The Labyrinth
Chapter 5
"Wonderful." Kira said somewhat more irritably than was his wont. "Next time we meet up with freak boy back there, I'll do the talking."
After delivering his last cryptically-worded warning, Rociel had disappeared off somewhere to do whatever it was effeminate insane angels did when they weren't obliquely threatening their adversaries, leaving Setsuna and a decidedly aggravated Kira alone in the tunnels again. Kira had been left decidedly annoyed by the encounter: Rociel had him more than a little alarmed but he couldn't admit to it, such a thing would be bad for his image. Instead he acted annoyed, that at least didn't make him look so terminally pathetic. For his part Setsuna didn't get it, but he almost never did.
"What for?" Setsuna asked dumbly. "I don't see what the problem is. Nothing happened, did it?"
In the distance, it sounded like someone had started vacuuming the corridor, for no reason at all that Setsuna could make out. For some reason, Kira now looked as if he was almost apprehensive. This was a rare enough occurrence for Setsuna to start to feel a lot more panicky.
"What's the noise?" he asked, unable to think of anything more apposite to say.
The noise was definitely getting louder, a lot louder, and the nasal whine of the vacuum was now accompanied by several sinister clanks, the screech of tortured gears and a very nasty mechanical whirring noise, as well as by someone's attempt to hum (largely failed). Even if Kira hadn't pointed out to him what Cleaners in these parts actually did, Setsuna would have been running just to stop the torture being inflicted on his poor ears. As it was he was really beginning to wish he'd kept his mouth shut. Bad as the corridor had been when walking down it, fleeing down it in terror for one's life was less fun and became even less amusing still when he ran slap into a large metal grille that blocked off the rest of the corridor. Only gripping the bars of the grille with both hands stopped him from falling.
"Shit!"
Some occasions could only be done justice to with profane language. Turning back, Setsuna could see a sinister gleaming of light in the corridor up ahead, heralding the approach of a large machine - no doubt the thing from which all the noise was emanating.
"Over here!"
Finally, with a tortured shriek of metal, the door gave, the sudden unexpected motion of something previously immobile pitching both Setsuna and Kira off their feet, landing in an undignified and again somewhat compromising tangle in a small alcove just before a hideous-looking machine covered in no doubt almost wholly pointless blades, knives, nasty-looking serrated edges and powered by an absolutely immense fan of some sort powered past them, followed by a surprisingly blithe-looking dark-haired girl dressed as a maid who was brandishing the vacuum nozzle. Had Setsuna been in the mood to take anything in he would have said she looked uncannily like Sara. As it was he didn't notice a thing, which no doubt relieved Kira no end.
"What now?" Setsuna asked, pulling himself to his feet and dusting himself off. Kira, he noticed, had already recovered his not inconsiderable cool and was leaning against a rickety old ladder.
Ahh! Sara! He had almost forgotten about her! Setsuna practically hurled himself at the ladder and started to climb frantically, ignoring the muffled curses this elicited from Kira who didn't like the way Setsuna was making the ladder shake. For a moment they climbed in silence but naturally, desirable though that state was to the both of them, it didn't last very long.
"Kira-sempai?"
Kira had banged his head on a stone door set into the roof above their heads. Setsuna wasn't sure how best to react; should he start laughing, or would it be better to try and attempt sympathy? In the end he decided to do neither, and so he just patiently clung to the still horribly shaky ladder and waited whilst Kira rubbed his head. Luckily for the both of them Kira healed up fast so soon after he, clinging precariously to the ladder with one hand, pushed open the door with the other. It fell to the ground outside with a satisfying thump. The sudden stream of sunlight pouring in from the outside had Kira guarding his eyes with his free hand as he scrambled out and back onto solid ground. Setsuna, a lot less daring, just had to squint.
He was still blinking in the afternoon sunlight as he followed Kira out of the trapdoor in the ground and looked around himself, gratified to notice that falling down the hole had brought him a lot closer to the castle and, for the first time since he entered the labyrinth, out of the claustrophobic rat-run of high-walled stone passageways he had been stuck in. For the first time, he felt his spirits lift somewhat. Kira, however, looked far less pleased by their changed surroundings.
"You're on your own now," he said, with a twisted smile. "Later."
Oh well. With a smile, a sigh and a shake of the head, Kira followed Setsuna off across the grounds. It was, he supposed, a purely humane gesture on his part. That kid drew trouble like a magnet and Kira supposed someone had to be there to help him out.
Slamming the door purposefully and somewhat petulantly behind him Rociel walked back into the room, pulling the pins out of his hair and shaking it free. He was frowning darkly and the frown only worsened when he noticed that Sara was still there, stood by the little ornamental table that was placed near the settee and trying to arrange the roses in a way that she thought looked more suitable. Rociel had liked the roses just fine as they were so naturally he was not best pleased. The fact that Katan was stood by the window discreetly trying to massage his temples was not lost on him either. Katan looked stressed and, considering that he had been trying to cope with Sara alone (Kirie having walked off somewhere in a jealous huff, no doubt), this was not surprising. Well, that was one thing at least. In his current mood Rociel was not at all inclined to want to deal with Kirie.
That had not been his intention at all. He had not put Lucifel in that wretched oubliette just so that he and Alexiel could get pally. Certainly he hadn't wanted them to get that friendly! And now to find out that the wretched man was actively trying to help his dratted sister… well! Rociel was very annoyed and he didn't care who knew it. He would have to try and think of some way to get that idiot Lucifel out of the picture before he ruined everything. The only problem was, he didn't have a clue how to manage it.
