Arctic
Author: Hikari-Kage no Ojo
Genre: Angst, Horror, Romance, Poetry
Warnings: Not suitable for younger viewers. Parental Advisory is not strongly advised because it will only waste your parent's time. They will
not allow you to read this. This story contains graphic descriptions of
violence, some minor homosexuality, suicidal material, Disturbing descriptions, torture, implied rape, described molestation, adult themes,
blood, Satanic and Demonic magick, vampires, demons, Anti- Christian/Atheistic views, self mutilation, psychological torture, angst,
insanity, implications of mass murder, possession by a demonic spirit,
sympathy for the devil, and the slight chance of some Dark Themes.
Disclaimer: Yu Gi Oh, Seto Kaiba, and all related characters are © of Kazuki Takahashi. The song 'Strawberry Gashes' is © of Jack off Jill. The Original Characters Aerarchos, Raevyn, A'drea, Tsunokei, and Sequoia are
all property of Hikari-Kage no Ojo and cannot be used without her
permission.
Japanese Translations:
Kyuuketsuki - Vampire
Ojo, Hime - Princess
Youkai - Demon
Tenshi - Angel
Yousei - Fairy, Sprite
Hai - Yes
Ie - No
Yamenasai, Yamete - Request to Stop
Onegai - Please -Sa - A title added after someone's name. Sometimes referred to as -san of
-chan, depending on the dialect of Japanese you're using.
Kage - Shadow
Hikari - Light
My façade was arctic and obstinate, unaffected and impenetrable. I was without fear or mercy, without sentiment or fault. Without flinching I cast away people's souls, sold them to the corruption of the world I lived in. I was esteemed by the values of the public, but no one really knew me, and I
didn't really know anyone. I was detested for my bitter outer shell, my
inhuman intellect and military judgment that had gotten me so far and brought me so much intense desolation I would have killed myself had it not gone against my very nature. My madness was well veiled and under control, the literal demons that haunted me were merciful enough to come only in the
dark of night, when I was a child and weak and beautiful to them.
I sat on the ledge by the window as it snowed, watching with great interest. Snow. cold, quiet. It's The Arctic tundra, empty and cold, with thoughts and whispers of memory and madness echoing over the barren, icy nothingness. The silent one observes all that goes on around him. yes. That was true. Silence had brought me many things, many good things that made me so very, very happy. They kept people away from me, away and hating me from
a distance. It was good, for them to stay away. I was dangerous to be around. But they weren't hurt because they stayed away because I was quiet,
quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet. Keep your silence and you'll stay at the
pinnacle of your personal perfection. Be silent, don't speak unless you have got to, otherwise someone may hear, they may hear, they have excellent
ears.
I clutch the silk of my unbuttoned white blouse in abrupt hysteria. I was alone. Let it all out, let out the madness, and then continue this little charade when someone comes in close enough to see. But oh, someone might be
watching. I loosen my grip, sliding my delicate, dexterous hands to my
loose jeans and down below my knees. My knees reflexively curl up and I
wrap my willowy arms with hard, well-toned muscles around my legs. They
aren't especially comforting arms. They're not really all that thin but
they seem like they are emaciated because I'm so tall, and they're hard from martial arts. My glacier orbs fluttered closed and I rested my head
against my jeans between my knees, cuddling them lightly. Despite everything, I felt good. I was comfortable in my own body, at least, even if the world seem awkward to me. That was one thing that most people would
be surprised to find out. They generally assumed that I was edgy being alone as well as being around others. But I love being alone with myself,
my own mind and my own memories of what used to be. Alone is such a
wonderful place to be.
I was cruel. Sadistic. There was a veil over my soul, concealing the person
I was. Nobody would have guessed that I was such a beautiful, perfect masochist. I liked things that way. So simple to fool people into thinking that I was truly the man I seemed, not the beautiful, frosty eyed teen with chains holding him fucking captive, holding him helpless as his soul was
torn away bit by bit, sold to the thousands who flocked there to get a portion of the ambiguous prodigy that was me. But my soul was a curse, a
death sentence, a disease. All who touched me.
I sighed dejectedly, the sound echoing in my ears, a melancholy resonance.
There was a flaw, though. Or so it seemed. The veil could be torn somehow. I was hated, yes. But I was also beautiful. Ah, yes. a gorgeous teen, well known for being calloused, but still wanted. What the hell was so desirable about me? But, yes, I was a desire from a movie, a fantasy, a sick little delirium. The iced, blue-eyed boy that no one can ever get their hands on. Oh yeah, everyone wanted a piece of that. Fan girls. Fuck them. Yes, I had
cold, glacial sapphire eyes. But that doesn't mean I'm your fucking
delusion, that I'm your little fantasy boy. Goddamn them and their weakness, they wanted me. Why? Damn you all, you repulsive fools. Get the
hell away from me!
I closed my eyes, an expression of hopeless heartache and despair on my handsome face. People were awed by my power underneath their loathing for me. I had learned to discern things beneath the charade that people put up.
There was a whole different person underneath my surface.
People could not grow attached to me. Attachment had caused me agony. I hated people; I had been so stupid to ever think. People were disgusting creatures, fit only to be my pets, and my playthings, toys that were made for me to sign away. And I did! Signed away their souls and destroyed them entirely. And yet. they still came to me. Fools! Why are you doing this!
Can't you see I'm going to destroy you!
I squeeze my eyes shut, wanting tears to come out. They don't. No, no, no.
Miserable bastards. Oh, I do destroy them. Kill them and kill them, they
deserve it for coming to me, such weak fools. Never trust never trust.
Trust and you die, you deserve to die. And they come anyway. Damn them!
Why?
Why hast thou so forsaken me, my love? Have you forgotten, already, what we have shared? We shared so much pain, yet thou have left me alone, shorn and
mourning.
I've lost a lot. So much, I wish things were they way they were. before.
A candle is lit
I see through her
Blow her out and save all her ashes for me.
A beautiful voice. yes, an arresting, powerful voice like a flute, a harp. It hypnotizes me, soothes me and comforts me as it always has, even though
now its source will cause me such torment I had never known.
Watch me fault her
You're living like a disaster
She said
Kill
Me
Faster
With Strawberry gashes all over
Raevyn. Ah, yes. Again, I'm weak. The masochist. I lost Raevyn.
Of course. Of course.
She stands there, a striking smile on her face. She's here. In front of me. Ah, loveliness. Such beauty I have never known before Raevyn. She has an
elfin, lithe form with rigid muscles like smooth, supple skin stretched tight over iron bones and liquid steel muscles, working together, flexing maladroitly and hastily with the odd sort of style she possessed. She moved
hurriedly, as if she was constantly rushed along by something. Deep, amused, ebony doe eyes like a starry night with little lights, so far away,
as far away as the hope we clung to desperately. They held a deceptive innocence I knew was found nowhere in this girl with long, raven hair that
lashes around with the slightest breeze. At this point it was swaying forward and backwards, adjusting itself as the wind, which she herself had created to add to the illusion of beauty, receded and then pressed forward.
Before, Raevyn had always reminded me of a dove. Her eyes were so innocent; she was so small and lithe. She had the body of a martial artist and most people expected the refinement and austerity to go with it, but she walked quickly and scampered along with her feet barely touching the floor instead of with the normal slow grace that warriors possessed, and though she was in no way innocent, she wasn't a sadist. Or, not so much of a sadist that I
couldn't value her. She was a little dove, hato chisai.
There stands Raevyn's body. Her essence is gone. And she no longer reminds
me of a dove for some reason.
Back in the beginning we were both very young and foolish, recklessly
exploiting our power, reveling in our superiority of mind and body and soul. We were children playing with the dark fire that burned within our
souls. Raevyn was always the best. Not the wildest on the outside, but
there was a passion inside her that made all of our madness pale in comparison. She was high. It drew me to her. It drew all of us to her. And she never, ever betrayed our love. She loved us all back with her heart and
soul. We were her children, in the beginning.
It started with a game of chess, a game that I won handily. A game I won
against a certain CEO Gozaburo Kaiba. A game that brought me home to beatings and alcohol and the haunting shadows of self-annihilation. By the age of nine I became strong enough to beat the living hell out of Gozaburo. I was fucking high. I kicked his ass every day of the week. I was no longer weak. Hell, I had never been weak. I had never cried out, even when I was
young. But Gozaburo was weak. Said CEO used some contacts or another to
find a home for me. A place where I would be at home. A place where I
belonged, in his mind. That place was hell.
Kaldorei.
I left the name Seto Kaiba behind. I took a new name, and a new life. I was
the wrath of not heaven or hell, but Earth. I was the wrath of the weak
rising against the strong and winning. I was the archangel of warrior
children. The god of the frail and fragile souls.
Somewhere in France were the deep, dark labyrinths of Kaldorei. On the outside it was a small town with not over a hundred people, surrounded by mountains and secluded to the point of no one knowing about it. It didn't
even exist. It was hidden, hidden like my soul. Unknown. Never to be
acknowledged by the world. Perhaps. it is better that way.
When you first enter the city of Kaldorei a sign in the native language of Arnica greets you. It says 'Welcome to the city of the crimson night,' but the sign, morbid as it seems, is misleading. It implies that the city is
morbid and rather bizarre, certainly. You would think that you were entering a ghost town, perhaps a place that was thought to be haunted. It does not imply that there is any danger to the place. It would not take a brave soul to enter such a city. And while it does not directly say that there isn't any kind of danger, I'm pretty damn sure that most people go into cities assuming that they're not inevitably going to die a horrifying
death in a man made hell.
If you were brave enough to enter the city of the crimson night, you'd walk on wide paved roads of gray stone. The city has no sidewalks but vendors park their carts on the edge of the streets and still leave enough room for a dragon rider to swift through. On one side of the road you would see old, rickety buildings with dusty wooden signs and half the lights shattered, scattering glass onto the floor along with broken bottles of wine. On the other side was a short, sheer hill that dropped into a brook that seemed to
be made of blood, trickling along around the smooth, black rocks. You would next see a bar. It had no name, not even a sign, but in the front
window you could see various drinks on a mahogany shelf. Through the bottles you see the blue eyed, black haired bartender, with a silky smile, a short skirt, and studded leather around her wrist. She drinks red wine from a flute, and holds a cigarette in one hand while she serves with the other. She speaks with an accent that you cannot place but sounds deep and
erotic. You might see her playing spit with one of the men, her hands shuffling gracefully and skillfully through the cards, winning every game.
Rap metal plays from the stereos and teenage beauties rock to the music uncontrollably, with hair whipping around and a heavy techno beat blasting
from the stereo as some band screams and swears about every drug conceivable to the human mind. The skirts climbed up as high as they could, and even a good number of the boys were topless. And they were all gorgeous
like the bartender.
If then you were to step inside you would notice that every soul inside was
drinking red wine exactly like the lovely bartender. They are all unnaturally beautiful, with eyes of every color, from chocolate brown to a deep red, an eerie yellow and even light lavender eyes. The hair is either deep black or a brilliant silvery white, with the exception of a lone woman sitting in the back, twirling her cyan hair with a bored look on her face
as she, too, sips red wine from a wineglass.
As her cyan eyes pierce into you, a chill runs down your spine and every instinct within you screams in confusion. She's a lovely young woman, but
the red wine at her lips a strange color, a deeper red than what you'd
normally expect, a thicker texture than what you'd thought wine to be.
She's disturbing, somehow.
You may decide to run or to stay with the impossibly exquisite natives, but for the sake of this we'll say that you were prudent enough to leave the building silently and speedily. As you continue along the place is pretty much what the sign implied: a ghost town. Occasionally you'll hear a laugh or two from the bar, but other than that the city is unnaturally silent. There are houses now, with no space in between them. Each house is red, but
they're all a slightly different hue, as if they had all been different colors before but were all covered in a strange red paint that was slightly
translucent. You observe that the houses have people in them, but you notice idly that you see no children or teens outside of that bar. Indeed,
not a soul younger than twenty could be seen.
As you continue to walk you will come to the end of the road, and a single building with the same eerie red hue as all the others. It stands one story high, flat and dull looking, with rusty chain link fence surrounding the
back yard. The two barn style doors are wide open, inviting you in.
You go inside, and all around you is metal walls, metal floor and ceiling,
rusted and red. It has the same disturbing scarlet hue that all the
buildings have, but suddenly you know what it is, what has stained the walls to leave that ruby tone. You know what flowed through the creek at
the bottom of the hill. You know, now, that it wasn't red wine that the
beautiful teenagers drank.
And the door closes behind you.
Terror floods your senses as you know, somewhere within the depths of you
subconscious, your fate.
Another door opens, and reveals Kaldorei. The real Kaldorei. Metal stairs
lead down to hell. Hell with metal and vampires, animosity and anarchy.
And at the tender age of ten, my first real scar was burned onto my arm. It was a tattoo, an insignia of Kaldorei, and the beautiful woman with blue
hair who sat at the bar. It was the Japanese kanji that represented Kyuuketsuki hime. Vampire Princess. At the age of ten, I was branded, and
my fate was sealed with burning iron against my upper arm.
