Crimson wings...

Chapter 7

Letting Anna go out alone had been a mistake. She had left him at the inn, taking Noishe with her. She had said something about getting him to a doctor, or coming up with a way for him to walk. Despite her words Kratos could imagine Anna dragging the poor protozoan through the ribbon market dressing him up like a doll. Nosihe's parting bark made Kratos figure that his "dog" didn't know what he was getting into. Noishe would learn, and come back with ribbons woven through his fur.

On some levels Kratos was glad he didn't go. He despised how woman shopped, always haggling and talking... A sword and glare normally gave him the prices he wanted. Anna was in this way a normal female, and he had to admit that if she got them what was needed at a low price there money would last longer. A knock on the door made Kratos look up, but when there was no accompanying bark Kratos didn't bother to answer.

"Hello? Is anyone in there?" Gargled the person on the other side of the door. The next comment by the voice was pitched low, too low for most humans to hear. "Well then if no one's home then I'll just go help myself to..." The door squeaked as the innkeeper pulled it open. For a long moment the pot-bellied man stared at Kratos. Took in the silver sword that lay on the seraphim's lap, and took in the powerful form of the man who rested on the bed...

Then, it was as if the innkeeper put on a mask. A mask that melded with the man's doughy face. Out came the oily smile, the watery brown eyes went wide, and the smugness was gone, all in less then a breath. Gone was the man's true self, as it was replaced by a fawning that Anna had described as "annoying as Hell". For once he agreed with her, profanity and all.

"Hello good sir, it is a pleasure to see you enjoying your room!"

Even the voice was higher, it was as if the man wanted to mimic the innocence in a child's voice by matching pitches.

"Humph… I'll enjoy it better once you are out of my sight."

"Of course... of course..." The man was already backing out o the room. He bowed every other step, his too wide eyes never leaving Kratos and Anna's packs. The man paused by the door, and Anna's lover could see the other man's mind running around in a wild attempt to get him out of the room. "Sir, you are aware of our policy with cleaning each room? Every day at noon we shoo out our guests so that we may better clean their rooms."

"My room's fine, thank you."

"Your doesn't think so, as a matter of fact she asked the mai-"

Kratos stood, and then far faster then most men could think, he crossed the room and had his sword to the innkeepers throat. Under the sun burns it was possible to see the man's face turn pale. With one hand he held his sword, with the other he grabbed the front of the fools tunic. With a careless gesture he threw the man into the room, than closed the door. It was good to not have Anna about right now. She had stressed caution, had kept his temper in check when some men had come up to them, had insulted her, and then asked Kratos if Anna was for sale. In Triet the word (A/N: yeah I censored the word, I don't want to jack the rating up any higher then I have to) meant woman, for all woman were dogs meant to be little more then breeding stock. It was an insult that he could not tolerate.

"It's there culture." Anna had sighed; her hand lay on his as she hid the fact that i his /i hand was clenched around the hilt of his blade. Unlike other places where such a gesture would have been seen as "cute" it was viewed by the dessert dwellers with scorn. She had marked herself as a whore, with her unveiled face and absent caresses. "Just grit your teeth and say no, don't worry with that look on your face no one will ask twice."

It would feel good to hurt someone who had all but asked for it. It would feel good to lash out at the man who had just insulted his wife. The innkeeper fell to the floor with a whimper, than came to his feet with a growl. Dagger in hand the man glared at the one who had once been a man. With the servile mask gone Kratos could see the real person underneath, and he would later mutter a prayer to the ancient Gods that Anna was not here by herself. Hate, lust, those were the fires that lit this man's eyes, and, much to his discomfort Kratos thought of Mithos. How alike those innkeeper's eyes were to his "lords".

"So you're all show. You carry a shiny sword to spook the commoners." The knife plunged down, and Kratos dropped his sword and grabbed the man's wrist. An expert twist and the knife fell to the floor. For a long moment Kratos considered the lump of quivering human flesh and bone in his grip. Then with exploring hands he ran the length of the man's wrist. Finding what he was looking for Kratos applied pressure, and the man fell to his knees howling. The crack of the man's smallest wrist bones were music to the warrior ears. The man shrieked, moaned, and went limp in Kratos' arms. Such a racket should have roused the city guards, but it was the hottest time of the day. No sane man would be out in the heat, or run out into it to see why another screamed.

