In another time...
He woke up as sudden as a match being struck. He lay on his back on the cold stone floor, his head cradled in her lap. The view of the ceiling was obstructed by curtains of metallic, silver hair and sky blue eyes.
"Meliodas?"
An electric trill ran up his back and he barely missed mashing his skull against hers from sitting up so fast. Frantic, he scrambled to the farthest corner of the room, mind too panicked to form any coherent thought.
"Stay away from me!"
She flinched. "I didn't mean to hurt you, I just—"
"Touch me again and you're dead—no, you are dead. I'm going to kill you, I'm going to plaster your brain to the wall and tear your limbs apart!"
The strangle-winged girl scuttled back to the wall, paling so quickly she turned gray as death.
Even so, he didn't move. His body trembled against the stone as though glued to it. He didn't even dare to breathe.
And for the first time, he wondered just what the hell had happened. Not that any answers came from his screaming brain.
"I-I just wanted to heal y-y-your wounds," she stuttered, shaking just as hard as him, if not worse. "And it looked like it worked at least in that regards. If I had known it would hurt…"
But that was just the thing, he realized with a sudden bang: it hadn't hurt. Not at all.
And that was the problem.
Something clicked in his head.
"That's what your healing is," he said, breathless. "It's light. Just pure, unadulterated light. Power in it's purest form."
"Pardon?" she clutched her hands to her chin.
Struggling to bring back together his shaken mind, his thoughts babbled out like a brook. "Energy and matter are interchangeable. Healing is based off the body's level of energy, both to transport materials and to make up the materials themselves. With an infinite amount of energy you get a self-sustaining, indestructible body. You're healing is high levels of energy transfer. Since you're temperature is just—" he snapped his jaw closed, finally catching up. Heat flushed across his neck. "Hell, you're…you're a monster. Look what you've done to me. I'm going to kill you."
But still, he didn't move. Neither did she. Not that there would be anywhere she could go. This was the realm of demons, and he its prince.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
He stared at her, hard. He really did want her dead. Yet the bloodlust left his body cold, and it was his body, he knew, that was reluctant. Such euphoria shouldn't exist. His muscles trembled at the mere memory—the memory of relief.
This was also why beings of higher light avoided those of lower light. Having a body adjusted to lower levels of energy, anything higher…was torture.
Growling, he tore himself from the wall and stomped towards her. Just as his foot landed within striking distance, a bullet of fur zipped from about her and attached to his shin via dozens of miniscule claws. The shrill squeak was the extent of the tiny kitten's capability of a threatening yowl. He stared at it, more surprised at being attacked by something so small after nothing had dared to attack him over several millennia. Snorting, he reached down, just to have the next surprisingly weak thing in the room snatch at his wrist with her small, white hands.
"No. Please no," she gasped.
The girl was terrified. And yet she would rush her death to defend a baby rat?
Well, it wouldn't be in him to deny that wish. So he pulled back his hand, ready to break her body apart with one fatal slap. She turned her head, bracing herself.
He leaned in for the swing…his hand wouldn't move, frozen in mid-air. He tried several more times to swing it down, staring down her soft, weak mortal body barely covered by the thin silk dress he had given her, the scarlet ribbon about her neck the only shock of color on her.
A memory of cedar wood drifted across his mind, along with that flash of floral musk he had gotten in that moment her light had encompassed him. The smell brought with it the flood of alien emotions, soaked with stomach turning want and weakness.
Kill it!
He screwed up his eyes, biting his lip so hard it bled.
When his hand finally came down, it wasn't upon her, but the handle to his door. The bolts of the hinges richoeted off the walls along with fragments of wood. Stones cracked beneath as he stomped out. Pent up need for destruction snapped out about him, shattering the crystals that lit the hall and cracked mortar and stone alike. A pair of servants around the corner cried out in alarm and ran for it. Within moments both his brothers, Estrossa and Zeldris, blocked him off on route to exiting the castle.
"Melodis," Estrossa started, then back tracked as tendrils of black flame cracked out like a whip where he had been a moment before. He cussed.
Zeldris kept going. "Brother, what happened?"
Meliodas threw him aside with a blunt whack of his forearm, sending him through the hard wall to his left. He tromped through the commencing dust with a thunderous snarl. With an impatient shove, he tore his darkness forward, piercing it through the remaining stonework between him and the outside, which he dug his fingers in mentally and tore apart. Boulders and great planes of floorwork came raining down—and he was free, climbing up and up on shadow lanced wings.
Estrossa was overcome by the rubble. Zeldris, on the other hand, climbed up just behind him. Meliodas sensed his presence all across the burning-frost of the upper atmosphere, though he kept his distance.
