too bright for them to focus with, and their ideals have been growing pure to an extreme. The reason has been dictated by law, rather than law dictated by reason.

"It's been going on for some time now; self-contradicting schemes of how to keep the worlds in line, extreme punishments for miniscule crimes, and some things that never should have been considered illegal in the first place. But it's always been spaced out and unheard of. You, Glyde, seem to be the first true convict of The Academy."

"And why so much attention to me?"

"Because the higher ups amongst The Academy's Masters have been growing paranoid. There are tales being told by scouts out on the edge of the worlds, that there's something big along the way, and that whatever it is has the potential to cause untold destruction. We Masters hear of tales of many people, Keybearers even, going rogue from the path of Light, and when you failed to complete the mission you were assigned, it was believed that you were connected to something of that sort. After all, you did make the conscious choice to miss that last shot you took at her." The Mistress fell silent.

Glyde remained in his own silence as well. He hadn't just been randomly plucked from the crop as a traitor. He was somehow, by means of assuemd association, connected to a distant string of betrayals, and faltering to the Darkness that was already beginning to sweep across the worlds on the edge of the Light. If that was the case, then... he didn't completely understand. "So then... what is there left to do?" he asked at last.

 

Glyde looked to Malisa in shallow and quick contemplation. Only two of her ideas of what to make with next registered with his own thoughts: staying and fighting, or fleeing until something decided to give, and his situation loosen up enough for him to return. The idea of allowing himself to fall to capture was a far cry from anything he'd have thought to do. It would have given things all the ease, with no benefit other than not having to deal with any further woes of the apparent corruption of the head honchos.

A second after he glanced over his options, he came to his snag, lying between fighting the Academy, and leaving with Malisa to wherever she could get to. "Sure," he said to her. "Sure enough we can say 'screw it and run' and then be out of here. But you're forgetting that I've got family in THIS plane of existence, family that, for all I know, is being punished as we speak. My mother, my half-sister... I... I wouldn't be able to rest too easy if the last family I was certain to have was being tortured or imprisoned. Personally, I'd say we stay here, stay here hand fight until we've either killed the last Academy grunt thrown at us, or until we're killed ourselves."

"Don't be stupid," Thalia spat at him. "Remember what else I've taught you? Hmmm?"

"What do you mean?"

"Sometimes, it's better to run away. Trust me on this. You'll be far better off yourself if you get someplace where the Academy can't get to you. You're family, will be safer if you're gone. So long as you're mother and half-sister don't give away that they have seen you recently, and that they know where you've been or where you are, they won't likely be bothered either. I can see to that much for you. Oh, and as an added incentive, I can't keep helping you if you stay and fight. If you continue to knock around, and compromise yourself for the sake of revenge, then I will have no choice but to turn you in... and that goes for both of you."

The whole spiel was more than enough to convince Glyde that flight was the only way out for the time being. So long as Thalia could take care of his family, he knew that they'd be, at the very least, unharmed, even if not out of suspicion. "Then it's settled," he said. We'll go... but one thing. What if they trace the two of us to you? I mean, they might have expected us to come here. And besides, that watchman--.

"Won't remember that he saw either of you once he's woken up," Thalia cut in. "And don't worry. The Academy doesn't know you the way I do. THEY think you're downright clever." She capped off this final statement with a pleasant, joking smile, and added on, "now hurry up and get out of here."

"OK," Glyde said to Malisa, pulling himself out of the chair. "Let's get this over with. Take as wherever, as long it's someplace The Academy won't be likely to look for us."​