1Assassin's Silver:
chapter seven
by YamiHikari
Disclaimer- I don't own Demon Diary! (Actually, I DO have the whole series on my bookshelf now, but, you know what I mean!) Oh yes, and no stealing of original characters please.
YamiHikari's Note- My comp. got messed up and my bro deleted EVERYTHING to fix it. EVERYTHING. GAAH! So now I hafta write this with WordPerfect instead of Microsoft Word, and M. Word is what I've used until now and I miss it terribly. Boohoo. Oh, and I HAVE FINALLY gotten a hold of the TWO BOOKS that I was missing in Demon Diary, and now have the entire series! Yay! And now that I look back on it, stuff that I wrote(like, with the magic and stuff) is completely contradictory to what is in the last volume. Hey, let's just pretend that the stuff after the middle of volume 4 never happened, and Assassin's Silver will make perfect sense.... ehehehe.... anyway, THANK YOU FOR THE REVIEWS! YOU'RE(the reviewers) ALL SO NICE!!
Despite their best efforts, a fever had set in and after the first few days began to climb and drop and climb again as the hours went by. In one of the early hours of the morning, when even the sun thought it was an abominable hour to be out and about, Aysel was caught up in a fit of delirium, long, silvery hair braided back from her face by Erutis,
Eyes slitted open fixated blearily on the blank wall just inches from her face.
Now someone was standing before her; she was at the back of a room filled with children and a teacher was at the head of the class. No one noticed the elven woman lying at the back.
"Very good. Now can you tell me what this is?" the teacher inquired, perhaps too brightly, switching flashcards and holding up one that held a mangled body.
The eyes narrowed as pale shoulders covered by a light azure fabric shuddered. She knew. Aysel knew the answer all too well. Dazed, she struggled with the fact that she knew it was a dream and with the instinct to tell the ignorant the answer; the instinct to please the authority figure to perhaps gain a word of praise.
There were some questioning murmurs arising from the seemingly unaffected class.
Lips moving, she tried to speak. "Shell," she managed, but barely recognized her own voice. It was rough, twisted, mangled like the body of her elder brother that lay in the mud of the riverbank where it had been unceremoniously tossed after the demons had finished with it.
"Shell," she repeated hoarsely, then had no energy to speak again. [1] She couldn't shout out what she knew the answer was, and no heads turned to look. Instead, the class continued, entirely oblivious to the figure at the back.
'Just a broken, empty, defeated shell! There's no soul left! It's gone! It's dead!' was what Aysel had wanted to rage, to scream, to sob at the ignorant peoples in front of her.
But the dream slipped from her grasp like water through a sieve, and she finally sank into the darkness of sleep.
Sunlight was beginning to stream in through the windows and Chris's back ached from the hours in the chair.
"Idiot. You fell asleep on watch," was the sword master's attempt at humor to lighten the situation, but somehow her tone was too bleak, too weary, too strained, and almost truly accusing rather than jokingly so.
"Very funny. I laugh and laugh and laugh." He rose from the seat, one hand rubbing his eyes as the other held onto the back of the chair for support. "And I will if you fall asleep too. What's for breakfast?"
"Go back to sleep. No one's getting up THIS early just to make breakfast for you." This try was a bit more successful.
The only answer Erutis received from that comment was a sneer from Chris before he stumbled out of the room. Turning back to the bedridden figure, she reached out and lifted the folded cloth from the elf's forehead; Erutis dipped it in the bowl of cold water before wringing it out and placing it back.
She settled back and in for the hours before Raenef would take his turn.
Cursed pride of the species!
As the sun began to peer in on him, Eclipse peered- glared really- back. Though nearly a week had passed, it was the seventh day, he still hadn't found answers to anything. He was irritated by this, and became even more irritated when he also couldn't figure out why the hell he was irritated. This vicious circle ended, and began, with an irritated Eclipse.
In a formerly unusual display of temper, the demon shoved the chair that he was sitting in back, resulting in an earsplitting squeal of protest from the mistreated piece of furniture and the floor. Rising, he set off down the hall. Not that it'd help any, but still. A short brush of an unfamiliar aura against his consciousness made him pause and turn back to the window where he was nearly blinded again by the sunlight.
The immediate disappearance of the feeling and his annoyance at the sun and other nameless things made Eclipse turn back and resume his walk down the halls as if nothing had happened. When the sound of the demon's steps had faded away - each one a peeved slap of a leather sandal against smooth stone - the presence slipped into his study and ghosted down the hall in the opposite direction, silently cursing its former carelessness.
"Hey, what're you being so bitchy about this early in the morning, huh?"
"'Bitchy'?!" The demon's tone held mixed tones of incredulity and a growing rage at the world in general in the one repetition.
