Frozen in Darkness
by BridgitKiido
Disclaimer: I don't own GX. And I'd come up with something witty to say here, but I'm feeling somewhat brain dead at the moment, to be honest… no, wait, not to be Honest. To be truthful. Yes, truthful. I don't want to be Honest, because Honest is a jerk.
(…and if you caught the reference, good for you!)
Chapter 3
Demonic Attack on Osiris Red
Daitoukuji led Asuryn and Daichi to a room somewhat in the center of the inn. It didn't look particularly special, but then, it made sense that the Prince wouldn't want to make his presence that well known. Knocking on the door, the man called, "Prince Sho, there are some travelers from Nordia who wish to speak with you privately, nya."
From behind the door came a response, "Please let them in, Daitoukuji."
With that, Daitoukuji opened the door and allowed the travelers in. As soon as they had entered, he exited the room and shut the door behind him. Yes, there was the possibility that they could be assassins, but it was supposed to be a private audience, and besides, the Prince could handle himself long enough for help to arrive.
"Welcome to Academia," Sho began after the door had closed. "It's unfortunate that the country isn't exactly in the best state of things at the moment, what with Darkness on the throne and all, but I thank you for coming to lend your aid."
"You're welcome, but you shouldn't thank us until Darkness is deposed," Asuryn replied. Her tone had slightly relaxed, though she did not remove her cloak.
"So, may I ask who in Nordia is interested enough in the affairs of Academia to offer their help at this time? After all, though our countries may have a truce at the moment, the terms of peace have yet to be signed."
Daichi interjected, "Your highness, if I may, that is the reason why we're here. Though the general Nordian public doesn't know about it yet, our beloved Blizzard Prince appears to have been either captured or killed by Darkness as well as the Kaiser. And if he isn't found, the public may very well blame the Academian government for his disappearance. And if I may, I doubt that either country truly has the resources to continue fighting pointlessly."
"Daichi!" Asuryn hissed in warning, but it was too late.
"So then, if you know about that, you're not of this general public that you were talking about, are you?" was Sho's response. "I understand if it's important to be kept a secret, but I would at least like to know what types of people are on my side."
Before either of them had the chance to attempt to come up with a response, however, the building shook. Daitoukuji burst into the room in a panic, clutching Pharaoh in his arms. "Prince Sho, I really hate to interrupt, but we're being attacked, nya!"
Upon hearing Daitoukuji's words, Sho immediately grabbed his sword from where it rested on a nearby nightstand before bowing quickly to his guests. "I'm sorry, but we'll need to continue our conversation another time." He then followed Daitoukuji quickly out of the room.
Daichi looked toward his companion. "Do we fight, my lady?"
The other didn't give any indication of a facial response, but instead replied, "Do you really need to ask? And I asked you to stop calling me that."
And the two of them left the room as well.
It was no mere earthquake. Just as Daitoukuji had implied, Osiris Red was under attack. Half of the main room was on fire, and though Judai had summoned one of his Elemental Armors – a water elemental named Bubble – who was busy putting out the flames, the fireballs kept coming, shaking the building's foundation even as they burned its walls. The ceiling was even collapsing slightly, and Hane was busy trying to keep the falling pieces from harming Ms. Tome.
Sho immediately scanned the area for signs of what was attacking, and immediately he spotted them – three large, vaguely humanoid demons that resembled rocks covered in yellow and green flames, spewing their fires in huge orbs toward the inn.
He had to give Darkness some credit. The guy at least knew enough to attack powerfully at first, rather than in small, weak waves to test his enemy's power.
"This is the work of a warlock," Judai observed with disdain when he noticed the demons as well. "One who summons demon-type monsters temporarily and forces them to serve him without giving the obligations of a pact in return. They sicken me. They have no respect for the monsters they work with, none at all."
"And that one is attacking Osiris Red like this…" Thunder muttered, his tone reflecting his agreement with Judai's sentiments about warlocks. He called back toward the burning inn, "Yellow, Green, Black, get out here and help."
"Yes, Aniki!" came the sound of three voices responding to the call, and the three Ojamas ran out of the building to join Thunder. Though they seemed mildly scared, they didn't hesitate to help their Aniki in the least, likely partially due to their own beliefs that it would be better to be outside where one could at least avoid the fire.
As soon as the Ojamas were all present, Thunder began reaching into his jacket and told everyone else, "I'll take care of these. You all should work on making sure Osiris Red doesn't burn down." Then, after all of the other humans had nodded to his request, he addressed his Ojamas, "You three, assume Delta Formation S."
"Right, Aniki!" The Ojamas grabbed each other's hands until they were in a circle, each one of them facing outwards. Smiling, they each closed their eyes, or eye in the case of Green, and bent down as low as they could, at which time the three of them began to softly glow.
