DISCLAIMER: The characters, story, universe, etc. of Soul Calibur
belongs to Namco. They're not mine, and I make no claim to
them.
As the lightning falls by YF-21
"" denotes speech.
_ _ denotes emphasis.
* * denotes thought.
Chapter 3
The sun shined with intensity over the dense foliage. A gust of the warm summer wind flew by, taking a few dry leaves with it. The faint sound of birds tweeting could be heard in the distance. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful place, yet few dared to come here. Although the plague had receded a long time ago, the area was still called the ´Plaguelands´ by the people of the feud.
The dark-haired woman kneeled near the mound before her. It was that time of the year. Sometimes, depending of the current task, she would come days sooner or days later but still she would come. She didn´t quite know why but she did, like she was drawn to it or something.
Thus she began to pray. To pray to the heavens for the souls of the dead in that common grave. To pray for the souls of her dead family. The family she didn´t have recolection of.
*This is pointless.*
She had mentally kicked herself for thinking that way before, but still she couldn´t help it. The dead were dead. What was the use in praying for people whose names you don´t know?. Her parents. Her brothers. She had no memories of them. Would they still hear her prays?. Would they be able to look from the heavens and recognize _her_?.
Like a thief in the night, the plague struck her village with stealth and without warning. The water, the food, even the air became tainted with its poisonous grip. As the ill began to die, the few ones untouched ran for their lives, deserting the place. So little Taki was left all by herself, her parents too weak to move; their chests barely rising and falling. Inhaling pain, exhaling life.
A few days passed and the muffled voices of the sick finally stopped, leaving the village in complete silence. All Taki could do now was to wait. To wait for the plague to claim her life. She would not abandon her home. She would not abandon her family in their sleep. She would join them, soon.
The heat and the smoke awoke her from her sleep. Her home was on fire. The girl tried to get to her parent´s room but the door was blocked with burning logs, the ceiling threatening to collapse in any moment. Left with little choice but escaping, Taki reached the streets to find out that it wasn´t only her house the one on fire, but that the whole village was engulfed in flames.
In a sea of burning glow, the loud noise of hoofs was heard. The rider went around the corner of her home, a torch in hand, barely missing the girl. The man stopped the horse, then turned around to face the child. The rider wore black, baggy clothes. Although his face was covered with a mask, she still could see the dark eyes shining to the light of the torch. Their eyes met. Hers were tired and sad. His were cold and indifferent.
No words were said. No questions were asked. The rider approached Taki and extended his free hand, their eyes still locked...
In a few seconds, everything changed. Her mind. Her life. Over death, she chose to live. She took his offer, her small hand holding his. The man picked her up and they rode into the darkness, out of the blazing inferno.
*Master Toki...*
She owed him everything. Her life. Her love. Her loyalty.
Her surrogate father introduced her into her new family. The clan. He showed her what they did, the reason of their existance. Under direct orders of the Shogun, the Fuu-Ma did what other servants wouldn´t do; they dealt with things the army couldn´t face, let alone comprehend. And exceled at it.
Toki taught her to open her eyes and see. To see the invisible world that surrounds us. The creatures that lurks in it. Ghosts, demons, monsters. He taught her how to sense them. How to track them. How to slay them.
Years of intense training left her mind as sharp as a blade, her body becoming a weapon as well. She had learned to channel, even to manipulate the energy of her very soul and to use it in her own advantage. The best of her master´s students, Taki became the finest of the Fuu-Ma´s demon slayers...
...And his pride.
Toki, although a harsh master, was a patient man. His way of teaching might look slow to some, but the results were very solid. He seemed cold and distant to most people, but that was for a reason. His own sake. He wouldn´t let the passions interfere with the task at hand. He wouldn´t let feelings get in the way of what needed to be done. There was no room for faltering in their profession. There weren´t second chances. To linger was to die.
His wisdom was unquestionable. No matter the subject, Master Toki always seemed to know better...
Did he?.
"Hachibei, who once lead this great clan with me has stolen the spiritual ninja-tou Mekki-maru and ran away with his daughter Chie. They are now nuke- nin!."