A day passed liked that, with Meliodas beating out the excess energy within him through his wings. The force of the wind from his speed would have been enough to tear the flesh off a lesser man, yet his bared teeth and dark eyes remained unperturbed. Only once he felt the remaining memory of relief, of agonizing pleasure, burn from his muscles from fatigue and his lanced skin did he slow and finally land on a distant shore of glass. The continuing tearing of his feet on the glass-shard beach brought him back in full, the pain familiar and comfortable. Acidic waves lapped just out of reach of his toes, beautiful in its deep, emerald blue. He breathed deep of the ammonia and chlorine smell, settling his rattled nerves.
Zeldris landed besides him, his tough red boots crunching the glass beneath them. They were still torn from their father's abuse, and blood still leaked out from half-healed tears across his calves and forearms. His eyes, however, gleamed out whole from a mask of dried blood.
"Your legs," he said after a slow minute. "They're healed already?"
Meliodas closed his eyes. If he couldn't kill her…Zeldris's body had no memory of the light in her hands…
He took a deep breath that stung all the way down like a burst of fresh winter air.
"I don't think I'll be able to go back to Earth for a while," he said.
He could all but see Zeldris's confused frown.
"Okay…? Like anyone cares?"
Meliodas 'hmmphed.' "Right. Ha."
"If I wasn't bored to death I wouldn't have even followed you. Been a while since I've been to beach."
Meliodas opened his eyes to view the glimmering shore. If one ignored the fact the water would dissolve your body and the shore would slice it up before hand, one would be impressed by the jewel-like beauty of the glittering sands and brilliantly clear, bright water. Then, the dark-brown haze above it all also ruined it. Their world's sun was a dying one, and their atmosphere unforgiving to its light.
He clutched his fists.
Just tell him. Tell him to go back and kill her. He doesn't have anything better to do.
But it wouldn't even come out!
"What happened? And don't tell me nothing, you almost murdered Estrossa."
Why didn't that sound like a compliment.
Sighing, he turned around and did what demons did best.
He lied.
"I was trying a new concoction to infuse the body with more energy, speed up the healing so I could walk straight. Had more oomph than I would have liked. Based off my study of star making."
"Ho, and you just drank it like that?"
Meliodas smiled. "And miss out on something new?"
New. Elizabeth was definitely that.
Zeldris let out a frustrated puff. "I can't believe I flew all the way for that."
The oddity of that sentence struck him. "Why did you follow me?" It wasn't like Zeldris would actually care.
His brother gave him an unreadable look for a moment than gave him a crooked smile.
"Guess you're not the only one acting out of the ordinary, eh? At least I don't have to lie about some potion to cover it up." Zeldris turned and stretched out his wings. "Let me know when you feel like telling, eh? Especially if its something the king shouldn't hear."
And just as anti-climatically as he had come, Zeldris left, flapping as lazy as a full seagull.
Meliodas watched him go until he disappeared off the horizon, letting the glass sand dig deeper and deeper into his feet.
She was waiting for him when he finally returned, either hours or days later, it was impossible to tell in this dim realm. The kitten was still a rat of a thing, so it couldn't have been too long. Even as he thought that, he found how peculiar it was to be basing his sense of time on such a thing as the growth of a kitten.
"Have you been getting food?" he found himself asking with little thought. Another strange thing. That he would care. Then again, starved corpses were a particular eyesore. Bony, dry, hairy things that they were. Weird that humans grew more hair when food-deprived. You'd think the body wouldn't have anything to spare.
She nodded, glancing at the transmitter ruby on the wall. So she had at least figured that much out.
The kitten watched him from underneath his bed, so still it could've been a figurine.
"Last time you bathed?"
She flinched. "It's…it's been a few days? I think." She glanced to the window, where the ambiguous gray light filtered in.
He nodded. Tired. At the same time, the core of him was a kind of steady wired. They, after all, didn't necessarily need sleep. Sleep just offered a break from the monotony of conscious thought.
He sighed. Why was he even bothering with this wench? And why was he finding it so hard to move from in front of his doorway? It wasn't like she was going to use her freakish power on him, unless she felt like dying.
"You feel like dying?"
She scrunched her folded hands to herself, like a frightened squirrel. "No."
"Just checking," he rubbed the back of his head. Hard.
Well. He had wanted stimulation. If he was going to figure out anything, though, bathing was in order. No way was he going to closely examine her with that mortal stench filling up his nostrils.
Fortunately, the tub had been left in its place all that time, and the magic was still in place to fill it, so he did so. This time when he ordered her to strip, she did so without fighting it, though she didn't meet his eye when she stood naked and vulnerable, all white hair and ivory skin, the red ribbon about her neck like a line of blood. A part of him admired the gentle curves and long legs, but on the level of art. Their bodies were modeled after the Creator's, after all, and therefore modeled after supreme beauty and power.
Still too skinny.
He pointed to the enormous copper tub of water and she immediately stepped in. The next thing he knew, he was lathering up soap and a rag and stepping to her head. He stopped instantly.
