NOVPUBWithin the pipeways of the Underground Pipelines, the sound of footsteps bounced against its iron surface as three figures walked quietly.
Low, distant moans escaped from within the Pipelines while Ciara glanced around in curiosity.
For a while now, they had been walking in a straight path, led by Ruffia to a spot, not certain nor confirmed but simply stated.
In a way, they were being led without any distinctive proof other than words.
Something Ciara would usually stand against, but with the threat the assassin boy posed, she decided to go against a principle. Which irked her greatly.
Her thoughts had been spiralling within her head on their path, a deadpan silence hanging between the trio until she looked ahead.
In front of her was Louis, and in front of him was the girl that they found– Ruffia Jones, she called herself.
Her eyes narrowed to a slit, her lips parting out as she asked.
"Sorry, what did you say your name was again?"
Louis slowly glanced back at her, his expression masked by indifference while Ruffia giggled.
Ciara's face twitched slightly, a brow arching while she shifted to the side.
'Something about the way she talks and laughs makes me uncomfortable."
"Oh, don't worry yourself about things like that, Ciara Merlin. The great families aren't expected to know of us, little ones."
Louis glanced at the girl, his lips curling in a frown as he grabbed her by the hair and tugged her.
A swift motion that caught both girls off guard.
"W–What is it, Louis La Teuer?!"
Louis stood silent, their feet banging against the iron in fluid motion, filling the stale silence that hung around them.
"You answer the girl when she asks a question, and none of that bullshit you've been doing. Understood?"
Ciara's pupils dilated for a moment, bulging out slightly and shifted back in place.
'O–Okay?' She thought.
With a thug, he pushed Ruffia away, causing her to trip, nearly falling to the ground flat on her face. Her figure, though, kept up with the motion just in time and balanced.
"It's like I said before. I'm Ruffia Jones, a member of Class Three. I'm a level 60 Water Knight and I was captured…..just like the rest…"
She paused, turned around and pulled down her sleeves, causing the latter two to halt mid-step.
Ciara sighed, stroking her face with her hand.
"You don't have to show us that scar every time you reiterate that story. We understand. You escaped, and luckily, we found you while you were running away."
Ruffia nodded once and turned around, commencing their march.
They followed after her, Louis glancing up at the pipeway, his dull crimson eyes flaring with a shade of deep scarlet.
"How did you escape?"
"The number of enemies within has dropped. I assumed they sent most of their subordinates above to capture more students. Poor souls, the dread that awaits them if they're captured."
She glanced back at them.
"We must find them, first!"
Louis' gaze landed on hers, emotionless, stale.
Just like it had always been. The expression that never left his features– the sole reason for his loss of touch with the wonders of humanity. The longing of wanting to express oneself freely.
All that had been lost to him as a son of the Assassin Family, the La Teuer.
Stripped of emotions since birth, he had fostered a life of his own by building mental and physical strength.
Yet, that fleeting emotion he once gave up on had been returned to him by something– someone very unexpected. A mermaid.
The key that opened the lock to the profound joy and love that brewed within him.
A sun that cascaded her warm radiance onto his shallow life. Ripped from a darkness beyond into a gracious warmth, one that enveloped him with such happiness.
It had been taken from him…deprived of him. Stolen by beings who do not know of the warmth she serves.
His expression hardened, fierce flames igniting in the depths of his gaze. A dance of death flickering with brimstone and fire.
'I will get her back even if I have to grind my enemies' bones– and if it doesn't suffice, then I shall grind mine.'
"Out of curiosity, how did you guys find this place?"
Ruffia's voice snapped him from his thoughts, his head slowly rising from the ground while his pupils darted holes in hers.
She shivered, glancing away as they continued on their way.
Ciara hummed slightly.
"I guess you wouldn't know if you were captured, huh?" She muttered.
Ruffia nodded, and Ciara remained silent.
She glanced up at the top of the pipeline.
'Unforeseen circumstances…' She thought to herself.
That had been the play since she was forced to search for Mariam Aquarius.
