The Price Of Hatred

Chapter 25 - The Melted Throne

​The matte-black sport bike tore through the heavy iron gates of the Pitch House, the tires screeching violently against the rain-slicked gravel before slamming to a sudden halt. Tidder vaulted off the seat before the engine could even sputter to a silence.

​Two syndicate guards dressed in immaculate black suits stepped forward from the shadows of the concrete pillars, their hands immediately disappearing beneath their jackets to draw their firearms.

​“Who the hell are you?” the first guard barked, his face twisting in sudden aggression. “You can't park here! Get the fuck—”

​Tidder didn't let him finish. Moving with a cold, terrifying fluidity, she ripped open the heavy canvas weapons bag strapped to her bike. Her fingers locked around the steel grip of an L86A1 LSW. Without wasting a single millisecond, she brought the heavy squad automatic weapon to her shoulder and pulled the trigger.

​RAT-TAT!

​Two deafening, high-caliber rounds tore through the midnight downpour, striking both guards squarely in the center of their foreheads. Their skulls fractured instantly, their bodies collapsing backward into the mud like discarded ragdolls.

​Tidder kicked the massive iron security gate wide open. She took one heavy step forward into the inner enclosure, then stopped dead in her tracks, her chest heaving as she forced air into her lungs. She looked around.

​The courtyard was dead. A heavy, suffocating silence hung over the sprawling mansion. Dozens of luxury syndicate vehicles sat parked in a chaotic, haphazard radius, their doors left wide open, their headlights cutting uselessly through the blinding sheets of rain.

​She fixed her gaze on the grand entrance doors of the main house. Slumped across the marble threshold were the bodies of three more elite guards, their dark suits soaked through with pools of thick, steaming blood.

​Tidder slung the heavy L86A1 across her chest, stepped over the dead, and crossed the threshold into the grand foyer.

​The interior was a vision of absolute slaughter. As she approached the massive spiral staircase leading to the upper levels, her boots began to splash in deep, congealing rivers of crimson. The stairs were choked with human remains.

​Tidder’s stomach violently wrenched. She breathed in through her nose and let out a long, trembling breath to steady her nerves. Some of the bodies had been completely decapitated, their heads severed with a horrific, geometric precision. Others were still technically alive—their limbs twitching in the dark, their throats letting out wet, guttural rasps—but their faces had been entirely melted down to the bone, the flesh charred into a bubbling, blackened sludge by a volatile violet energy.

​She forced her eyes away from the horror, ascending the steps one agonizing tier at a time until she reached the sprawling upper hallway. She marched down the carpeted corridor, stopping directly in front of the towering double doors of Arthur's private war room.

​She threw the doors open, her weapon raised.

​The moment she stepped across the threshold, a sudden, lethal shift in the air pressure registered behind her. A shadow materialized from the dark corner of the frame, moving with an impossible, silent velocity.

​Tidder spun on her heel instantly, her finger tightening against the trigger as she screamed into the dark, “Show yourself! I only know one goddamn friend who moves like that! Elias!”

​SWOOSH.

​A blinding arc of cold steel split the darkness. Number 202 exploded into her line of sight, his master-crafted katana flashing through the air with a sickening, whistling speed. The blade sliced clean through the heavy barrel of the L86A1 LSW, cleaving the massive firearm completely in two. The momentum of the sword carried through, the tip of the steel missing Tidder's throat by a mere fraction of an inch as she violently arched her back, throwing herself to the floorboards to dodge the decapitating strike.

​“Traitor,” 202 hissed. His voice was a low, freezing whisper, his eyes burning with a deep, personal betrayal behind his dark locks.

​Tidder hit the carpet hard, letting out a heavy, ragged breath as she kicked the ruined pieces of her gun away. She scrambled to her feet, her hands raised in a desperate gesture of peace. “I didn't come here to kill anyone, Elias! I came here to stop my brother before he destroys what's left of this world!”

​“He has already slaughtered dozens upon dozens of our people downstairs,” 202 growled, his dangerous, dangerous voice vibrating with a lethal promise as he raised his blade back into a guard stance. “So you tell me exactly who the hell you are here to save, Tidder. Is it your psychotic brother, or is it Arthur? The man who actually took real good care of us when we had absolutely nothing in the gutter?”

​With a roar of unadulterated anger, 202 surged forward, striking at her again, the steel of his katana cutting the air in a vicious downward slash.

​“Stop! Elias, please!” Tidder screamed, diving out of the way as the blade splintered the mahogany desk behind her.

​“Where the hell was James back then?!” 202 yelled, his professional composure fracturing into a raw, bleeding display of emotion. “Was he there to protect you?! Was he there to ask you how you were surviving in the mud?! No! Arthur gave us a purpose!”

