me editing these chapters: haha had cringe comps with my fail son


Ash Crimson had learned not to make a fuss from a relatively young age. The reason was simple: because it didn't do anything. Nothing changed, so it was pointless.

The sun bleaches the pages of the small book, and Ash squints. In the blaze, the firm black letters are still slightly makeable. "Say over again, and yet once over again, That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated..." Fingers toy around with the corner of the page. It's all quite terribly shmucky. That's on him though, for picking up a sonnet collection exclusively about love. Et tu, Elisabeth Barrett Browning.

It's still the middle of class, but really, who cares. The view from the window is the same, a stretch of dull white despite the sun, bleaching the trees below gray. He takes another glimpse at the page. "Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll, Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?" You think there'd be some of those flowers around by now, considering it's March. "Say thou dost love me, love me, love me-" With a click of the tongue, the book is shut with a soft thump. Boring, boring, boring. The student next to him shoots a strange look. Ash replies with a blown kiss.

Something bad is about to happen. The statement hangs back outside the window, beating like a drum. Not because of anything he'd ever done, oh no. It's just a matter of fact, like an already published news article. Ash snickers. Now wouldn't that be an interesting concept. He picks up a long-abandoned pen, making sure there's a slight flourish for the audience. He doesn't have anything particular in mind though, so the pen resorts to making patterns, tidy neat loops of ink on the wooden desk. Tragic how things were going to turn out, but oh well! C'est la vie.

"You can't do that to school property." It's that same student again. Class must have ended, from the looks of it. Time really passes in a blink of an eye. Ash swings over with an easy smirk.

"Really? I had no idea! You should tell me more." One leg over the other, a finger expertly twirling the ribbon in his hair. The way you hold yourself is a weapon in its own right, but more importantly, doing this is just a lot of fun. "Or you can skip all that and talk about yourself. That'll be far more interesting."

"I-You-You'll get in trouble." Oh, they look so threatened…!

"I'm being honest! I don't even know your name! Well, that's because I couldn't bother with any of you people." He leans forward, and the other flinches back. "Why don't I start? My blood type is O, I like long walks on the beach, and this," another twirl, "is my lucky ribbon! It fits my complexion, don't you think?"

Fire. That's what he saw before the morning struck, and how he knows about the things to come. Fire, blazing in a color that he doesn't remember. She, Betty that is, used to call it a nightmare, ages ago, but it's more like an omen. An omen only good for signalling the bad things to come...it sounds romantic, in its own way.

The pest is gone now. The finger pulls away from the ribbon in a huff, leaving the red fabric to drop back to the side. Disappointing to the end. He waves a hand over the pen scribbles, and they vanish, leaving the tiniest of emerald lights in their wake. Nothing left other than to read, he supposes.

Ash flips over to the abandoned sonnet. Number twenty-one, 'Say over again'. With a slight turn of the shoulder, he turns to the next page. In the steady sunlight, the printed ink of the previous sonnet bleeds over to this one, rendering it unreadable if you squint.

Something bad is about to happen. He just wishes it would hurry up and get it over with. Hopefully before he gets to sonnet 43.


It's March, but it still gets dark around 4 pm, long after school. Four, he mulls the number around. An unlucky number in the East, due to its pronunciation being similar to the one for 'death'. The fact brings a smile. Underneath the four o'clock sky, everything is set with a bitter orange tone. It sets the mood nicely, even with the persisting clouds. What better time than to have a romantic date with misfortune?

The venue leaves a lot to be desired, though. Bricks; chipped, weathered, and clearly abandoned, litter the ground. Only a select few still remember their role as a wall, leaning against the remaining iron fence. As much as the lighting sets the tone, it only serves to make this place emptier. It melts the bricks into the shadows, leaving only the thin bars of the fence to show that there's something there. He kicks a stray pebble in the way, sending it flying, and it clangs against the rusted metal.

He actually doesn't know why he's here, in this space full of nothing but rubble. Not completely nothing, there's still a few things that are left, a few stone pillars there, a headless statue here. You'd have to be a particular kind of dunce to not see how disgraced with soot they are though. Perching on one of the wall sections, Ash breathes in, checking if the air is still bitter from the charcoal. It's not, and strangely, he feels disappointed.

Fire. It was fire that destroyed this place. Of course, he doesn't remember the details. Not the fire, not the supposedly huge mansion this place once was, and not the many, many people that supposedly lived in it. Not at all. That's selfish of him, Ash supposes. Even as a child, that hasn't changed a bit. From here, a single ray of light glints on one of the many piles of abandoned rocks, and for a second, it can almost be mistaken as a lit fireplace. A fancy one, one that would be fit for a home-

He turns away. It stands out as an eyesore. Yes, he hasn't changed one bit. Maybe that's why unlike Betty, who has absorbed the new Blanctorche estate into her person, he seemed to belong here. A pause, and then a laugh. It comes easy and light. Well, this place is his 'property' after all. No use thinking about it too deeply.

And it's here, in this empty lot, that he comes face to face with the Devil.

"Finally, we meet." From behind a collapsed brick wall walks out a cloaked figure, who couldn't possibly have been there from the start. They lay a stark pale hand on the stone. Their face is shadowed with a hood, but it doesn't mask the eyes, jack-knifing the slight darkness of the afternoon. "It's been...years? Humans, they create the most useless of things." Yes, that is the Devil. For even in the slight distance and the skewed lighting, Ash Crimson recognizes on the creature his own face, and that's how he knows; this is the Devil.

A small breath of air. Well, he's no Faust. "Haha, sorry. Don't know anyone with a drab get-up like that. You got the wrong person."

