13th CARD › “Shackled”
“Gio, it’s okay.”
A voice called out. A voice lost to time.
Faye Star, Gio’s late wife, calling out from the darkness.
“This isn’t your fault. It’s okay. I’m right here.”
He wanted to reach out and take hold of her hand, but there was no way to do so. All that lie before him was darkness. His own body was gone. His senses were lost. He tried to figure out where he was and what was going on, but his thoughts were a blur.
Memories flooded through him like a busy intersection at rush hour. The moment he thought he could hold onto a scene to play it out in his mind was the same moment the scene had passed him.
This wasn’t a dream nor a nightmare.
It was both real and not.
Time and space were present but lost.
Though, despite the trials that plagued him, Gio pushed further. The darkness began to give way in the distance. A small, flickering flame, illuminated the world – but as hopeful as that flame was, it was just as devastating when it faded away.
“Gio…”
A voice that wasn’t Faye’s rang, echoing through the void. A voice with no substance and yet the ferocity of a lion’s roar. It called out to Gio, pulling him in, constricting him. It was suffocating.
“Burn… burn… burn it all away…”
Once again the flame returned, far in the distance, but Gio could no longer reach it. The foreign voice had hold on him. Escape was not an option. The only option was to accept this fate. The fight was over.
“Burn… burn… Hurry, a frost is coming…”
The flame flickered wildly, dancing, and soon it began streaking across the darkness. What was once an endless void gained color, substance, and as the flame grew closer Gio could feel his shackles weakening.
“Burn… burn… BURN…”
Gio’s body was free as the fire consumed him, burning him from head to toe, revealing the body and soul that had moments ago been nothing. However, the more the flame revealed, the closer Gio grew to the sight of something horrible.
Standing before him was a figure born of the flames, just as his own body returned to him. At first the figure seemed unrecognizable, just a mass of flames given human shape, but it was the sight of his wife.
Her body, bloody and broken, burning to death all over again. She couldn’t scream. She didn’t even flinch. All Faye could do was smile, reaching her hand out to Gio.
“It’s okay.”
Screams of agony burst forth, consuming everything.
The screams were his own. He was crying out in pain.
« — »
“It appears he’s finally coming to. Perhaps I’ll tone down my power in the future.”
Victor’s old and wrinkled face was not quite the sight Wild Card expected to be waking up to.
He was still groggy from the drugs and attack, though Gio himself didn’t remember those two things very well. All he could remember was giving himself up to the hunters – and then everything became hazy. With the sight of Victor before him, Gio instinctively struggled to be free, but he was restrained. Thorns cut into his arms, legs, neck, and torso.
The vines of Rose were ferocious. Questioning her rank as King seemed rather foolish.
The real problem was the searing pain shooting up Gio’s left arm. A pain that only came to be when around Rose. First there was the encounter at the arena which crippled Gio for much of the fight, then today. Something was occurring which shouldn’t have been possible.
“Y-You…” It was barely a whisper. Gio’s voice seemed lost.
“No need to strain yourself, Jaeger. You’re in the custody of two Kings of New Eden. You won’t be going anywhere but the executioner’s axe. Well, hahaha—” Victor’s sarcastic laugh was nauseating. “—I guess you won’t actually be going to someone’s axe. I plan to silence you once and for all myself. Before then, though…”
Victor stood from his wooden chair. Gio’s eyes followed him, revealing the group to be in a rather fancy looking penthouse of some kind. With how large and luxurious it appeared to be, there was a good chance this was the personal residence of Victor himself.
“Before I end you, Giotto Jaeger, I’m curious. What makes you tick, hm? This Wild Card that you’ve become, what did it take? Simply murdering your Jack and Queen? What’s also interesting – how do you still have a connection to the King of Hearts? Why does your mark glow and cause you pain around the new King? She even seemed ever so slightly affected before.”
Victor could barely contain himself. He wanted to poke and prod at Gio before he killed him. There was no mistake to be made – the Diamonds King wanted him dead. But he felt it was vital to understand the power of the Wild Card.
Victor was sure that if a being such as that could exist, there was the chance for more to appear in the future. He had to be ready to defeat future Wild Cards. This was the evil that Victor was certain posed the biggest threat to New Eden. A being with the power of the Wild Card, able to use the abilities of others and to such an extent, was dangerous.
That wasn’t the sole reason, though.