​“I don't want to fight you, Elias!” Tidder shouted, her voice cracking as tears mingled with the rain on her face. “Arthur slaughtered my father! And he murdered my mother! How the hell do you think that makes me feel every single second of my life?!”

​202 paused, his blade trembling slightly in mid-air, his chest rising and falling frantically. “Your mother… Clara is still alive. Arthur keeps her safe.”

​“No! She’s dead! Arthur killed her!” Tidder shrieked, taking a sharp step forward. “Why do you think his own biological son, Gage, betrayed him and vanished into the underworld?! Because Arthur slaughtered his mother!”

​The words hit 202 like a physical blow. A sudden, profound confusion washed over his features, his lethal posture fracturing as he shook his head side to side. “What…? No. No, that’s impossible. It can’t be.” He took a shaky step back, his grip loosening on his hilt. “Clara… your mother… is Gage’s mother? No, no, it doesn’t make any goddamn sense. How could I not know that?”

​“Because you’ve known it all this time, Elias!” Tidder wept.

​“No, I don't!” 202 roared.

​“You do! You just can’t fucking remember anything because he di—” Tidder abruptly choked on her words, pausing to let out a long, agonizing breath.

​“He did what?!” 202 demanded, stepping directly into her face, his voice desperate, terrified of the truth. “What the hell did he do to me, Tidder?!”

​“Elias… I’m so sorry,” Tidder whispered, her voice breaking with a lifetime of guilt. “I just… I couldn’t find a way to come and tell you all this time. Arthur systematically wipes your memory. Every single time you find out the truth about Gage’s mother—or anything else he doesn't want you to know—he forces you into the chair and erases it.”

​“He… he… he—”

​The katana slipped from 202’s fingers, clattering loudly against the floor. He fell straight down to his knees, his hands clutching his head as a violent, agonizing migraine tore through his skull, his mind fighting against the psychological blocks Arthur had carved into his brain. He looked up at her, his eyes wild with horror. “He took everything from me… but tell me… he told me my brothers died in a car accident when I was five years old. Before he took me into the Pitch. Was that all a lie too?”

​Tidder looked down, her shoulders shaking. “I don't know, Elias. I honestly don't know.”

​202 slowly forced himself back up to his feet, his face entirely blank, a dead, empty void replacing his anger. He turned away from her, his eyes looking toward the exit. “I’m done here.”

​“No! You can’t leave!” Tidder cried, reaching out to catch his arm. “We have to stop my brother together!”

​“We?” 202 said, stopping in his tracks. He turned his head slowly, looking back at her with an absolute, chilling detachment. “Why? So Arthur can use me to kill your brother, and then wipe my fucking memory all over again after he’s done using me like a loyal pet? No.”

​“Elias, I know exactly how you feel right now, but—”

​“No, you don't!” Elias yelled, his voice echoing through the rafters. “You never did!”

​“You know exactly what will happen if Arthur dies tonight, Elias!” Tidder pressed desperately. “Gage will immediately come out of the shadows and claim the throne of the Pitch!”

​“Then you will be the very first person he kills,” 202 said flatly, turning his back on her.

​“I’m already dead,” Tidder whispered, her voice dropping into a hollow, tragic register. “Just promise me one thing, Elias. Promise me you will do whatever it takes to stop Gage from destroying everything if he ever claims his father's throne.”

​“I don't make promises with the dead,” 202 murmured, his voice fading as he took two steps toward the hallway. “Especially when I know I can't fulfill them! James is beyond ordinary humans even without the stone.”

​But before he could take a third step, the world exploded into chaos.

​The heavy double doors at the far end of the war room were violently thrown open from the outside. Arthur burst into the room, his clothes disheveled, his hands trembling as he clutched a bleeding, deep laceration across his left side. His face was a mask of unadulterated, panicked terror.

​“He’s come!” Arthur shrieked, his voice losing all of its standard majesty, turning into a pathetic, desperate command. “He’s inside the! Stop him! Both of you, kill him now!”

​202 stopped, staring at the old man with a face burning with a sudden, silent hatred.

​BOOM.

​The entire structural wall of the war room shattered inward, wood and plaster tearing apart like paper.

​James stepped through the dust.

​He was a vision of absolute nightmares. His long leather coat was entirely drenched in thick, dripping blood, and the massive broadsword in his right hand was painting the floorboards red with every step. But it was his body that made Tidder gasp in pure horror—the mutation had accelerated. The flesh across his face and hands had turned a bruised, rotting black, and the veins across his entire frame had swollen into thick, pulsating lines of dark, volatile energy. His eyes were completely gone, replaced by twin pools of bottomless, glowing violet light that locked directly onto Arthur.

​“James…” Tidder whispered, her voice trembling.

​Slowly, the creature tilted its head, the violet eyes shifting down to look at Tidder.