"You've grown suitable enough." The creature completely bypasses the remark. It looks around. "By the way, isn't this…I see, you've done a better job than I could ask for. " An air of satisfaction curls around the figure like a fat serpent. The edges of his lips threaten to curl at the sight.

"You seem pretty happy talking to yourself. Why don't you keep doing that, where I can't see you? I'm sure it'll be beneficial for both of us." Hands behind his back, keeping afloat with a light smile. Who knows. Maybe this is just some stranger. Someone human.

The figure stops midway. In the even duskier orange of the setting sun, the blue of its eyes suddenly turn gut-twistingly sickening. Fine, if the thing wants to play that way. "Enough playing dumb. Or is your common sense in the gutters from playing around with so many humans?" It turns, but before it can even take a single step, a sharp sizzle hits the air. The sizzle arcs and twists, forming a wake of sparks between them. They hang briefly, green glittering like a body of water. Unwittingly, his eyes flit to the opposite side, to the creature's face, but before he can actually get a good glimpse, the sparks burst into life. They roar, the green blooming into a living wall of familiar emerald.

"Green fire? You're full of surprises." Behind..! "You should be proud, I'd never imagined things to go this smoothly." From the opposite side, the Devil has come closer, only a few meters away, and he now gets that glimpse. Cold blue eyes framed by flaxen hair, pale even under the hood, with the thin edge of its lips twisted in a smirk. There aren't any freckles, he notices. Would it be stranger for the thing to have them, there's no time to wonder.

The emerald lights up again, this time in both palms. It gushes, dripping onto the dirt like melting wax. "Are all snakes this talkative? No wonder your kind dried out."

The thing doesn't even blink. "So you know something after all."

"Merci! I actually know quite a few things." The hand motions in the air, scattering green droplets. "For example...I hear this fire works quite well for burning up folks with scales." This time, there's not even enough time to breathe. In a single swipe, the fire leaps out, shedding into an arc as it flies.

"Useless-" Those words are cut short as Ash's remaining hand lunges to the right. It grasps onto the heavy cloak that once again materialized from nowhere, and yanks, hard. Caught off guard, the figure stumbles, right into his range.

"Caught you" He gets to say. The other hand is already up in the air as a fist, its fire burning as hot as it can be. The air shivers, and shivers again.

A laugh. It's low, and almost sounds metallic in the heat shimmer. "What are you rushing for? So I can't say my next words? You look so desperate." The blaze, incomprehensibly, despicably so, halts. In this distorted temperature, it's hard to feel anything, from the bunched up cloak, all the way to the surface of his own face. The face in front doesn't acknowledge any of this, its sneer only a mere head's width away. "It's a shame, I don't lay about praises very often."

Another breath. Without a free hand to play around with, the edges of his lips settle in twisting upwards instead. "I don't have enough free time to listen to the ramblings of a fossil, much less a doppelganger" he drawls.

The thing laughs again. "Doppelganger? Oh, you know better than that."

Oh, did he now. "Dog of Ouroboros-"

A noise. A sound. A terrible, terrible ringing sound. As if a bomb went off, right inside his ears. It keeps ringing, bringing nothing but sickening white. Coughs shudder out, as the lungs try to get some air, and that's when the pain boils over. It flashes red against the retinas, as wave after wave of scalding temperature, but he refuses to make a scene, he won't. The decision fills his mouth with pools of rust. They're coughed out before they can be spilled.

Something solid rests upon the temple, hard, and the bloom of copper paralyzes his tongue. "...You brought this onto yourself. Didn't that book say so; 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain'? So you understand, this is just punishment." This texture, this shape. It's laughable really, because of course, it can only be a hoof. "Are you listening to me? I know you're not broken, from something like this. Do you know why?" The hoof grinds exactly into the point of the concussion. "Well? Do you?"

The questions suddenly cut off with a hiss. The pressure on his head disappears with them, and immediately he gets back up. Both of his legs still don't work, but it's fine, better than lying like a dog. More coughs, but instead of blood, what spills out is liquid fire. Everything is ablaze, every part of him radiating flames. The heat takes place a beat later, or maybe it's just his senses that are still scrambled. Frozen ground melts in the gaps between the fingers, and the shudders relax, slightly. It brings back his vision, little by little.

"Burning this place down a second time?" The low voice calls out. "I'm not against it. Miserable bunch of insects they were." It spits.

Fingers dig into the now-mud of the courtyard floor. Making a fuss doesn't change anything. Not the present, not the future, and definitely not the past. His head is slightly turned to hide the blinks. He still can't see. "You shouldn't know about that." Slowly, slowly his sight returns, to the smoldering red of the dying sun encroaching on emerald. They mix together into a color he can't place.

"Hm?...Ah." Even in the blurriness, Ash knows; that the thing is grinning. "About how you're the bad little culprit that set this place on fire? Is that what you mean? How the ashes of the burnt insects who lived here are on your hands? Again, do you know the reason?" Because you're the Devil. "Ha. I'd explain...but it's getting rather late." Without warning, two arches of fire hurtle through the air, but they only hit the wall behind, blasting it into aged dust. There's nothing there. "You're smart, you can figure it out. Or maybe you already did." With the emptier lot, its laugh sounds even more metallic as it echoes. "I'll leave you to it for now. We'll be seeing each other again." The voice doesn't come back after that, no matter how long he holds his breath.

A hint of bright red. The ribbon had come off at some point, lying dangerously close to the pool of spreading fire.

Coming here was a mistake. He watches, as the flames make contact, and starts slaving away at the fallen cloth. It's eaten up quickly, swallowed by a mix of red and green.

Time passes by in the blink of an eye. It's already night, and the absence of the sun returns the flames to its normal color, rendering its previous color unable to be remembered.