Sentient
By Vir M.
The Prologue:
"The End"
As the back of his hand connected with my face, I realized that I hurt, everywhere. My hands connected with the glassy stone floor with a smack as my body crumpled at his feet, too tired to maintain its defiant, upright posture any longer.
"Finally giving up, are we?" he sneered, pacing back and forth in front of me.
In response, I spat out a mouthful of blood at his feet. Flecks of the black liquid stained his leather boots, and his lip curled in disgust. Kneeling, he grabbed the back of my neck in one wide-palmed hand and pressed my face—hard!—against the marble floor.
"Give it up, Jira," he said, crooning my name like a lullaby. His fingers dug into my trachea, cutting off my air supply. "I'm going to kill you. Hasn't that sunk in yet?"
I shook my head as best I could, fighting for breath.
He slammed my face into the floor a second time, and my nose broke with a sickening crack of pulverized bone. I think I screamed, then, but I can't be sure. I'd been screaming all evening—one single yelp didn't leave much of an impression on my memory's rough face.
When my whimpers and gasps subsided, he leant forward until his lips brushed my ear. "Get up," he said, "so I can kill you properly."
He let me go, and I stood. My knees shook as I fought to keep balanced, but I nearly toppled forward again when I saw him draw his sword from its sheath. The blade glimmered like water, making me almost want to drink in the metal to heal my parched throat.
He was close enough to me that when he raised his sword and held it out, the tip of the curved blade touched the hollow at the base of my throat with an almost scientific delicateness.
"I'll cut you right here," he said, drawing the blade's edge sideways over the gentle swell of my adam's apple, "and here," he bumped the blade over the ridges of collar bone under my thin, stretched skin, "so that your skin will peel back until I can see your heart." He frowned, suddenly. "When did you eat last? You're too skinny."
The words came out funny due to my broken nose and dry, damaged wind pipe. "I haven't been eating much, lately," I wheezed.
My killer nodded. "That's right. You've been too heartbroken to eat, locked away in your tower room." He smirked, pretty lips twisting like a scar. "You're like a fairy princess, Jira: all alone and waiting for a white knight to rescue her."
I smiled at him, nose screaming from the effort. A cut on my forehead dripped blood into my eye. "Sorry, but I don't have a knight… not a white one, at least." My smile faded, replaced with burning rage and a snarl of: "My knight's soul is as black as… as…" A fitting analogy failed me, and in lieu of a proper comeback I stood there floundering for words.
He broke the silence by laughing. "Idiot," he said, and his next words cut me to the bone. "You've never had a knight at all." He began to back away, still smiling at my shocked face. "Now, I'm a—mostly—honorable person, so at least try to put up a decent fight for me, okay?"
"As you wish," I murmured, banishing the pain as best I could. Hunkering into a fighting stance, I prepared myself for his attack.
The strike came almost immediately. He launched himself across the room—a giant stadium-like structure with a stained-glass roof held aloft by elegantly arched support beams—sword raised. I jumped backward, at the same time concentrating on the air around me until I felt the tell-tale signs of…
"Got it!" I cried, and kicked myself into the air just as my killer came up even with me. I flew upward, leaving my adversary on the floor.
Flying came naturally to me, as always. Even though what I was doing wasn't true flight (I could only levitate and propel myself, after all) the rush of cool air gratified my sense of freedom, leaving me feeling both weightless and empowered even as it seemed to wipe the pain out of my muscles and bruises and cuts. For a moment, despite the fact that my gravitational manipulation was nothing more than a cheap parlor trick next to the abilities of the man on the floor, I felt like I could beat my killer at his own game.
I jumped so high I found myself next to one of the beams supporting the delicate network of stained glass covering the domed building like a baseball cap. Reducing the gravitational pull in the air around me to zero, I laid myself flat along the beam, using it to keep me from floating higher, then did a sort of "hand stand" off of it so that my palms were the only thing making contact with the wrought iron structure. Angling my feet toward the man on the ground, I took a deep breath and increased the gravitational pull around me to the highest I could muster. Instantly my body became heavier than a blue whale, and I plummeted toward the ground feet first.
The man dodged, and I gouged a hole in the ground deeper than I was tall, cutting a path straight through the tile and concrete and dirt that would have pulverized my opponent had he remained in my line of fire. It was only by reducing the gravitational field around me to nothing at the last minute that I was able to escape injury.
"Good job!" said my killer as I used my power to rocket skyward and out of the hole. "But not quite good enough."
He came out of nowhere. Caught in midair in zero-gravity, unable to dodge, he slammed the hilt of his sword into my stomach, knocking the wind out of me and sending me careening back to earth. I hit the tile with a smack; my arm broke my fall, literally. My shoulder pushed awkwardly at my skin, out of socket. I rolled over and screamed, clutching the limb to my chest. A thousand tiny pieces of glass and metal gored my skin. Blood leaked onto the floor.
A voice said, sarcastically: "I like seeing you bleed, Jira: the blood goes so well with your skin."
I realized that he was standing over me, sword hanging limp from his fingers; I viewed him upside-down. His pale hair and skin were streaked chaotically with my blood, and I couldn't tell if his lips curved in a grin or a leer.
"Why are you doing this?" I managed to ask in a hoarse whisper.
Laughter poured out his grinning, leering mouth like water from a tap. "'Why'?" he repeated. "Because you're dangerous to me, that's why. You get in the way of things." His hand clenched, and the sword bobbed upward to hover next to my face. "If you die… well, everything will be better." His blue, blue eyes were resolute. "I'll be able to live again."
"But…" I groaned, and a tear fell from the corner of my eye. As it coursed over my temple, I found myself hating that single drop of saline, for in it lay all my vulnerability and pain, laid out as visibly as my battered body for him to see. "But… I thought you cared for me!"
"Don't make me laugh," he sneered, and my heart nearly stopped. "You mean nothing to me." He pressed the tip of his sword to my breast, over my suddenly-thumping heart, then raised it to strike. "You never have."
More tears joined the first in the open air. "Oh," I said, sobbing like a child. Blood bubbled on my lips. "Oh. Okay. I'm sorry."
For a moment, I thought I saw pity in his cobalt eyes, but then it was gone, the glimmer snuffing out like just like the ray of hope it kindled. "You should be sorry," he said in a voice of venom, and brought down the sword.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, the prologue is posted!
DEVIL MAY CRY © CAPCOM
SENTIENT (C) VIR M.