The first was A'drea.
I met her after a rather gruesome fight, one that I remember very well. The lovely, black and silver haired people had caught me trying to steal some
scrap of food. That was not allowed. We were their prisoners. All the children were. At that point I was not well known, and I still had the name Seto Kaiba. Dexterous fingers took flight towards the food long ago, and
black claws snatched them away and dug into my hand until it bled, bled sweet blood, the exquisite wine that the vampires with black and white hair lived off. This one had black hair, and cold black eyes like burnt, charred
coals.
I had never felt such fear. Her eyes stared into mine, daring me to do
something. Waiting for. what?
And a voice within me answered her without words. She was waiting for my
reaction. She got it, all right. I felt myself slip away.
Wisps of darkness enveloped my body, a dark fire from the underworld itself
rose from the floor below me and shrouded me in a veil of power. One
feather unfolded from my back as if it had been there all along, then another after it, and another, growing into silver wings of twilight that gave me my name. Near the end the diamond feathers were tipped in black.
Dipped in black blood, the black blood of Set.
And in my hand was a sword, made from hell itself, the same clouds of shadows binding it in obscurity. My eyes became oceans of glacial light,
the colors of the arctic glittering like precious gems, burning without fire just like my sword. I grew pale, and my hair blackened as if it had been burned. I was more beautiful than I had ever been. I was a demon. A
beautiful, angelic, demon.
It was instinct to kill. To destroy her.
It was the same feeling I got when I decked Gozaburo, who was twice my size
at least. The small won against the big, and I was fucking exhilarated. There was a dark laugh on my lips. I was a long lost god. I could feel her worship me, adore me. I could feel her love me as I killed her and killed
her and killed her.
I enjoyed destroying her. I loved it. My sword took over, noiselessly
tearing through the woman as if she wasn't there. but she was most undeniably there, and she bled, too. She bled hard. More than humans did. Maybe it was a distress call, when one needed help, a lot of blood would be
spilled so other vampires could smell it.
Then A'drea-sa came. She saved me from the dark. Seeing her face brought me back. Seeing her eyes, awed and dazed, woke me up from the state I was in. My silver wings folded back into nothingness, and my sword departed in a
burst of shadowy, mystical wisps.
Her eyes were black like Raevyn's, but they weren't doe eyes. Hers were wild and full of blaze, hatred but not anger. Happiness. She was happy even
though she hated. I envied her. Her hair was like a black bouquet of
thorns, with wild, ebony spikes that had to be tied back and sickles of hair falling in her face. Her skin was pale, and she was slightly shorter
than average, but she was muscular and stocky.
"I am A'drea Charday." Her voice was cool and calm, comforting, but not
condescending at all. I liked her right away.
"I. I'm Se-"
"Sh." she hushed me. "Whatever you name is now is no longer your name. Someday you may go back to that name, and to that life. But now you have a new name. Now you have a new life," She paused, looking at me intensely.
"Your name is Aerarchos. It means 'silver wings of the twilight."
"Aerarchos." I repeated. I liked it okay. But I liked the meaning a lot.
Silver wings of the twilight.
A'drea took me to her home, down the metal stairs. They were built like the stairs on a fire exit, and the walls were pure rusted iron. The light was all claret and dim. I figured that it was to scare us, to make us feel less
at home. To demoralize us. Or perhaps it was to remind us of blood.
A'drea took me down to Tsunokei.
At first he was a chilling person, but I lusted after him just the same. His eyes were black like the vampire who had met an end at my Darksword, like ashes of souls burnt to black in the deepest pit of hell. His hair was
silver with little streaks of azure, lavender, white, and every wintry color imaginable. They looked like a glacier, like my wings. His skin was
pale and smooth, taut over his muscular, agile form. He was gorgeous.
He was quiet and sad and passionate, with a deep voice that resounded even
as he spoke quietly. Tsunokei.
He was my first sensei, the first one to teach me the martial arts in a way
they had never been taught before. I was physically potent, but my true
vigor lied in the hell powers that seemed to come to me naturally. The Darksword, I learned later, was part of a dark power, the power of one of
the three Hells.
The first hell was simply known as the Shadow Realm. It was a void of dark emptiness, shadow and nothing. It was the first magick, the layer of hell
that most human mages tapped into if when they wanted to delve into the dark arts. This hell was where the souls of the dead were banished if their
heart weighed more than a feather on the Scale of Judgment. Thus the
Egyptian legend.
The second hell was a more Christian view of hell, with demons and Succubi and Incubi, fallen angels and Lucifer and his lovely daughters. The souls of the unworthy dead didn't end up in this hell, but everything else was pretty much hell, except with lack of torture. The second hell was simply home for the demons, not a place for torment. Actually, most demons I knew
were Christian, including Lucifer. I had always been an atheist before Kaldorei, so the sudden realization that the teachings of Christianity were wide of the mark didn't shock and appall me. Most demons, obviously, would
tap into this hell power for magick.
The third was symbolic hell. In retrospection, hell is all around us. We live and breathe hell. It is pain, a metaphysical pain that is part of our world. It is a thought, an emotion, a shock of electricity, death and doom,
fate, love bound to fail, betrayal, obsession, paranoia, hate and
insecurity, deceit and bitter nights alone. This hell could become
something real, something proper and physical, something that could cut
through you and make you really bleed. Every time you bleed, that is figurative hell. And if you can channel this symbol, this false hell, you
can make someone bleed. You can create darkness.
Of course, you have to be out of your mind to fool around with the Third Hell. It would tear you apart from the inside in about five years, for most
cases. And that was if you were a demon. I've lasted ten years. I don't
have too much longer. I figured I could last until I was 25.
Symbolic hell was why I was losing it, why so many bad things were happening to me. Symbolic hell was drawn to me. And symbolic hell is pain.
Symbolic hell is madness.
Tsunokei taught me to control the darkness as well as he could, but soon I got too good, even for him. I beat him every time. It didn't bother him at all. It drove me mad that he didn't care. We fought and fought, and I told
myself that I hated him. I didn't. My existence revolved around him, at
that point. I was desperate for affection.
He didn't know I existed.
I wanted him anyway. Not loved him, but I wanted him. Needed him, or
anyone. Someone.
I was a fool. Truly.
The third was Raevyn.
The first time I saw her was at another part of the dungeon, where Tsunokei, A'drea and I had fled, outnumbered by vampires and injured from
previous battles. She seemed to be amused by something that not another soul in the room was aware of. There was a constant contemptuous smirk on her face. She was so contented it made me want to scream. She argued with
the other girls and always won, got into fistfights with the boys and triumphed cleverly. There was a sultry, seductive look in her eyes, but it was apparent that no one could have her. She was a goddess. Oddly enough, she didn't seem like a real sadist to me. She didn't seem like the type to take men's hearts and cast them away while enjoying it. She seemed to be too happy, and her happiness was infectious. It spread around to everyone
near her, plaguing them with good humor. She was a divinity. She was a pathological flirt. She was idyllic and clever and unattainable at the same
time. She was obviously over my head, but I was arrogant, and I asked
Tsunokei who she was.
"She is Raevyn, Youkai hime, The Shadow Storm. The Daughter of Lucifer."
"Youkai? She looks like a yousei. or a Tenshi. hato chisai. and you say she
is youkai?"
He rolled his eyes, grinning seductively. I thawed at the sight of his dazzling smile. "Love at first sight, ne?" He said it in a way that was typical of him, not sarcastically in the usual sense, but with a genuine smile on his face, rather than the annoyance that normally came with irony.
But suddenly, I felt that I had a new source of comfort. There was a
hopeless romantic somewhere in me, a part of me that told me I had a
chance.
"So, you are Aerarchos, ne?" Her voice was smooth, but casual. There was
nothing hidden, no triggers I might set off by the answer. There was no
motive behind her question. She simply wanted to know. Was I Aerarchos?
"Hai. Merry meet, milady." I said, respecting the typical tradition of
addressing royalty such as Raevyn.
"Merry meet yourself, milord." She said it with a genuine smile on her face. What? Wasn't I a threat to her power? I was a powerful warrior, which meant a lot down here, and I was smart enough to know how to manipulate her little clique into lifting me on their shoulders instead of her. Was she
that confident that she didn't care? Or did she simply want me to think that? I would assume the latter; it was always better to assume the worst
possible scenario. "I've heard a lot about you. They're calling you the
angel of death. Now that's a title I've been striving for."
Why was she even here? I didn't go up to her, on the contrary, she had come to me. Had she seen me staring? Damn, she was very clever. Fool. What the
hell would possess you to stare at her so obviously? And now your just sitting here, shooting your stupid self in the stupid foot. You're far too good at maneuver to loose this easily to her. Keep in control of her, keep manipulating her. I scoffed at this mentally. As if there was ever a point
when I was manipulating her. "Thank you." I said, sounding rather
suspicious, despite myself.
I saw her raise a delicate eyebrow. She was observant, at least. She noticed the suspicion and obviously didn't think she was just imagining it,
which meant that she could conceive at least one reason for me to be suspicious of her. So, perhaps she wasn't as casual and unmotivated as she
seemed. She shook her head and smiled lightly. She wore that same
seductive, irritating smile that drove me mad. "Aerarchos." she trailed
off, giggling slightly.
I glared menacingly before looking away.
"Aerarchos, what are you afraid of? Me?" she said softly, her tone now with a noticeable tinge of concern. Her black eyes pulled me in. I could see the lightning in them, the shadow storm. She was truly the daughter of Lucifer.
her eyes were a smoky, thick black that clouded my senses, whispered comfort in the whipping arctic wind. They rippled and flowed like deep seas of that thick black smoke. The lightning echoed through them, flashing with
her emotions. She was lovely. And gods, I was afraid.
"Afraid? Of you?" I snarled, whipping my head towards her. "You don't know the meaning of fear." I hissed, the threat easily noticed in my tone, as I
stared her down, unflinching.
She didn't even cringe. She stared right back at me, looking at me almost sadly. Not pitying, but sad. Sad for me. Sad for herself, too. Sad for the life she would never share with me. Sad for the future and the past and the present. She looked at me for a long time before she spoke, softly. What she said I shall never forget, nor shall I forget the meaning she gave my
life in that moment.
"I am not afraid of you, Aerarchos," and for once, her words were careful and cautious. Like she knew how fragile I was. "Because I do not care about
anything you can take from me. You should not be afraid of me because I cannot take anything from you that really matters either. But you do care,
because what matters to you is different." She paused, taking a deep breath. "It is different, Aerarchos, because what I care about comes from my heart. But your heart has caused you pain, so you've shut it off because you think I will betray you. You think everyone will betray you." She was silent for a moment, letting that sink in. "I won't. I will never betray
you, Aerarchos. This world may have caused you pain, but I will not. I
won't allow myself to."
My breathing was heavy by this point. I felt sick. She was analyzing my
entire being in front of me, showing me my strength and weakness, my
essence. My core. "Yamenasai." I whispered.
"It's ok." She murmured, sighing heavily. She wrapped her arms around me.
Oh yeah. It was love at first sight, all right. But having her was long delayed. That was fine with me. Knowing her was a blessing, speaking to her was a miracle. We became acquainted. She knew me, and I knew her like the
back of my hand. I was obsessive.
I had no chance.
For that time I had to be content watching her as she ruled over her little
world, as she seduced her way to the top and left men at their knees. I
knew I would be one of those men. I didn't care. I wanted to be.
I would be. In a way neither of us thought possible.
The last was Sequoia.
She was the cyan haired beauty from the bar above the surface of Kaldorei, the chilled, disturbing girl who sat, bored out of her mind. Kyuuketsuki hime. Vampire Princess. She was a snobbish teenager like any other, bored and discontent and brooding over her own damn problems. She wore black tee
shirts with hello kitty and flares with safety pins in them. She was so
pathetic I wanted to scream. She was still stuck on the shallow thought
that what you look like actually means anything about who you are. She still believed that what kind of person you are could be changed by what little clique you happen to be in, what music you listen, what friends and
enemies you had. She called people 'posers.'
It was an act, of course. So easy to underestimate a snotty teen, so simple
to underrate a wolf in sheep's clothing. She wasn't an idiot, though it took me a while to figure that out. It took a lot of beating to get that
into my head. I learned what she really was the hard way.
She was a horror.
She moved fast, hit hard and showed no sympathy. She was cunning, sadistic,
and sick. So sick.
The other vampires drank human blood, yes, but it was a sort of sacrament for them, almost an art. They sank their fangs in painlessly, normally on the wrist. The process rarely even hurt the victim unless the Kyuuketsuki was ravenous. Overall, I didn't hate vampires as a species. I hated these
ones for keeping me here, but I knew that vampires had to drink blood.
Sequoia ate her victims, raw flesh and all.
Tore at them as if she was a starved wolf, snarling and hissing, a crazed look on her pretty teenage face. It's the most horrifying thing I've ever
had to witness.