Something was wrong. Very wrong. She was startled with the anger in his voice, the hate in his eyes. Usually composed Toki now seemed blinded by fury, outraged by the loss.
Taki stood up. Another gust of wind flew by, caressing her hair, her skin. It was her fault. _She_ was the one that should have known better.
She was the one that brought that thing to Japan. That damned shard.
She should have known better when the shards she extracted, still drenched in the blood of _that_ girl, merged into one. Her beloved Rekki-maru shivered, refusing to come near the evil thing. Even in that weakened state, she could still hear its voice, whispering in her mind. She should have get rid of it when she had the chance...
...But even then it was way too good a chance to let it just pass. The potential was enormous. Once tamed, that shard would prove-
...
The questions disturbed her even that day. Did it fooled her?. Did she _allowed_ it to fool her?. Had it simply clouded her judgement?. You don´t wield Soul Edge. Soul Edge wields _you_. It cannot be tamed, nor subdued or controlled. It can only be destroyed.
The whispers. Promises of knowlegde, of power. Was she truly that _weak_?...
Fused with the the cursed shard, the spiritual blade now reeked of corruption; it´s dark aura tainting minds and twisting wills.
"I order you to find them and return Mekki-maru dead or alive!".
The whole idea sickened her. Hachibei and Chie, once part of her family, now were marked for death. Master Hachibei showed her the secrets of the forge and ´inherited´ from him her love for it. She had known Chie since they were children, and even today the girl remained as one of her few friends.
Weren´t they family?. Didn´t she love them?.
Could she defy _him_?. Could she betray _him_?.
But orders were orders, whether she liked them or not. And if she had a problem with those orders, she knew that the rest wouldn´t. That brute Geki and the others.
Her eyes narrowed, her mind made up. She couldn´t waste more time here. She would track the nuke-nin down, find them and once she had them...
She wouldn´t know what to do.
////////////
The sparrow gracefully jumped from one branch of the tree to another, barely bothering to flap its wings. Lost in its own world, the bird seemed busy now as it chirped; the sweet melody getting lost in the woods. Busy enough to ignore the attentive stare of the figure resting in the opposite tree.
A small smile came to her lips. She had always liked birds.
Where birds could simply fly away from their problems, she could not. Where birds could always find a way home, she could not. Where birds were free, she was not.
She had always admired them. Envied them.
Those things were so irrelevant now. With a sigh, Sophitia Alexandra closed her eyes, waiting for the images to come to her mind, again. Images of ashen fields, of black rains, of death and decay. Images that weren´t part of her memories, but came to her nonetheless. They were disturbing at first but as the days passed, she had learned to ignore them. For terrible they were, there was no worse image for her than her own reality.
She shouldn´t stop. Sophitia sighed again, stronger this time. She knew she shouldn´t stop, as the memories would come back to her. The horrible deeds. When she moved she didn´t have to think. Only when she moved she could run away from her pain.
For countless days she wandered through the forests, unaware of her location. Never resting. Never stopping.
There was no need to. Not once since _then_ Sophitia had felt tired. She no longer felt hungry or thirsty. The sentinel knew why, though. The energy of the wicked blade now ran through her veins, as it shared its unholy strength with her. She no longer wondered how _he_ had managed to elude her grasp so many times in the past. Smacked up with the intoxicating power of Soul Edge, the azure knight was on the move constantly, day and night. Never resting. Never _stopping_.
She feared it. That power. The same power that enhanced her body could corrode her soul.
She wouldn´t become a monster. Not like _him_. Never like him. She wouldn´t let that thing come close to anybody again, less ruin anybody else´s life. Even if she had to spend the rest of her life in solitude in those woods to make sure of it..
She was kidding herself. Sophitia opened her eyes, the red orbs lost in the inmensity of the forest. That was just wishful thinking. All of it.
Soul Edge. She had no control whatsoever over it. Whether she didn´t know where she was, she was sure _it_ did. It wasn´t just mere luck the fact that in all this time they never ran into somebody or ended in some village. It was like the infernal artifact wanted to remain unseen, unnoticed.
It looked like Omega.