"Katan." He said, running his fingers through his hair and brushing it back into shape, then slumping back onto the couch with a small and utterly unexpected sigh that had Katan hurrying over almost immediately, his expression one of quiet concern. "I'm beginning to think this was a bad idea… and if you say so much as a word, Jibrielle, I'm throwing you into that oubliette and fuck the bet."
Sara, bent over her flowers, had tried to listen in to her captors' conversation but since they didn't seem to be talking about her beloved brother she quickly tuned out. She placed a rose in a slightly more striking position and tried to compose herself. Setsuna, she was sure, would soon be here to rescue her and she had nothing to fear from these people. She just wished she was a little more convinced that she was really safe here, even if she was a hostage. But people killed hostages, didn't they? Suppressing a shudder she tried to think of happier things, only looking up when the door opened again and that girl Kirie walked in.
Rociel frowned when he saw who it was had interrupted them. "What, Kirie?"
There was a long, uncomfortable, disbelieving silence, broken by Rociel who looked up from the floor and gestured to Katan, still stood a respectful distance away, to come closer.
Even with Kira's help, however reluctantly given, Setsuna was getting the feeling that he still wasn't doing that well. Though all the running he had done had helped regain some of the time he had lost talking, as had the inadvertent shortcut, he really didn't know where to go from here. The castle seemed no closer than it had done ten minutes ago and here he was, standing in a garden and looking lost. What way did he go now? Setsuna had no idea.
"Where to now?" Setsuna asked Kira, who was following behind him with a far more serene expression on his face than Setsuna would ever have been capable of.
Setsuna and Kira could have gone on like this indefinitely if they hadn't been interrupted here by the sound of footsteps from behind them. Someone was walking up a flight of steps neither Kira or Setsuna could remember having climbed but which they were nonetheless at the top of. The two boys turned to face the newcomer - a slender, long-haired young man, smiling totally humorlessly. If it hadn't been for the white snake wrapped round his neck and the small mark on his forehead, he could have been accounted almost normal-looking. Overly sadistic, yes, but almost normal.
"I could tell you," he said, dropping gracefully into a convenient stone chair that like the steps didn't appear to have been there before, "but then I'd have to kill you. Or I might tell you nothing and kill you anyway. It all depends what kind of a mood I'm in."
Setsuna took the opportunity to back away a couple of paces; Kira stood his ground, as was his wont, and stared Astoreth down. It was probably a matter of some embarrassment to the demon that he was the one who looked away first. To cover his mild embarrassment, he draped the snake a little more comfortably around his neck and began chewing on one fingernail in an obviously practiced way. Astoreth had decided that it was probably a far better idea to concentrate on intimidating Setsuna; the tall one who looked like Lucifer really didn't look the easily intimidated sort. Setsuna realized this and, now stood what he hoped was a safe distance away from the lounging demon, he raised his hands in a defensive kind of way.
"Look, I don't want any trouble…"
Setsuna blinked. This was getting them nowhere fast, even if he really should have expected nothing less of Astoreth. It probably wasn't going to do him any good trying to appeal to this sadistic freak, but what could he do? He had to try and help Sara somehow, and there was nobody else round here who looked like they knew what they were doing. Still, Astoreth…? Was it even worth trying? The man was a complete sadist who would probably be thrilled to hear that Rociel had Sara captive simply because it would hurt Setsuna to know it.
He had to try, though! For Sara's sake! So, taking a deep breath and trying to look as charmingly persuasive as possible, Setsuna began "Yes, but if you could please just…"
Astoreth was not looking good. In fact Astoreth was looking downright pained. The snake, which had up till now been lying supine on his shoulders was looking a little agitated too, insofar as it was possible to tell anything by looking at a snake. Setsuna and Kira could do nothing but watch as in front of their eyes (and to Setsuna's complete amazement), the man's body changed form in a way that looked to be very painful. As did the snake's. After a while Setsuna decided the best thing to do would be to look away and he did so, keeping his head averted until the figure in the chair spoke again.
"… Who are you?"
Setsuna looked round again, and did a doubletake. True, he had known about Astoreth and Astarte, but it hadn't prepared him for how weird it would be. The man in the chair had now been replaced by a young woman, as if that wasn't disturbing enough an obviously pregnant young woman, one hand on her stomach, who was looking up at him with something like confusion in her eyes. The snake was now black and looked, as far was it was possible to tell, rather huffy as it coiled itself round the woman's arm.
"Have you come to talk to the baby?" Astarte asked, her eyes vacant, hands folded protectively on her stomach.
Okay, Astarte was scary too. But even taking that into account, Astarte couldn't be harder to deal with than Astoreth had been, surely? All he would have to do was appeal to her maternal instincts and it would be fine! His plan formulated, Setsuna turned directly to face her with a look of deranged concern in his eyes that was not entirely faked.
"My sister's been kidnapped!" he said dramatically, gesturing towards the castle.
She straightened and handed Setsuna a small, foil-wrapped object which he took uncomprehendingly. Finding nothing obviously helpful about the outside he undid the packaging and pulling out a small brown biscuit, which he turned over and over, frowning. Kira too had started to frown as he watched the operation and with, he thought, good reason.
Not Astarte any more. Once again the stone chair was inhabited by Astoreth, white snake wrapped round his shoulders, deeply displeased expression on his face, flexing his fingers in a way that spelt trouble for the two of them not just soon but almost immediately. "You're still here?" he said, getting to his feet with a frown.
They ran.
~to be continued~
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