What the hell…had he actually been planning on cleaning her himself?
After a second of bitter confusion, he decided he was done thinking and just dug his fingers into her hair, suds and all. She jumped horribly and made a very amusing squawking noise, but otherwise held still and let him scrub her head, neck, shoulders, arms—even her pits.
Like washing a pet dog he thought, even has he washed around the red ribbon that marked her as his. Like a collar. He told himself he was probably doing this just to make sure she was sufficiently clean, like any good pet owner would do.
"Stand up," he said.
She hesitated for only a second before standing, bubbles and clear water coursing down her breasts and thighs.
A strange quiver took place behind his naval.
He paid it no mind. He didn't care to know. Instead, he set to work scrubbing what had been underwater, watching as his rag turned the ivory to pink. There was a good chance he was scrubbing to hard, but she hadn't said anything and the skin was still there and fine, so whatever.
When he went to scrub between her legs, she a wavering little yip.
"Please," she squeaked. "Let me?"
"Fine," he slapped the rag on the edge of the tub and turned. "I don't care as long as it's clean."
And he didn't care. Genitals on any sex were particularly nasty. Ooze and nasty smells and weird, wrinkly bits.
He flopped onto his bed to wait her out. Somehow, through the gentle swishing noises, he must have nodded off, for the next thing he knew he was waking up to that damn kitten hissing at him from the corner of the bed farthest from him. He glared and the little creature scuttled off. He must not have been asleep for long, but it was hard to tell if her hair was wet anymore with how well it imitated silver metal. She had curled up on the windowsill, arms around her knees and blue eyes watching him from over her elbow.
"Can…can I ask you a question?" she asked when their eyes met.
He grunted. She took that as a yes.
"Why do demons want to destroy men? And, with the amount of power you have, why won't you just do it?"
"That's a whole story I don't have the energy to tell. As for the second, there is a balance of powers, and with each estate granted to a being founded from Intelligence that being gains more power." He sighed and scratch his head roughly. "While the power of us demons is flashy and can affect the physical world humans can perceive, the human soul is in a state of transition allotted to them by the Creator, allowing them to dwell in an estate of higher power. Got to have somewhere to fall in order to fall in the first place, and where we are is 'fallen.' Because of that, in order for us to gain power over their estate, they must choose to give us that power. 'Course, they give up that power completely if they should become one of us."
She blinked. "Oh…"
He gave her a bland look. "You didn't get any of that, did you?"
"I'm sorry…"
"Suffice it to say I can kill you in a blink of an eye." He allowed himself a vicious smirk. "And I can't harm your soul unless you let me…and it's good that you think that."
"Huh?"
He just smiled. That's right, demons allowed mortals to grow attached to that truth. All the better to lower their guard and blur the lines between their agency and coercion.
Gesturing to her to follow, he left his hallway, ignoring the stares a serving girl gave them as she passed. Behind them he could hear the quiet slap of her bare feet on the stone floors.
"So…you hate humans because they, um, have—forgive me if I'm wrong—"
"I don't forgive."
She hesitated, but pushed on. "You hate them because they have more power than you?"
"They have more light," he said tersely, shooting her a flat glare. "Not more power."
"But you just said—"
"I gave you the textbook answer. Reality is different. Truth is transient."
"Doesn't that kind of make it, um…not truth?"
He rolled his eyes, finding himself amused, and that pleased him. "Well, lookie at the pet. Getting all philosophical. Keep going. Philosophy is the best kind of comedy."
"Comedy?"
"Oh yes. A construct of men that lets them feel extraordinarily smart by using big words to argue that everyone's asses smell like flowers. If you ever want to muddle so called truth, just throw in a bit of that and watch them flail. I've destroyed entire countries with a well placed philosophy mixed with just enough of truth to make it seem deep." He cackled. "Soooo funny."
"Then truth isn't so transient?"
He groaned. "I take that back. You're just an idiot, aren't you? Don't you have ears?"
"I'm sorry…"
"Whatever."
And he was bored again.
They came to his tower office, where he directed her to a table near the fireplace, which filled with maroon flames at a snap of his fingers. Red and orange spurted through as the oxygen in the room combusted.
"Lay yourself out. Come on. There's a good girl."
At least she had enough brains to be nervous as she laid herself out on the plain wood.
Fetching an Urminary, a thick round eyeglass of sorts connected to a series of gold wiring that connected to a breastplate which reached over one shoulder to touch the base of his neck, he drew near to her and pulled the eyeglass to his right eye. The first thing he caught was the trembling of her pale fingers. She flinched hard when he pulled up her arm with the very tip of his fingertips.
"Sir, could I be on my stomach? My wings…"
"Suit yourself," he dropped her arm.
Once she had turned, he took hold of one of her bandaged, mangled chicken wings, earning a squawk of pain from her, which he ignored. He pushed out his senses, twisted the eyeglass, and peered through the lines of light the white became.