She eats one and goes on to the next, eating and eating and never stopping. A flash of long nails and sharp canines and her victims disappear, leaving only mangled, frayed bodies. She bathes in the blood and flesh for hours after gorging herself, crawling to whatever meat she left over and eating it slowly, with a sickening defiance to any revulsion you might feel while you watch. She eats with great passion, her small but powerful arms pulling
at meat of people, actual people that she's killed and is now eating slowing, savoring each bite and looking like she's enjoying her sick little
meal.
It's unlike any other torture. I've been tortured. I've been beaten and raped and molested and starved for days, then driven like a slave, forced to do things I couldn't even tell you. There is nothing like seeing that.
Nothing.
She tied me to a wall, once, after I had tried to steal from her. She
knocked me out and tied me to a wall, and then she took fifteen random children, children, and ate them alive while I watched. Then she stalked towards me with a sultry look in her eyes and impossible vampire grace. And
she kissed me fervently. I tasted the blood and flesh on her lips, the
horror of her crimes now staining me. She trailed kisses down my neck,
gently, as if I was her lover and this was something I condoned. I struggled to no avail. She took off my black, ragged t-shirt, frantic by
this point, kissing me with all the passion she had.
She ran her cold, calloused hands down my torso, her long nails scraping uncomfortably against me, the scent of blood so thick it made me sick. I
felt her fangs scraping against my neck as I whimpered and mumbled in protest, spasms I seemed unable to control causing me to jerk back, causing agonizing pain. Her hands pulled lightly on my tattered jeans, her features
buried in my neck, kissing and nibbling softly. She hooked her thumbs inside my denims and slowly, agonizingly, tugged down on them, torturing me
all the more. I glared at her, hatred pumping through me, burning me.
She pulled them off me, slowly.
Terror replaced hate.
And she took me.
When I was 12 years old, she took me.
She laughed at me, a shrieking blast from deep within her dark soul, hysterical with madness. Mirth at my aversion, my dismay. My agony. And she left me by the stairs leading to Raevyn's quarter of the warren, bleeding
and shorn.
To this day I still hear her nails grazing down the metal walls, leaving an unnatural, piercing shriek echoing behind her as she walked off, designer
heels clicking with each step.
Her scratching nails left a wound on me. It was still bleeding then, but
soon it scarred and went the back of my mind, shrieked only when I was
vulnerable or when Sequoia called on the memory, reminded me.
That was the first time in a long time I cried.
Behind me a heard a soft, feminine gasp. Raevyn. I cried out as her miniature arms wrapped around me and effortlessly dragged me inside. It was only at that point that I noticed the kind of beating Sequoia had given me. I saw bite marks on my legs, ragged flesh. I felt sick, dizzy. She was a
monstrosity. No. Oh, Kami, no.
Before that day my soul had been black. Now it had been tainted with the
same ruby tone that stained the walls.
The same ruby tones that tainted my Darksword.
From that day on, I was a whole different person.
I killed the bastards without mercy, without reason or motivation. I would go wherever they were and I would kill them, kill them by the hundreds. My
sword became a part of me, my best friend in the world. I slaughtered ruthlessly, I killed and killed and killed and enjoyed every minute. I felt good. I was high. I was euphoric, ecstatic. It was the same feeling I had first gotten when I had first slain the vampire with cold black eyes. The dark power within me began to eat me alive. Now, and only now, I did truly understand what Tsunokei had meant when he told me that dark power would kill me. I understood now. I realized how it would eat me alive and drive
me to madness. I loved it more than ever.
None joined me at first. There was too much disconcert around the subject for anyone to consider it. The thought of anyone slaughtering the way they did was too much, too immoral. Fools. They're all dead now, just to inform
you. They didn't join me. They were cowards, fools. They opposed me. I
should have killed them too.
None came to me, at first.
That didn't last long.
A'drea was the first, naturally. Then Tsunokei. And the next time I saw Raevyn, she told me that she would join my campaign. The red stains on the walls and floors grew darker than ever, but we all knew whose blood it was
now.
Blood was everywhere, it ate me alive and consumed me. People feared me now, no longer looked at me as the angel with silver wings. The silver had
been tainted. The black tips of the lovely feather, which I had once believed were dipped in the black blood of Set himself, were now dipped in
the red blood of mortals. And I bathed in it. I loved it.
I was a warrior, an adrenaline junkie. I was wasted. My desire for blood
was insatiable.
I was no longer I.
Sequoia had made me something new.
And I tore the beating heart from her. I tore it from her and smiled as I
did it. A cruel smile, sick and evil. Like her smile. And I laughed, hysteria in my rich, arresting voice. Sick hilarity tinged my voice with ruby tones, the same ruby tones came from her lovely blue eyes as she died. And as I dug my diamond hard fingernails in, right before I killed her, I
brought her face right up to mine and stared her dead in the eyes.
I had never noticed.
I had never noticed how incredible beautiful she was. Especially now, bloody and mangled. Defeated. I stared deep into her cyan orbs, hypnotized. They were like the winter sky after it snowed, light blue and crystal. Her pale white skin was covered in strawberry gashes, to quote a favorite song
of mine. Her smooth, silky hair was braided, I believe, with a single
strand hanging down in her face, a feather tied at the end.
Beautiful.
Now I stood over her, and she was tied to the wall as I made her watch her worst nightmare come true. I didn't have a mirror, but I knew the look in my eyes. I saw it reflected in her blood. It was a crazed, insatiably mad
look.
I kissed her.
And I finished her off with her lips still pressed against mine in the most
passionate moment of my life.
Things happened very quickly.
"Aerarchos?" I heard the voice behind me, casual and manic, despite
everything. It drove me mad.
"Hai?" I replied, my voice rather flat. Damn. She would call me on that, to
be sure.
I felt her hand on my shoulder, but it was nothing like any touch I had felt before. It was simply casual and friendly. It had no hidden meaning or
manipulation. Just comfort. That was what I had truly found in Raevyn; freedom from my insecurities, someone who would love me no matter what I did. Someone who had seen the worst of me and still stood by me, without
flinching.
We were no longer in the Kaldorei warren, but in the palace that we had currently taken to residing in. Tsunokei wasn't kidding when he said Raevyn was a princess of the demons. She was the daughter of Lucifer. And damn, did that boy have money. The place was black marble and silver all around, and bluish crystals in the place of the typical palace flora gave my magick a super charge, so I had wings all the time. All day it seemed to be dusk, just after the sun had set behind the hills. It was the most beautiful time in the world for me. And the crystals, of course, glowed, making it look
like an all sapphire Vegas at midnight. I was in heaven, in hell.
"How are you?" Raevyn asked, cool as could be. She said it still with the
grin on her face, the constant smirk still hinted on her pretty face.
I couldn't help it.
"I'm fine. It's hard, but I am adjusting to this. I can handle it ok. Maybe not on my own, but I'll live." Mentally, I was slapping myself. I had just spilled to her, shown incredible weakness to her. I had just told her that I might be a little distressed by the fact that my world was falling apart.
Nice job, Seto.
"I know, Seto." Her voice is soft, but still holding the possessed, manic
shade to it.
I blink. She. called me Seto.
Never before had she called me anything but Aerarchos, and I had liked it
that way. I was no longer Seto Kaiba.
But why did she.
Insight is a terrible thing.
"Whatever you name is now is no longer your name. Someday you may go back to that name, and to that life. But now you have a new name. Now you have a
new life."
"Merry met, merry part, and merry meet again, Raevyn." I said, softly,
still respecting tradition. She was still royalty, after all. There is something of her in my voice now, something of her happiness. Something of
her cheerful, heavenly ways.
"Merry meet again."
She kissed me. Kissed me in the way she had always touched me, with no
sense behind it, just because. Because it was right. Because at that moment, the thing she felt she had to do was kiss me full on the lips. She wrapped her arms around me and cradled me, holding me like the child I was.
I loved it.
And I flew off on silver wings of the twilight, back to my home. I could feel my world falling apart, but I like it that way. She owned me, you see, and that was what I wanted. Because I wanted her to finish me off in the beautiful way I knew she would. I wanted to die the happy death I knew she would send me to, even if she didn't mean to. I knew that she would betray
me. Everyone would betray me. That was the dark curse that I had been given, that was the price I paid for the dark power. My soul was sold to
the devil and the devil always betrayed, as did everyone else.
I was cursed, as were all who had such power as mine. In the end, they would all betray me. They would deceive me whether they wanted to or not. The world would turn their backs on me, forsake me and leave me forlorn, without any choice in the matter. For that was my weakness, my strength. None could truly touch me. Tsunokei had told me, once, that the dark power
would tear me apart from the inside. He was wrong. It would not tear me apart, truly. It would simply tear me from this world, send me spiraling so closely to the darkness that all who touched me were forced to leave me. A defense mechanism built in to all people kicked in after being near me to long, told them to get away from the dark. But after all my paranoia, after my entire defenses, I still didn't pull back from the darkness. I delved into like no other had before, reveling in it. Breathing it in, living it.
But she didn't want to betray me. She wouldn't want to, would fight against it, even as she did betray me, which she would. And when she did, it would be perfect. There would be no pain to it. My heart was breaking,
but in a good way.
I walk out of my office, late at night, 14 years old and gone from
Kaldorei. Forever. It was still there, still a scar on my upper arm. A tattoo, of the kanji Kyuuketsuki. That was the physical representation of
my memory. But I was gone. I had my brother. I had one very dead
stepfather. They said that he had jumped off the roof. Suicide. I'm not surprised. After all, he was under a lot of pressure, with two sons, the
company, etc.
At least, that was what I had told the press. I happened to know for a fact that Gozaburo Kaiba didn't jump off the roof. He fell to his death because
he was pushed off. I know. I pushed him.
It had been three months since that happy day, in fact, when I walked out of the office in the dark of the night, with the stars glittering like a
thousand icy splinters and the moon gone from sight.
And there, outside my door, was a maid. With beautiful black hair flowing down to her waist, wearing the traditional black dress down to her knees, with a frilly with apron and feather duster in hand. Her eyes are turquoise
green and wide, staring into nothingness, seeing some profound wisdom
somewhere in oblivion. Empty. Dead.
Not just any dead.
Something ate her.
Someone ate her. Alive.
Her stomach is literally gone, torn out in a mad frenzy. Scratch marks cover her arms, with blood seeping out like fine wine, and judging by her
position with her legs spread, she's been raped. Her head has had long fingernails raking over it judging by the amount of blood and the odd, deep
gashes. And of course, her heart.
It's sitting next to her, outside of her body.
Just like Sequoia's.
How am I any better? I've killed people. A lot of people. Tore out
Sequoia's heart. I'm a monster. Dear god, I'm a monster.
I stare, dumbly. I'm hallucinating. A girl screams as she turns around the corner. A maid. She runs up to me, asks. am I ok? Do I look ok? At least she doesn't think I did this. then again, how could you. I wonder what I must look like, in this state of shock. I'm shaking. She has brown eyes, caramel popcorn eyes, staring into mine, concerned. I feel her, holding me
steady, sitting me down. Tears are in her eyes. She's smart. She's very
wise, to not freak out like me.
And. her blue eyes stare deeply into mine, mocking.
Blue?
I jerk back with a whimper, horrified. I'm twitching like never before, no
longer in control of my body. Fear is in control.
Sequoia.
"You see, Aerarchos, it's very simple."
She's alive. Alive. How?
"I can. possess. any body I wish, to be blunt about it."
Inside anyone. Inside me. No, no, go away.
"Well, of course. How did you think I lived so long?"
Such a fool. I'm such a fool.
"Oh, but you had no idea, did you."
How could I have known!! How!?
"You think you are the first, Aerarchos?"
Her voice is soft now, and close.
"The first to kill me? The first to suffer under me?"
Her breath is on my neck. Please don't kiss me again.
"I have lived for five thousand years, Aerarchos. Five thousand years of
murder and brutality as you have seen."
. No.
That doesn't even process into my brain. Too much. Unable to comprehend.
She's overloaded me.
"I can take any body I want. the body you killed was just a host,
ironically enough. I left her long before you killed me."
No. No. She's lying.
"Raevyn. where are you?"
Her voice is light and crooning.
"I'm coming for you, Raevyn."
There's a deep, sadistic amusement in her voice, as if she can barely
contain her laughter.
Her nails screech down the halls.
I scream.
A song comes to mind in the dead of the night. I shiver. God damn, it's
cold. There's a draft from the storm outside.
I lay quiet, waiting for her voice to say.
"Some things you lose, and some things you just give away."
Strawberry Gashes. that was it, was the song. Kill me faster. You're living
like a disaster. Kill me. faster.
Which one was Raevyn? Did I lose her, or did I give her away?
It was my fault. I didn't have to leave her. Raevyn.
I look at her, my sweet lover Raevyn, upset and confused. I feel so
irrational, like a damned child. Give her back to me. Raevyn.
She stalks towards me, in a way Raevyn never would have. But Raevyn was
dead. Now she seems to have that grace, that cruelty in her eyes. It chilled my to see her like that. My eyes widened in horror, not for fear of what would happen to me, but revulsion of what had happened to Raevyn. Oh,
Raevyn. After all we had gone through together, this was her fate.
Horrible.
