Thank you very much for the positive feedback for Chapter One. Since I adore Kamikirimusi, it's very likely that she'll be featured again later. Anyhow, here is another oneshot for who I believe to be a very underappreciated character.
Chapter Two
To Have A Heart
I want it…
The ivory-skinned girl slapped aside the thrust of the soldier's lance with but a flick of her wrist before bringing her own weapon down in an overhead swing. With a sickening crunch, the titanic mace sent up a spray of gore and mangled armor as it cratered the earth. A loud clang sounded as another one of the archers' bolts rebounded off of her neck, and throwing her weight backwards, she wrenched the weapon from the ground and set it at her side.
"I've come for it." she stated in her monotone voice as she stared blankly into the hateful eyes of the battered legion and was met with two dozen smoldering glares. Then like a pack of beasts, the soldiers roared and charged once more against her. The girl tightened her grip about the mace's shaft and wound up for a swing: there was no mercy, no discretion, and certainly no possibility for there to be any less blood spilled tonight, but she didn't care. She had come her for it, and she would have it.
It should be mine…
The soldiers flew aside like paper dolls as she spun and swung and danced through the courtyard of the dilapidated fortress. More came streaming out, all bearing that same crest upon their shields, but it didn't matter to her. She had come here in search of it, and she could all but feel it between her fingers as she inched closer and closer to heart of the fortress. A sudden jolt caught her attention as a shield was brought down over the back of her head, and automatically, she swung her hand towards the attacker, tossing him aside with ease.
I'll take it if I need to…
"Give…it…to me…" she murmured, heaving her mace in a wide arc and catching nearly half the company in the swing. A fresh wave of cries greeted her ears as lives were quickly cut short by the mace's colossal swing. Lunging forward, a fresh cry greeted the ranks of the dead as her fist ripped through the armor with ease. A broadsword left a long mark along her arm, tearing the frilled sleeve and leaving a deep scratch.
Instantly, her eyes were upon the perpetrator, and through his visor, she could see that the man – hardly the type who looked to scare easily – was frozen with fear. She didn't so much as wince as her eyes flickered over the mark on her arm, but the tension in the air grew thicker and as heady as a choking blood mist as her gaze traced the ruined pattern of frills. It was a personal affront to her, and the man's unspoken apologies were wasted when the hilt of the mace was rammed soundly through his stomach, skewering him like a pig on a spittle. She turned and neatly threw the man from her weapon with a single swing so that his blood wouldn't dribble down the shaft and further ruin her dress.
With a motion faster than she seemed to be able to accomplish, the girl dashed forward, whipping her weapon around her and carving a bloody path to the doors of the fortress inner sanctum and smashing through them as if they had been of rice paper. Inside, the dim light cast weak shafts of rusty light across the room, failing to bring any sense of life to the hollow chamber. Figures dressed in cloaks hissed and recoiled at her arrival and flocked behind the throne, all looking to the figure seated there – their immortal God of Destruction – for leadership.
It started as a long, low rumble, but quickly grew until it was a booming laugh as the hulking figure rose to its feet, two hideous embers gazing down at the girl – two hellish flames meeting a wall of bleached steel and porcelain eyes. She had not heard that laughter in a long time. With it came the rush of what few memories she had.
"Ashlotte…so good to see you..!"
--
She could remember when she'd completed her mission and felled the monstrous Astaroth. Battered and beaten, she had barely been able to stand, let alone heft her mace from where it had gotten lodged in the tower wall. With a sigh of exhaustion uncharacteristic to her, she allowed herself to fall backwards, eyelids shut before her back hit the ground.
Hours later she had awakened to find herself half-buried in rubble as the tower shook dangerously. Shoving the slabs of stone off from on top of her, the mechanical girl rose from her spot on the floor. Far above her, she could hear the sounds of battle, but as her eyes flickered across the room, they came to rest on the fallen form of the golem of Ares. Immediately, her sense of duty took over, and with some minor difficulty, she began the ardor of dragging her weapon, Astaroth, and the monster's axe back to her masters as proof of her victory.
It had always been her simple duty to complete her mission; there was no reward, no benefit, only a binding contract of servitude to her masters to which she would loyally follow until the end of time. Her congratulations were short-lived, and upon completion, she was permitted a rest until she was next needed. Thus began her slumber. Deep in the caverns where the cult's temple had once held a beautiful shrine was now little more than a dilapidated slab of rock amid a pool of fetid water. Still, she chose this place, and laying her mace on the ground, the girl laid against the cool stone, closing her eyes until her services would be of use once again.
Later…much later, her eyes would flutter awake as if in the midst of a beautiful dream. Slowly she sat up, surveying the room around her. Whatever had happened here..? Where there was once only a stone in dirty water was a beautiful garden of flowers amid a crystalline river. The walls of the cave were beautiful as well, and reflected the light of the fireflies dancing through the air. Tilting her head for only a moment, she disregarded the scene of pristine beauty, and grasped her mace where flowers and vines ripe with berries had wrapped around it, and started forward, dragging her mace down the familiar path through the temple she had traveled so long ago.
It would be as she slowly walked, that she found parts of the temple collapsed from age and decay, but she wouldn't stop until finally, against the wall of what had once been the entrance hall, she found two mangled corpses. Her brow flickered; she knew why she had reawakened. The axe-wounds on the bodies of her former masters couldn't have been made by any human. With the same grim mission as before, the girl set out across the world.
But it had been as she found herself huddled against a rock as the blizzard lashed against the mountain that she began to ask herself what it was that she was doing. It had been the will of her masters to track down and exterminate Astaroth. Disregarding however the demon had come back to life…what would she do once he was dead? Without a mission, was she simply meant to return to her eternal slumber..?
She…didn't want that.
So…
What was it that she wanted..?
--
"Astaroth." She replied, gazing at the golem sitting upon his throne. In the time since their supposedly eternal slumber, the golem had risen, and around him, the remnants of the ancient cult had rallied. Now they found themselves where this entire dance of blades had begun; two abominations of science and alchemy staring each other down. Their individual capacity for violence and murder were matched only by that of the person standing across the room from them.
The giant grinned his hellish grin and plucked his axe from where it had lay propped against his throne and growled idle threats she chose to ignore. Ashlotte's grip on her mace tightened as she lowered herself into the familiar stance she assumed for one-on-one combat. Looking at the monster she had once killed, the girl found herself overcome with the strange emotions she had struggled with ever since her reanimation; anticipation running through her hollow joints like passionate fire. Her eyes fell on the massive heart beating unnaturally against Astaoth's chest, and her ivory lips turned upwards in a devilish smirk.
She wanted it, she desired it, she needed to have it…and luckily enough, if she couldn't have it, he wasn't about to let her live to regret it.
"I am the one who deserves humanity; not a puppet like you. Give me your heart, Astaroth," She spoke coldly, and with nothing but hatred and the cold steel of the mace in her hand, she threw herself at him; mace whistling an executioner's song in the air.
Author's Notes – This was inspired by some writing I've done in the past coupled with some questions I had after Ashlotte's ending. The two most addressed in this story were what would have happened after the two priests died and there was nobody to give her orders, and the second was that if Astaroth were to return, as he often seems to, would she be there to stop him. Ashlotte ties with Kamikirimusi for how endearing I found a character to be, and I consciously made an effort to make her fighting style seem slightly different than Astaroth's.
