Do you recognize me? You should, I've been told on any number of occasions that my voice is very distinctive.
Do you recognize me now? No? Very well then, I'll tell you. Listening? Good. Pay attention, now.
Sore wa himitsu desu. That is a secret.
Well, not really. But you should know who I am by now.
If you don't, get out. You're in the wrong fandom.
Er, yes, thank you, Raya-chan. But shall we get back to the topic at hand?
What topic at hand, you ask? Oh, that's right, I haven't told you yet.
Very well.
You do, of course, know that it was I who exterminated – well, almost exterminated – a clan of golden ryuzoku during the Kouma Sensou?
Well, you do now.
Now, over the years, I've heard all sorrts of speculations as to why I did this. These range from the wildly improbable and hopelessly romantic –
(nervous laughter)
– to… well, to the wildly improbable and hopelessly romantic. Some more well thought out than others, but most boil down to the basic idea that I was in love with someone and the golds hurt/killed/assimilated them.
Not so.
And please, don't get me started on how many young ryu girls I've overhead sighing over how they intended to 'reform' the notorious Dragonslayer. Naïve, delicate young things.
Absolutely delicious. But, oh, so tiring to listen to their designs on me!
They never implemented them, of course. Once they got a glimpse of me, they immediately started trying to kill me.
Pathetic little ryu children, dreaming without daring to do.
They wouldn't have succeeded had they tried, of course. That goes without saying. But it would have been amusing had they done so. Perhaps I could have played along, and then when they were convinced, I'd have broken them oh so slowly, basking in their shock and horror…
Well, that's neither here nor there. We're talking about why I exteminated a ryuzoku clan.
Yes, children, exterminated. As in, ridding a place of small, annoying vermin. That kind of exterminated.
Of course, there was a war on. The Kouma Sensou, to be precise. The War of the Daemon's Return.
Okay, okay, it's supposed to 'Monster's', or 'Mazoku's'. But 'Daemon's' sounds so much better.
May I continue, Raya-chan? Thank you.
But, would I have killed them had we not been at war?
Well, what might have but has not happened, who can say? The prospect is not unlikely. In fact, it's highly probable.
For after all, what mazoku had done such a thing since the days of the Shinma Sensou? And even then, surely only the Mazoku Lords – or perhaps even only the Ruby-Eyed – had ever accomplished a feat of this scale alone.
We do not gain much in ability over the ages, mazoku. The powers we had at the beginning of the world have not increased significantly since then, or so Juu-o-sama tells me. I imagine the same is true of the ryuzoku.
Only humanity changes with such speed. They will be the masters of the world one day, I think.
Again, I digress. The point here is, I was intoxicated by the idea of wiping out a ten-score of ryuzoku unaided. It was like to a confirmation of the power I held. I mean, just think of it! The sheer strength involved in the act, and I had it! I could control the energy needed to end lives with a thought.
Sweet. Very sweet, it seemed back then. It still does, in fact.
And then, we must not forget the will of the Golden One. Destruction is, quite literally, what we were made for. A dark foil to the sullied light. Born in blood; bathed in it. Also literally, at times.
There are many different ways of bringing about destruction, of course. Individual mazoku each have a distinctive style, a particular preferred method. But in the end, we're killers, every last one of us. We revel in massacre, we wallow in backstabbing.
While I don't usually indulge in wanton violence, there is a peculiar satisfaction in seeing blood spouting from a throat you sliced. A savage kind of pleasure in watching your hand slide the knife in.
And blood tastes very, very good.
And then of course, ryuzoku are so damned arrogant! Noses in the air, know-it-all, holier than thou. How dared they think they could defeat us? Us! Stuck-up hypocrites, self-bound to a so-called 'moral code'. Morals! What good are morals? Self-inflicted limits with a fancy name and reasoning!
Oh, limits are excellent, of course. Caution is a must. Test the wind. Watch the current. Know what those above you expect and what they will not tolerate, and why.
But ryuzoku! Refusing to do the simplest things for the most ridiculous reasons! Fairness, equality, honour.
Fairness? Life isn't fair. It can't be, it wouldn't be life if it wasn't.
Equality? See above. There's no such thing as equality. What would there be to aspire to, if there was?
Honour, now… Well, there are things a mazoku will not do. For example? Sore wa himitsu desu.
I suppose that these last few paragraphs come to this: I wanted to prove them wrong. I wanted to lay them low, to make them see that they weren't superior; that they weren't the rulers of the world by virtue of their overall virtuousness.
Immortals are really very childish, at heart. Some of us show it more than others, is all.
(cough cough) Filia! (cough cough)
Indeed.
And yes, my dears. Centuries-old immortals with the power to level cities are running around in a state of perpetual adolescence. Millenia-old deities with arcane armies at their beck and call could decide to use those armies over an unreturned lipstick. And the whole Shinma Sensou was nothing more than a spectacularly explosive lovers' spat.
Scary, isn't it?
But yet again, I have been sidetracked.
The gist of the matter is this: I exterminated a clan of golds because I was a power-hungry, sadistic, bloodlusty, immature little bastard. That's really all there is to it.
And of course, it was so much fun!
Author's Rant: (sigh) This seems to be another 'fic that I feel the need to justify… Before I go further, let me say that typing this out was pure, undiluted hell. If I hadn't spell-checked (without the aid of a spell-checker, might I add) each paragraph as I typed it, it would have read rather like someone with a very bad cold giving a speech in an alien language. I suppose I could excuse that on the fact that I do have a very bad cold, but I think it's just that I'm a very bad typist.
I can't remember the exact 'when' of the writing of this; I think it was an after-homework-before-bed whim based on a random stewing idea. The remarks about overly romanticized ryuzoku massacre-ing are not aimed at other authors (the ones I read were better than this one), they're just me laughing at me. (I did actually write a Hopelessly Romantic massacre piece back when I was a young and tender Grade Eight. Two. I recycled them.)
In case you didn't notice, the bolded remarks are me being my egotistical smart-mouthed self. The speaker, in case you're really dense, is Xellos.
The negative portrayal of the ryuzoku has no excuse. That was me being a hopeless juvenile romantic; I'm sorry. Actually, upon re-reading, it reminds me of my Zel-bashing phase of last year. It prob'ly doesn't help that my view of dragons is mostly based on Filia.
Everything else, I suppose, can be blamed on reading The Tale of the Body Thief one too many times.
-Raya
Sept. 2001