In Darkness
Rin awoke with a headache. Her eyes slowly opened to take in the room around her.
The room was completly dark, not a single light could be seen. From what she could feel it had the tiled floor that she had walked on in the room she was in before.
She was seemingly alone in the silence and darkness yet still could feel her demons' presences. After a moment Rubinrot manifested and asked "Are you okay my lady?"
Rin nodded before looking up and seeing nothing asked "How long was I out?"
Rubinrot answered quickly "A few hours, It is now midnight as far as we could tell."
Rin stood and looked more carefully around the room trying to pierce the darkness "Did you see whatever it was that knocked me unconscious?"
"No miss, you simply collapsed." Rubinrot continued to report.
Rin nodded and went to examine her own body before quickly noticing what was wrong. Her essence reserves were completely empty, that wouldn't cause unconsciousness though so it was more likely a result of something "Draining" her reserves. She didn't have much of an idea about the cause but it seemed likely, she would have to slowly recover the store then.
Activity would cause them to recover faster so she tried to remember which way it was to the wall from where she was as she didn't want to blunder into the pit while unable to see. If she had essence she could have lit up her caste mark as a light source but as that wasn't an option she simply asked "Rubinrot, which way is the door from this room that we saw earlier?"
Rubinrot's wings continued to beat quickly as it moved further away from her "This way. Be mindful as the pit is between you and it."
That question answered Rin backed away from the pit to reach the wall before following the wall round to the door. While on the way she knocked a few skeletons to the floor, however she payed them no mind.
She exitted the room through the door and placed her hand blindly on the left wall. She began to walk in the quiet darkness, the only sound being the buzz of Rubinrot's wings.
Eventually she came to an opening and walked inside.
"Can you tell me what is in here?" She asked the question to her assorted demons. Rubinrot's response was first "I'm sorry but my sight is almost certainly even worse than yours is for this."
Silber answered "All I see are vague outlines my lady."
Blutspucke had nothing to contribute and gave only a small bark in the negative.
Rin sighed before responding "Silber, lead me to these outlines."
At her order, Silber materialized beside the furniture and called to her to let her know where he was. Rin took her hand off the wall before slowly walking to where she heard Silber from.
She managed to walk face first into a bookcase, she fellback and rubbed her nose in pain before rounding the case to get at the books. She pulled one out before realising the glaring problem that was the lack of light.
The answer that struck her made her laugh, this would have been a lot easier if she had thought of it earlier.
She took a step away from the bookcase before focusing.
The act of a Lunar changing shape was a thing that came naturally. While it was magic it required only a trickle of essence. She had it and so she forced a change from human form to a demonic form, the Gilmyne that once worked for Sakura.
Their natural form was flame, and so they cast light.
The light lit up the room around her allowing her to see that she stood in a library. She had guessed that much anyway. Reading was going to be an issue as she would burn any book she touched to dust. Regardless now that she could see, the rest of the ruins could be explored.
She left the room, her demons vanishing back into incorporeal form. Movement in this form was still strange to her even if she had used it to sneak into Sakura's base in the past. It seemed to need to dance about with each step. In a way it was faster to "Dance" to a destination than to simply "Walk" to it.
Rin was not a skilled dancer but her form was fire. Her dance was clumsy but it did feel better to dance down the corridor. She felt sluggish and understood that it was her own lack of grace that was the issue. That wasn't to say she was graceless, simply the demonic form could display far more grace than she could use.
At the end of the corridor she turned the corner with a twirl and continued on with slow, sure steps.
When she saw another room she danced in and looked around to see the room her own light revealed. There was some sort of statue here and behind it was a pile of metal that glittered strangely. The pile seemed to be a mix of many metals, both mundane and magical.
As she danced into the room the pile glittered in her light in a beautiful way. Getting a closer look at the pile she recognised Moonsilver, Orichalcum and White Jade but they were in the minority compared to the black metal that made up most of the pile.
"Soulsteel." Rin spun suddenly to see that Blutspucke had appeared behind her. At her look he continued "Favoured metal of the corpse exalts."
Rin nodded slowly, she had heard of soulsteel before, an evil metal made of innocent souls that sucked life from foes. In this pile most of the black metal was in the form of small tokens like large coins. Each was stamped with a face on one side and a four digit number on the other. Each token held a different number.
She didn't understand what they would be used for and she didn't really care, The Moonsilver was more interesting. She reached past the tokens to pick up the glinting metal underneath and looked at what she held. It was a small dagger, slightly larger than the knives Shirou used to cook back home.
The memory washed over her suddenly and she almost failed to hear the sound of cracking from behind her. In her light she could see cracks running across the statue.
She danced round the statue, dagger still in hand as the statue broke apart to reveal a monster.
Rin honestly didn't know how to compare it to anything. It's head was a cattle skull with white points of light that showed it was looking at her, it's body though was more like a centipede, long with many legs.
Rin didn't understand it and simply danced out into the corridor before and towards the room she started in. Not ten seconds later the monster charged out after her.
End of chapter.
Both this monster and the soulsteel tokens are made up for this story. As are the ruins. During the next end chapter I will explain their backstory.
Also, I actually forgot that Rin had that form for a while as I wrote it down in my notes as "The demon used to get close to Sakura"
I have no idea if Gilmyne actually give off light but as their true form is magic fire they probably do.