She comes up behind me, sweet, beautiful Raevyn, and puts an arm around me
almost casually. I am shaking. This is not a tranquil instant for me. Raevyn's body is being possessed. I've never felt so sick. I want to vomit. I never want her to take that arm away. Because maybe if it stays things
will go back to the way they were before Raevyn died.
"You could have saved me, Aerarchos. Why did you leave me? I loved you."
I want to scream, yes, yes, I loved you to, but I couldn't. You would have died. I would have killed you with my own hands! You were so different; you didn't understand how I suffered. You suffered too, but differently. I felt as if I was cursed, even back then I could sense it, everyone who came near me, who felt affection for me and I felt affection for, I hurt them all.
Ruined them!
I don't tell you that. Oh, Raevyn.
"I don't go by that name anymore, Sequoia."
She laughed, mockingly. Damn, sickening, horrible vampire. How I hated her. She would die, soon. Soon, I would kill her. I would save Raevyn. I would
repossess the body that had been stolen, free the soul that had been
exploited. "Oh, really!"
"My name is Seto Kaiba, son of Gozaburo, brother of Mokuba. It will be that
way for the rest of my life. Enough trying to draw me back."
Her eyes narrowed. "Gallant, aren't you?"
I shivered. She had power over me. it was sickening, the way she played
with me.
"Aren't you!? You're so brave, Aerarchos, such a valiant knight. My hero. You saved the damsel from the Dragon, but the Dragon came back! I always come back! And now Raevyn is dead. Dead. She's mine. Her body, her soul,
her mind is mine. Will never be yours, boy. Never be yours!"
Her voice was thick with madness. She was breathing heavily, hissing and whispering frantically, her fingers moving up my sides sensually. Raevyn. Raevyn. It made me sick, the way I wanted her. She was Sequoia. A monster.
I loved her. So, so much. My lovely Raevyn, my lovely Sequoia.
"That will have to change. So, so, brave, Aerarchos. That must change."
She smirks widely, and I squeeze my eyes shut. It doesn't matter. I can smell, even taste the blood as she cuts herself, mutilating the body that isn't hers and never truly will be. Slowly the knife drags, punishing me
for my disobedience. Blood wells up from her supple skin, scarring her rightness. I know she hates this, that she wants to slash at herself, but she can't, of course. Raevyn's body has defense mechanisms far too advanced to attack to bluntly. She has to coax herself into the cut, into the pain.
Does she revel in her own pain? Probably. It hurts me. It hurts Raevyn, too. It hurts us. If I should defy her again, she will hurt us at the cost
of herself.
Yamete. Yamenasai.
Onegai!
Perversion.
This isn't Raevyn.
It's a caricature of Raevyn, a distortion of her intense loveliness. I
should strike her down now. She would be shocked into leaving.
I don't.
I would never hurt Raevyn. Never hurt the woman I fell in love with, even
if she's not really the woman I fell in love with after all.
I can still hear her laughter echoing. She shrieked hysterically, wild,
high off her power over Raevyn and me. It chilled me to the bone.
My life is contemptible. I shake; mad with self-destruction, distrust and hatred. I'm losing my mind. I take a calligraphy pen from the desk, swiping it with quick, feisty hands that are no longer in my control. I press the sharp end of it against my arm, press and press until penetration, until it tears through the first layer of skin and then the next and the next and the next until they are all gone, leaving a mark, a lovely scar to me to talk about someday. When Raevyn and I are comparing scars, I will show her
this one with pride, and she will tell me how incredible it is, how beautiful it makes me look. She'll trace her finger over it, and I'll trace my finger over her tattoo, the pretty little tattoo she got at Kaldorei. It's the Japanese kanji for Kyuuketsuki hime, on her upper arm. I have the same one. It's my Kaldorei scar. And this new one, this well of life, of wine, this will be my love scar. And this one. And another. And another. Beautiful blood, beautiful red wine, sipped from cups in a bar, with the pretty blue-eyed bartender holding a cigarette in one hand, serving with
the other. And Raevyn's mixes with mine. It is all over me, and now it
leaks into my veins. Now we are one. We shall always be so.
I take the bloodstained pen.
.And write.
You took from me my name
You stole from me my life
You seized from me my love
Tell me
Tell me now
Are you happy now?
I am left alone
But still haunted
By the one I love
And you
You stole my dignity
You made me what I am
And I made you what you are
But how could I have known
I was so young
I am so young
And I'll die that way too
And you betrayed me
Betrayed my youth
Just like the rest
You said you wouldn't
I thought you would
But not like this
Never be yours
It echoes
Are you happy now?
Are you happy now?!
Never be yours
Never be yours
I will never be yours!
Is this what I deserve?
Ie
Ie
Ie, I will never be yours
Never
I don't need you
I'm not hysterical
I'm not disturbed
I'm just fine
There's nothing wrong with me
There's nothing troubling me
Why would there be?
I will never be yours!
I finish the sudden outlet, still bleeding from the wound on my arm. Strawberry Gashes. I lap up the blood absently. I've never tasted red wine. could it possibly be this good? Could it have this sweet, caramel, copper flavor? Could it possibly entice me so that I would stain my very being to
have it?
Does this make me a vampire?
Does this make me Sequoia?
She walked down the hall, scratching her nails against the walls, leaving an eerie screeching sound behind her. The snow it silent, as always, but the room no longer is, even after she is long gone. It echoes. Her words, her voice, her scratching nails have all left gashes on me. They're still
bleeding now, but soon they will scar and go to the back of my mind, haunting me only when I am the child again, when I'm the masochist, alone
with my madness. Alone is a wonderful place to be.
There were stories, after I left Kaldorei.
They said that one human boy spilled all the blood in Kaldorei. That he was
an angel who had been possessed by a demon, corrupted by darkness and unable to fight against it with his delicate human soul. They say that only four ever have escaped from the depths of Kaldorei. They say that one of them was a beautiful, frosty-eyed teen. They say that he would never escape his despair, that he would forever remain a beautiful, angst-ridden saint,
and that he would never die truly die, even though he was human.
They say that the last words of the Youkai Hime were these:
"A monster has been created by the unwilling hands of the angel of death.
that monster shall live on for all of eternity, never to die. It has
haunted eyes of blue, with hell locked inside."
I walked down the street, the wind in my hair. Despite everything, I was ok. I had been able to put it out of my mind after half of a week, and now
I was able to function normally, just as I always had. Mokuba had just assumed it was a phase. He always did. He was a smart kid, so he figured
that after a while, the work would build up and cause me to have little spells of depression. That would have probably been true if circumstances
were different.
The people around me seemed like a different species. It was odd. as if they were human, and I was not. I felt alienated, separated. Of course. I was being pulled towards the darkness. I wondered if they could sense it
too? I was being pulled away, but did they know that? It mattered not.
The wind stung my smooth face, causing me to squint ever so slightly. That
was a good sign. At least the mundane, physical part of this world was
still with me. I wondered how long it would take for it to betray me as well. But for now, the streets of Domino were fully clear. I was totally
able to keep a grip in this icy weather. I loved it this way. The heat always seemed to remind me of something far off and forgotten, a memory of a place I had never been. A memory of being. happy? Absurd. Happiness was
far away. Darkness was all that I knew.
But the cold kept me under control.
A small girl walked across the street, but for some odd reason, she didn't have any parents with her. Her eyes were an odd mauve shade, and she was
wearing dark, smoky eye makeup that made her look like an Egyptian divinity. She seemed to small to be alone, but perhaps she wasn't as young
as I had originally suspected. She was wearing a white tank top with a baggy, gray blue plaid shirt over it, and baggy jeans. On her head was a gray snowcap, and a gray scarf was tied around her neck. She had studded leather wristbands and black combat boots, not to mention eyebrow piercing, ear piercing, and even a diamond stud through her nose. Perchance she was
just short.
She walked over to my side of the street alone and with confidence,
reinforcing the theory that she was older than she appeared. She walked
briskly past me, but stopped after a few steps, as if she had noticed
something. She walked back and looked me over twice. I glared at her forebodingly, daring her to continue her examination of me. She looked up into my dark eyes and seemed only slightly unnerved by them, something I
wasn't used to. She tilted her head to the side. "Aerarchos." She said,
blinking with big, wine-colored eyes.
My weight shifted back as I took on a rigid martial arts stance. She knew.
Good lord, she knew.
"There's been talk." She said flatly. What the hell is she talking about?
"Raevyn's last words were, 'A monster has been created by the reluctant hands of the angel of death. That monster will live forever, never dying. It has haunted eyes of blue, with hell locked inside.' Did you know that?"
Yeah, I knew that. And you got a few words wrong, too.
"Your point?" Jesus, we're in the middle of a goddamn street here, and I'm
talking about this? Am I losing it or what?
"I just wanted to know." she trails off, hesitant. Oh, man. This won't be good. I tense up, preparing for the worst. She looks at my apologetically,
but goes ahead and asks anyway. "Who was it?"
My mind is blank. Say what?
"Kid. Jesus, what the fuck are you talking about?" I say, shaking my head, distressed unexpectedly. There is something subconscious telling me to get
the hell out of here.
"Who was the monster you created?"
I blink. That doesn't quite process.
"Well, you killed Sequoia, which in turn caused her to go and possess Raevyn. That's a pretty big fucking monster. But you yourself killed more people within a few months than Sequoia has in the past. oh, 500 years. I
would know. I am that old, you know."
My heart stops.
"So which one of you was she talking about?"
Abruptly, my head bows and I stare at the ground, a dark chuckle on my lips. My eyes are truly haunted, no longer what they used to be, but now a cursed, forgotten shadow of my former self. Former self. Dear god, I don't even remember. I don't remember anything good. I know I used to by happy, I remember being happy, but I don't remember the fine points, the little bits
and pieces that made up happiness, that were brought together into one
huge, vague understanding of happiness. I don't even have memories of
happiness. Unless. I'm killing someone. Yes, that's right. I was happy whenever I killed people. When blood stained my hands I felt euphoric. That is my happiness. My laugh grows louder and more hysterical by the minute. Happiness is found only in death and blood, only in killing the ones I love
and the ones I hate. Because I do love and hate everyone. And I do kill
everyone. And it makes me so happy.
"I think," I hissed, darkly. "Even you know the answer to that."
They say that only four ever have escaped from the depths of Kaldorei. They say that one of them was a beautiful, frosty-eyed teen. They say that he would never escape his despair, that he would forever remain a beautiful, angst-ridden saint, and that he would never die truly die, even though he
was human.
And so it would be, and so it was destined to be. This was my thought, my emotion, a shock of electricity, my death and doom, my fate, my love bound to fail, my betrayal, my obsession, my paranoia, my hate and insecurity, my deceit and my bitter nights alone. This was my curse, and the curse of all
who had such power as mine.
I remember, now, what Raevyn said to me, so long ago.
"I am not afraid of you, Aerarchos, because I do not care about anything you can take from me. You should not be afraid of me because I cannot take anything from you that really matters either. But you do care, because what
matters to you is different. It is different, Aerarchos, because what I
care about comes from my heart. But your heart has caused you pain, so you've shut it off because you think I will betray you. You think everyone will betray you. I won't. I will never betray you, Aerarchos. This world
may have caused you pain, but I will not. I won't allow myself to."
You were so wrong, Raevyn. And you so that, didn't you? You realized it as you died, as you went away forever and the Kyuuketsuki hime took over for you. You grasped how wrong you were. You would betray me. But even as you
died, you were wrong. I didn't create the monster.
After all, it was you who betrayed me. It was you who so cruelly deceived
me, who tore my heart away. You, the daughter of Lucifer, the lovely daughter of Lucifer. My Hato Chisai. My little dove, my little demon. My
love bound to fail.
Who was the monster?
That is not the question.
Who created it? Yes. You've created a monster, Raevyn. A monster with
haunted eyes of blue.
That monster is I.
I shiver wildly. The wind stings me, attacking me. I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. Even the physical world is attacking me now. It's not
bad enough that I'm going insane, I have to be in immense physical pain too. Jesus, it's cold. Cold and empty. I'm separated from the universe. I'm
in a wasteland, in nothing.
In the arctic.
Note: There are a lot of Author's Notes. I like to rant. You can feel free to skip over them and go right to the review button, but I'm going to talk
first.
The main character is technically Seto Kaiba, but in this story you'll see him called 'Aerarchos' a lot, because Aerarchos is a character that I've made up. But why am I calling Kaiba by his name? Well, Aerarchos was sort of based on Seto Kaiba personality wise, but he has slight differences. I often associate him with Kaiba in my stories because I like Seto Kaiba, but I also like to be as original as humanly possible. So, in this story, some
old friends of his once called Kaiba 'Aerarchos.'
I know, I know, you're going to hate me for having Original Characters. But if you read on, this isn't really a 'Mary Sue' story because Seto doesn't really end up with any of the OCs. This story has romance in it, but it's always a failed romance. Poor Seto. Anyway, Raevyn is a nice girl and all, which might make some people think she's a Mary Sue, but doesn't that make it all the more painful and less 'Mary Sue' when she inevitably doesn't get with Seto? And Sequoia can't be considered Mary Sue. She is not a Mary Sue.