The small, thick blade. The thin, short hilt. The accursed weapon seemed to mimic the steel of the Gods. The similarities were obvious, as it even had the same decorations of her lost sword.
But it was no such. Soul Edge wasn´t imitating Omega. It was mocking it.
Part metal, part flesh; the damned blade lyed on the grass, it´s eye closed. It had remained that way since she became its wielder, never hearing the dark voice again.
Sophitia looked at it with comtempt. Once, she had sworn to destroy it; now she was bound to it.
Soul Edge didn´t change from its zweihander form so that she could make more use of it, it changed so that _she_ could be more useful to _it_. By adapting to fit her skills, it made sure that she could properly serve its goals. In the end, it only helped itself.
"...Your anger and despair only served Their purposes."
Its words. Now she could clearly see the irony in them. If those feelings served the Gods for Their purposes, the same feelings now served the infernal artifact for its own. Whether the case, she was being used. Whether the case, there was nothing she could do about it.
A pawn.
It had been right then. She was nothing more than a pawn. A replaceable, expendable pawn.
_Their_ faces. _Their_ smiles.
An iron resolve invaded the sentinel. The Gods had forsaken her, but she would burn in Hades before she forsake _them_. Her soul would be too small a price to atone for her failure.
Sophitia lifted the wretched sword and resumed walking, wherever it took her. Her dead wouldn´t be less dead if she stayed there.
////////////
The heat of the midday sun burned over the crater. Blurry forms seemed to appear out of the thin air only to disappear again; mere tricks to the eye. Trails of dust danced in the air, lifted by the relentless wind. Cold blue eyes gazed over the wasteland, barely noticing the lack of trees, of clouds, of life.
She didn´t mind the desolation that much. She had seen worse.
The tall woman stood near the crater´s edge, comtemplating the devastation. A white cloak covered her pale features, protecting the alabaster skin from the vicious sunlight.
The peasants of the nearby villages had called it the wrath of the Gods. Isabella knew otherwise. Evil. This was a work of evil. An evil that couldn´t be simply cleansed, but needed to be excised.
An evil that had taken too much of her already.
Her family´s wealth. Her family´s position. Her _family_.
The Count´s obsession. A key to immortality. A panacea to cure all illness. Soul Edge.
The reclusion. The madness. A vast fortune wasted in useless efforts. The disease that overcame him. Once favored in the king´s court, the Valentines had slipped into disgrace. Doors were shut, old friends turning their backs. For all it was worth, their prestige was gone; all that remained from a life of comfort and luxury was a decayed estate and numerous debts. Overwhelmed by sadness, it didn´t took long for the Countess to follow him to the grave, but not before telling her...
Isabella clenched her fists. It didn´t matter. It would never matter. They would always be her _parents_. She would always be _their_ daughter. Nobody else´s.
Left with nothing but her grief, her shame and her anger, the remaining Valentine seeked refuge in the Count´s study. For the first time in months a smile formed in her lips as the idea crept into her mind. She immersed herself in her father´s books, in his notes. She spent years there, in self- teaching. All those secrets. All those revelations. All those forbidden arts.
She had the knowledge. She had the power. She had the _names_, the connections.
Now she could have her revenge.
She would fight fire with fire. Only evil would destroy evil, as her creation twisted with an unholy strength. She would dispose of it eventually, as she would with all those who allowed themselves to be lured by the Soul Edge´s siren´s call. That evil would be erradicated. No matter the cost. No matter the price. No matter who.
But where one thing was fighting Soul Edge, another completely different was _finding_ it. Adams, de Leon, Vercci. In the end all clues led to the death merchant, but...
She had heard of the column of light, but never seen it before. It was beautiful, the thin white tower piercing the nightsky. The wretched sword wasn´t in the money pit, but in the mountains of the east.
It wasn´t here either.
It was a dead-end. Isabella closed her eyes, shaking the frustration that overwhelmed her. Now there was no chance to know where the cursed sword was.
Or perhaps there was...
She knew of them, but never meet them before. The heretics. A dark cult, Fygul Cestemus had a huge influence in the western Asia Minor and their eyes and ears everywhere. She knew they worshipped Palgaea, some sort of goddess of destruction, in a struggle to bring forth the apocalpyse. Or so she had heard.
