Rynth: Four Beats

| 6th of Teryusin — Year 362 of the Cycle of Synthesis, Grand Cycle ??? |

Raowl: Did you find out anything else about Avil and Cali in your search?

Krockodile: Nothing much. They’re often holed up in their mansion, rarely popping out save for when ol’ daddy calls for his son. You ain’t been watching the news? His father, Oroan, is supposedly close to retiring and said some stuff about having his son take over the business. Lots of interviews of it online.

Raowl: Right…

Raoul frowned at the message, sliding his phone back into his pocket. Peering up, he scanned the layout of the front garden through the bars of steel that made up his swing gate. The two guards stationed at the sides eyed him warily, but didn’t make any moves. Both kept their fingers around their batons, tensing as he ‘hm’d’ his way around the entrance.

“They’re not going to let us through, are they?”

To his side, Idri asked, tilting a confused look aimed at one of the guards.

“Heyyy…” She waved a hand in front of his face. “Are you there? We’re friends of the young master and his maid. Can we come in?”

Both guards stood stalwart in place, their gazes instead turning to the distance in a fruitless attempt to remove the annoyances that were Raoul and Idri from their minds.

“No use,” Raoul frowned. “Why don’t you call Cali, Idri? You should have her number, right?”

“Ahh… about that…” the girl hesitated, touching her fingers together. “I lost my phone a while ago, during one of my hunts in the underground. I tried to look for it, I did, but it probably fell into a narrow crevice or river. I haven’t had a phone since then. What about you, Raoul? Don’t you have their numbers, too?”

“Well, we’re pressed for options, then. Mother took my phone when she separated us. She gave me a new one, one that she installed a tracking app on. It took me a while to find out how to delete the thing.”

Raoul continued to watch the property just past the iron gate. A magnificent, four-story mansion built in style of old Ereaean architecture—of which the world often adopted for its unique approach and devotion to asymmetry and bold, eclectic designs. Two towers, each built in the same precise cut brick and stone that the main home they sandwiched, pierced over twice the height of the highest pitched roof the rest of the mansion boasted. Pristine, transparent clocks twice the size of an adult male aligned toward the southern face of both towers, displaying the black, antiquated symbols that the Inquiry-era empire of Vazinti commonly employed to replace the more well-known Rynthian Numeral System, dubbed the Vazintine Numeral System. Currently, the clocks’ hour and minute hands were stuck on the ‘I’ and ‘VI’ respectively.

Trailing down from the side towers, his eyes descended on the wider corps de logis, a sweeping display of polished almond-colored stone so shiny it reflected much of the light from the afternoon sun. Six railing-lined balconies were awarded to each of the four floors, holding behind them the glass-sealed doors and further behind it the lit rooms of the mansion proper. Size-wise, just the main block and the towers completely dwarfed Raoul’s home in San-Selto by many degrees, and it encouraged a slight, unwilling shiver to run through his body once he imagined having to navigate its halls.

He had been to Avil’s home a few times in his childhood to play, and it was always an enjoyable time. Just the scale of his garden alone gave rise to multiple memorable moments during Hide & Seek, with his favorite memory being the near hour he had spent watching curled over in laughter from Idri’s clueless attempts to locate Cali, unaware that she had passed the very bush their friend had sequestered herself in a half-dozen times.

With the garden as the subject in mind, Raoul couldn’t find much difference in the space itself even after years of having been away from it at first glance. There was still the single lone oak tree in the eastern edge just barely visible from the entrance—a small gift Avil had ordered constructed for Idri during her eleventh birthday. Unlike the one atop Pinky in Tel Midasia, its leaves periodically flourished and wilted as the seasons passed by, though Avil did have quite a penchant for spending some of his own time to take care of it himself—or if he couldn’t, he’d ask Calliope to do it.

That wasn’t all. Rows of carefully picked flowers, each dug up and replanted to coincide with their preferred seasons, often lined the flowerbeds just close to the entrance. Tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils were his personal choices for spring. Pink roses, dahlias, and peonies were often what Cali suggested for summer, while chrysanthemums, aster, and rudbeckia found their places in his fall selection. Winter was the most debated, for unlike the other three seasons, Avil often had heated discussions with Cali on what to have for the cold. They weren’t all static; oftentimes small changes were made and different colors found their way into the quarter-year spotlight. As the current season spoke “fall”, Raoul expected the usual selection to be on display, or at least somewhere close to it.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Comparing and contrasting what he knew of Avil and his fondness for gardening, the sight was simply far too big of a dissimilarity to what he expected. What little flowers laid and could be seen on the front flowerbeds were nearly dead or dying, their bright colors hunched into the ground and their petals wilting into death. Even the oak tree in the distance wasn’t spared. Raoul could clearly spot imperfections in the bark that could only have come from entire months of disregard. Its leaves too, were falling, which, while customary for the season, could only carry a different meaning once he noticed their excessively curved bodies and hole-ridden surfaces.

By then, Idri had noticed the lack of movement in her friend and had slid over. She inched onto the tips of her toes, just barely lifting her eyes over his shoulder despite the immense space to his sides.

“What’s wrong, Raoul?”

“The flowers…” he replied, trailing off. “They’re still of summer’s. All the color’s gone from each flower, and they’re practically curling over themselves. Something’s wrong.”

He then shot a look at the guard to his left. “Hey, why are summer’s flowers still on the flowerbeds? Avil should’ve had them changed long ago. What happened?”

No response, at least verbally. Raoul immediately caught the slight flinch from the guard the moment he mentioned the flowers. Something was undoubtedly very wrong, and their reactions only made it more obvious.

Just then, the barely audible creaking of a door sounded in the distance. Raoul’s eyes narrowed at the figure that walked out into the garden, their back turned. He couldn’t mistake it for anyone else, not in a million years, he thought. She had gotten taller over the years, almost up to Raoul’s height. Still, the distinctly Ereaean maid uniform, with all its frills and lengthy dark skirt and puffy white headdress, and above all, the waist-length hair of emerald that they had long taken to realize as her trademark.

She paced around for a short few, but then slowly made her way to the foot of the oak tree. Her hand slid into one of the many pockets her uniform contained, and pulled itself out a short while later holding the thin white of a cigarette. With her free hand, she muttered a chant, and brought the conjured fire-flame to the butt and lit it.

She sighed, and then craned her head to the sky before bringing the opposite end to her mouth and inhaling the smoke.

At the same time, Raoul took his own deep breath, gathering years’ worth of longing into his voice. His lips strained as he screamed.

“CALI!”