She's scary.
Author: Hikari-Kage no Ojo
Genre: Angst, Horror, Romance, Poetry
Warnings: Not suitable for younger viewers. Parental Advisory is not strongly advised because it will only waste your parent's time. They will
not allow you to read this. This story contains graphic descriptions of
violence, some minor homosexuality, suicidal material, Disturbing descriptions, torture, implied rape, described molestation, adult themes,
blood, Satanic and Demonic magick, vampires, demons, Anti- Christian/Atheistic views, self mutilation, psychological torture, angst,
insanity, implications of mass murder, possession by a demonic spirit,
sympathy for the devil, and the slight chance of some Dark Themes.
Disclaimer: Yu Gi Oh, Seto Kaiba, and all related characters are © of Kazuki Takahashi. The song 'Strawberry Gashes' is © of Jack off Jill. The Original Characters Aerarchos, Raevyn, A'drea, Tsunokei, and Sequoia are
all property of Hikari-Kage no Ojo and cannot be used without her
permission.
Japanese Translations:
Kyuuketsuki - Vampire
Ojo, Hime - Princess
Youkai - Demon
Tenshi - Angel
Yousei - Fairy, Sprite
Hai - Yes
Ie - No
Yamenasai, Yamete - Request to Stop
Onegai - Please -Sa - A title added after someone's name. Sometimes referred to as -san of
-chan, depending on the dialect of Japanese you're using.
Kage - Shadow
Hikari - Light
My façade was arctic and obstinate, unaffected and impenetrable. I was without fear or mercy, without sentiment or fault. Without flinching I cast away people's souls, sold them to the corruption of the world I lived in. I was esteemed by the values of the public, but no one really knew me, and I
didn't really know anyone. I was detested for my bitter outer shell, my
inhuman intellect and military judgment that had gotten me so far and brought me so much intense desolation I would have killed myself had it not gone against my very nature. My madness was well veiled and under control, the literal demons that haunted me were merciful enough to come only in the
dark of night, when I was a child and weak and beautiful to them.
I sat on the ledge by the window as it snowed, watching with great interest. Snow. cold, quiet. It's The Arctic tundra, empty and cold, with thoughts and whispers of memory and madness echoing over the barren, icy nothingness. The silent one observes all that goes on around him. yes. That was true. Silence had brought me many things, many good things that made me so very, very happy. They kept people away from me, away and hating me from
a distance. It was good, for them to stay away. I was dangerous to be around. But they weren't hurt because they stayed away because I was quiet,
quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet. Keep your silence and you'll stay at the
pinnacle of your personal perfection. Be silent, don't speak unless you have got to, otherwise someone may hear, they may hear, they have excellent
ears.
I clutch the silk of my unbuttoned white blouse in abrupt hysteria. I was alone. Let it all out, let out the madness, and then continue this little charade when someone comes in close enough to see. But oh, someone might be
watching. I loosen my grip, sliding my delicate, dexterous hands to my
loose jeans and down below my knees. My knees reflexively curl up and I
wrap my willowy arms with hard, well-toned muscles around my legs. They
aren't especially comforting arms. They're not really all that thin but
they seem like they are emaciated because I'm so tall, and they're hard from martial arts. My glacier orbs fluttered closed and I rested my head
against my jeans between my knees, cuddling them lightly. Despite everything, I felt good. I was comfortable in my own body, at least, even if the world seem awkward to me. That was one thing that most people would
be surprised to find out. They generally assumed that I was edgy being alone as well as being around others. But I love being alone with myself,
my own mind and my own memories of what used to be. Alone is such a
wonderful place to be.
I was cruel. Sadistic. There was a veil over my soul, concealing the person
I was. Nobody would have guessed that I was such a beautiful, perfect masochist. I liked things that way. So simple to fool people into thinking that I was truly the man I seemed, not the beautiful, frosty eyed teen with chains holding him fucking captive, holding him helpless as his soul was
torn away bit by bit, sold to the thousands who flocked there to get a portion of the ambiguous prodigy that was me. But my soul was a curse, a
death sentence, a disease. All who touched me.
I sighed dejectedly, the sound echoing in my ears, a melancholy resonance.
There was a flaw, though. Or so it seemed. The veil could be torn somehow. I was hated, yes. But I was also beautiful. Ah, yes. a gorgeous teen, well known for being calloused, but still wanted. What the hell was so desirable about me? But, yes, I was a desire from a movie, a fantasy, a sick little delirium. The iced, blue-eyed boy that no one can ever get their hands on. Oh yeah, everyone wanted a piece of that. Fan girls. Fuck them. Yes, I had
cold, glacial sapphire eyes. But that doesn't mean I'm your fucking
delusion, that I'm your little fantasy boy. Goddamn them and their weakness, they wanted me. Why? Damn you all, you repulsive fools. Get the
hell away from me!
I closed my eyes, an expression of hopeless heartache and despair on my handsome face. People were awed by my power underneath their loathing for me. I had learned to discern things beneath the charade that people put up.
There was a whole different person underneath my surface.
People could not grow attached to me. Attachment had caused me agony. I hated people; I had been so stupid to ever think. People were disgusting creatures, fit only to be my pets, and my playthings, toys that were made for me to sign away. And I did! Signed away their souls and destroyed them entirely. And yet. they still came to me. Fools! Why are you doing this!
Can't you see I'm going to destroy you!
I squeeze my eyes shut, wanting tears to come out. They don't. No, no, no.
Miserable bastards. Oh, I do destroy them. Kill them and kill them, they
deserve it for coming to me, such weak fools. Never trust never trust.
Trust and you die, you deserve to die. And they come anyway. Damn them!
Why?
Why hast thou so forsaken me, my love? Have you forgotten, already, what we have shared? We shared so much pain, yet thou have left me alone, shorn and
mourning.
I've lost a lot. So much, I wish things were they way they were. before.
A candle is lit
I see through her
Blow her out and save all her ashes for me.
A beautiful voice. yes, an arresting, powerful voice like a flute, a harp. It hypnotizes me, soothes me and comforts me as it always has, even though
now its source will cause me such torment I had never known.
Watch me fault her
You're living like a disaster
She said
Kill
Me
Faster
With Strawberry gashes all over
Raevyn. Ah, yes. Again, I'm weak. The masochist. I lost Raevyn.
Of course. Of course.
She stands there, a striking smile on her face. She's here. In front of me. Ah, loveliness. Such beauty I have never known before Raevyn. She has an
elfin, lithe form with rigid muscles like smooth, supple skin stretched tight over iron bones and liquid steel muscles, working together, flexing maladroitly and hastily with the odd sort of style she possessed. She moved
hurriedly, as if she was constantly rushed along by something. Deep, amused, ebony doe eyes like a starry night with little lights, so far away,
as far away as the hope we clung to desperately. They held a deceptive innocence I knew was found nowhere in this girl with long, raven hair that
lashes around with the slightest breeze. At this point it was swaying forward and backwards, adjusting itself as the wind, which she herself had created to add to the illusion of beauty, receded and then pressed forward.
Before, Raevyn had always reminded me of a dove. Her eyes were so innocent; she was so small and lithe. She had the body of a martial artist and most people expected the refinement and austerity to go with it, but she walked quickly and scampered along with her feet barely touching the floor instead of with the normal slow grace that warriors possessed, and though she was in no way innocent, she wasn't a sadist. Or, not so much of a sadist that I
couldn't value her. She was a little dove, hato chisai.
There stands Raevyn's body. Her essence is gone. And she no longer reminds
me of a dove for some reason.
Back in the beginning we were both very young and foolish, recklessly
exploiting our power, reveling in our superiority of mind and body and soul. We were children playing with the dark fire that burned within our
souls. Raevyn was always the best. Not the wildest on the outside, but
there was a passion inside her that made all of our madness pale in comparison. She was high. It drew me to her. It drew all of us to her. And she never, ever betrayed our love. She loved us all back with her heart and
soul. We were her children, in the beginning.
It started with a game of chess, a game that I won handily. A game I won
against a certain CEO Gozaburo Kaiba. A game that brought me home to beatings and alcohol and the haunting shadows of self-annihilation. By the age of nine I became strong enough to beat the living hell out of Gozaburo. I was fucking high. I kicked his ass every day of the week. I was no longer weak. Hell, I had never been weak. I had never cried out, even when I was
young. But Gozaburo was weak. Said CEO used some contacts or another to
find a home for me. A place where I would be at home. A place where I
belonged, in his mind. That place was hell.
Kaldorei.
I left the name Seto Kaiba behind. I took a new name, and a new life. I was
the wrath of not heaven or hell, but Earth. I was the wrath of the weak
rising against the strong and winning. I was the archangel of warrior
children. The god of the frail and fragile souls.
Somewhere in France were the deep, dark labyrinths of Kaldorei. On the outside it was a small town with not over a hundred people, surrounded by mountains and secluded to the point of no one knowing about it. It didn't
even exist. It was hidden, hidden like my soul. Unknown. Never to be
acknowledged by the world. Perhaps. it is better that way.
When you first enter the city of Kaldorei a sign in the native language of Arnica greets you. It says 'Welcome to the city of the crimson night,' but the sign, morbid as it seems, is misleading. It implies that the city is
morbid and rather bizarre, certainly. You would think that you were entering a ghost town, perhaps a place that was thought to be haunted. It does not imply that there is any danger to the place. It would not take a brave soul to enter such a city. And while it does not directly say that there isn't any kind of danger, I'm pretty damn sure that most people go into cities assuming that they're not inevitably going to die a horrifying
death in a man made hell.
If you were brave enough to enter the city of the crimson night, you'd walk on wide paved roads of gray stone. The city has no sidewalks but vendors park their carts on the edge of the streets and still leave enough room for a dragon rider to swift through. On one side of the road you would see old, rickety buildings with dusty wooden signs and half the lights shattered, scattering glass onto the floor along with broken bottles of wine. On the other side was a short, sheer hill that dropped into a brook that seemed to
be made of blood, trickling along around the smooth, black rocks. You would next see a bar. It had no name, not even a sign, but in the front
window you could see various drinks on a mahogany shelf. Through the bottles you see the blue eyed, black haired bartender, with a silky smile, a short skirt, and studded leather around her wrist. She drinks red wine from a flute, and holds a cigarette in one hand while she serves with the other. She speaks with an accent that you cannot place but sounds deep and
erotic. You might see her playing spit with one of the men, her hands shuffling gracefully and skillfully through the cards, winning every game.
Rap metal plays from the stereos and teenage beauties rock to the music uncontrollably, with hair whipping around and a heavy techno beat blasting
from the stereo as some band screams and swears about every drug conceivable to the human mind. The skirts climbed up as high as they could, and even a good number of the boys were topless. And they were all gorgeous
like the bartender.
If then you were to step inside you would notice that every soul inside was
drinking red wine exactly like the lovely bartender. They are all unnaturally beautiful, with eyes of every color, from chocolate brown to a deep red, an eerie yellow and even light lavender eyes. The hair is either deep black or a brilliant silvery white, with the exception of a lone woman sitting in the back, twirling her cyan hair with a bored look on her face
as she, too, sips red wine from a wineglass.
As her cyan eyes pierce into you, a chill runs down your spine and every instinct within you screams in confusion. She's a lovely young woman, but
the red wine at her lips a strange color, a deeper red than what you'd
normally expect, a thicker texture than what you'd thought wine to be.
She's disturbing, somehow.
You may decide to run or to stay with the impossibly exquisite natives, but for the sake of this we'll say that you were prudent enough to leave the building silently and speedily. As you continue along the place is pretty much what the sign implied: a ghost town. Occasionally you'll hear a laugh or two from the bar, but other than that the city is unnaturally silent. There are houses now, with no space in between them. Each house is red, but
they're all a slightly different hue, as if they had all been different colors before but were all covered in a strange red paint that was slightly
translucent. You observe that the houses have people in them, but you notice idly that you see no children or teens outside of that bar. Indeed,
not a soul younger than twenty could be seen.
As you continue to walk you will come to the end of the road, and a single building with the same eerie red hue as all the others. It stands one story high, flat and dull looking, with rusty chain link fence surrounding the
back yard. The two barn style doors are wide open, inviting you in.
You go inside, and all around you is metal walls, metal floor and ceiling,
rusted and red. It has the same disturbing scarlet hue that all the
buildings have, but suddenly you know what it is, what has stained the walls to leave that ruby tone. You know what flowed through the creek at
the bottom of the hill. You know, now, that it wasn't red wine that the
beautiful teenagers drank.
And the door closes behind you.
Terror floods your senses as you know, somewhere within the depths of you
subconscious, your fate.
Another door opens, and reveals Kaldorei. The real Kaldorei. Metal stairs
lead down to hell. Hell with metal and vampires, animosity and anarchy.
And at the tender age of ten, my first real scar was burned onto my arm. It was a tattoo, an insignia of Kaldorei, and the beautiful woman with blue
hair who sat at the bar. It was the Japanese kanji that represented Kyuuketsuki hime. Vampire Princess. At the age of ten, I was branded, and
my fate was sealed with burning iron against my upper arm.
The first was A'drea.