Actually the countess couldn´t care less about their goals or intentions but the fact that they might put her back in the trail of the Soul Edge seemed appealing enough to listen to them. And then again, it was _them_ the ones who contacted her.
Without much options, she guessed she would have to play along for a while...
"I´ll come with you."
Turning around from the crater, she was greeted by a pair of black eyes.
Covered in a brown cloak, the man merely nodded. He turned his back on her and lead the way, walking from the place where he had been patiently waiting for her decision.
Following the acolyte, Isabella smiled to herself. This might prove useful, after all.
_Right_.
To be continued...
Author Notes:
I know, it´s the lame character introduction chapter. And it´s short too. It needed to be done, though; you don´t want the characters to be already _there_, right?.
Taki´s clan is actually enlisted as Fu-Ma, not Fuu-Ma, but there was this guy from the awful World Heroes game called Fuu-Ma and I know that Fuu means wind in japanese so I thought that it might be a translation typo...
The greek hell is called Tartarus, not Hades. Hades is just the king of the dead, lord of the underworld blah blah blah.
Now let´s get to the reviewers. You guys kick ass. I got four reviews in two days and then the inspiration hit me. I would have posted this anyways but it would have taken longer. Yes, even _longer_.
regie27: Thanks! See you at TA.
lordfolken: I´ve only played DOA 2 a couple of times and save for the big boobs it didn´t call my atention that much. If you don´t mind Yuri (awwww, come on!) you should check Kaiser Ryouga II´s fics. He´s one of the best fanfic authors out there and he has written a couple of great DOA fics.
Cowgrree: Someone _actually_ liked my SE characterization!. Sophie hates SE but at the same time, she´s stuck with it. More interaction to come.
I know I might start to sound annoying but I´m having chapter 1 rewritten. It shouldn´t take long, though.
Guess that´s it this time, please don´t forget to review!.
Comments?, Critics?, Death Threats?: mail me at hafhmii@yahoo.com.ar
belongs to Namco. They're not mine, and I make no claim to
them.
As the lightning falls by YF-21
"" denotes speech.
_ _ denotes emphasis.
* * denotes thought.
Chapter 3
The sun shined with intensity over the dense foliage. A gust of the warm summer wind flew by, taking a few dry leaves with it. The faint sound of birds tweeting could be heard in the distance. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful place, yet few dared to come here. Although the plague had receded a long time ago, the area was still called the ´Plaguelands´ by the people of the feud.
The dark-haired woman kneeled near the mound before her. It was that time of the year. Sometimes, depending of the current task, she would come days sooner or days later but still she would come. She didn´t quite know why but she did, like she was drawn to it or something.
Thus she began to pray. To pray to the heavens for the souls of the dead in that common grave. To pray for the souls of her dead family. The family she didn´t have recolection of.
*This is pointless.*
She had mentally kicked herself for thinking that way before, but still she couldn´t help it. The dead were dead. What was the use in praying for people whose names you don´t know?. Her parents. Her brothers. She had no memories of them. Would they still hear her prays?. Would they be able to look from the heavens and recognize _her_?.
Like a thief in the night, the plague struck her village with stealth and without warning. The water, the food, even the air became tainted with its poisonous grip. As the ill began to die, the few ones untouched ran for their lives, deserting the place. So little Taki was left all by herself, her parents too weak to move; their chests barely rising and falling. Inhaling pain, exhaling life.
A few days passed and the muffled voices of the sick finally stopped, leaving the village in complete silence. All Taki could do now was to wait. To wait for the plague to claim her life. She would not abandon her home. She would not abandon her family in their sleep. She would join them, soon.
The heat and the smoke awoke her from her sleep. Her home was on fire. The girl tried to get to her parent´s room but the door was blocked with burning logs, the ceiling threatening to collapse in any moment. Left with little choice but escaping, Taki reached the streets to find out that it wasn´t only her house the one on fire, but that the whole village was engulfed in flames.
