As promised, a new chapter and some revision by the end of January. Okay, so it's really close, but there's more to come this year! I took a creative writing class last year and I hope to improve. It might be too late for this story, but any others should be better. I seem to have lost the original second half of this chapter. As always happens in such cases, it was better and longer and you all would have loved it as much as I did. Alas, it has been tidied into a stack of papers in a corner or accidentally destroyed or something. I thought I'd typed it up once, but it must have been lost when my external hard-drive melted.

Look at the first chapter for my disclaimer.

Chapter 5

"Sage!" shouted the Ronins.

"Cale?" Kayura said incredulously. Well, Cera assumed she was Kayura.

Until this moment, the only ex-warlord whose identity Cera had known for sure was Dais. He had been Deception's specific target and considered the most threat by her. She had studied him extensively. Now, she could figure out the others. Kayura was the female. Cale was the fallen blue-haired man. Sekhmet had to be the one with green hair. Then she remembered the situation.

Sincerity studied Sage's injuries. Compared to the others he was rather beaten up. He was semi-conscious. He looked like he might have even been poisoned too, but she doubted Hope would have bothered. Sekhmet would be able to cure that. Despair might have done something magical to him instead. Cera briefly placed her hand on his forehead and sighed in relief. His kanji, Wisdom, glowed a soft green as Halo tried to heal its bearer. She removed her hand and glanced quickly at the other Ronin warriors. They were muttering words of concern and encouragement for the most part. Cye was looking at her with a curiously intense expression.

Feeling rather foolish she murmured, "He's not sick."

Cye blinked at her. "That's good. We wouldn't want him to die." There was something amiss in his sea-colored eyes as he spoke. His accent was diminished too. Oddly, his tone reminded her of Dementia.

Deception's eyes narrowed. "Of course not."

The boy blinked again. "Why are you looking at me like that, Cera?"

She turned away to watch the ex-warlords and Cale. "Perhaps I wasn't really seeing you," she answered.

She left before he could respond and went to look at Cale. Kayura was examining him, and Cera fancied she was given a suspicious once-over as she settled next to her.

It was obvious from the beginning that his injuries should not be enough to keep him down. Cera knew that he'd taken worse abuse in the past—from both Talpa and the Ronins—and kept fighting. She went back to the moment that both Halo (Sage, she reminded herself) and Cale had fallen. They had collapsed simultaneously with similar symptoms. Sage's incapacitation was almost convincing as a result of his injuries, but combined with the blue-haired man's led her to believe a spell had been placed on them. Magic was their forte, after all. She vaguely remembered that Mentia had befriended them when she learned that they practiced magic, but why had they ended up with Talpa? The gap in her memories was most distressing.

But now wasn't the time to worry about it. Hopefully Kayura would come to the same conclusion and Cera could stay out of it. She would have enough explaining to do as things stood now. She thought back to her fateful attack on the Ronins and winced internally. Her memories were strange—like a stranger had taken over her body and left her memories behind for Cera to view. How could she have been thinking like that? Had Talpa done something to them, or had she really changed so much in those missing months? Do I really want to know? She shivered at the dark place that thought led to. She would obviously have to tell these people something and she couldn't say, "Yes, I attacked you on Talpa's command and wanted to kill Dais. Did I mention that Despair's attack likely happened because I went missing and that part of me loathes you all? That I don't know if the current situation is a result of my planning a careful trap for all of you and it may be that I'm playing an expected role, even if I don't remember it? No, I don't remember being a spy, Kento, but I give it a thirty-percent probability. It seems to be what I remember doing for Talpa, after all."

After Cale and Sage had been properly taken care of and wrapped in blankets and bandages (which in their mostly unconscious state they could not protest), Cera faced the remaining warriors. Kayura had detected the spell that was keeping them insensible, but been unable to remove it. It was a form of magic she was unfamiliar with and reluctant to tamper with. Definitely Despair's work, thought Cera. In any case, most of Despair's magical repertoire had a set time limit. Hope's power was not that great. Defiance, Destruction, and Dementia were by far the strongest magically. Wait—Defiance? Who was Defiance? The name had come so easily, but nothing else seemed to be attached to it. She put it aside for later consideration. Her memories were obviously less complete than she had hoped.

They sat around the table, ignoring the casserole/potatoes. Ryo began the questioning: "Who are you?"

It was the logical place for him to start, but not something she could answer properly. Cera decided to just start talking and see what came out. "I don't really know. I remember being adopted into the Date family and Sage remembers it too, so I feel I can almost trust that memory. My name is Sincerity, but I'm usually just called Cera. Of course, at some point I started being called Deception. It's the name of my armor. Ours—the Demoness Quartet's, I mean—all look like your sub-armor, and I don't think they're as innately powerful. I think the armors of Intention are another failed attempt that Talpa split up into several parts and tried to match with suggestible young magic users. I don't know how we ended up with him. There's a whole block of time—two months, maybe—missing from my memory. One moment I'm in school, and the next thing I remember is literally bowing before Talpa." She fell silent, lost as how to continue.

Rowen asked the question they'd all had in mind for weeks. "Why do you call yourselves the Demoness Quartet?"

Cera wanted to laugh, but could only manage a weak smirk. "It annoyed M—Talpa. There were too many of us to be a proper quartet. My friends—you remember that the last thing I remember before the memory gap is school?—came up with the name for our school Talent Show. Our talent was to perfectly sing any score put before us. Pop, classical, opera, any language… We rigged it, of course, but not like everyone thought we did. We didn't know the music the judges were going to give us, but we cheated with magic to link our minds and voices. We held the whole auditorium in thrall with song-magic. They thought it was perfect. I know that I forgot to breathe before the second chorus and nearly ruined the whole thing." She frowned. "It was Mentia's idea. None of us would have considered enspelling the whole school if she hadn't suggested it. I think," Cera said slowly, "that we might not have done a lot of things without Mentia. De-mentia, now. The only true demon among us."