Of course, facing Louis was completely possible. Doing it without casualties, though, would be like a man who ran through flames bathed in wax. Casualties would be expected. Death was even a possibility.
'Not to mention finding the others. I'm sure Mariam wasn't the only one captured.'
She sighed inwardly. 'It wouldn't be a bad idea to save those kids.'
She glanced at Ruffia Jones, her gaze narrowing once more.
"Ruffia, were there others aside from you who were captured within Year Three Hostel?"
"No, none that I'm aware of. I was outside the building while it happened. Why?" She glanced back when they reached a corner. A path leading further ahead.
There was a descending slope ahead of the pipeline, serving as a meeting point for multiple pipework that opened into it.
Reaching there, they came to a halt, Louis and Ciara glancing down in silence while Ruffia glanced ahead.
Ciara's brow furrowed.
'How did the principal not know about this?' She wondered. 'Well, it is a very well-hidden layer.
Something like this popping out just at the moment of the appearance of the Red Peacemakers makes it even more impressive.
The detailed structure and how it was hidden.'
A territory within a territory.
A sub-territory.
That was the name most would give to a phenomenon like that, and it explained it perfectly.
Just then, Ruffia pointed ahead where an opening led further in, shadows and darkness cobwebbed at the end of the path.
"That way. If we go through there, then we'll end up in the layer of the Red Peacemakers."
Ciara glanced at Ruffia, her brows furrowed.
'How about the System Uprisers?' She wondered.
If a space like this had been hidden so well until now, there was an off-chance that this was in fact the secret hideout of the System Uprisers.
'Well, it would make sense, but none of them has shown up….only the Red Peacemakers strike now.'
And while they expected a confrontation with the System Uprisers, the Red Peacemakers had proven too difficult to face.
"Are you sure?"
Louis's voice cut the air like a hot knife through butter, his presence basked in the hollow shadows.
The girls squealed in startled, while standing beside him, shocked by his sudden question.
Ciara gasped slightly.
'How…how does his presence keep fading when he's walking right next to us?'
In a fluid motion, Ciara watched Louis pick up Ruffia and jump into the air, covering the distance in a blink of an eye and landing at the other end.
He turned around on landing, dropped Ruffia and glanced back at her. 𝖓𝖔𝖛𝔭𝖚𝖇.𝔠𝖔𝔪
"Come on over."
Ciara nodded as a wand formed in sparks of light in her grasp, a wave of mana flowing within her. She floated over the distance, reaching them and landing a few spots over.
Glancing at Louis, they nodded in unison, then glanced at Ruffia– Their eyes turned cold.
She raised a brow, curiosity etched on her face as Louis walked away from her, edging closer to Ciara.
Ruffia's expression tensed, her mouth growing dry as she gulped slightly. She took a step back only to land slightly on the curved surface of the pipe. Her back pressed upon it.
She glanced at it and then at the duo, her eyes flickering with intensity.
"Wha– What's wrong?"
The duo remained silent, a tense silence growing between them while their gazes locked onto each other.
The darkness that surrounded them was stale, it caused their crimson eyes to glow with a torch of venom. Pure superiority oozed out of their bodies as they stared at the girl.
"You see this?"
Ciara asked as she pulled out an aqua blue handkerchief from the pocket of her nightgown.
On it was an embroidery of a mermaid with a triton, the symbolic signs of the Aquarius.
"This belongs to Mariam Aquarius, one of the girls who was captured that night."
Ruffia chuckled wryly, her brow arched in confusion.
"Why– Why does that matter?" She asked. "It's not like we can find her with a piece of her object or anything…" she chuckled louder, her pupils darting between the two figures before her.
Their expressions remained still, unmoved by her words– and then it dawned.
"I'm from the Merlin household, Ruffia Jones. I, of all people, would definitely have a spell to locate a missing person with a piece of them.
We have all magic, anything that is considered comprehensible.'
Ruffia's gaze slowly flared open in realisation, her jaw hanging open as a shiver ran down her spine.
'Shit.'
Ciara raised her wand to the air, a beam of light igniting from the tip as a streak of lightning bolts surged from it.
"Who did you think you were deceiving?"