In a sea of burning glow, the loud noise of hoofs was heard. The rider went around the corner of her home, a torch in hand, barely missing the girl. The man stopped the horse, then turned around to face the child. The rider wore black, baggy clothes. Although his face was covered with a mask, she still could see the dark eyes shining to the light of the torch. Their eyes met. Hers were tired and sad. His were cold and indifferent.
No words were said. No questions were asked. The rider approached Taki and extended his free hand, their eyes still locked...
In a few seconds, everything changed. Her mind. Her life. Over death, she chose to live. She took his offer, her small hand holding his. The man picked her up and they rode into the darkness, out of the blazing inferno.
*Master Toki...*
She owed him everything. Her life. Her love. Her loyalty.
Her surrogate father introduced her into her new family. The clan. He showed her what they did, the reason of their existance. Under direct orders of the Shogun, the Fuu-Ma did what other servants wouldn´t do; they dealt with things the army couldn´t face, let alone comprehend. And exceled at it.
Toki taught her to open her eyes and see. To see the invisible world that surrounds us. The creatures that lurks in it. Ghosts, demons, monsters. He taught her how to sense them. How to track them. How to slay them.
Years of intense training left her mind as sharp as a blade, her body becoming a weapon as well. She had learned to channel, even to manipulate the energy of her very soul and to use it in her own advantage. The best of her master´s students, Taki became the finest of the Fuu-Ma´s demon slayers...
...And his pride.
Toki, although a harsh master, was a patient man. His way of teaching might look slow to some, but the results were very solid. He seemed cold and distant to most people, but that was for a reason. His own sake. He wouldn´t let the passions interfere with the task at hand. He wouldn´t let feelings get in the way of what needed to be done. There was no room for faltering in their profession. There weren´t second chances. To linger was to die.
His wisdom was unquestionable. No matter the subject, Master Toki always seemed to know better...
Did he?.
"Hachibei, who once lead this great clan with me has stolen the spiritual ninja-tou Mekki-maru and ran away with his daughter Chie. They are now nuke- nin!."
Something was wrong. Very wrong. She was startled with the anger in his voice, the hate in his eyes. Usually composed Toki now seemed blinded by fury, outraged by the loss.
Taki stood up. Another gust of wind flew by, caressing her hair, her skin. It was her fault. _She_ was the one that should have known better.
She was the one that brought that thing to Japan. That damned shard.
She should have known better when the shards she extracted, still drenched in the blood of _that_ girl, merged into one. Her beloved Rekki-maru shivered, refusing to come near the evil thing. Even in that weakened state, she could still hear its voice, whispering in her mind. She should have get rid of it when she had the chance...
...But even then it was way too good a chance to let it just pass. The potential was enormous. Once tamed, that shard would prove-
...
The questions disturbed her even that day. Did it fooled her?. Did she _allowed_ it to fool her?. Had it simply clouded her judgement?. You don´t wield Soul Edge. Soul Edge wields _you_. It cannot be tamed, nor subdued or controlled. It can only be destroyed.
The whispers. Promises of knowlegde, of power. Was she truly that _weak_?...
Fused with the the cursed shard, the spiritual blade now reeked of corruption; it´s dark aura tainting minds and twisting wills.
"I order you to find them and return Mekki-maru dead or alive!".
The whole idea sickened her. Hachibei and Chie, once part of her family, now were marked for death. Master Hachibei showed her the secrets of the forge and ´inherited´ from him her love for it. She had known Chie since they were children, and even today the girl remained as one of her few friends.
Weren´t they family?. Didn´t she love them?.
Could she defy _him_?. Could she betray _him_?.
But orders were orders, whether she liked them or not. And if she had a problem with those orders, she knew that the rest wouldn´t. That brute Geki and the others.
Her eyes narrowed, her mind made up. She couldn´t waste more time here. She would track the nuke-nin down, find them and once she had them...
She wouldn´t know what to do.
////////////
The sparrow gracefully jumped from one branch of the tree to another, barely bothering to flap its wings. Lost in its own world, the bird seemed busy now as it chirped; the sweet melody getting lost in the woods. Busy enough to ignore the attentive stare of the figure resting in the opposite tree.
