The pitch black nature of the cave was no obstacle to her, the demoness moved within as if it were outdoors on an open field in the bright noon sun. She kept her human form, largely because it had one advantage. 'I love my wings, but damn they get in the way.' She mused, and turned to the side to slip between narrow stone walls. 'The beastmen never chased them this far… or lost them… the cave-in back there was still intact and those three didn't have any evidence that they'd been eaten after death. Not like…' Hatred welled up in her core, she squeezed her eyes shut, her heart fluttered as she passed between narrow stone walls and in an impulsive act of hatred…
She turned her hand, restoring its demonic claws and raking them across the stone in front of her, the gash in the stone formed in an instant, "Fucking beastmen!" She screamed and raked her claws against the heart of the mountain again and again when she thought of the terror, the fear, and the fates of those she lost along the way. She took out her hatred against the naked, innocent stone, ripping her claws into it again and again.
Her words echoed over and over, ringing back against her own ears.
"Fucking beastmen! Fucking beastmen… fucking… beastmen…"
And when her cries of fury died in the air, she sniffled once, steeled her will, and inched her way further, sliding her feet along the stone and telling herself, "Just get over it. You'll never have the revenge you wanted…" She told herself and swallowed the lump in her throat. The coming war against the Triumvirate and the horror they would experience, came to mind. 'That will feel fantastic… but it was Rargnan's Kingdom… if only I could just finish them all off…' She clamped down on the thought, and even rebuked herself.
'The guilty died in terror and pain. What was inside the kingdom, did nothing.' She could practically hear the voice of the Peasant General, Enri Emmott-Bareare, stern and scolding as a teacher or mother. Or even, ironically, the Pope herself, long in the face and full of shame for her hypocrisy, telling her how unwise it was to make anything personal…
Maybe they were right, but it was hard to care if they were. As she slipped further down the long path and rounded a bend, she turned that hypocrisy of the Pope over in her head. 'Demon of the West', 'Mother of Terror', and a dozen other names of varying degrees of complimentariness came to mind. But the demoness who took the Pope to get help after her suicide attempt knew the truth as few others could. That demons haunted her which no spell summoned and no wish could dispel, and that would never truly change.
The impact on her house was obvious, strength obsessed to the point of madness, Vanysa recalled Queen Zesshi's quip remarking that, "It's only a matter of time before the child I don't even have yet, gets proposals from the descendants of the Pope."
It had been meant as a joke over dinner in the papal estate, but Neia hadn't laughed, instead saying, "If I live long enough, I look forward to it."
Vanysa rounded the bend and found that the path opened up, and the noise of distant babbling water reached her ears. 'Strange folk… but I'm glad they're ours.' She forced those thoughts aside when she found a set of armor lying scraped and torn up against the wall. She reached out to touch it, the stuff wasn't in great shape, the moisture of the cave had rusted it considerably, and the leather was rotted to worthlessness.
"Damn." Vanysa whistled and glanced back the way she'd come, trying to imagine Barintacha wearing his armor and trying to pull the limp body of the golden woman with him. "Why bother with all that and then discard it h-" She stopped the question when she noticed the deepening shadows to her left.
A chasm. 'Didn't think you could jump it in armor I guess. Poor human.' She felt a twinge of pity as she stood up and approached the edge. Down below she could hear the babbling waters, and half expected a vision.
But none came. She looked to the other side. 'He wouldn't have discarded his armor if he thought he needed it, he seemed to be a confident Lord, so he wouldn't have jumped if he weren't sure he would make it…'
She tried to imagine the vanished moment, even stronger than average and with martial arts to help, it would have been a narrow thing. Removing the armor had clearly given him an edge but…
'Did he really just throw her corpse into the darkness…?' Vanysa tried to picture it, holding her cold, dead hands and hurtling her like a broken, used up doll, to land with a thud and crumple alone in the dark.
She shook her head. 'Impossible. Utterly impossible. He didn't do that. He carried her.' She knew it. It wasn't a vision, but even so… she knew.
'He wasn't even trying to escape to save his life… he just didn't want them to have her… so…' She thought and walked close to the edge. Until she found a place where the stone was broken free.
Vanysa crouched down and touched it, the break wasn't a large one, and it could have come from a stone above breaking free, but if it didn't?
She stood up, looked back along the long open dark stone floor and followed her line of sight from the break until…
There it was. She walked to the small rock, picked it up, it was a little wider than the palm of her hand, she carried it back to the break and fit the piece into the broken section. "Perfect match." She muttered and dropped the stone to splash into the water below.
She could see it as if it were a vision, Barintacha finding the chasm, looking behind him, wondering if he was still being pursued. The river down below, beckoning, an easy end, but she could read the thoughts of the past as if they were the present. 'We might be separated.'
She stepped aside from the broken section as if to get out of the way of a jump from long ago, her eyes following nothing, Barintacha holding her against his chest, his legs pumping, breathing hard with desperation, activating every martial art he could think of, shouting defiance at the stone sky as his feet pushed off the rock, breaking it and casting that piece behind him where it would lie until Vanysa found it centuries later. His body leaping into the darkness he was ill equipped to handle.
She found herself rooting for him. 'Make it… please make it…' She held her breath as if she were watching it happen.
'He did.' She told herself, her eyes wild and staring fixed on the far end of the chasm, a distant break in the wall presenting the obvious path. She spread her wings, launched herself over the empty space, and flew to land on the other side.
Her feet touched down and her stride carried her swiftly to the opening in the wall.
Then it hit her.
It was faint.
It was small.
But it was a smell she would never forget.
It was the smell of blood.
Fresh blood.
Lots of it.