Unperturbed by what would have formerly sent her scurrying for cover, Erutis simply arched her eyebrows while leaning back in her own chair. "Yeah, bitchy. As in ill-tempered like some pissed-off female dog. Really, what's your problem, comin' in here and starting to just vent whatever problems you have on me, eh? Eh?"
There was a brief, tense silence, then what could have become the castle half in ruins was interrupted by a light, dry laugh. It quickly became a fit of coughing which shook the white, damp cloth off the elf's forehead, but eventually turned into a mixture of both.
The two in the room simply stared at Aysel, who was now acting as if it was the most amusing thing she had ever heard before. Flopping back down from her half-risen position that she had assumed during her bout of hysterics, she grinned vaguely up at them.
"Like a dog on a leash. Master calls, the leash goes yank, and the bitch follows." Slowly, gracelessly, her pallid hand reached up and curled around Eclipse's raven-dark hair. "Yank, yank. Go answer your master, bitch."
Pulling the black strands back in time with the first two words took most of what energy she could summon to move any distance further than a couple inches. Letting her hand drop, Aysel laughed again, that eerily rough, almost wild laugh.
"Isn't fever at a low ebb in the morning?" asked Erutis, warily replacing the cloth as if she thought the invalid would suddenly rise and tear a chunk from her arm with her teeth.
"Yes." Eclipse was returning Aysel's hand to her side. For a second, his fingers tightened about her slender wrist, topmost digits curled inwards while the nails nearly dug into the vulnerable flesh. The moment passed and he completed the act. She was now gazing up at him soberly, solemnly; he idly wondered if she had gotten her sight back.
For the second time in as many minutes, the door to the room swung inwards and open. Raenef moved to the side and held the door as Chris entered, attempting to balance a steaming bowl of some semi-liquid substance on two hands whose instinctive reaction was to jerk away from the painfully hot object as quickly as possible. With a sigh of relief, the cleric set the bowl down on top of a handy bureau and blew on his palms.
A loud crash of door-becoming-reacquainted-with-doorframe made the two humans jump and shoot simultaneous glares towards the now apologetic, puppy-dog eyed Raenef.
"What is this? A demon lord residing with humans?" The words hung on the air as another being materialized in the room. Bright topaz eyes rested on the scene before them as the spymaster made himself comfortable on a windowsill.
"Well, sire? Answer me," the darker-colored elf stated in a tone that could have been classified as condescending, jeweled gaze directed towards a startled Raenef.
There were some astounded splutters from Chris and Erutis.
"He broke the record!"
Ignoring them, the new arrival made his way across the room and past Erutis to where Aysel lay, now fixing her own fey gaze upon him, eyes narrowed in a glare.
"Our lord has made his decision; you are to return immediately. Menefer is not especially pleased with you, Aysel."
Former actions now pushed aside, the patient was now surprisingly lucid. "Tell him to shut up for me, Sef, there's a good messenger boy. Y'know, maybe it'll be the first time he doesn't shoot the bearer of insulting news."
Hoarse though her voice still was, her phrase was cutting. There was no reaction on Sef's lightly tanned features.
"How..."
Raenef's unanswered question remained unanswered as, in a blur of movement, Sef was instantly behind him with one arm pressed around the demon lord's throat and another's hand holding a knife close enough to make the others hesitate before attempting anything. Sometime during his passage, Eclipse had been suitably distracted by the bowl of near boiling substance resting on the bureau flipping up into his face and the door suddenly coming to play "Getting to Know You" with the back of his head.
"Perhaps I should just eliminate him for you right now." The spymaster's voice matched his bland expression.
Slowly, now with the easy grace of a serpent coiling and readying itself to strike, Aysel slid out from between the sheets and stood, pale blue tunic coming to a rest just above her knees. She took a leisurely step towards Sef and his hostage, then continued in that manner until she was just in front of them both. Vibrant green eyes pleaded with her, wide with terror as the blade stopped just short of drawing blood.
Leaning slightly forward, hand resting on the now empty bureau top for balance, Aysel smiled. "Do you know the reason why you're a spymaster rather than an assassin or a real spy, Sef? Do you? It's simply this." One hand snapped out.
Sef brought the knife around in a gesture that would have killed Raenef had he still been standing there. Instead, it plunged into Aysel's arm as she shoved the demon lord down.
Lips now just by the darker elf's ear, she whispered, heedless of the blood now running down her arm, "You don't have the guts to kill. Now, get OUT!"
Jerking away, Sef barely managed to get a shield up in time as a blast of light sheared through the air towards him. As it was, a shaft of it pierced the shield and sliced past his left cheek and pointed ear. For the first time he showed some emotion and winced, bringing a hand up automatically to try and stop the flow. The left ear was torn; there was little to no chance of a complete recovery from that. Looking Aysel full in the face, he spoke.
