Hello, Soluxy here with another chapter.

If you feel strongly about me or my work and want to support me, search for patron and Soluxy together on Google. Or go on Pa/re on and put a /Soluxy after the com.

I would be forever grateful if you become a patron!

The next chapters are already on my page.

Don't forget to follow or favorite if you want to be alerted to new chapters!

I hope you enjoy this chapter.

X✹X
Checkered Queen II
X✹X

Riser | A small phoenix searching for a light

What do you think when you meet a human?

It was weird for me. This was the first time in 13 years since I met with humans not involved with the supernatural. There were a few inquisition members I had met before, still they were more monsters than human, so this was a first.

This was a very crowded space known as a train station in Japan. It surprised me when seeing this many humans in a crowd. Of course, a tall brat like me with blond hair made for quite the sight. The Vieth family is and was also very far away from how normal people acted, so I still acted silent in this second life of mine. However, the Vieth family is old news now, right now I belong to a family of devils in this second life.

I had come here on a vacation with my family, and now I memorized the way to return to the Underworld and go to the human world as I pleased. I now knew the way. The Phenex family had gone back to Tokyo, while I stayed in Sendai, a delightful city with lots of industries on the horizon. As I walked on the streets, I witnessed the night sky. Still no stars to see here. It was a disappointment when the Vieth Family home in the mountains was surrounded by a bright horizon of the cosmos every night.

I walked away from the bright lights and from the crowd of the hardworking middle-class, and entered a more dilapidated region of the city, whereas rejects of society suffered in alleyways a mostly standard sight in all places, you'd only need to look to the side to see people trying to cook their dinner on the streets and on their little makeshift homes, some Yakuza gangs still acted, often selling drugs and conning people out of money, still the usual, you could find these sights in every city in the whole world. Sendai wasn't different, Devil Society wasn't different. To the edge of town, I went.

"Hmmm?"

Some punks blocked my way. They were so caught up with my foreign appearance and wanted to bully me out of cash since all foreigners were always rich, is what they told me. Thankfully, they didn't bother me anymore after I bashed them on the floor and on the walls of these dilapidated buildings until they had a nice goodnight sleep. Sometimes things can only be solved by violence, which is a lesson I learned the hard way.

Peacefulness never really resolves anything, and might and violence are tools to make yourself heard. You find these sick idiots killing people just for fun sometimes, which is why these assholes use religion, group-mindset and other things to satisfy their need to have their voice heard.

Idiotic…

All people do is kill other people.

Idiotic…

In my opinion, utopia is a place where nobody gets killed because of another's beliefs.

But that's an impossible place to exist. I know it, and everybody knows it. It's utopia because it's impossible, and thus any conversation is rendered useless. It becomes just a pastime. You should just ignore any idealistic talk from me from now on and focus only on the bad parts. Maybe not, my life is just thoughts and dangerous situations. If it's only the bad, then the story becomes unbearably depressing even for someone as detached as me, and probably you, Julianne.

I arrived at a dilapidated train station. This was a very verdant place near the hills, far away from Sendai. I followed the way down to a very ugly and dirty train station. I sat on a very old bench, and it fell to the floor. There was a fool here, taking shots in his veins. He saw me and ran away upwards, don't worry idiot, we're all fools here. But I've known it. Sometimes you need a sacred place away from anyone who'll judge you.

This place was extremely dark, however as a devil and as a gamer I had several advantages in the darkness compared to humans, still I used my index finger to make an incandescent flame, revealing dirty walls and two abyss-like tunnels, there was an old train cart parked a bit further away.

I went much further than the youth who was injecting himself, going deeper and deeper into a darkness unknown, a creature such as a phoenix shouldn't like dark places. But that should be a ridiculous notion, since the sun is left there, in the deep darkness of space.

Does light fear the dark?

Or do they coexist?

Until the dark swallows it all trillions and quadrillion years in the future, and light itself dies.

I was in a slump and my mood felt pretty bad. Leviathan said I was a quiet kid and had a very bad frowning face. People thought I was always angry and my words certainly made more than a few enemies. I didn't have exemplary parents, and in turn, I wasn't a dutiful child. I doubt any parent in the world would take in a troublesome brat like me, and I honestly don't want to belong to any family of any kind after the Vieth and Phenex.

I was old already, an adult if you do a sum of both my ages, so I should reach and grasp my independence with both my hands.

Still, there is a shackle to my ankle, a shackle called emotions.

Powerful emotions… sometimes they are called sins. Wrath and Pride are especially invasive within me.

You know something is bad for you, yet you keep doing that same thing. Even though anxiety creeps in and invades your extremities and makes your toes curl, you keep doing it as a terrifying feeling of self-doubt and hatred spreads.

I think everyone knows this feeling, Julianne. Even if the illustrious you, never felt it once in her life…

Just like that youth spending his money on drugs, even though he knows it might ruin his life because of it. He can't help but keep doing it.

Just like that, my wrath and pride control me, control my thoughts, my mood, my actions and sometimes, I do things that keep building my anxiety, and worsen my mood even further, making my sin of pride and my sin of wrath flare up even more.

I scratch my shoulder and neck in irritation. I am alone most of the time and I hardly speak to anyone, so all I do is have stray thoughts about useless things. The flame burned brightly as it illuminated the section I was in. Japanese signs and letters dirtied and plastic stickers already half torn were on the ground as I walked towards one of the tunnels. Then, my self-deprecating session of silence was invaded. There was moaning.