Especially when the man who screamed was hated, when all his neighbors knew of the petty thieveries that his customers endured.

A growl from Kratos' throat made the innkeeper flinch, no longer hungering for another's suffering Kratos felt a twinge of guilt as the man's moans continued. He noticed how the human staggered, then fond his feet. There was a slight gesture with his whole hand, something so minuscule that it stroked one of the Seraphim's darker memories. Feet climbing the stairs made Kratos snap his head up, obviously there was someone deranged enough to bear the heat and come to the man's cries of pain.

A bark from the lobby made Kratos' blood turn to ice.

The innkeeper smiled at his enemy, flourished the dagger he had retrieved from the floor in his false stumble. Took a step to the side, so that Kratos could see who the would be rescuer was...

Anna, and for one moment he could see her and she him. She saw his horrified eyes, saw the innkeeper's pain filled orbs. There was a flash of silver, than Anna staggered back. Her hands, she fisted her left then gripped the left's wrist with her right hand. Then as if her hands were a shield she brought them up, and managed to strike her attacker's arm. It wasn't much, little more then a slap, but the knife thrust veered to the left, and plunged into her cruxis crystal. Better then her jugular, which was where the strike had initially been aimed. Yet not by much. With a screech Anna collapsed, her eyes rolled back into her head, she fell and writhed on the floor.

With a startled yalp the man fell back, Kratos' iron grip threw him back into the room. The man shrieked, rolled over, tried to bolt. Blood pounded in the Seraphim's head, a drum of crimson was his heart. He heard a sharp panting; an animal's sound, and paid it no heed. This man had struck his wife down; there was no mercy for him, only pain. Somehow he had come to hold a sword, was it his? He didn't know.

He didn't care.

With a cry he brought the flat of the blade down in the man's legs. It wasn't mercy that guided him; he did not wish to spare the man's life...

Only to prolong the bastard's trip to Hell.

There was a wet snap, much louder then before, as both the man's legs broke under the force of the blow. The innkeeper howled like a dog, using his good and bad hand he tried to crawl away. The man crawled forward only to find himself moving no where, his futile motions merely bunched up the blankets. Somehow the man had landed on the bed, and the fact Kratos couldn't remember tossing the man there himself didn't bother the seraphim. With a snarl the blade fell, arched through the air and glowed with a silver light, it slashed deeply into the man's belly, but not deep enough to sever the spine.

i Oh no, no quick way out or this one. /i

Annoyed was all Kratos felt, annoyed that the sword was not delicate enough to rip the hole open and not dull itself on the man's ribs. He could always sharpen it later, he consoled himself. As if from far off he could hear someone yelling, it was a mad feverish yelling that was a mix of many languages. Insane, utterly insane, and mixed with it was a harsh panting.

Blood flew everywhere as the innkeeper lay on the bed, being almost delicately vivisected. Blood stained the sheets, the light was fast in fading from his enemies eyes.

"Damn it, no, you will not deny me!"

Still the man's face was easing, as the last light of life fled. For one moment he considered using a healing spell, to bring the man back so he might suffer more.

i Anna /i

Kratos shuddered, than called to him a sliver of power. Fire appeared in his hand, an orb that was a dull orange, larger then a melon. He considered it, then Anna's assailant. There was not enough time to make the hole bigger, not enough time before the bastard died. He would just have to work around this little difficult. He walked up to the thing that had once been a man. It looked at him with wide watery eyes, a horror on it's face.

"Allow me to grant you a taste of the Hell your soul now goes to." He dropped the fireball into the open wound. Then watched in sick satisfaction as the man cooked, from the inside out. When the last thrashes stopped Kratos turned away. Anna was mercifully out cold, she would have no memory of this. She might wonder at the shadows around his eyes, but she would not have seen what put them there...

