What Makes A Monster - Chapter 8

Amongst Imyra’s numerous uncles, many were famous and/or infamous, but there was one that was especially unusual.

In the capital, they called him by many names. One of those was: ‘Disgrace of the Durstans’.

He was born with the inability to manipulate zorne.

For a Noble Clan like the House of Durstan to produce such offspring was, to say the least, shocking. Their political rivals rejoiced and plotted, the elders of the family worried and consulted specialists and the populace did what they always did best; gossip. After all, the Durstans were the Durstans. An existence often likened to the Imperials. A House that had produced generations of advocates and generals. Even the current emperor had Durstan blood flowing through his veins.

That the Durstan bloodline was bursting with talent was the general consensus not just among the masses but also among researchers of bloodlines and genetics. It was not a question of opinion but generally accepted fact.

For the youngest son of such a House to be disabled in nothing else but zorne was enough of a deal that there were speculations about suspicious circumstances behind his birth, whether he had been switched out at birth and other dubious rumours that slandered his mother. Alhough, anybody who had seen him with their own eyes would recognise the trademark hair and skin combination that decorated so many of the Durstans.

If being a dud was all there was to the youngest son of the late Head of House, the gossip would have soon blown over in a few years’ time. He was sent off to be raised in the countryside and it was expected that even if he returned, he would have been long forgotten and discarded as old news. The capital never lacked for exciting gossip, after all.

But when he did return, it went completely against his father’s plans of quietly blending him into society. His appearance caused a commotion wherever he went.

Imyra herself had only met her youngest uncle a few times. Before she first met him at her brother’s birth celebration, she thought the rumours were simply trumped up and blown out of proportion. She couldn’t understand why the whole capital was clamouring over this man who was destined to be a useless dreg of society leeching off his family. It was only after her first glance at him that she realised the weight of another of his nicknames:

‘The Beauty of the Durstans’.

Indeed, he was not handsome, he was beautiful. Only after laying eyes on him, did Imyra realise that the rumours, the poetry, they were not exaggerating. If anything, they were understated. It made her sick to her stomach to have to admit this, but it was as if the word beauty was coined for him. Descriptions did him no justice.His visage could not be imagined through mere words on paper. He was beauty incarnate.

Back then, there was a part of her that both pitied and envied him. He forwent so many formalities yet even the strictest elders had no reprimands for him. He was beautiful regardless of his actions. It let him get away with anything. She envied him for it.

But his beauty was also of the type that did not attract onlookers to see beyond the face. Nobody was interested in him or who he was, only about how pleasant he was to look at. Beauty and ineptness were his defining features. She pitied him for it.

He was said to have dropped off the face of the earth. The last time he appeared at the capital was ten years ago, at his father’s; Imyra’s grandfather’s funeral. Even now, ten years after his disappearance from the face of high society, his name was used to compare all things useless but pretty. When used to describe the arts, his name was high praise, when used to judge practicality, his name was an insult. That was impact he had left on the capital.

So why, Imyra wanted to ask, why did she meet this uselessly beautiful uncle of hers in a crazy scientist’s lair in the middle of the Reaper’s Forest? Of all places for her to come across him, why was he at the Ancient Witch’s den?

Imyra stared at the man. Ten years had passed so he looked slightly older and more mature, but this was definitely her infamous youngest uncle. His appearance was not the type one could mistake for another.

It took her brain a while to compute this new information and caused her to inelegantly gape like a fish.

He was dressed in typical travel garb. The blue metal accessories on his neck and cuffs accentuated the midnight blue of his flawless skin and the hair tied at his nape fell down his back like a stream of red wine. Stray strands of his wine red hair fell on his wide forehead and his thin but dense red eyebrows above his down-turned lilac eyes. His ultramarine lips, not thin but not too thick, were drawn into a slight smile as he spared Imyra a single fleeting glance. His gaze was concentrated on Olivia.

Imyra hurriedly shut her mouth and controlled her expression.

“Who is this? Your newest playmate?” he asked Olivia about her as he entered the laboratory with a starry-eyed Tona in tow and sat on a stool opposite them. Tona’s forehead was bandaged and she scowled at Olivia as they entered.

He didn’t even recognise her, Imyra realised.

“Zuran can stay. Tona, get out.” Oliva said without looking up. She was scribbling something on a sheet of paper in unintelligible foreign symbols.

This was the new job that had been cancelled the day before because of Olivia’s little ‘incident’; being Olivia’s assistant, i.e. gopher, in the laboratory.

“I refuse. What are you going to do about it?” Tona replied in a hostile tone.

“See the beaker in front of me? It has tsevard venom in it. I’ll throw it at you. There’s also a jar of lenoska sap on the table behind me. I don’t need to explain what these things are capable of, do I?” Olivia looked up with a bored look on her face. Her threat was calm and nonchalant, in the tone one would ask what sort of breakfast was preferred.

Tona glared at Olivia. “Instead of apologizing to me, you’re actually threatening me of disfigurement?”

“If anybody has to apologise, it’s you. But I don’t have the time to get into that right now, so I’ll just count to three before I throw it at you. One.” Olivia continued to speak in a bored tone.

With another murderous glare, Tona spun around and left the room.

Imyra was surprised at how easy that was.

After the wall slid shut behind her, Olivia turned her narrowed eyes at the newcomer, “Can you not bring your fangirls with you everywhere you go?”

“I can’t help it. I need someone to open the doors for me.” He said as he smiled with no constraints or calculations.

Imyra stared in rapt attention despite herself. Fleetingly, she wondered whether anyone in the capital had seen him smile as such before. She had never heard of any poems, seen any art describing his smile, only ever about his unequalled look of condescension and his many bored and nonchalant expressions. There was a famous story about the artist that was executed by an Imperial who had commissioned his work because he was unable to paint the right smile onto the likeness of her uncle.

She mentally smacked herself and averted her gaze. She could never forgive herself if she began to fawn over him like those fools she routinely made fun of.

“Then don’t come down to places like this that need security clearance.” Olivia muttered as she turned the page to her notebook.

“This place needed security clearance? Isn’t this just one of the practice rooms? And what does tsevard venom do? I know about the lenoska sap but I don’t even know what a tsevard is.”

Imyra was curious too and perked her ear up.

“They’re little moles that feed on carrion. Their venom can corrode your skin and flesh down to the bones.” Olivia answered inattentively as she jotted another line of scribbles down.

“Harsh. What did Tona do to get such a threat?”

Olivia shrugged and spoke dispassionately, “Just because I scratched her face a little yesterday, she actually went and shot laced metal spikes at me. And then she has the nerve to be upset and angry. She deserves worse than a little tsevard venom.”

He stared at her for a second before muttering, “Forget I ever asked.”

Imyra agreed with the sentiment.

“Just say why you’re here and then get lost.”

“What did I do to deserve always being told to get lost?” he asked with an incongruent dramatic flair.

Olivia finally looked up and raised an eyebrow, “You really want me start on that?”

“Rhetorical question. Don’t actually answer.” He chuckled. “Chennae said that there was an amusing show to watch, so I took up the offer and came to watch.”

Olivia looked up again from her notebook and stared at Zuran, incredulously, “You’re an idiot, do you know that?”