Tyrant

Wheels bumped and crackled along the ground underneath Cerys, shaking her out of some unknown amount of sleep. Her eyes opened to an onyx sky, stars swathing across the blackness like diamond dust. Her face felt heavy, her limbs even more so. Cerys might’ve thought for a moment that she was camping somewhere safe. The very notion promptly dispelled as soon as Cerys tried to move. 

Pain jolted through her abdomen as she tried to sit up, her hands tied together at the wrists. It took a moment to realize that her ankles had also been tied, and the rest of Cerys was too weak to pry out of her bindings. 

Damn.

Releasing a strangled groan, Cerys rolled over and forced herself onto her elbows. She was in the back of a truck. A dark, slumbering form turned over in the shadows, drawing a sharp gasp from her the moment she realized who it was. Tiny rolled over in his sleep, seeming unharmed but likely dosed up with something. Hell, maybe Cerys had been dosed up too. That would explain the slurred grogginess that had her swaying back and forth. 

She dragged her eyes upward, taking a closer look at her surroundings. Shining through broken glass windows and crumbled walls were lamps, flickering and glitzing along platforms that rose with what was left of tall, dark monuments jutting into the sky—skyscrapers. Silhouetted forms walked back and forth along the broken sidewalks, and they were also roaming over the various levels of the buildings. Vaguely human, or so it seemed, though some of them moved a little too fast. Those had to be Chitauri.

Cerys had been here before the end of the world. The Tyrant—this was his city. Old New York.

Cerys startled at the sound of yelping nearby, her eyes darting around the shadows until she placed the source. Two nearby shadows moved between the buildings, pausing as they drove by. The truck carried them onward without stopping, the skyscrapers getting longer and taller the further they moved into the urban landscape. 

Panic started to overtake Cerys as the spinning lights became a blur, the sound of chattering and—laughter?—in the far distance lowering to a dull roar. Briefly, she considered how far she’d get if she jumped over the edge… but she couldn’t leave Tiny like this. Maybe she could fight her way out? Was it foolish to stay behind for her dog?

Cerys didn’t have time to think too long about it. The truck halted before a vast set of iron gates, spanning in both directions to the left and right.  She turned her attention beyond the shadowy threshold, then up at the glittering, mountainous “palace” fashioned from three or four skyscrapers that had fallen against one another. They were fogged in mist, silhouetted by the moonlight that managed to stream through the cloudy sky. 

In as much as civilization fell fast and hard at the hands of the Chitauri, the years that passed clearly weren’t enough time to build a palace worthy of a king. That’s not to say that this makeshift one wasn’t impressive—on the contrary, Cerys found it rather terrifying. And its brutal architecture—if that’s what you would call it—made it doubly more fitting than a palace of alabaster stone and colorful banners. 

The impulse to scramble out of the truck wracked her limbs as two sentinels came around back to stare at Cerys, her skin crawling at the feeling of their lidless eyes on her and Tiny. Animals were usually left alone—never shot or maimed on the field—and were suspected to be taken to the city if they were healthy enough to be trained. Sometimes, they returned with the Chitauri battalions as tracker animals.

Tiny didn’t flinch as the back of the truck was flung open, and a soldier grabbed Cerys by the ankle. Trying to scramble away, her arms and legs moved groggily, and she smacked face-first onto the ground instead. Hands grabbed at Cerys from every angle, thrusting her between them as someone else muttered in the guttural language of the Chitauri. 

A chill ran down her spine—she recognized that voice. The voice of the bounty hunter who’d caught Cerys. He’d been driving the truck. 

She let out a weak groan as Cerys was passed to him, but her listless protest was weak against the strong arms that shoved her onward. “N-No,” she moaned as she was pushed through the creaking gates, opening to let them pass. “Please, don’t…”

It was pointless, but no one could say Cerys didn’t fight it. Scrambling every step of the way, dirt kicked up with every shuffle of her boots against the ground. The truck engine turned on somewhere behind her, her heart squeezing as it roared to life and then tapered away in the opposite direction. With Tiny in it.

The door to the palace wasn’t even a proper ‘door’—it’d been fashioned as a set of sheer curtains, taken from the lobby of whatever this building once was. A carpet led to a crumbling chamber of what was once a glittering entryway—a hotel, maybe? Lamps were situated on the walls in an orderly fashion, shadows falling against one another in uneven shapes. 

Cerys thrashed as best she could as she was led through the buildings. The vast chamber at the center of the three skyscrapers was something of a crawlspace between them—a massive courtyard that somehow managed to be open to the sky. It the cleanest, most polished area she'd seen in a long time. Right down to the fountain, stone benches, and makeshift dais situated in the single column of moonlight that managed to penetrate the buildings. 

Panic shot through her as she realized the figure sitting atop the throne at its far end. Torn up banners and dust particles blew by in an invisible breeze, lightly fluttering the black fabric of the royal cloak that pooled around his legs.  Two human sentinels stood on either side of the throne.