Victor could deal with dangerous. Many Espers were dangerous but they could be taught to control their power. As far as Victor believed, the Wild Card had the potential to randomly kill thousands without a second thought. A single awakening of the Wild Card power was enough to kill a Queen, a Jack, and hundreds of others. It was enough to cause a King to fall for the first time.
Victor would stop such things from happening again.
His methods were questionable and his sanity seemingly lacking in his old age, but, Victor cared for the city and its citizens above even his own life. He felt that this was the only course of action for him to take.
Perhaps he was even right.
Perhaps the Wild Card was the true enemy of New Eden.
Not even Gio could say for certain that he wasn’t. The incident four years ago was reason enough for him to doubt his own power.
“Can’t find the words? I suppose that these restraints aren’t the best for conversing in. Unfortunately, they won’t be coming off anytime soon. It is best to get comfortable.”
Victor stepped closer to Gio. He was examining his left hand as it continued to glow a crimson glow that it should have long stopped doing. It truly threw him for a loop how such a thing was possible.
The marks of the Houses represented a connection to said Houses. All who bore a mark had with it their rank and House in clear view. Of course, these marks weren’t natural. The Aces, long ago, created the marks and granted them to the first Kings of New Eden – a position that Victor first held at the age of eighteen, sixty years ago.
These marks were then capable of being distributed to Espers by the Kings. A single King, a single Queen, and a single Jack – they stood above the Numbers, ranks filled with multiple members from two to ten.
When Gio Fell from Grace four years ago his connection to his own House, Hearts, should have been severed.
Something that was made more obvious by the fact a new King had been appointed by the Aces – Rose. Despite this, Gio still held his mark.
Victor’s thoughts began to race.
“Rose?”
The Diamonds King turned, facing his monotonous daughter behind him. A daughter blindly following the will of her father despite she herself being a King as well.
“.. Rose?”
He spoke again, Rose snapping her attention back to him with a stiffened jolt.
“S-Sire! I mean, father, I—”
“Do you feel anything right now?”
Victor didn’t even give her the chance to speak her mind openly.
Perhaps what Patricia Barnes said in that underground arena was true. Perhaps she was just a puppet. Unfortunately, now was not the time to be lost in thought and Rose nervously shook her head in response.
“Hmm, nothing? Interesting.” Victor reached down, taking hold of Gio’s glowing left hand. “She feels nothing now and yet you are crippled? That in itself is a mystery… but why had your mark not vanished in your fall? Why did the Aces not feel your presence and have the ability to forcefully remove it?”
He released the bloodied hand and stepped back towards Rose, examining both her and Gio back and forth for a moment.
Then, a look upon his face that was the personification of the word eureka.
What was so obvious, what had never been said before, truly made the most sense.
Rushing back, Victor gripped tight on that illuminated left hand with such ferocity that Gio’s raspy screams escaped him.
“It was there! Right there the whole time! Oh, how I was so blind. It makes all the sense in the world. Everything we thought we knew, we knew nothing!” He smirked, looking back to Rose with overflowing confidence. “You see, daughter – Giotto Jaeger, Wild Card, never Fell from Grace.”
As they say; eureka.
Rose’s own static disposition shifted, her contorted face showing obvious confusion, but she was overpowered by the look her father gave.
“H-How can he not be a fallen…?”
Victor once again released Gio and stood tall, ignoring the blood that now smeared his own hands.
“That, my dear, is the ultimate inquiry. For any and all who know of the event, Giotto Jaeger surely fell that day. The catastrophe was just like other falls – worse, even. But if he did indeed not fall that day… if it was something else… But, what?”
The ramblings of Victor did little to distract Gio from the pain which consumed him. He didn’t even feel the thorns of the vines. All he could feel was the pain resonating from his left hand. Though as Victor rambled further and further, Gio’s interest slowly drew him to the present and away from his mind numbing pain.
Never fell, he says? That’s impossible. Any idiot could tell you what happened. I killed hundreds of innocents.
A few stray tears began to fall down his dirty, blood stained face.
I killed them all, but most importantly, I killed friends. I killed my Jack. I killed my Queen… she was—
The fog in his mind began to slowly clear. Gio was regaining his coherent thoughts. He felt the pain, yes, but he began to truly soak in his surroundings of what was there – and of what wasn’t.