Thunder removed something from within his coat and began to recite,
"Lost souls of this world, hear my plea.
I seek the services of three.
Thy task, to kill my foes, will be,
from within these carved capsules three.
Thy reward of my blood shall be,
and all required energy.
These demons' deaths will set you free."
At this point, whatever spell the Ojamas were attempting had obviously been completed, as a large beam of energy descended from the heavens, anchoring itself on the ground in the middle of where the Ojamas stood.
Thunder smiled – somewhat smirk-like, but not quite – for a moment before opening his hand, revealing three small figures carved into dragon-like shapes from metal. They could almost have passed for robots in any world that had them, except there was no indication of any electrical wiring within them. "Ye wanderers, come! I call to thee!" he cried, sticking his hand with the three figures into the beam.
Upon touching the beam, the three figures immediately burst to life, their eyes glowing a soft blue. They then flew from the boy's hand toward the demons, which didn't have quite enough coordination to even attempt to swat them away. Each of them landed on a different demon and began to dig into the exterior with its claws. Though these demons seemed to be made of rock, the dragon-like things' claws were powerful enough to dig through the rock to the demons' cores.
As soon as each dragon reached the point where they had broken through the rock layer, they opened their mouths and began to spew bright red flames. The demons may have been covered in flames, but in reality, it was the rock layer that kept them from overheating, as their inner workings couldn't handle even minor increases in temperature, let alone the amount of the dragons' fire. And thus, the demons exploded from the inside, though no shards of rock caused damage as, upon their defeat, the terms of the warlock's summoning were completed, and they returned to their home dimension to recover.
Thunder collapsed to the ground, attempting to breathe as normally as possible in order to hide his exhaustion. "I guess I'm not used to doing three at once," he muttered, his arm shaking slightly as he clenched his fist in an attempt to close the three now-bleeding pricks on his hand, as well as to hide that they were even doing so. As the Ojamas brought the now lifeless metal creatures back to their Aniki (as the terms of the pact with the souls inside had been completed as well), however, he did manage to smile. "Thanks, you three."
Yellow bashfully rubbed the back of his head, saying, "Aww, it was nothing, Aniki." The other two nodded in agreement.
"Wow," Judai, who had been watching from the side-lines (there wasn't really much he could do to stop the flames other than summoning Bubble), interjected into the scene. "I've never seen anything like that before, Manjoume. How did you do that?"
"First of all," the boy replied as he pulled himself up and dusted off his jacket, "call me Thunder. And second, that's none of your business."
"Aw, and why not?"
Even if Thunder had felt like responding, he wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to do so. After all, with those demons defeated, one would hope that the one who summoned them, realizing the strength of their opponent, would retire to regroup and come back stronger another day, but unfortunately, no sooner was the first wave of demons defeated that a second wave of three demons appeared.
These monsters were different, however. Instead of vaguely human-shaped figures, these were monsters that looked like the children of horrid beasts and rogue dragons – one red, one yellow, and one blue. Before anyone could react, they fired their own attacks at Osiris Red, these being powerful beams of an unknown type of energy. Hane reacted in time to take most of the attack, but it was so strong that even the little puffball wound up fainting. (Judai immediately ran over to his Kobun's side to make sure, but Hane was merely exhausted, not injured.)
"There's only one warlock I know who's powerful enough to summon demons like those, nya…" Daitoukuji replied nervously, taking the opportunity to hide behind one of the still-standing walls as he fished some herbs and a vial out of his bag. Pharaoh was by his side, surprisingly not hissing at the cloaked figure with a long, white beard that had appeared behind the demons.
"Kagemaru," Sho murmured in shock. "So he's even begun to summon them…"
Author's Note: The first set of demons are based off of the Infernals from World of Warcraft. Similarly, Manjoume's robots I visualize to be sort of like the Mechanical Dragonlings from the same game. The whole basis behind the warlock thing was also, come to think of it, from there as well, though Kagemaru lends himself pretty easily to such a distinction. Oh, and the second set of demons are the actual canon legendary demons that were sealed under Duel Academy. The dub calls them the "Sacred Beasts", which I've always been confused by. After all, they've always gone to extra lengths to leave out all references to any type of religion at all… I guess they think that the word "sacred" is better for children to hear than the word "demon"? Hnn…
Sorry for the longer-than-expected wait. My plot bunnies have been bugging me about other things lately, and school work (plus college applications) has left me little time to work on this… I'll get the next chapter out as soon as I can, but I can't promise any particular date. As usual, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them in a review, though I might not answer depending on the level of the spoilers involved. After all, I want to keep some secrets.