His throne.

The Tyrant.

The Tyrant’s eyes were covered by the hand that cradled his face, his large frame altogether leaning off to the side. Unmoving, like a dark fixture in the courtyard. Black waves reached his shoulders, fluttering slightly in the breeze.

Cerys’s breath came out in shallow gasps. She’d never been so terrified in her life—even as she thrashed, she shook in fear. Hiding her terror was no longer at the forefront of her mind—she needed to get the hell out of this place. “Stop, please—” Cerys pleaded in a pitiful whisper, her knees hitting the hard ground as she was thrown before the dais. 

Every movement felt like an inch away from death as Cerys slowly drew her eyes to the Tyrant. He had yet to move—or even give sign that he was breathing.

“Another prize,” the bounty hunter spoke in his thick accent, drawing the attention of the sentinels. “Aaek laje,Cerys Adelin.” 

Cerys froze at the sound of her name, hot tears running down her cheeks as she lowered her gaze to the cracked ground. Even the cool breeze running through this place couldn’t stop the stress fever Cerys was starting to develop. In the corner of her eye, one of the sentinels watched her, cold blue eyes set against stark-white skin. 

“Cerys Adelin,” he said, turning his head toward the other sentinel. “The real one?”

Real one? Did Cerys have a reputation she didn’t know about? She’d had dealings with the Avengers before they fell, but most of the rebel leaders did. She’d even trained with the Black Widow, but that had been a useless effort that sounded much more encouraging than it actually was. Cerys could hardly hold her own in a fight, and based on her failures since, she clearly hadn’t improved much. 

“I tracked her, after the demolishing of West Point camp,” the hunter responded.

Silence. 

“She’ll be too dangerous to keep,” the sentinel answered.

Cerys furrowed a brow. Keep? They kept rebel leaders?

More silence settled through the area. It seemed like everyone was considering what to do with her. “Agreed,” said the second sentinel. “You—finish this now.”  

“My reward,” the hunter growled. 

“You’ll paid in full by the end of the night,” the first sentinel answered calmly.

An approving grunt was the bounty hunter’s only response. The sound of a buzzing weapon turning on behind Cerys, a hot tip touching the back of her neck. Her head cocked up, eyes landing on the throne as  she considered begging for mercy. Cerys could see now that the Tyrant’s eyes were closed, with the moonlight angled askew past his face. It cast shadows across his listless features. Brows set in a deep furrow, he wouldn’t look at Cerys as she was executed—he didn’t care who she was. 

“We take final words,” the first sentinel muttered. “If you have them.” 

Cerys’s kneecaps dug into the floor through her jeans, but the pain didn’t register. Was this it? Was she really about to die? Even the rest she’d gotten in the back of the truck still left her tired, and starvation had already begun to play its part. Cerys hung her head forward, her mouth opening as she willed some words—any words—to rise. Anything to spite the situation she was in, the state of the world, the millions of people who died before her. 

Nothing.

Pitiful… her people had spent their final hours fighting, and Cerys and spent hers running. Time was up, and she'd be seeing their faces soon in the afterlife. Cerys never believed in life after death, but then, she'd never believed in aliens, either. Who was to say she wouldn’t soon be welcomed by the song that that kept their memories alive?

“Are you, are you…” the first two words streamed out of her mouth in a tiny, quiet thread that only Cerys could hear. “Coming to the tree…” Silence—silence everywhere except her mind, where Cerys heard their voices. “They strung up a man, they say who murdered three…Strange things did happen here—no stranger would it be, if they Ceryst at midnight in the hanging tree.” 

The gun’s power buzzed behind Cerys in a high pitched noise, ready to strike. She closed her eyes, her heart pounding as she waited for the darkness to come.

“No.”

The dulcet note of the voice sent a resounding shudder through the room. Cerys’s shoulders, legs, and breath shook amidst the cold night air and exhaustion, now even more so from the adrenaline. Slowly, she lifted her head to the Tyrant, his hand still draped over half his face. Cruelty. Bitterness. Revilement. Those were the things that emanated from the thin, narrow glare that sliced through the air—through just the one eye that was visible between his fingers. The other was kept hidden behind his hand.

“Your—majesty?” The first sentinel began uncertainly, looking down at the Tyrant. Lips slightly parted, there was no response from their leader. Only the cutting glare he kept fastened on Cerys—utterly unreadable, save for the dark malice glinting in those emerald depths.

The sentinels exchanged glances, and then the first one spoke again, “What would you have us do?” Again, no response.

For all that they seemed uncomfortable, Cerys practically disintegrated under the weight of the stare that pinned her existence to that very spot. She'd have scattered into a thousand pieces if Cerys could, to escape it—blown away into the wind.

The second sentinel nodded to the hunter. “Just…take her where they keep the rest.” 

Cerys was all too familiar with the hands that clamped down on her shoulder next. Confused, the cold glare of the dark prince weighed on her as she was dragged away.