Sera, his partner, his friend, was not there. Gio was restrained against a wall. If she was in the same room, he would have seen her. Not to mention, if she was there, surely Victor or Rose would have kept an eye on her just to be safe.
Though both his captives were here. Sera was not.
Sera? Where could she… what happened? What happened?!
His body, supposedly held perfectly in place by the vines, twitched. Normally it would have meant nothing, but the way Gio was held meant he shouldn’t have been able to do even that. The fact he could manage even a twitch showed that he was in some way overcoming the plants which bound him.
Victor and Rose were caught up conversing, but Gio could no longer understand what they were saying. His mind and body were focused on the fact Sera was absent. Another twitch. His heart rate was sky rocketing. Within him, he was beginning to relate Sera’s absence to that of his wife’s.
What happened to her?! How did I get here?! Where are those moments of my life!! Give them back to me, give them back!!
The sight that Gio saw began to shift from that of reality to that of his dreams. Of his memories. One second he was watching two Kings, the next he was being consumed by fire, buried beneath a building. He was switching from the high class penthouse suite to miles of death and destruction.
Faye, where are you?! Faye!! Faye!!
His twitches soon became a constant, continued struggle. He pulled his arms forward, trying to break free of his shackles, and the vines were beginning to give way. The thorns cut deeper, slicing flesh like confetti, but he didn’t even notice. His own pain was inconsequential.
Faye!! I… I can save you!! … Sera!! Sera, where are you?! Damnit, let me go! Wake me up! I won’t go through this—
“—Not AGAIN!”
Victor spun back around as Gio screamed out, but not even the man considered the greatest King was fast enough. Vines snapped like twigs. Flames erupted through the floor, consuming Gio’s entire body and the remaining constraints. The two Kings tried to react, rushing forward, but flames blew outwards and sent both flying back.
The walls of the penthouse were consumed by the same fire, blowing outwards, and causing an explosion of hot air to consume the entire upper floor of what the morning sun revealed to be a skyscraper standing tall right in the middle of New Eden.
This was indeed Victor’s personal residence – which just so happened to be atop Diamonds HQ in District One.
“Rose! Rebind him, now!!”
Victor’s sparking lightning spun around him and latched onto the floor. It spread across it, creating an electrified walkway – but most importantly he remained glued to the burning penthouse rather than being blown out into the city below.
Rose’s vines had latched onto the remaining support walls near the center of the floor, but she struggled to even stay in place.
“How can I contain that?!”
Flaming twisters shot outwards, cutting through chunks of the floor, forcing Victor to leap upwards and use his electricity to hang from the patches of the ceiling still intact. Rose used walls of thick wood, spawned from crimson lights behind her, to rush before her and block the attacks – she was barely fast enough to do so.
“Charge, now! As Kings we must face this threat with all that we are! Do not hold back anymore, daughter!” Victor was moving as he spoke, touching down on the ground and using pure electrical energy to slam into the flames head on. “Giotto Jaeger, you are too dangerous to be kept alive any longer! I hereby sentence you to death!”
Razor sharp vines flung forward, aided by the lightning cutting a path through the flames.
Contact was made, evident by the screams, but the flames blocked the sight of Gio.
“Cut him down, Rose!”
Sirens sounded from the streets below as emergency personnel were on the move. That included the forces of the House of Diamonds, mobilized to rush into the building of their King.
Thousands of citizens still asleep in their beds and out on their way to work were witnessing the sudden explosions at Diamonds Headquarters, unsure what it was they were watching. Even normal citizens without a supernatural bone in their body could feel the weight, the pressure being put out by not just one King but multiple.
Gio was, of course, putting out the same power as a King.
Rose continued to unleash attack after attack, following the path of lightning to get close to Gio, and his screams of torment continued – but they were not the end of him. Perhaps those screams didn’t even have anything to do with the attacks.
The fire began to fade, seemingly a signal of the Kings’ impending victory, but that was not the case. Gio was moving, dashing forward and right at Victor. His body moved back and forth, dodging the continued attacks of Rose with a hair’s width to spare. Victor had to use his power defensively, holding himself in place and forming an electrical barrier for the fires of Gio.
“Where is she?! Where is Sera?! Victor!!”
Gio saw nothing but rage and blood. His emotions had boiled over to the point he was no longer himself. Memories from the past that were unclear began to meld with the present, sending him deeper into despair than he had ever ventured before. His ability of The Fiery was now his outlet for that emotion. He was going wild.