A small smile came to her lips. She had always liked birds.
Where birds could simply fly away from their problems, she could not. Where birds could always find a way home, she could not. Where birds were free, she was not.
She had always admired them. Envied them.
Those things were so irrelevant now. With a sigh, Sophitia Alexandra closed her eyes, waiting for the images to come to her mind, again. Images of ashen fields, of black rains, of death and decay. Images that weren´t part of her memories, but came to her nonetheless. They were disturbing at first but as the days passed, she had learned to ignore them. For terrible they were, there was no worse image for her than her own reality.
She shouldn´t stop. Sophitia sighed again, stronger this time. She knew she shouldn´t stop, as the memories would come back to her. The horrible deeds. When she moved she didn´t have to think. Only when she moved she could run away from her pain.
For countless days she wandered through the forests, unaware of her location. Never resting. Never stopping.
There was no need to. Not once since _then_ Sophitia had felt tired. She no longer felt hungry or thirsty. The sentinel knew why, though. The energy of the wicked blade now ran through her veins, as it shared its unholy strength with her. She no longer wondered how _he_ had managed to elude her grasp so many times in the past. Smacked up with the intoxicating power of Soul Edge, the azure knight was on the move constantly, day and night. Never resting. Never _stopping_.
She feared it. That power. The same power that enhanced her body could corrode her soul.
She wouldn´t become a monster. Not like _him_. Never like him. She wouldn´t let that thing come close to anybody again, less ruin anybody else´s life. Even if she had to spend the rest of her life in solitude in those woods to make sure of it..
She was kidding herself. Sophitia opened her eyes, the red orbs lost in the inmensity of the forest. That was just wishful thinking. All of it.
Soul Edge. She had no control whatsoever over it. Whether she didn´t know where she was, she was sure _it_ did. It wasn´t just mere luck the fact that in all this time they never ran into somebody or ended in some village. It was like the infernal artifact wanted to remain unseen, unnoticed.
It looked like Omega.
The small, thick blade. The thin, short hilt. The accursed weapon seemed to mimic the steel of the Gods. The similarities were obvious, as it even had the same decorations of her lost sword.
But it was no such. Soul Edge wasn´t imitating Omega. It was mocking it.
Part metal, part flesh; the damned blade lyed on the grass, it´s eye closed. It had remained that way since she became its wielder, never hearing the dark voice again.
Sophitia looked at it with comtempt. Once, she had sworn to destroy it; now she was bound to it.
Soul Edge didn´t change from its zweihander form so that she could make more use of it, it changed so that _she_ could be more useful to _it_. By adapting to fit her skills, it made sure that she could properly serve its goals. In the end, it only helped itself.
"...Your anger and despair only served Their purposes."
Its words. Now she could clearly see the irony in them. If those feelings served the Gods for Their purposes, the same feelings now served the infernal artifact for its own. Whether the case, she was being used. Whether the case, there was nothing she could do about it.
A pawn.
It had been right then. She was nothing more than a pawn. A replaceable, expendable pawn.
_Their_ faces. _Their_ smiles.
An iron resolve invaded the sentinel. The Gods had forsaken her, but she would burn in Hades before she forsake _them_. Her soul would be too small a price to atone for her failure.
Sophitia lifted the wretched sword and resumed walking, wherever it took her. Her dead wouldn´t be less dead if she stayed there.
////////////
The heat of the midday sun burned over the crater. Blurry forms seemed to appear out of the thin air only to disappear again; mere tricks to the eye. Trails of dust danced in the air, lifted by the relentless wind. Cold blue eyes gazed over the wasteland, barely noticing the lack of trees, of clouds, of life.
She didn´t mind the desolation that much. She had seen worse.
The tall woman stood near the crater´s edge, comtemplating the devastation. A white cloak covered her pale features, protecting the alabaster skin from the vicious sunlight.
The peasants of the nearby villages had called it the wrath of the Gods. Isabella knew otherwise. Evil. This was a work of evil. An evil that couldn´t be simply cleansed, but needed to be excised.
An evil that had taken too much of her already.