​“There is no more James,” a voice replied. It was an overlapping, terrifying chorus—James's human vocal cords twisted and multiplied by the ancient, sentient frequency of the crystal.

​Arthur scrambled backward, backing up the small steps leading toward his raised high seat. “Stop him, Elias! Make sure he dies!”

​202 looked at Arthur, his hand pressing tightly against his own wounded stomach where blood was seeping through his vest. He let out a low, disgusted snarl. “You deserve to burn in hell, old man. You deserve to be eaten alive by monsters with flesh just like yours. If you don't die by his hand tonight… I will personally come back for you. And I will make sure I finish what he started.”

​Without another word, 202 turned on his heel and disappeared into the shadows of the secondary exit, abandoning the Pitch entirely.

​Before the echoes of Elias's footsteps could even fade, James moved.

​He didn't run—he blurred. In a fraction of a second, he crossed the expanse of the room, his massive, blackened hand shooting through the air like a lightning bolt. His fingers clamped around Arthur's throat with a sickening, crushing force, lifting the old leader completely off the steps of his throne. Arthur gasped, his hands frantically clawing at James's vice-like grip, trying to use his own fading strength to force his way out.

​“No! James, don't!” Tidder screamed loudly, taking a desperate, plunging step forward toward the dais. “Drop him! The crystal stone is taking complete control over your mind!”

​“No,” James rumbled, the overlapping voices inside his chest laughing in a low, resonant harmony. “This is not control. This is strength. Didn't you feel it… sister? Didn't you feel this glorious weight when you wielded it?”

​“James, I know you are still in there somewhere, and I need you to listen to my voice!” Tidder wept, her hands extended as she pleaded with the monster. “I felt absolutely nothing the moment I held it! Do you hear me?! Nothing! All that stone does is feed on the pain and the anger inside of us! It only grows on hatred, pain, and rage! And right now, it is eating your hatred alive! I know how much you hate him, James—I hate him too for all the horrific things he did to our family! But killing him won't bring Mother back! It won't bring Dad back from the grave!”

​James paused, his violet eyes shifting back to Tidder's face. A sudden, deep wave of human agony broke through his blackened features, his voice dropping into a raw, bleeding register of emotion. “Neither will it bring me back.”

​Arthur choked, his face turning a deep, suffocating purple as James’s grip tightened, but the old man still managed to let out a dry, mocking laugh through his teeth. “You… you were always the weak one, James. That’s why your father left his blood on your face… so it could feed the hatred in your pathetic soul. But even now… with all that power… you are still so weak.”

​A terrifying, absolute stillness settled over James’s frame. The violet veins across his face flared with a blinding, concussive radiance.

​“You took every single piece of love that was ever left inside my heart,” James whispered, his voice dropping into a dead, freezing calm that chilled the room to absolute zero. “And you turned it into pure, unadulterated hatred. So I am completely done hiding it.”

​He leaned in close, his black teeth baring against Arthur’s face. “After I rip your life from your throat… I will take everything. Everything you ever built, everything you ever possessed… I will claim it for myself.”

​Deep within the dark recess of his consciousness, the crystal matrix roared in absolute triumph, whispering its final, lethal directive directly into his soul:

​‘Kill him now… kill him now so we can have EVERYTHING.’

                                      Author - Note

Hi everyone, I know this chapter could make you feel confused or curious.  But what I really want you all to think of and tell me what you think.    

1.  “You heard the moment James said. ‘No, it's strength. Didn't you feel it when you willied it’.     

Question: who do you think was speaking at that moment. Do you think that was just James or the crystal and what do you think the crystal really is and wants?   Because I’m hoping to hear a good response from you.  Keep reading and you will start understanding the real purpose of the stone .

2. “You should also hear the moment tidder said. “James, I know you're still in there and I want you to listen.  I feel nothing the moment I willied it.  All it feeds from me is the pain and the hanger inside me.  It only feeds on hatred, pain, and rage.  And now it is feeding on your hatred. I know how much you hate him. You hate him for all the bad things he has done.  But killing him won't bring Mum or Dad back”. 

“Neither will it bring me back”. 

“You're always weak. That's why he left his blood on your face. so it could feed the hatred in you.  But still you're still weak”.

“You took every piece of love that's left in me. And turn it to hatred,  So I'm done hiding it.  After I killed you.  I will take everything, Everything you ever had for myself”.

‘Kill him now. So we can have everything.’ ☢️ I hope you capture this moment. The crystal was speaking, not James.  ‘So we, can have everything’.

The crystal didn't say. ‘So, You could have everything. Instead he said. “WE”. 

The crystal wasn't just talking about James only. He was talking about both of them.    I know you readers could feel confused right now.  

Because the moment I was writing this chapter. I put a lot of work into it.  Because what happened now?  Will depends on their features.    Read the next chapter now.   To know what the crystal stone really is and what he's trying to get through the death of Arthur.