Vexen had been ensconced in his room's reading chair, as comfortable and as relaxed as he ever got, when he felt the air turn ... wrong. He looked up from the yellowed pages of his book and closed it over a finger, scowling to himself.
The thick, heavy wooden door, four hundred years old if it was a day, muffled any voices outside it, but it didn't dampen the trace amounts of energy signatures that he could feel. The familiarity of it cut through the ambient background noise of Daguerreo like a hot knife through butter and he felt the unpleasant prickling on the back of his neck before he fully realised what it meant.
Before he fully realised who it was.
Every instinct in him wanted to freeze the door closed, to coat the inside with ice and lock himself inside, but he sat there, unmoving save for a tremble in the fingers of his free hand, barely breathing. If he felt them in here, he knew that they'd be able to feel him out there, especially if they were looking for him and they had to be.
They. They.
How had they found him? He'd taken a strangled route to Daguerreo, going from Lindblum to Alexandria and then by sea instead of by train. He hadn't given anybody in Rabanastre any inkling that he was planning to leave at all, let alone where he was going to. He supposed that it was an obvious place for him to go -- it was the biggest library in the world -- but the more logical course of action would have been to lose himself in a populated city.
Preferably on Dorstonis.
He'd been foolish to think he might be able to stay at a remote location, even a remote library, without it coming to anybody's attention. He had expected the Order to come after him, some sniffer dogs sent by Xigbar at Saix's behest, perhaps. He almost laughed at the idea. But no, it was 'envoys' from Khamja. Five of them.
He supposed he should be flattered by the number. Zexion was there, as was Marluxia. He didn't know the other three, but he suspected that one of them was the associate of Marluxia's that he had brought with him. Reports said that they were inseparable.
The other two? He didn't know. The feel of them alarmed him for reasons he couldn't place. If he thought about it, he knew he'd be able to work out why, but the slowly rising panic made it difficult, even for him, to think, to put a finger on the memory. He'd subconsciously filed them into the 'dangerous' category already. He'd undoubtedly find out why, later.
He sat, very quietly, and jumped when he heard the rapping on the door. The deep, hollow knocks reverberated around his cold stone room and then cut off abruptly. Silence followed. It almost felt like they were giving him the option of responding.
That was laughable.
If Khamja was there, he knew had no option, not really. They were there to either recruit or kill him. If the former failed, they'd undoubtedly fall back on the latter. Maybe that's what Zexion was there for, to lessen the chance of them killing him like a schoolyard bully making the most of the 'if I can't have it, nobody can' mentality that bullies everywhere employed.
His suspicions were confirmed when he heard the scraping of the lock being picked.
no subject
The thick, heavy wooden door, four hundred years old if it was a day, muffled any voices outside it, but it didn't dampen the trace amounts of energy signatures that he could feel. The familiarity of it cut through the ambient background noise of Daguerreo like a hot knife through butter and he felt the unpleasant prickling on the back of his neck before he fully realised what it meant.
Before he fully realised who it was.
Every instinct in him wanted to freeze the door closed, to coat the inside with ice and lock himself inside, but he sat there, unmoving save for a tremble in the fingers of his free hand, barely breathing. If he felt them in here, he knew that they'd be able to feel him out there, especially if they were looking for him and they had to be.
They. They.
How had they found him? He'd taken a strangled route to Daguerreo, going from Lindblum to Alexandria and then by sea instead of by train. He hadn't given anybody in Rabanastre any inkling that he was planning to leave at all, let alone where he was going to. He supposed that it was an obvious place for him to go -- it was the biggest library in the world -- but the more logical course of action would have been to lose himself in a populated city.
Preferably on Dorstonis.
He'd been foolish to think he might be able to stay at a remote location, even a remote library, without it coming to anybody's attention. He had expected the Order to come after him, some sniffer dogs sent by Xigbar at Saix's behest, perhaps. He almost laughed at the idea. But no, it was 'envoys' from Khamja. Five of them.
He supposed he should be flattered by the number. Zexion was there, as was Marluxia. He didn't know the other three, but he suspected that one of them was the associate of Marluxia's that he had brought with him. Reports said that they were inseparable.
The other two? He didn't know. The feel of them alarmed him for reasons he couldn't place. If he thought about it, he knew he'd be able to work out why, but the slowly rising panic made it difficult, even for him, to think, to put a finger on the memory. He'd subconsciously filed them into the 'dangerous' category already. He'd undoubtedly find out why, later.
He sat, very quietly, and jumped when he heard the rapping on the door. The deep, hollow knocks reverberated around his cold stone room and then cut off abruptly. Silence followed. It almost felt like they were giving him the option of responding.
That was laughable.
If Khamja was there, he knew had no option, not really. They were there to either recruit or kill him. If the former failed, they'd undoubtedly fall back on the latter. Maybe that's what Zexion was there for, to lessen the chance of them killing him like a schoolyard bully making the most of the 'if I can't have it, nobody can' mentality that bullies everywhere employed.
His suspicions were confirmed when he heard the scraping of the lock being picked.