Her family´s wealth. Her family´s position. Her _family_.
The Count´s obsession. A key to immortality. A panacea to cure all illness. Soul Edge.
The reclusion. The madness. A vast fortune wasted in useless efforts. The disease that overcame him. Once favored in the king´s court, the Valentines had slipped into disgrace. Doors were shut, old friends turning their backs. For all it was worth, their prestige was gone; all that remained from a life of comfort and luxury was a decayed estate and numerous debts. Overwhelmed by sadness, it didn´t took long for the Countess to follow him to the grave, but not before telling her...
Isabella clenched her fists. It didn´t matter. It would never matter. They would always be her _parents_. She would always be _their_ daughter. Nobody else´s.
Left with nothing but her grief, her shame and her anger, the remaining Valentine seeked refuge in the Count´s study. For the first time in months a smile formed in her lips as the idea crept into her mind. She immersed herself in her father´s books, in his notes. She spent years there, in self- teaching. All those secrets. All those revelations. All those forbidden arts.
She had the knowledge. She had the power. She had the _names_, the connections.
Now she could have her revenge.
She would fight fire with fire. Only evil would destroy evil, as her creation twisted with an unholy strength. She would dispose of it eventually, as she would with all those who allowed themselves to be lured by the Soul Edge´s siren´s call. That evil would be erradicated. No matter the cost. No matter the price. No matter who.
But where one thing was fighting Soul Edge, another completely different was _finding_ it. Adams, de Leon, Vercci. In the end all clues led to the death merchant, but...
She had heard of the column of light, but never seen it before. It was beautiful, the thin white tower piercing the nightsky. The wretched sword wasn´t in the money pit, but in the mountains of the east.
It wasn´t here either.
It was a dead-end. Isabella closed her eyes, shaking the frustration that overwhelmed her. Now there was no chance to know where the cursed sword was.
Or perhaps there was...
She knew of them, but never meet them before. The heretics. A dark cult, Fygul Cestemus had a huge influence in the western Asia Minor and their eyes and ears everywhere. She knew they worshipped Palgaea, some sort of goddess of destruction, in a struggle to bring forth the apocalpyse. Or so she had heard.
Actually the countess couldn´t care less about their goals or intentions but the fact that they might put her back in the trail of the Soul Edge seemed appealing enough to listen to them. And then again, it was _them_ the ones who contacted her.
Without much options, she guessed she would have to play along for a while...
"I´ll come with you."
Turning around from the crater, she was greeted by a pair of black eyes.
Covered in a brown cloak, the man merely nodded. He turned his back on her and lead the way, walking from the place where he had been patiently waiting for her decision.
Following the acolyte, Isabella smiled to herself. This might prove useful, after all.
_Right_.
To be continued...
Author Notes:
I know, it´s the lame character introduction chapter. And it´s short too. It needed to be done, though; you don´t want the characters to be already _there_, right?.
Taki´s clan is actually enlisted as Fu-Ma, not Fuu-Ma, but there was this guy from the awful World Heroes game called Fuu-Ma and I know that Fuu means wind in japanese so I thought that it might be a translation typo...
The greek hell is called Tartarus, not Hades. Hades is just the king of the dead, lord of the underworld blah blah blah.
Now let´s get to the reviewers. You guys kick ass. I got four reviews in two days and then the inspiration hit me. I would have posted this anyways but it would have taken longer. Yes, even _longer_.
regie27: Thanks! See you at TA.
lordfolken: I´ve only played DOA 2 a couple of times and save for the big boobs it didn´t call my atention that much. If you don´t mind Yuri (awwww, come on!) you should check Kaiser Ryouga II´s fics. He´s one of the best fanfic authors out there and he has written a couple of great DOA fics.
Cowgrree: Someone _actually_ liked my SE characterization!. Sophie hates SE but at the same time, she´s stuck with it. More interaction to come.
I know I might start to sound annoying but I´m having chapter 1 rewritten. It shouldn´t take long, though.
Guess that´s it this time, please don´t forget to review!.
Comments?, Critics?, Death Threats?: mail me at hafhmii@yahoo.com.ar
