Heated Battle
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Sephiroth felt the crash only seconds before he saw the shadow monster bearing down on him, tossing the trees aside as though they were broomsticks. Masamune freed now in his hand he faced the monster, and saw those empty eyes fixate on him. Fixate on his very soul, the thing he held most dear, starved for its broken and ugly energy--
Again he remembered the Heartless's cold hands, their invisible hungry spirits crawling on his flesh, tearing and savage in their soul-starved frenzy. Like hyenas, they ravaged his soul and body countless times... bringing him back from death only by the promise of parasiting more of his energy to satiate their unholy hunger.
His hesitation was nearly fatal... as his mind froze with horror at the memories, he felt a whisper of cold brush past his cheek and focused again only to see the whirling, black and red lightning writhing around the monster's body. It was one of these that he had sensed touch his cheek and he bunched his muscles, dropping his cloak and pack to leap into the air and swipe his blade toward the face of this demon.
He misjudged the creature's speed. Reacting in an eyeblink, the creature's fist rocketed him aside into a tree several feet away. His back cracked against the trunk and he slid to the roots again, but the pain was only a dim memory as he stood again and leapt, rolling out of the way as yet another closed fist pounded onto the ground to smash him to bits.
He would not make that mistake again. Tossing his hair away from his face, he crouched to spring again, facing the demon as it tried to find him again in its sight. Before it could, he sprung again, focusing his strength. Like an angel of death he fell upon the monster. Thrice the sword rang, hacking through cold, black shadowflesh, seperating it cleanly as the whole array toppled to the ground in three black pieces.
Sephiroth stood up, sneering softly... This was far too easy. It had to be. Something was wrong.
He stepped away from the fallen creature, his eyes flickering from one piece to the other. There was no possible way that it would fall so quickly... so willingly. He knew from years of experience, and from the battle at Kiriel's college that nothing so collosal would stay down after such a quick kill.
Would it?
Indeed... he *had* chopped it into three, huge pieces. He saw the black, thick blood oozing from the wounds and blackening the earth - grimacing slightly as he did so, for the stuff seemed to 'move' like it were still alive.
Wait... moving....?
He straightened, gritting his teeth with growing hatred as he saw the blood was not stopping as it moved. It crawled like sludge, oozing back into the corpse of the demon, and he saw them begin to twitch.. twitch and writhe, moving and bulging as though their very remains were striving to recover strength.
Taking new forms. Twisting, gliding drowsily to dripping, black oozed feet until they began to solidify into jagged angles, spike-arms. Sephiroth saw them, three identical demons, raise their heads and blink toward him with renewed hunger - their bodies lumbered forward, growing steadily stronger as immense magic fueled their fierce advance.
"You devils," snarled Sephiroth as he started to retreat toward the campfire again. "You don't give up! You just goddamn don't give up!!"
The camp area was large, giving him plenty of room to move around. Behind him, the camp area was blockaded by three sides by stone, trees or the mountainside. He would have to escape by scrambling past the boulder and toward the mountain. Maybe the demons would have trouble navigating the slippery loose rocks that collected at the foot of the collosal tower of earth.
Without thinking much after that, he turned and fled, leaping across the thin gap that was the split seperating the boulder and the mountain.
Kiriel was weaving a magic trap in the path of the three demons. Several feet behind her, hidden in the shadows, Ansem saw Sephiroth flickering madly in and out of sight between the trees. Beyond him, the blurry wavering monsters (three of them suddenly?) charging as their voices grated against his ears.
He had no weapon save but the cured sleek wooden spear the ground had provided him with. What good it would do against demons, he didn't know. But he knew magic aplenty that would do unsufferable damage to the demons.
The forest had become utterly silent. Creatures fled before the fury of the strange essence that had culminated itself from seemingly nowhere. His golden eyes flickered from his shadowed faces, giving him the look of a feral wild thing. "Come," he growled softly to the attackers. "Come and see what will befall your pitiful soulless corpses."
"NOW!!" Kiriel shrieked suddenly. She stood up, her empty hands thrust forward as a blaze of white hot fire shot across the earth, scorching everything it touched. At the last moment Sephiroth lurched to the side, his back crashing into the side of a horse sized stone out of the path of destruction. The three demons, unprepared for the assault, found themselves suddenly wreathed in holy fire.
Screaming, they threw themselves down the gravel-covered slope to a rocky end. The sound of bones cracking and joints snapping apart made Ansem cringe, but as soon as he heard nothing else he darted from his cover toward Sephiroth.
"What happened?" he demanded. "Where did they come from?"