"I do not believe that you or anyone else residing here will be safe for much longer."
The last ounce of mezraez that she had went into the scrutiny of his expression. Sef's eyes were now the ones pleading, but for understanding and not for salvation. Aysel was still for a moment, and then slowly, deliberately, she nodded.
"Whatever happens, keep him safe."
The spymaster, after acknowledgment of the enigmatic message, vanished. Aysel dropped, nearly landing on Eclipse and just barely avoiding the substance splattered on the floor. Scrambling to his feet, Raenef bent to inspect her injury.
She yanked her arm away, bringing a protest from Chris as he attempted to heal the injury. "Don't poke at it."
"Quit moving! ...you sound fine now..."
"Mm? Oh. Surprisingly enough, I feel fine." The elf thought back to the path that Sef had taken to threaten Raenef. There had been the faintest suggestion of the brush of one hand against her forehead, and she was more than willing to bet that that had been another reason for the path that he chose.
But the fact remained that he could not give her any of his own mezraez and that she was unhappily low on magical energy right about then; in fact, Aysel had none. Also, simple healing of the ill itself did not mean that she could be up and about as she usually was, which then lead to another unpleasant fact which was that she still had recuperation to do. After Chris's hand had left her arm, a sure sign that the cleric was finished and had probably already risen from his crouch, she got somewhat unsteadily - though surprisingly the opposite, given the fact that just a few minutes prior to this, she had been bedridden - to her own feet, and began to try and navigate her way to the door and out the hallway to someplace more open and with a bit more sunlight.
Noting his patient's hesitant steps and all the near crashes with someone or something else in the room, Chris jerked his head in her direction. "Oy. One or both of you do something before she knocks something over." There was a slight protest which abruptly changed into some curse in the smooth, lilting tongue of the elves; judging from the tone, it was something very severe and very appropriate when one's shin is smacked into the deathtrap that all pieces of furniture with sharp edges are.
"I'll check out Eclipse."
There was a slight murmur from Erutis as she crossed the required distance to get from point A to point B that was inaudible to persons standing at point B, but Chris's reply cut through clearly from point C -somewhere between points A and B- to the persons at said point B. "For burns, you idiot! Burns! Get your blasted mind out of the gutter!"
If the nature of the knowledge that Sef had passed on to her had not been so sobering, Aysel might have laughed as she exited the room with her entourage of two made up of a Demon Lord and a Sword Master.
Keeping his tone carefully bland yet respectful, the spymaster ignored the dribbles of blood leaking onto the shoulder of his tunic and made his report to Menefer.
"I believe that it would not be wise to send in other agents; Aysel seems to already have their complete trust. To preserve it when I attempted to meet with her and some of the residents arrived, she made as if to drive me away. I believe she succeeded in keeping them all fooled."
"How long?" The High Elf eyed his servant seemingly idly with gleaming eyes reminiscent of the darker colored opals that were prized for their rarity.
Sef understood the unsaid words that would clarify the meaning of the sentence. "As long as she is there, it is too risky to send in others unless she is to be eliminated."
After his words, there was silence; he tried his best to not make any suspicious movements nor give Menefer any reason to believe he was lying. It was a dangerous game that Sef was playing, and with one of the few people dear to him at stake. Resisting the urge to do some action to relax himself, the spymaster kept his eyes down and mentally admired the inlay work on the floor as he had done before in situations like this, keeping his facial expression blank.
The slight 'plip' of a crimson droplet upon the floor shattered the silence. Lord Menefer glanced down, chin resting on one unadorned hand.
"We will leave her alone until there is reason to do otherwise. When that time comes, you shall be summoned. Dismissed. Send someone in here to clean that."
With a faint incline of his head, Sef stood and exited the room. As he strode off down the hall, he easily healed the injuries inflicted upon him by Aysel, pausing just before the marks completely disappeared on an afterthought, almost as a memory of her. His right hand reached into a pocket and stroked the silver rim of a pendant, stopped at the rough edge which signaled that at one point or another it had been larger. It seemed his warning had been false.
'Don't do anything rash until I can speak to you again.'
He prayed his message would somehow, someway reach the assassin in the castle of the Fifth Demon Lord Raenef.
Said assassin's mind was racing even as she settled onto a sunny ledge in the garden, three others - Chris had managed to catch up with them after dealing with Eclipse's injuries; it had seemed more like his pride was injured rather than he himself - arrayed in other parts of the garden. Erutis had returned to the hammock she had set up at some time during her stay, Chris was under the shade offered by the spreading boughs of a tree, and Raenef had found his own sun-warmed perch nearby.
