I squinted in the image of the approaching man whom I recognized. It was Amos Dillen. He was obviously a lot older and taller since that time we had worked the zirconia vein together.Those simple, calm brown eyes of a thirteen-year-old boy now carried a deep and serious undertone of a thirty-something adult. His head was almost bald with a shorn carpet of brown hair lining his scalp. Gone were those innocent boy freckles. Instead, his face was smooth. Set with a hardened expression. His ear lobes were pierced with studs of gla.s.s-silver material. Similar to the texture of those dermaleeches embedded into the lantern room"s night table.
The transformation to his body shocked me the most. He was covered, neck to toe, in a black body suit. It made his abnormally long limbs obvious. I noticed the silver marble scaring of his skin between the cuffs of his sleeves and black gloves. His whitish X-scar was a traumatic, deep gash wound. It ran from the top of his collarbone to the underside of his neck. The scaring seemed evident of a knife attack.
"Amos?" Lyra carefully asked.
"Lyra Kazama. It"s infuriating to see your sickly pretty face unaged. I guess coming back from Minos had its perks." Amos snarled.
"And you Sire. I had a million words to say about your cowardly departure. Abandoning the ones you called your people." He stepped before Brystagg, so they stood eye to eye.
Brystagg averted his gaze.
"As I thought. No words are worth speaking to a coward prince. No wonder you lost the crown. Your wife. Kids. Like they could love a b.a.s.t.a.r.d prince. The lonely boy. Loser freak. Worthless gutter snipe!" Amos spat out his acrimonious words.
"HEY!" I shouted, stepping in between them with my guns raised at Amos"s face.
"Try saying that again with a bullet in your forehead!"
"Ha! Your hands are shaking. You can barely hold them Famine." He stepped back towards Homburg Banshee and the restless spider gang.
"What the h.e.l.l? I"ll grant you the shot Mister DemiG.o.d."
Amos smirked as he stepped into a clear line of sight with his arms stretched wide.
"Famine don"t take the shot!" Death"s voice broke through the stillness of my mind.
"Why Death? I can take him down!" I raised my guns to fire.
"You do that. You"ll cause the walls to dissemble prematurely. It"s something I"ve noticed when you"ve been fighting. The gun noise and jarring movements triggers the change. We don"t have the numbers to fight them in a changed s.p.a.ce. Especially if it becomes smaller."
I glanced about the walls and noticed some tell-tale trembling to the red bricks.
"You wish X-man freak." I placed the guns to rest in their holsters and heard a few sighs behind my back. So Death wasn"t the only one who had noticed.
"What"s the meaning of this Aidoneus? What"re you up to this time?" Wilfred stoically questioned the man. He kept hands in close range of his guns.
"Aidoneus?" I frowned. "Who?"
Lita pointed to X-man freak with her short sword. "Aidoneus Dillen. Former Map of h.e.l.l"s Labyrinth who was court-martial for murder."
"Ha! You Smithsonian side characters haven"t changed. d.a.m.n boring, righteous brats." He snarled. "This is getting tedious."
I gasped when a claymore of sliver-white light formed in his hands.
We braced ourselves for the fight.