"They came from the giant... I cut him in three and it seems to have been... unsuccessful." The man's eyes flared with energy. Ansem was captivated only for a moment, holding onto his dust-laden cloak with his white-knuckled hand. "This doesn't seem like it's going to end... there must be some...some way... do you think Kiriel's magic killed it?"
"Doubtful. Although it was a very powerful spell. It may be incapacitated for now. Which means we have very little time to get away." Sephiroth reached, and took his hand, detaching his fingers slowly from his sleeve. His smile was somewhat comforting...
"I'll go back and fetch our things," he went on, and slipped from his grasp and back the way he had come across the scorched earth. Kiriel appeared by his elbow, taking hold of his arm.
Her brow was creased, her forest green eyes darkened to an almost black hue. He could feel her magic pulsing through her, potent as a drug. Its effects snaked through him by her touch alone and he pulled his arm free. "He'll return in a few moments... it's obvious we can't camp here now."
Kiriel had a certain way of stating the annoyingly obvious. Ansem rolled his eyes back slightly, and stepped away from her, dropping lightly onto the sandy earth. No sooner did he do so then Sephiroth returned, bearing their belongings, all neatly packed in their respective packs.
"Let's just make it up the mountain. I think I saw a cave up there as I was fighting the demon."
"That would probably be an abandoned dragon cave."
Ansem's eyes swooped up slightly, glittering gold in the failing light. "Dragons?"
"We used to have so many around here. But in the last couple of years, they've been either dying out or going into hiding. I don't blame them. Technology is starting to creep over from the north and it's been difficult to mete out the 'bad' stuff."
"What kind of technology?" Sephiroth was keen to know, standing nearby us and handing Kiriel her own pack.
She shouldered it, answering bluntly, "Guns." Adding to the list, she turned, and began to scramble up the mountainside with the agility of a fox. "Watches that tell time. Even things called telephones. They have to clear the land away to put up posts, so the magic can travel across the wires stretched between them. Could you imagine such a thing here?"
Ansem would have said yes, he could. Such a thing was commonplace for the worlds among the stars. But he wouldn't frighten her with his awful tales, of mankind's dominion, of evils untold. Of doors and locks. Secrets never to be shared with anyone again.
Once again he wondered about worlds, blindly following her path to the cave, carved against a jagged ledge that jutted out like a crooked tooth from the partially charred face of the mountain. His hands clawed at the crumbling earth, the balls of his feet becoming sore from pushing from the same spot as each metric foot was gained. Behind him, Sephiroth moved silently, patiently waiting for him to move on.
Finally, after an age, he clawed his way using the aid of a stunted tree to the flat, well-worn surface of the aged stone. The 'tooth' overlooked a wide expanse of territory, and in the distance was her college town. It cut a pretty picture in the landscape, melding into the forests perfectly.
"Good lord," Sephiroth whispered behind him, rising and dusting his legs off. He gazed across the sweep of Ansem's shoulder into the distance, at the setting sun. The hues of blood and orange that painted the clouds. The thin, weak points of stars that grew in strength as the sun began to slide away from view.
Ansem felt his chest tighten slightly. He wanted to reach for him, take his hand and step back to enjoy it together. It was so difficult to do it, Kiriel was standing by them, watching this same sight, before she turned away and moved on to the cave.
She flashed a grin over at Sephiroth as she spoke. "Good eye, Seph!"
Good eye, Seph.
The moment was gone. Ansem's face twisted into a look of inner pain, but he quickly masked it with emptiness as he readjusted his pack and began to walk stiffly toward the edge of the cliff. There, he dropped his pack and shucked his cloak, running his hands through his dark, unkempt gray hair. He felt his presence beside him a moment later.
"What is it?" His voice swept over him, and the usual smile, awkward and yet more at ease than the first Ansem had seen, spread over his face to replace the sunshine that had finally vanished, leaving all in twilight.
How can I voice this? Childish jealousy... or maybe I'm just... unbelievably weary An exhaustion further than just bone-deep. A demanding thing that seeks to pilfer my resolve, make me lose my
He didn't say a word. Instead, he reached toward his hand and their fingers found one another, linking desperately together. Sephiroth slid his body closer until their thighs were pressed together, his arm crooked around Ansem's waist to rest against his right thigh, fingers still eternally clasped together.
To hell with Kiriel, Ansem thought finally. I can live with it if she saw us like this... it shouldn't matter. In this world or any other. We are together. It's all we have. *He* is all *I* have. I won't let anyone take that away from us.
His mouth worked uneasily, leaning against the strong warm wall of Sephiroth's chest. The words tasted sweet but unfamiliar, perhaps better to speak them later when he felt confident. Now, strange as it was, in his arms he would always feel vulnerable and yet entirely safe from the harm that seemed to threaten them wherever they went.