Lonesome

~*~

Rating: PG – for language and certain situations

Genre: Angst/Drama

Warnings: Language, implied violence

Spoilers: Not much really. You just won't get this too much if you haven't read up to about volume number three. There are some details in four and five that would help in comprehending some of the details in this (i.e. Erutis being a mercenary before she came to the castle).

Summary: "They say it's lonesome at the top... It's lonesome everywhere." Erutis-centric Drabble

~*~

I wasn't needed. Not as much as my older brother and sister.

They were tall, they were obedient, they were needed.

Unlike Erutis, the short, the scrawny, the disobedient.

I watched my elder brother take over the manor as my father sputtered out his last words, blessing him and my sister. But he did not even direct a curse or glance to me. I watched my sister blush as she married her man, never mind that he was twenty years older than her. But she didn't look to me.

But they gave me the chance to escape that life of stiff silence, of being ignored. They paid for me to be accepted the Academy, in an attempt to wring something from me. A lady from the finishing arts would have been nice for them, as they could marry me off, but a scholar would have been acceptable, locked away in the library until death. It was all about convenience.

They never expected that I would be a top student to the Armsmaster and become a Swordsmaster in her own right.

I knew I would find no sympathy from them when I graduated. I never looked back to them. Even if I had the feeble hope that they would accept me just because I was of their blood, I knew instant disowning would have crushed it.

I couldn't stay at the Academy. I had barely anything to my name. So I became a mercenary.

It paid well. The guys weren't too bad. I got to see the world. And I shook off the last shackles of my family as I embraced a new one.

How short-lived that joy was.

In one night I lost the family who accepted me. In one night I was alone again.

I had to drag their bodies to a pyre, sobbing when I saw their faces slack in death. Edward, Piran, Hesang, Leon, Ping, they all stared at me, fear still etched in their blank eyes before demons had slain them.

I would have joined them in death, but the fires of revenge kept me alive. The gods may have struck me a blow by taking who I cared for, but those faceless, unmerciful beings had charged me with vengeance. Always, those faces that I had known so well haunted me, demanding revenge for their deaths. So I left, to enact vengeance upon the demons and the demon lord who sent them.

Chris, Chris, you are so naïve. How can you be so blind? The world is ugly, Chris, and it seeks to crush us all. Can't you see the carnage that demons leave in their wake? Can't you even see the corruption in your own faith?

And you say that mercenaries are scoundrels and thieves.

We did what we needed to survive. We didn't waste our time with the past. Death was death. We dealt in it to live. It was selfish, but we did not deny that. But we still loved, we still wept, we still bled for whom we cared for and what we believed in.

You are blind. And that, Chris, will not make you the next High Priest.

And now I look at this cheerful demon lord, who wails when he steps upon an ant, and do not know what to do. Will he truly one day command legions of demons and kill so many? Will he force more children to have to grow up and futilely seek revenge?

And worse yet: Can I punish him for something he did not have anything to do with?

They say it's lonesome at the top. Bullshit. It's lonesome everywhere.

~*~

Yes, it's another Demon Diary fanfic. This time it's Erutis who gets the honor of contemplating! Yes, I know that I took a lot of liberties but... ah well!

By the way, I'm not much of an Erutis/Chris fan. She'll eat him alive- literally. Neither am I for Eclipse/Erutis or Erutis/Krayon... Don't even get to Erutis/Raenef.