Sounds of moaning.

A singular person, it was not a couple having their moment, it was moaning and groaning of pain and suffering.

Someone was in pain. Someone was suffering, the primitive instinct of using voice and sounds to call for help. Or perhaps someone was just easing their pain by doing those noises.

"…"

I approached the train, half-expecting a zombie out of a flick to jump at me, and uselessly try to consume me, though the realist in me thought it would not be such an acceptable outcome. A woman drowning in pain. I knew the noise well. I also know the sounds of old men and women, middle-aged men and young adults. I know how they scream as well. I also know the screams of death of young children, younger than I was.

This one was a woman drowning in pain, or perhaps convulsing from an overdose. I jumped down the tracks and went inside of the tunnel. Not two meters from the exit was the tail-end of the train. I approached the train cart with my light on the index finger. The dark tunnel could go on forever as I looked into this deep abyss of a place.

Tall brat as I was, the train doors were way above my waist, almost to my head height.

I pushed the two doors open with one hand, and with one hand, I jumped inside like some sort of Olympic athlete going over an obstacle. And I jumped onto the derelict train cart that was abandoned ages ago. The moan and groan was coming from inside.

I saw a pool of blood near the entrance to the train, and I reconsidered the situation.

Someone probably shot her or shanked her and left her for dead. Following the drops of blood, I arrived at the victim. She was lying on a dirty fabric chair in the cart, without legs or arms. A torso of a woman, and her head and neck still attached, there were no limbs on her, just bloody stumps.

My first thought is that she might have been a victim of sex trafficking, or something along those lines, and the red dress that barely covered her chest and revealed one of her breasts because of its state. Yes, this definitely felt like a case of that, a sex slave dressed as a Disney Princess or something along those lines. However…

Reconsidering it, she was bleeding heavily, so the removal of her limbs was not a surgical procedure but instead a form of execution or punishment. So gang violence might be another motive…

"You there…"

An olden accent, platinum blond hair, and slanted pupils in her golden eyes with sharp canines to complete the set…

A vampire.

This was the first time meeting one of them, but it was a certain thing for Riser. Most of the vampires lived in the human world, after all.

"Y—You there… g—give me thy blood."

"Why should I, will something good happen if I do?"

I asked the woman, all left for dead. Maybe she crawled in here to escape whatever attackers were after her. Exorcists, or some inquisitors would probably be behind this, nobody else cares more about vampires than the good old church, but you know what's funny, the church hates them because their clan threatened their hold on Europe a long time ago, it's all about who has power, and money. Everything else is just excuses they give to justify whatever.

"You w—will become my flesh and b—blood, you should be h—honored."

She said after many heavy breaths, almost like she ran a marathon on a treadmill, but it was most likely her wounds. I turned around and walked out. These situations tired me… I was tired of saving people.

"W—Wait, you fool, wait I tell you. Why are you running, aren't h—humans supposed to be happy that they'll be my food?" And it was like a great breath came from her mouth, a one so scared and defeated, almost like the world itself had rejected her. "You… won't… help… me?"

She fell from the bench as she tried to crawl towards my fleeting back, but the half-dead woman could barely move two steps. If I looked back, I would see her shedding tears, shedding tears of blood, the last moments of a dying vampire.

Those vampires who don't die by sunlight or those who don't die by holy tools always end up like this, or so was the information he'd gained when he actually cared about different races in this damn world.

I jumped from the train into the tunnel and walked towards the abandoned station. She kept apologizing, apologizing with her remaining might, apologizing to who?

It certainly couldn't be me.

Not even as she screamed for my help, I took the stairs, step by step, until the last step made me stop as the incessant cries of that vampire reached the recesses of my brain. Take one more step, you don't owe anyone anything and you won't be rewarded for anything you do for others…

Why am I always so foolish…?

Why…?

Almost as if my body had returned in time, I was silently there, back in the cart, with the vampire on the floor. It was not like I had used time-traveling powers, or used teleportation, or ran pretty fast. No, I walked back here, step by step, slow as a slug. My body was on autopilot, so my mind forgot the trip I made here, even as my feet carried me through the deep darkness without a light this time.

I took a seat, watching over the crying torso of a woman. She cried, like a baby being rejected. I kept staring at her, until she noticed me and gasped with hope in her face, and there was an insurmountable guilt in her expression as well as she then directed her apologies at me.

Sometimes people can't even die right, we're just that hopeless. Humans, devils, angels, vampires, spirits, dragons… all hopeless.

I am also one of those hopeless fools who couldn't even die right, don't you think so, Julianne?

And thus, the little bird of fire met the little bat of blood.

A fateful meeting…?

Of course not. It was just an abandoned brat meeting a person who needed help. And deciding that he wanted to help that person.

X✹X
Author's notes
X✹X

First time Riser meets Kiss-shot before the whole arc where he turns her into his Queen piece, the start follows closely but there will be massive differences from Kizumonogatari the movies and the light novel.

If you feel strongly about me or my work and want to support me, search for patron and Soluxy together on Google. Or go on Pa/re on and put a /Soluxy after the com. You can view my work early and make valuable suggestions and comments right on my docs.

I would be forever grateful if you become a patron!