'A month at most, a day at least. Sweet Mab, that's not even close to what I would need for decent protection of this place. A month would be fine, but... Sef, if you don't manage to do anything, and I know you can, I will hunt you down and destroy you.
Let's say: three days at most for the runes, strength another day, final placement-'
"Hey."
Thoughts and plans interrupted, Aysel glanced up but kept a tight hold on her train of thought. There was no telling who or what it might run down if it got loose.
"He knew you. He nearly killed Rae. What the hell are you doing, running around with people like that, eh?" Erutis's tone was cold, her eyes frigid, the temperature somewhere in the negatives.
"I believe that is something we would all like to know."
Aysel's expression abruptly went from wary to the former mixed with exasperation; it seemed to say, "not you too", as Eclipse had - in addition to somehow miraculously getting clean - just entered the garden and the beginnings of the conversation. Shifting position so that her legs were also resting atop the stone ledge that ran along the edges of the garden, she also turned her face to gaze at the afternoon sun, just beginning its climb into the fully overhead position that it always assumed at noon.
She turned back, expression as bland as the one Sef had used when addressing Menefer. "There's not much to te-"
"Yes there is!" Chris snapped, rising from his relaxed position against the tree trunk, blue eyes now blazing. He was as fiery as Erutis had been glacial. "And take the mask off, you always have that expression on whenever you don't want to do something or if you're encountering something that you'd rather be far away from!"
Surprise showed clearly on her fair features as her gaze flicked towards him, so surely and accurately that he and the others present were sure that she had regained her sight.
"And another thing: what's the deal with you being able to see sometimes and then being completely blind others, huh?! And why won't you tell us anything?! How many times have you dodged out of answering questions about yourself anyway?! [2]"
The expression that Aysel wore was now stubborn, and for a while it was merely a silence that was stretched so taught with possibilities that one wondered how the five managed to breathe.
Then she dropped her gaze and turned away again, only partway this time so that rather than not meeting their eyes at all, she was simply profiled against the sky which matched the tunic perfectly; now she seemed only disembodied parts emerging from the sky. She still had not taken the time to loosen her hair, but some errant strands had drifted away to frame her pale face.
"So I can't dodge out this time, huh?" She sounded tired; a smile that had no humor contained in it pulled at her lips.
They did not dignify that with a response, and since Aysel had not been expecting one, she did not really care.
"Right. Here goes, I guess."
The expression on what they could see of her face was a mingling of an unfathomable sorrow and, strangely, the bracing for something else, some repercussion of what she was about to do; there was an inexplicable swell of both impatience and yearning within Eclipse. He dismissed them both as part of the eagerness to finally know that answers that he'd sought for so long, but a shadow of doubt flickered inside him.
It quickly retreated and hid for the time being as Aysel drew a breath and let it out slowly before beginning her story.
[1] - this actually happened to me once, and it was dang CREEPY. It's like, you know it's a dream, but you don't really... I don't know how to explain it at all... mm, yeah, that's pretty much how this part came about, except I added stuff. I mean, all I dreamed about was some teacher - I think it was my Spanish teacher for some strange reason - who was holding out a shell and asking what it was. I felt horrid and I nearly couldn't talk, and I fully expected myself to be ill and unable to attend school in the morning. However, I was fine when I woke up after falling asleep, much to my disappointment. I kinda felt like skippin' school, like I usually do when I'm tired in the morning, which is pretty much always... ... HOW do I get good grades with THAT kinda attitude?!?
[2]- out of curiosity, I checked. At least twice in writing. If there were others, I don't know, sooo... yeah.
YamiHikari's Note- umm... gee... I don't have much to say, amazingly enough. I mean, usually I blather on and on and on about junk, and here I am drawing a blank. Well, let's see... I started fencing (if it hits near 100 degrees, I am gonna DIE in that jacket...)... I... good grief, I'm so boring in the summer... -;; anyway, this story's should be all wrapped up in a couple more chapters, soooo... yeah. Soon I'll be VERY happy and celebrating my first finished non-one-shot fanfiction ever! Woohoo! Anyway, those of you on summer vacation (like me!), have a SUPER LOTTA FUN! YEAH! PARTYPARTYPARTY! Or whatever, your call. Ja!
P.S. – I actually finished this sometime around the end of June, however a certain SUZU-CHAN glares insisted on being the first to read, so I sent this to her, then never really got around to posting, since usually she's nagging at me to post since she hasn't been able to read the whole thing. Sorry for the wait! Oh yeah, right now I'm battling an urge to just drop EVERYTHING on and concentrate on ... I mean, if you really wanted to know the end, I could post an explanatory last chapter, but I might continue, however... GYAAH! I'm confusing myself... help... mee... TT.TT