I met her after a rather gruesome fight, one that I remember very well. The lovely, black and silver haired people had caught me trying to steal some
scrap of food. That was not allowed. We were their prisoners. All the children were. At that point I was not well known, and I still had the name Seto Kaiba. Dexterous fingers took flight towards the food long ago, and
black claws snatched them away and dug into my hand until it bled, bled sweet blood, the exquisite wine that the vampires with black and white hair lived off. This one had black hair, and cold black eyes like burnt, charred
coals.
I had never felt such fear. Her eyes stared into mine, daring me to do
something. Waiting for. what?
And a voice within me answered her without words. She was waiting for my
reaction. She got it, all right. I felt myself slip away.
Wisps of darkness enveloped my body, a dark fire from the underworld itself
rose from the floor below me and shrouded me in a veil of power. One
feather unfolded from my back as if it had been there all along, then another after it, and another, growing into silver wings of twilight that gave me my name. Near the end the diamond feathers were tipped in black.
Dipped in black blood, the black blood of Set.
And in my hand was a sword, made from hell itself, the same clouds of shadows binding it in obscurity. My eyes became oceans of glacial light,
the colors of the arctic glittering like precious gems, burning without fire just like my sword. I grew pale, and my hair blackened as if it had been burned. I was more beautiful than I had ever been. I was a demon. A
beautiful, angelic, demon.
It was instinct to kill. To destroy her.
It was the same feeling I got when I decked Gozaburo, who was twice my size
at least. The small won against the big, and I was fucking exhilarated. There was a dark laugh on my lips. I was a long lost god. I could feel her worship me, adore me. I could feel her love me as I killed her and killed
her and killed her.
I enjoyed destroying her. I loved it. My sword took over, noiselessly
tearing through the woman as if she wasn't there. but she was most undeniably there, and she bled, too. She bled hard. More than humans did. Maybe it was a distress call, when one needed help, a lot of blood would be
spilled so other vampires could smell it.
Then A'drea-sa came. She saved me from the dark. Seeing her face brought me back. Seeing her eyes, awed and dazed, woke me up from the state I was in. My silver wings folded back into nothingness, and my sword departed in a
burst of shadowy, mystical wisps.
Her eyes were black like Raevyn's, but they weren't doe eyes. Hers were wild and full of blaze, hatred but not anger. Happiness. She was happy even
though she hated. I envied her. Her hair was like a black bouquet of
thorns, with wild, ebony spikes that had to be tied back and sickles of hair falling in her face. Her skin was pale, and she was slightly shorter
than average, but she was muscular and stocky.
"I am A'drea Charday." Her voice was cool and calm, comforting, but not
condescending at all. I liked her right away.
"I. I'm Se-"
"Sh." she hushed me. "Whatever you name is now is no longer your name. Someday you may go back to that name, and to that life. But now you have a new name. Now you have a new life," She paused, looking at me intensely.
"Your name is Aerarchos. It means 'silver wings of the twilight."
"Aerarchos." I repeated. I liked it okay. But I liked the meaning a lot.
Silver wings of the twilight.
A'drea took me to her home, down the metal stairs. They were built like the stairs on a fire exit, and the walls were pure rusted iron. The light was all claret and dim. I figured that it was to scare us, to make us feel less
at home. To demoralize us. Or perhaps it was to remind us of blood.
A'drea took me down to Tsunokei.
At first he was a chilling person, but I lusted after him just the same. His eyes were black like the vampire who had met an end at my Darksword, like ashes of souls burnt to black in the deepest pit of hell. His hair was
silver with little streaks of azure, lavender, white, and every wintry color imaginable. They looked like a glacier, like my wings. His skin was
pale and smooth, taut over his muscular, agile form. He was gorgeous.
He was quiet and sad and passionate, with a deep voice that resounded even
as he spoke quietly. Tsunokei.
He was my first sensei, the first one to teach me the martial arts in a way
they had never been taught before. I was physically potent, but my true
vigor lied in the hell powers that seemed to come to me naturally. The Darksword, I learned later, was part of a dark power, the power of one of
the three Hells.
The first hell was simply known as the Shadow Realm. It was a void of dark emptiness, shadow and nothing. It was the first magick, the layer of hell
that most human mages tapped into if when they wanted to delve into the dark arts. This hell was where the souls of the dead were banished if their
heart weighed more than a feather on the Scale of Judgment. Thus the
Egyptian legend.
The second hell was a more Christian view of hell, with demons and Succubi and Incubi, fallen angels and Lucifer and his lovely daughters. The souls of the unworthy dead didn't end up in this hell, but everything else was pretty much hell, except with lack of torture. The second hell was simply home for the demons, not a place for torment. Actually, most demons I knew
were Christian, including Lucifer. I had always been an atheist before Kaldorei, so the sudden realization that the teachings of Christianity were wide of the mark didn't shock and appall me. Most demons, obviously, would
tap into this hell power for magick.
The third was symbolic hell. In retrospection, hell is all around us. We live and breathe hell. It is pain, a metaphysical pain that is part of our world. It is a thought, an emotion, a shock of electricity, death and doom,
fate, love bound to fail, betrayal, obsession, paranoia, hate and
insecurity, deceit and bitter nights alone. This hell could become
something real, something proper and physical, something that could cut
through you and make you really bleed. Every time you bleed, that is figurative hell. And if you can channel this symbol, this false hell, you
can make someone bleed. You can create darkness.
Of course, you have to be out of your mind to fool around with the Third Hell. It would tear you apart from the inside in about five years, for most
cases. And that was if you were a demon. I've lasted ten years. I don't
have too much longer. I figured I could last until I was 25.
Symbolic hell was why I was losing it, why so many bad things were happening to me. Symbolic hell was drawn to me. And symbolic hell is pain.
Symbolic hell is madness.
Tsunokei taught me to control the darkness as well as he could, but soon I got too good, even for him. I beat him every time. It didn't bother him at all. It drove me mad that he didn't care. We fought and fought, and I told
myself that I hated him. I didn't. My existence revolved around him, at
that point. I was desperate for affection.
He didn't know I existed.
I wanted him anyway. Not loved him, but I wanted him. Needed him, or
anyone. Someone.
I was a fool. Truly.
The third was Raevyn.
The first time I saw her was at another part of the dungeon, where Tsunokei, A'drea and I had fled, outnumbered by vampires and injured from
previous battles. She seemed to be amused by something that not another soul in the room was aware of. There was a constant contemptuous smirk on her face. She was so contented it made me want to scream. She argued with
the other girls and always won, got into fistfights with the boys and triumphed cleverly. There was a sultry, seductive look in her eyes, but it was apparent that no one could have her. She was a goddess. Oddly enough, she didn't seem like a real sadist to me. She didn't seem like the type to take men's hearts and cast them away while enjoying it. She seemed to be too happy, and her happiness was infectious. It spread around to everyone
near her, plaguing them with good humor. She was a divinity. She was a pathological flirt. She was idyllic and clever and unattainable at the same
time. She was obviously over my head, but I was arrogant, and I asked
Tsunokei who she was.
"She is Raevyn, Youkai hime, The Shadow Storm. The Daughter of Lucifer."
"Youkai? She looks like a yousei. or a Tenshi. hato chisai. and you say she
is youkai?"
He rolled his eyes, grinning seductively. I thawed at the sight of his dazzling smile. "Love at first sight, ne?" He said it in a way that was typical of him, not sarcastically in the usual sense, but with a genuine smile on his face, rather than the annoyance that normally came with irony.
But suddenly, I felt that I had a new source of comfort. There was a
hopeless romantic somewhere in me, a part of me that told me I had a
chance.
"So, you are Aerarchos, ne?" Her voice was smooth, but casual. There was
nothing hidden, no triggers I might set off by the answer. There was no
motive behind her question. She simply wanted to know. Was I Aerarchos?
"Hai. Merry meet, milady." I said, respecting the typical tradition of
addressing royalty such as Raevyn.
"Merry meet yourself, milord." She said it with a genuine smile on her face. What? Wasn't I a threat to her power? I was a powerful warrior, which meant a lot down here, and I was smart enough to know how to manipulate her little clique into lifting me on their shoulders instead of her. Was she
that confident that she didn't care? Or did she simply want me to think that? I would assume the latter; it was always better to assume the worst
possible scenario. "I've heard a lot about you. They're calling you the
angel of death. Now that's a title I've been striving for."
Why was she even here? I didn't go up to her, on the contrary, she had come to me. Had she seen me staring? Damn, she was very clever. Fool. What the
hell would possess you to stare at her so obviously? And now your just sitting here, shooting your stupid self in the stupid foot. You're far too good at maneuver to loose this easily to her. Keep in control of her, keep manipulating her. I scoffed at this mentally. As if there was ever a point
when I was manipulating her. "Thank you." I said, sounding rather
suspicious, despite myself.
I saw her raise a delicate eyebrow. She was observant, at least. She noticed the suspicion and obviously didn't think she was just imagining it,
which meant that she could conceive at least one reason for me to be suspicious of her. So, perhaps she wasn't as casual and unmotivated as she
seemed. She shook her head and smiled lightly. She wore that same
seductive, irritating smile that drove me mad. "Aerarchos." she trailed
off, giggling slightly.
I glared menacingly before looking away.
"Aerarchos, what are you afraid of? Me?" she said softly, her tone now with a noticeable tinge of concern. Her black eyes pulled me in. I could see the lightning in them, the shadow storm. She was truly the daughter of Lucifer.
her eyes were a smoky, thick black that clouded my senses, whispered comfort in the whipping arctic wind. They rippled and flowed like deep seas of that thick black smoke. The lightning echoed through them, flashing with
her emotions. She was lovely. And gods, I was afraid.
"Afraid? Of you?" I snarled, whipping my head towards her. "You don't know the meaning of fear." I hissed, the threat easily noticed in my tone, as I
stared her down, unflinching.
She didn't even cringe. She stared right back at me, looking at me almost sadly. Not pitying, but sad. Sad for me. Sad for herself, too. Sad for the life she would never share with me. Sad for the future and the past and the present. She looked at me for a long time before she spoke, softly. What she said I shall never forget, nor shall I forget the meaning she gave my
life in that moment.
"I am not afraid of you, Aerarchos," and for once, her words were careful and cautious. Like she knew how fragile I was. "Because I do not care about
anything you can take from me. You should not be afraid of me because I cannot take anything from you that really matters either. But you do care,
because what matters to you is different." She paused, taking a deep breath. "It is different, Aerarchos, because what I care about comes from my heart. But your heart has caused you pain, so you've shut it off because you think I will betray you. You think everyone will betray you." She was silent for a moment, letting that sink in. "I won't. I will never betray
you, Aerarchos. This world may have caused you pain, but I will not. I
won't allow myself to."
My breathing was heavy by this point. I felt sick. She was analyzing my
entire being in front of me, showing me my strength and weakness, my
essence. My core. "Yamenasai." I whispered.
"It's ok." She murmured, sighing heavily. She wrapped her arms around me.
Oh yeah. It was love at first sight, all right. But having her was long delayed. That was fine with me. Knowing her was a blessing, speaking to her was a miracle. We became acquainted. She knew me, and I knew her like the
back of my hand. I was obsessive.
I had no chance.
For that time I had to be content watching her as she ruled over her little
world, as she seduced her way to the top and left men at their knees. I
knew I would be one of those men. I didn't care. I wanted to be.
I would be. In a way neither of us thought possible.
The last was Sequoia.
She was the cyan haired beauty from the bar above the surface of Kaldorei, the chilled, disturbing girl who sat, bored out of her mind. Kyuuketsuki hime. Vampire Princess. She was a snobbish teenager like any other, bored and discontent and brooding over her own damn problems. She wore black tee
shirts with hello kitty and flares with safety pins in them. She was so
pathetic I wanted to scream. She was still stuck on the shallow thought
that what you look like actually means anything about who you are. She still believed that what kind of person you are could be changed by what little clique you happen to be in, what music you listen, what friends and
enemies you had. She called people 'posers.'
It was an act, of course. So easy to underestimate a snotty teen, so simple
to underrate a wolf in sheep's clothing. She wasn't an idiot, though it took me a while to figure that out. It took a lot of beating to get that
into my head. I learned what she really was the hard way.
She was a horror.
She moved fast, hit hard and showed no sympathy. She was cunning, sadistic,
and sick. So sick.
The other vampires drank human blood, yes, but it was a sort of sacrament for them, almost an art. They sank their fangs in painlessly, normally on the wrist. The process rarely even hurt the victim unless the Kyuuketsuki was ravenous. Overall, I didn't hate vampires as a species. I hated these
ones for keeping me here, but I knew that vampires had to drink blood.
Sequoia ate her victims, raw flesh and all.
Tore at them as if she was a starved wolf, snarling and hissing, a crazed look on her pretty teenage face. It's the most horrifying thing I've ever
had to witness.