With trembling hands Kratos bent down, and took his wife's limp form from the floor. The fire was spreading; the room would soon be engulfed in flame. For a second he cursed the loss of his packs, but it was only for a breath, for the next tasted of smoke. Anna should not be left in this place, the smoke could kill her. Carrying his lover like he would his child, Kratos let the inn burn to the ground, and left Triet, swearing to himself that he would never return.

center /center

"Noishe come!" His throat barely could force the sounds out, it was so raw. Smoke and screaming did that, he guessed. His supposed "divine" state could not protect from nature. The protozoan padded up to Kratos, his paws were yet again bleeding. They could not slow down, not even to treat Noishe, and thankfully it was something that Noishe understood. When Kratos had moved first treat the cuts the protozoan had bit him, then walked forward. Not needing any more hints they had gone on. They had passed through the valley of brown nameless rock, and were now walking in the open, closing the space that lay between them and the Desian Base.

Yuan's camp, was the one thing keeping control over the Triet human. It was also a base where new Desian troops were trained. There were a multitude of rumors from both the Desians and members of Cruxis that the "camp" was falling into disrepair. It didn't matter if it was or wasn't to the Seraphim, what mattered was that there lay a gate to Derris Kharlan. Or rather there was a portal above the fort that lead to the holy city. He would need his Reiard though, and to get that he would need to deal with whatever fool Yuan had put in charge during his prolonged absence.

He walked up to the gate, leaving Noishe behind to watch Anna while he dealt with the Desians. Again he was grateful for Anna's comatose state; the mere mention of Desian's would have made her gone into hysterics. This plan that he had formed would have pushed her beyond mere hysterics. He walked into the Desian base, expecting what he would have at the Isila Ranch.

What he got was a whole different story. While magnificent on the outside, the interior walls were sheathed in rusting bits of metal. No hand had come by to clean up; the place was riddled with scrap metal. Disgusted, Kratos kicked a piece of metal out of his way and kept walking down the dully lit hallway. Yuan, it seemed, had fallen into one of his depressions. For decades he would shun the company of his fellow seraphim and brood in this little hovel in Slyverant.

No one had seen him enter, no guard had asked him his business at the gate, like disembodied eyes the security cameras looked off to the dessert. All of them gazed in different directions, yet none of them were focused on the path he had come from, and none of them had swiveled in his direction. He doubted that if the cameras had moved they could have stayed on their little towers. Coming to one of the more familiar halls Kratos paused, then put his hand against the blue pad in the wall. The air shimmered and the Seraphim stepped into the hanger. At least this was in good condition; no matter how far he'd fallen Yuan always took care of what he really cared about.

All he had was Martel, Martel and the Rieard...

Having lost one of his pet projects to Mithos, Yuan had poured all his remaining energy into the other. On some levels it was terrifying, the steel falcons looked no different from the last time the group had used them. They were polished, clean, and when Kratos slid into his red falcon he noticed that it was still charged.

It was fully charged!

Great mana had to be poured into these ships just to keep their power gauge to the halfway point. When Mithos, Martel, Yuan, and Kratos had been together they hadn't dared charge them all the way. The arcane drainage would have been the death of them all.

"What the Hell are you doing here?"

Kratos looked up, to see a male half elf glaring at him. It had been ages since one of them had dared talk to him in that tone. With a raised eyebrow the seraphim concerned himself with the ships reading. He ignored how the sandaled feet crossed the steel floor, ignored the sword being drawn, then absently blocked when the blade whistled down on his head. The feigned indifference as well as his strength shook his foe; he could see it when the man met his gaze.

"I have other things to do then waste times with Desians." Kratos kicked the man off the platform in which the ship rested on. He swung his leg over the side of the Reiard, much like a man would pull himself a saddle. "Tell Yuan I have come to borrow my old ship, if he has an issue with it he can talk to me about it later. We'll be meeting at Yggdrasil's castle in four years anyways, I imagine he can wait that long."

"You dare mock Lord Yuan!" The young Desian snarled he then brought his red and black sword around for a second strike. This time Kratos wasn't gentle, he drew on his angelic mana, and sent the young man flying across the room with a flick of his wings. The muscular Desian, so rare in a normally svelte race, sunk to his knees in terror. He now knew just who he was dealing with. Red dripped on the man's white tunic; glints of silver-blue were embedded in the tunic. With a trembling hand the man reached into on of the lesser wounds and withdrew a feather. Kratos had no more time for the fool, without a second glance he turned the Reiard on and felt it hum to life. With bloodied hands, and blooded wings he flew from Yuan's ranch. Back to the valley, back to Anna.