Honeycomb bone structure, he mentally noted. Though the rest of her skeletal structure is more akin to a land mammal. Flight should be impossible. Her back doesn't have enough surface area for wings large enough to lift that much weight, given her wings even plan on growing.
"When did your wings start growing?" he asked.
"When I was twelve, I think. Um, sir—"
"Call me what you want, but if I hear another um I'm slitting your throat." He almost smiled at the tiny squeak she made.
"S-s-sir, why—why did my healing hurt you? I swear, I only meant to help—"
"And that there is why."
"Huh?"
He sighed again, even as he dropped her wing and twisted the eyeglass back out. "What happens to your eyes when he leave a pitch back cave into daylight?"
"It hurts?"
"Bravo."
"So does that—does that mean you're so deprived of help, help hurts?"
"'Help' is not the correct term. It's completely relative to the intention of the subject. 'Light' is more accurate. Your healing is a transference of light." He snapped the eyeglass to his other eye, splitting it in two in the process to give him fill vision on the image of her organs, displayed in a backdrop of her visceral cavities. "Light. Power. Energy. It's all the same. My body is use to functioning on such a low level of light, being rather efficient, that you overran it."
"Wow. You're really smart."
That gave him pause. Smart? Well, that was the natural result of having an immortal mind, surely. He certainly wasn't idiotic. He'd seen enough of that to be certain. But no one had ever called him smart.
It sent a shock of warmth to his gut, which alarmed him.
"Are you using your power again?" his hand tightened on her forearm, preparing to toss her.
She winced. "N-no! I swear!"
He frowned. There was no lie in those eyes. If there was anything he, prince of demons, knew well, it was a lie.
Thus, he filed this strange sensation for later study and continued to look deeper, zooming in till he could see the layer of tissue and all the cells which comprised it. Her liver was particularly healthy. Her kidneys, especially the right (the natural weaker in the normally formed human), looked to be strained a bit. A symptom of lowered blood pressure from malnourishment, perhaps. It didn't tell him anything other than that. Nothing to say they were any different from a normal mortal.
He zoomed down to the cells, and instantly picked out the larger than normal mitochondria. He smiled and made another mental note.
After another measureless space of time, with him pulling aside limbs to focus on whatever parts, she spoke up again.
"What are you looking for?"
"Anomalies," he said. "You're a freak of nature."
Not like she could argue with that.
"I never took demons to be scholars."
"Knowledge is power," he stopped himself before saying 'and we are damned from growth.' Why was he telling her so much anyways? Not that it matter. She'd be dead eventually anyways.
Somehow, that made him a little uncomfortable.
He pushed that aside. Mitochondria. That's what he wanted. More limbs, more like, more energy, more power, and Mitochondria were the power houses of the cells. Made sense. But why? How did it compare to a celestial body?
Not like a being in any higher realm would have anything to do with him, let alone be part of his projects.
After finding nothing else more, boredom started to itch at him. A hunger for speed, action, some form of entertainment, gnawed at him.
Perhaps he could go down and see how his curse was progressing in the village who had given him this girl.
"What's your name again?" he asked, not really interested.
"Elizabeth."
He 'hmmed' and pushed up the eyeglass and took a brief, more cursory examination of her cuticles and feet. Every hair on her body was just as silver as her hair.
"What's up with this hair?" he asked, putting the eyeglass back down. How could he have forgotten?
He hardly heard her answer. For no sooner had he brought down the eyeglass that it filled with crystalline light, momentarily blinding him. Cursing, he swiped it off his head, nearly destroying the Urminary.
She sat up. "What happened? Are you okay?"
"Why are you even asking?" He squinted through the pain at her look of concern. Another strange prick of warmth trickled through him. "Even if I weren't your captor and inevitable executioner, I'm an immortal, all powerful demon. You really are stupid, aren't you?"
He expected her to be offended or hurt. For her face to scrunch up and her eyes to darken.
What he didn't expect was a smile that softened her eyes till the way she looked at him was almost, dare he say, tender.
The warmth engulfed him. Burned him.
But, somehow, it wasn't the same as the torturing light of her power. It was every bit as gentle as the smile that caused it.
His knees trembled.
"What are you?" he hissed, feeling his claws lengthen to strike her down where she sat, even as his arms refused to move.
The smile fell away as she cocked her head. "I already told you all I know."
And, of course, those blue eyes were guileless.
He ran a hand down his face and found that too was trembling.
Sleep. Sleep sounded nice.
"We're done for now," he pushed out, fighting to stop the quaking from spreading to the rest of his body. "We're going back now. Bed."
"Are you sure you're alright?"
"Oh, shut up."
And with that, he went back to his room and went unconscious almost the moment his head hit his pillow, not caring what she did with herself in the meantime.