She eats one and goes on to the next, eating and eating and never stopping. A flash of long nails and sharp canines and her victims disappear, leaving only mangled, frayed bodies. She bathes in the blood and flesh for hours after gorging herself, crawling to whatever meat she left over and eating it slowly, with a sickening defiance to any revulsion you might feel while you watch. She eats with great passion, her small but powerful arms pulling
at meat of people, actual people that she's killed and is now eating slowing, savoring each bite and looking like she's enjoying her sick little
meal.
It's unlike any other torture. I've been tortured. I've been beaten and raped and molested and starved for days, then driven like a slave, forced to do things I couldn't even tell you. There is nothing like seeing that.
Nothing.
She tied me to a wall, once, after I had tried to steal from her. She
knocked me out and tied me to a wall, and then she took fifteen random children, children, and ate them alive while I watched. Then she stalked towards me with a sultry look in her eyes and impossible vampire grace. And
she kissed me fervently. I tasted the blood and flesh on her lips, the
horror of her crimes now staining me. She trailed kisses down my neck,
gently, as if I was her lover and this was something I condoned. I struggled to no avail. She took off my black, ragged t-shirt, frantic by
this point, kissing me with all the passion she had.
She ran her cold, calloused hands down my torso, her long nails scraping uncomfortably against me, the scent of blood so thick it made me sick. I
felt her fangs scraping against my neck as I whimpered and mumbled in protest, spasms I seemed unable to control causing me to jerk back, causing agonizing pain. Her hands pulled lightly on my tattered jeans, her features
buried in my neck, kissing and nibbling softly. She hooked her thumbs inside my denims and slowly, agonizingly, tugged down on them, torturing me
all the more. I glared at her, hatred pumping through me, burning me.
She pulled them off me, slowly.
Terror replaced hate.
And she took me.
When I was 12 years old, she took me.
She laughed at me, a shrieking blast from deep within her dark soul, hysterical with madness. Mirth at my aversion, my dismay. My agony. And she left me by the stairs leading to Raevyn's quarter of the warren, bleeding
and shorn.
To this day I still hear her nails grazing down the metal walls, leaving an unnatural, piercing shriek echoing behind her as she walked off, designer
heels clicking with each step.
Her scratching nails left a wound on me. It was still bleeding then, but
soon it scarred and went the back of my mind, shrieked only when I was
vulnerable or when Sequoia called on the memory, reminded me.
That was the first time in a long time I cried.
Behind me a heard a soft, feminine gasp. Raevyn. I cried out as her miniature arms wrapped around me and effortlessly dragged me inside. It was only at that point that I noticed the kind of beating Sequoia had given me. I saw bite marks on my legs, ragged flesh. I felt sick, dizzy. She was a
monstrosity. No. Oh, Kami, no.
Before that day my soul had been black. Now it had been tainted with the
same ruby tone that stained the walls.
The same ruby tones that tainted my Darksword.
From that day on, I was a whole different person.
I killed the bastards without mercy, without reason or motivation. I would go wherever they were and I would kill them, kill them by the hundreds. My
sword became a part of me, my best friend in the world. I slaughtered ruthlessly, I killed and killed and killed and enjoyed every minute. I felt good. I was high. I was euphoric, ecstatic. It was the same feeling I had first gotten when I had first slain the vampire with cold black eyes. The dark power within me began to eat me alive. Now, and only now, I did truly understand what Tsunokei had meant when he told me that dark power would kill me. I understood now. I realized how it would eat me alive and drive
me to madness. I loved it more than ever.
None joined me at first. There was too much disconcert around the subject for anyone to consider it. The thought of anyone slaughtering the way they did was too much, too immoral. Fools. They're all dead now, just to inform
you. They didn't join me. They were cowards, fools. They opposed me. I
should have killed them too.
None came to me, at first.
That didn't last long.
A'drea was the first, naturally. Then Tsunokei. And the next time I saw Raevyn, she told me that she would join my campaign. The red stains on the walls and floors grew darker than ever, but we all knew whose blood it was
now.
Blood was everywhere, it ate me alive and consumed me. People feared me now, no longer looked at me as the angel with silver wings. The silver had
been tainted. The black tips of the lovely feather, which I had once believed were dipped in the black blood of Set himself, were now dipped in
the red blood of mortals. And I bathed in it. I loved it.
I was a warrior, an adrenaline junkie. I was wasted. My desire for blood
was insatiable.
I was no longer I.
Sequoia had made me something new.
And I tore the beating heart from her. I tore it from her and smiled as I
did it. A cruel smile, sick and evil. Like her smile. And I laughed, hysteria in my rich, arresting voice. Sick hilarity tinged my voice with ruby tones, the same ruby tones came from her lovely blue eyes as she died. And as I dug my diamond hard fingernails in, right before I killed her, I
brought her face right up to mine and stared her dead in the eyes.
I had never noticed.
I had never noticed how incredible beautiful she was. Especially now, bloody and mangled. Defeated. I stared deep into her cyan orbs, hypnotized. They were like the winter sky after it snowed, light blue and crystal. Her pale white skin was covered in strawberry gashes, to quote a favorite song
of mine. Her smooth, silky hair was braided, I believe, with a single
strand hanging down in her face, a feather tied at the end.
Beautiful.
Now I stood over her, and she was tied to the wall as I made her watch her worst nightmare come true. I didn't have a mirror, but I knew the look in my eyes. I saw it reflected in her blood. It was a crazed, insatiably mad
look.
I kissed her.
And I finished her off with her lips still pressed against mine in the most
passionate moment of my life.
Things happened very quickly.
"Aerarchos?" I heard the voice behind me, casual and manic, despite
everything. It drove me mad.
"Hai?" I replied, my voice rather flat. Damn. She would call me on that, to
be sure.
I felt her hand on my shoulder, but it was nothing like any touch I had felt before. It was simply casual and friendly. It had no hidden meaning or
manipulation. Just comfort. That was what I had truly found in Raevyn; freedom from my insecurities, someone who would love me no matter what I did. Someone who had seen the worst of me and still stood by me, without
flinching.
We were no longer in the Kaldorei warren, but in the palace that we had currently taken to residing in. Tsunokei wasn't kidding when he said Raevyn was a princess of the demons. She was the daughter of Lucifer. And damn, did that boy have money. The place was black marble and silver all around, and bluish crystals in the place of the typical palace flora gave my magick a super charge, so I had wings all the time. All day it seemed to be dusk, just after the sun had set behind the hills. It was the most beautiful time in the world for me. And the crystals, of course, glowed, making it look
like an all sapphire Vegas at midnight. I was in heaven, in hell.
"How are you?" Raevyn asked, cool as could be. She said it still with the
grin on her face, the constant smirk still hinted on her pretty face.
I couldn't help it.
"I'm fine. It's hard, but I am adjusting to this. I can handle it ok. Maybe not on my own, but I'll live." Mentally, I was slapping myself. I had just spilled to her, shown incredible weakness to her. I had just told her that I might be a little distressed by the fact that my world was falling apart.
Nice job, Seto.
"I know, Seto." Her voice is soft, but still holding the possessed, manic
shade to it.
I blink. She. called me Seto.
Never before had she called me anything but Aerarchos, and I had liked it
that way. I was no longer Seto Kaiba.
But why did she.
Insight is a terrible thing.
"Whatever you name is now is no longer your name. Someday you may go back to that name, and to that life. But now you have a new name. Now you have a
new life."
"Merry met, merry part, and merry meet again, Raevyn." I said, softly,
still respecting tradition. She was still royalty, after all. There is something of her in my voice now, something of her happiness. Something of
her cheerful, heavenly ways.
"Merry meet again."
She kissed me. Kissed me in the way she had always touched me, with no
sense behind it, just because. Because it was right. Because at that moment, the thing she felt she had to do was kiss me full on the lips. She wrapped her arms around me and cradled me, holding me like the child I was.
I loved it.
And I flew off on silver wings of the twilight, back to my home. I could feel my world falling apart, but I like it that way. She owned me, you see, and that was what I wanted. Because I wanted her to finish me off in the beautiful way I knew she would. I wanted to die the happy death I knew she would send me to, even if she didn't mean to. I knew that she would betray
me. Everyone would betray me. That was the dark curse that I had been given, that was the price I paid for the dark power. My soul was sold to
the devil and the devil always betrayed, as did everyone else.
I was cursed, as were all who had such power as mine. In the end, they would all betray me. They would deceive me whether they wanted to or not. The world would turn their backs on me, forsake me and leave me forlorn, without any choice in the matter. For that was my weakness, my strength. None could truly touch me. Tsunokei had told me, once, that the dark power
would tear me apart from the inside. He was wrong. It would not tear me apart, truly. It would simply tear me from this world, send me spiraling so closely to the darkness that all who touched me were forced to leave me. A defense mechanism built in to all people kicked in after being near me to long, told them to get away from the dark. But after all my paranoia, after my entire defenses, I still didn't pull back from the darkness. I delved into like no other had before, reveling in it. Breathing it in, living it.
But she didn't want to betray me. She wouldn't want to, would fight against it, even as she did betray me, which she would. And when she did, it would be perfect. There would be no pain to it. My heart was breaking,
but in a good way.
I walk out of my office, late at night, 14 years old and gone from
Kaldorei. Forever. It was still there, still a scar on my upper arm. A tattoo, of the kanji Kyuuketsuki. That was the physical representation of
my memory. But I was gone. I had my brother. I had one very dead
stepfather. They said that he had jumped off the roof. Suicide. I'm not surprised. After all, he was under a lot of pressure, with two sons, the
company, etc.
At least, that was what I had told the press. I happened to know for a fact that Gozaburo Kaiba didn't jump off the roof. He fell to his death because
he was pushed off. I know. I pushed him.
It had been three months since that happy day, in fact, when I walked out of the office in the dark of the night, with the stars glittering like a
thousand icy splinters and the moon gone from sight.
And there, outside my door, was a maid. With beautiful black hair flowing down to her waist, wearing the traditional black dress down to her knees, with a frilly with apron and feather duster in hand. Her eyes are turquoise
green and wide, staring into nothingness, seeing some profound wisdom
somewhere in oblivion. Empty. Dead.
Not just any dead.
Something ate her.
Someone ate her. Alive.
Her stomach is literally gone, torn out in a mad frenzy. Scratch marks cover her arms, with blood seeping out like fine wine, and judging by her
position with her legs spread, she's been raped. Her head has had long fingernails raking over it judging by the amount of blood and the odd, deep
gashes. And of course, her heart.
It's sitting next to her, outside of her body.
Just like Sequoia's.
How am I any better? I've killed people. A lot of people. Tore out
Sequoia's heart. I'm a monster. Dear god, I'm a monster.
I stare, dumbly. I'm hallucinating. A girl screams as she turns around the corner. A maid. She runs up to me, asks. am I ok? Do I look ok? At least she doesn't think I did this. then again, how could you. I wonder what I must look like, in this state of shock. I'm shaking. She has brown eyes, caramel popcorn eyes, staring into mine, concerned. I feel her, holding me
steady, sitting me down. Tears are in her eyes. She's smart. She's very
wise, to not freak out like me.
And. her blue eyes stare deeply into mine, mocking.
Blue?
I jerk back with a whimper, horrified. I'm twitching like never before, no
longer in control of my body. Fear is in control.
Sequoia.
"You see, Aerarchos, it's very simple."
She's alive. Alive. How?
"I can. possess. any body I wish, to be blunt about it."
Inside anyone. Inside me. No, no, go away.
"Well, of course. How did you think I lived so long?"
Such a fool. I'm such a fool.
"Oh, but you had no idea, did you."
How could I have known!! How!?
"You think you are the first, Aerarchos?"
Her voice is soft now, and close.
"The first to kill me? The first to suffer under me?"
Her breath is on my neck. Please don't kiss me again.
"I have lived for five thousand years, Aerarchos. Five thousand years of
murder and brutality as you have seen."
. No.
That doesn't even process into my brain. Too much. Unable to comprehend.
She's overloaded me.
"I can take any body I want. the body you killed was just a host,
ironically enough. I left her long before you killed me."
No. No. She's lying.
"Raevyn. where are you?"
Her voice is light and crooning.
"I'm coming for you, Raevyn."
There's a deep, sadistic amusement in her voice, as if she can barely
contain her laughter.
Her nails screech down the halls.
I scream.
A song comes to mind in the dead of the night. I shiver. God damn, it's
cold. There's a draft from the storm outside.
I lay quiet, waiting for her voice to say.
"Some things you lose, and some things you just give away."
Strawberry Gashes. that was it, was the song. Kill me faster. You're living
like a disaster. Kill me. faster.
Which one was Raevyn? Did I lose her, or did I give her away?
It was my fault. I didn't have to leave her. Raevyn.
I look at her, my sweet lover Raevyn, upset and confused. I feel so
irrational, like a damned child. Give her back to me. Raevyn.
She stalks towards me, in a way Raevyn never would have. But Raevyn was
dead. Now she seems to have that grace, that cruelty in her eyes. It chilled my to see her like that. My eyes widened in horror, not for fear of what would happen to me, but revulsion of what had happened to Raevyn. Oh,
Raevyn. After all we had gone through together, this was her fate.
Horrible.