He was fighting to kill his enemies. He was fighting to kill both Victor and Rose.
Flames were passing along the entire building, ripping through supports and consuming anything they could get a hold of. This was the beginning of the end – this was the growing power of someone who could destroy the entirety of New Eden.
Victor stepped back, no longer using his power to maintain a footing, and instead he gathered it around his hand and threw a ferocious fist right at Gio’s nearing skull.
“Sera Noel?! The partner you brought down your life of crime?! She has been left to the hunters! Her fate was her own doing – no, excuse me, it was your doing!”
Gio’s own hand, his left, gathered flames – but as the pain from before grew more intense his flames stuttered.
The electrified punch made contact, sending Gio crashing backwards through the floor and down to the room just below.
“Quickly, finish him!”
Victor leapt after him, but Rose hesitated.
For a moment she questioned what this was and what they were doing. She had not done so before, but, watching her father act this way… it wasn’t like him. This wasn’t the same man who saved her and took her in to his home.
Despite her sudden feelings of hesitation, she dove in just a second later.
Gio’s body was covered in flames. They were burning all around him, but of course he was spared of their destructive power. He stood from the shattered tiles that covered the now ruined kitchen, looking up as Victor dove right at him.
Flames and electricity met once again, the force of both attacks so great that Victor was suspended in mid-air as the two magical properties collided – but Gio, no matter how strong, was as a disadvantage.
Leaf-shaped objects began to appear around Victor, made of a garnet colored energy. These leaves swirled, gathering more and more in number, and finally they released their built up momentum to slice through the flames. Gio tried to match them, fireballs flying out to greet them, but he was overwhelmed and once again went flying backwards.
This time he crashed into what remained of the fridge, his body making a human-shaped dent in its metal coating.
The flames were fading away. Gio’s strength was fracturing due to the overwhelming strength of the Kings he faced and the fact his body was reacting so negatively around Rose.
“This is it, Giotto Jaeger! Your disastrous deeds come to an end today.”
Victor’s electric energy formed again around his hand. They then stretched outwards, forming what looked like a sword made of lightning. With Gio unable to properly stand and his flames becoming nonexistent, this would be the end of the battle.
“.. For what it’s worth, former King of Hearts,” Victor now stood directly in front of Gio, his voice having only slightly softened. “I do feel a bit of remorse that you went down such a path. Perhaps in death you may see the error of your ways.”
The lightning blade in his hands was held upwards and to the right, slashed at an angled stroke, aiming to behead Gio in a brilliant flash of light.
I still need to find her… Sera, where are you… I’m sorry I got you caught up in this.
In Gio’s mind, even as the sword that meant his death fell towards him, he found the time around him to stand still.
I can’t even protect those close to me after all this time. Nothing has changed at all. Sera, Faye, everyone… I’m sorry.
His rage that blinded him seemed to fade as the flames around him dispersed entirely. His desire to protect those closest to him remained, but in his condition, his conviction seemed to fade just as quickly.
.. But there was a voice inside him that still cried out.
A voice fighting to be heard.
A voice that wanted to free Gio from his past, his pain.
That’s not like you at all, Gio!
That snappy yet playful tone of hers that always felt warm even when she was angry. Like she was a child trying to play the responsible adult. Faye was still there, trying to push Gio on, but it seemed he wasn’t able to live up to her expectations.
You know things are never going to be easy, right? That’s why you have friends; there to help you, to support you, to protect you.
Gio didn’t quite see it that way. He had hurt those closest to him in the worst way. Death followed him everywhere. He pushed those that were still there even further away. His world was tucked away, close by, only for himself and no one else. Getting close to others was just another way to cause them pain.
If what you felt was so true, why do so many people continue to lend you their hand? Even in chance meetings, you connect to so many people so quickly, Gio.
Perhaps Gio saw it as a curse. His connections to others that formed so quickly was what made it easier for him to put them in danger, to cause them sadness. Just like four years ago.
You’re wrong, Gio. There’s a goodness inside of you. A heart of goodwill. Even in the bitter cold, you are still a warm person. These flames that have protected you for four long years—
The pain that consumed Gio from his former mark of the King began to fade away, just like the mark itself. The red glow of Hearts was fading from his hand, the sight of which left Victor’s blade attack frozen in mid-air.
—Let these flames, my flames, finally melt away the icy shell around your heart.
~ END 13TH CARD ~