She comes up behind me, sweet, beautiful Raevyn, and puts an arm around me
almost casually. I am shaking. This is not a tranquil instant for me. Raevyn's body is being possessed. I've never felt so sick. I want to vomit. I never want her to take that arm away. Because maybe if it stays things
will go back to the way they were before Raevyn died.
"You could have saved me, Aerarchos. Why did you leave me? I loved you."
I want to scream, yes, yes, I loved you to, but I couldn't. You would have died. I would have killed you with my own hands! You were so different; you didn't understand how I suffered. You suffered too, but differently. I felt as if I was cursed, even back then I could sense it, everyone who came near me, who felt affection for me and I felt affection for, I hurt them all.
Ruined them!
I don't tell you that. Oh, Raevyn.
"I don't go by that name anymore, Sequoia."
She laughed, mockingly. Damn, sickening, horrible vampire. How I hated her. She would die, soon. Soon, I would kill her. I would save Raevyn. I would
repossess the body that had been stolen, free the soul that had been
exploited. "Oh, really!"
"My name is Seto Kaiba, son of Gozaburo, brother of Mokuba. It will be that
way for the rest of my life. Enough trying to draw me back."
Her eyes narrowed. "Gallant, aren't you?"
I shivered. She had power over me. it was sickening, the way she played
with me.
"Aren't you!? You're so brave, Aerarchos, such a valiant knight. My hero. You saved the damsel from the Dragon, but the Dragon came back! I always come back! And now Raevyn is dead. Dead. She's mine. Her body, her soul,
her mind is mine. Will never be yours, boy. Never be yours!"
Her voice was thick with madness. She was breathing heavily, hissing and whispering frantically, her fingers moving up my sides sensually. Raevyn. Raevyn. It made me sick, the way I wanted her. She was Sequoia. A monster.
I loved her. So, so much. My lovely Raevyn, my lovely Sequoia.
"That will have to change. So, so, brave, Aerarchos. That must change."
She smirks widely, and I squeeze my eyes shut. It doesn't matter. I can smell, even taste the blood as she cuts herself, mutilating the body that isn't hers and never truly will be. Slowly the knife drags, punishing me
for my disobedience. Blood wells up from her supple skin, scarring her rightness. I know she hates this, that she wants to slash at herself, but she can't, of course. Raevyn's body has defense mechanisms far too advanced to attack to bluntly. She has to coax herself into the cut, into the pain.
Does she revel in her own pain? Probably. It hurts me. It hurts Raevyn, too. It hurts us. If I should defy her again, she will hurt us at the cost
of herself.
Yamete. Yamenasai.
Onegai!
Perversion.
This isn't Raevyn.
It's a caricature of Raevyn, a distortion of her intense loveliness. I
should strike her down now. She would be shocked into leaving.
I don't.
I would never hurt Raevyn. Never hurt the woman I fell in love with, even
if she's not really the woman I fell in love with after all.
I can still hear her laughter echoing. She shrieked hysterically, wild,
high off her power over Raevyn and me. It chilled me to the bone.
My life is contemptible. I shake; mad with self-destruction, distrust and hatred. I'm losing my mind. I take a calligraphy pen from the desk, swiping it with quick, feisty hands that are no longer in my control. I press the sharp end of it against my arm, press and press until penetration, until it tears through the first layer of skin and then the next and the next and the next until they are all gone, leaving a mark, a lovely scar to me to talk about someday. When Raevyn and I are comparing scars, I will show her
this one with pride, and she will tell me how incredible it is, how beautiful it makes me look. She'll trace her finger over it, and I'll trace my finger over her tattoo, the pretty little tattoo she got at Kaldorei. It's the Japanese kanji for Kyuuketsuki hime, on her upper arm. I have the same one. It's my Kaldorei scar. And this new one, this well of life, of wine, this will be my love scar. And this one. And another. And another. Beautiful blood, beautiful red wine, sipped from cups in a bar, with the pretty blue-eyed bartender holding a cigarette in one hand, serving with
the other. And Raevyn's mixes with mine. It is all over me, and now it
leaks into my veins. Now we are one. We shall always be so.
I take the bloodstained pen.
.And write.
You took from me my name
You stole from me my life
You seized from me my love
Tell me
Tell me now
Are you happy now?
I am left alone
But still haunted
By the one I love
And you
You stole my dignity
You made me what I am
And I made you what you are
But how could I have known
I was so young
I am so young
And I'll die that way too
And you betrayed me
Betrayed my youth
Just like the rest
You said you wouldn't
I thought you would
But not like this
Never be yours
It echoes
Are you happy now?
Are you happy now?!
Never be yours
Never be yours
I will never be yours!
Is this what I deserve?
Ie
Ie
Ie, I will never be yours
Never
I don't need you
I'm not hysterical
I'm not disturbed
I'm just fine
There's nothing wrong with me
There's nothing troubling me
Why would there be?
I will never be yours!
I finish the sudden outlet, still bleeding from the wound on my arm. Strawberry Gashes. I lap up the blood absently. I've never tasted red wine. could it possibly be this good? Could it have this sweet, caramel, copper flavor? Could it possibly entice me so that I would stain my very being to
have it?
Does this make me a vampire?
Does this make me Sequoia?
She walked down the hall, scratching her nails against the walls, leaving an eerie screeching sound behind her. The snow it silent, as always, but the room no longer is, even after she is long gone. It echoes. Her words, her voice, her scratching nails have all left gashes on me. They're still
bleeding now, but soon they will scar and go to the back of my mind, haunting me only when I am the child again, when I'm the masochist, alone
with my madness. Alone is a wonderful place to be.
There were stories, after I left Kaldorei.
They said that one human boy spilled all the blood in Kaldorei. That he was
an angel who had been possessed by a demon, corrupted by darkness and unable to fight against it with his delicate human soul. They say that only four ever have escaped from the depths of Kaldorei. They say that one of them was a beautiful, frosty-eyed teen. They say that he would never escape his despair, that he would forever remain a beautiful, angst-ridden saint,
and that he would never die truly die, even though he was human.
They say that the last words of the Youkai Hime were these:
"A monster has been created by the unwilling hands of the angel of death.
that monster shall live on for all of eternity, never to die. It has
haunted eyes of blue, with hell locked inside."
I walked down the street, the wind in my hair. Despite everything, I was ok. I had been able to put it out of my mind after half of a week, and now
I was able to function normally, just as I always had. Mokuba had just assumed it was a phase. He always did. He was a smart kid, so he figured
that after a while, the work would build up and cause me to have little spells of depression. That would have probably been true if circumstances
were different.
The people around me seemed like a different species. It was odd. as if they were human, and I was not. I felt alienated, separated. Of course. I was being pulled towards the darkness. I wondered if they could sense it
too? I was being pulled away, but did they know that? It mattered not.
The wind stung my smooth face, causing me to squint ever so slightly. That
was a good sign. At least the mundane, physical part of this world was
still with me. I wondered how long it would take for it to betray me as well. But for now, the streets of Domino were fully clear. I was totally
able to keep a grip in this icy weather. I loved it this way. The heat always seemed to remind me of something far off and forgotten, a memory of a place I had never been. A memory of being. happy? Absurd. Happiness was
far away. Darkness was all that I knew.
But the cold kept me under control.
A small girl walked across the street, but for some odd reason, she didn't have any parents with her. Her eyes were an odd mauve shade, and she was
wearing dark, smoky eye makeup that made her look like an Egyptian divinity. She seemed to small to be alone, but perhaps she wasn't as young
as I had originally suspected. She was wearing a white tank top with a baggy, gray blue plaid shirt over it, and baggy jeans. On her head was a gray snowcap, and a gray scarf was tied around her neck. She had studded leather wristbands and black combat boots, not to mention eyebrow piercing, ear piercing, and even a diamond stud through her nose. Perchance she was
just short.
She walked over to my side of the street alone and with confidence,
reinforcing the theory that she was older than she appeared. She walked
briskly past me, but stopped after a few steps, as if she had noticed
something. She walked back and looked me over twice. I glared at her forebodingly, daring her to continue her examination of me. She looked up into my dark eyes and seemed only slightly unnerved by them, something I
wasn't used to. She tilted her head to the side. "Aerarchos." She said,
blinking with big, wine-colored eyes.
My weight shifted back as I took on a rigid martial arts stance. She knew.
Good lord, she knew.
"There's been talk." She said flatly. What the hell is she talking about?
"Raevyn's last words were, 'A monster has been created by the reluctant hands of the angel of death. That monster will live forever, never dying. It has haunted eyes of blue, with hell locked inside.' Did you know that?"
Yeah, I knew that. And you got a few words wrong, too.
"Your point?" Jesus, we're in the middle of a goddamn street here, and I'm
talking about this? Am I losing it or what?
"I just wanted to know." she trails off, hesitant. Oh, man. This won't be good. I tense up, preparing for the worst. She looks at my apologetically,
but goes ahead and asks anyway. "Who was it?"
My mind is blank. Say what?
"Kid. Jesus, what the fuck are you talking about?" I say, shaking my head, distressed unexpectedly. There is something subconscious telling me to get
the hell out of here.
"Who was the monster you created?"
I blink. That doesn't quite process.
"Well, you killed Sequoia, which in turn caused her to go and possess Raevyn. That's a pretty big fucking monster. But you yourself killed more people within a few months than Sequoia has in the past. oh, 500 years. I
would know. I am that old, you know."
My heart stops.
"So which one of you was she talking about?"
Abruptly, my head bows and I stare at the ground, a dark chuckle on my lips. My eyes are truly haunted, no longer what they used to be, but now a cursed, forgotten shadow of my former self. Former self. Dear god, I don't even remember. I don't remember anything good. I know I used to by happy, I remember being happy, but I don't remember the fine points, the little bits
and pieces that made up happiness, that were brought together into one
huge, vague understanding of happiness. I don't even have memories of
happiness. Unless. I'm killing someone. Yes, that's right. I was happy whenever I killed people. When blood stained my hands I felt euphoric. That is my happiness. My laugh grows louder and more hysterical by the minute. Happiness is found only in death and blood, only in killing the ones I love
and the ones I hate. Because I do love and hate everyone. And I do kill
everyone. And it makes me so happy.
"I think," I hissed, darkly. "Even you know the answer to that."
They say that only four ever have escaped from the depths of Kaldorei. They say that one of them was a beautiful, frosty-eyed teen. They say that he would never escape his despair, that he would forever remain a beautiful, angst-ridden saint, and that he would never die truly die, even though he
was human.
And so it would be, and so it was destined to be. This was my thought, my emotion, a shock of electricity, my death and doom, my fate, my love bound to fail, my betrayal, my obsession, my paranoia, my hate and insecurity, my deceit and my bitter nights alone. This was my curse, and the curse of all
who had such power as mine.
I remember, now, what Raevyn said to me, so long ago.
"I am not afraid of you, Aerarchos, because I do not care about anything you can take from me. You should not be afraid of me because I cannot take anything from you that really matters either. But you do care, because what
matters to you is different. It is different, Aerarchos, because what I
care about comes from my heart. But your heart has caused you pain, so you've shut it off because you think I will betray you. You think everyone will betray you. I won't. I will never betray you, Aerarchos. This world
may have caused you pain, but I will not. I won't allow myself to."
You were so wrong, Raevyn. And you so that, didn't you? You realized it as you died, as you went away forever and the Kyuuketsuki hime took over for you. You grasped how wrong you were. You would betray me. But even as you
died, you were wrong. I didn't create the monster.
After all, it was you who betrayed me. It was you who so cruelly deceived
me, who tore my heart away. You, the daughter of Lucifer, the lovely daughter of Lucifer. My Hato Chisai. My little dove, my little demon. My
love bound to fail.
Who was the monster?
That is not the question.
Who created it? Yes. You've created a monster, Raevyn. A monster with
haunted eyes of blue.
That monster is I.
I shiver wildly. The wind stings me, attacking me. I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. Even the physical world is attacking me now. It's not
bad enough that I'm going insane, I have to be in immense physical pain too. Jesus, it's cold. Cold and empty. I'm separated from the universe. I'm
in a wasteland, in nothing.
In the arctic.
Note: There are a lot of Author's Notes. I like to rant. You can feel free to skip over them and go right to the review button, but I'm going to talk
first.
The main character is technically Seto Kaiba, but in this story you'll see him called 'Aerarchos' a lot, because Aerarchos is a character that I've made up. But why am I calling Kaiba by his name? Well, Aerarchos was sort of based on Seto Kaiba personality wise, but he has slight differences. I often associate him with Kaiba in my stories because I like Seto Kaiba, but I also like to be as original as humanly possible. So, in this story, some
old friends of his once called Kaiba 'Aerarchos.'
I know, I know, you're going to hate me for having Original Characters. But if you read on, this isn't really a 'Mary Sue' story because Seto doesn't really end up with any of the OCs. This story has romance in it, but it's always a failed romance. Poor Seto. Anyway, Raevyn is a nice girl and all, which might make some people think she's a Mary Sue, but doesn't that make it all the more painful and less 'Mary Sue' when she inevitably doesn't get with Seto? And Sequoia can't be considered Mary Sue. She is not a Mary Sue.
She's scary.