Another -25 Feb'12
Disclaimer: G-boys are not saru's... and saru already forgotten the details of the anime too.
chapter 10
The sun already set high enough to warm the air, although the cliff in front of them overshadowed their lying bodies on the damp ground; the soft grass and ferns and new sprouts around them just slowly woke up to welcome the sunlight with the clearing mist. He flexed his wings to chase away some smoky clouds caught between the feathers. The air tinged with sadness and anguish, perhaps the Maggart last night exuded those haunting feelings. A thin coil of familiar agitation tickled his nape.
He felt like Odin was near... as if the man was yelling to some border-men somewhere in the fortress in the area, hidden by the trees. But he knew it was unlikely.
Lazily opening his eyes, he took in the sight of a girly face sleeping soundly in front of his shoulder, using his left upper arm as a pillow; the boy's regular soft breaths warmed his neck and some rebellious strands of the brunette bangs brushed his chin and lips. He pulled his head behind a little, taking a better angle to look at the view. Duo fell asleep since about a couple hours ago, when the sky started to light up to a bleak grey shade; he felt Duo's restless mind the whole night, and he didn't really feel like making interaction with this human; he was just fulfilling part of Odin's duty.
A thin mist caught in the strands of the long braids and between their bodies, he pulled up his right hand and gently waved at the cloudy substance; the mist fluttered in the subtle breeze and coiled away from their entangled forms and disappeared in the warm air.
Duo moaned long and low, then; protesting for the missing hand around his waist and back that had left the places it previously touched felt cold. He scrunched up his face like he was waiting for a sneeze to come out, but then let out an explosive sigh and burrowed his face deeper to the recess under the demon's chin and chest, taking deep savoring breaths of the demon's smell, as if he could inhale those soft unearthly feathers like an addictive drug.
The demon frowned softly, knowing how Duo had reacted to him in the past days, his fascination and overly self-consciousness about his wings too. There's something wrong about this human boy, he was innocently dangerous; like impossibly so, that made others think of him as unlikely to cause harm. That what had made the soldiers escorting this boy caught off guard; not because of the sudden ambush, but this boy's nature. If he wasn't interjecting from between the assaults, he might as well saw this human as just another ignorant boy; charming and lively, perhaps; but not dangerous.
...Charms.
The demon blinked.
May be the boy's amulets were to blame for that... His frown got deeper, not liking the thought forming in his mind. He remembered what the boy said about the amulets; that they could only work within close vicinity towards him.
What kind of human needed so many amulets with him just to be deemed as not-dangerous by his fellow humans...?
As if he needed them to be human... the demon thinned his lips.
And then, a twitching finger.
A sudden pause of breath.
And Duo's eyelids flew open, instantly wide awake.
Pausing for a held breath to escape his slightly parted lips slowly.
"...Heero."
And then came the whisper, gentle and slightly surprised but had such finality in it; almost sounded desperate but resigned in the same time.
The demon blinked and pulled back; Duo gasped and gripped at the jacket's front, caught himself when the demon paused, and then shied away from their arrangement almost in a panic.
"S- sorry, I was half asleep...!" he made an excuse, which sounded like a lie even to his own ears, and sat up presenting his back to the demon, fastening the flies of his cloak and brushing off the leaves and twigs from his braids; his heart beat painfully in his chest, knowing that the demon knew he was already fully awake from the moment he opened his eyes.
"You still have provisions?" the demon stood up and asked evenly.
"Ah- yes...!" Duo looked up from one shoulder, cursing himself at how nervous he sounded.
"We go now, the Maggart's gone; eat on the way."
Duo blinked a couple times at the demon's words, at the content but also at their half-sentenced in the same time. It's like the demon deliberately skipped the explanations and just stuffed the subject-predicate-object rule of three sentences into one sentence. It's even beyond being practical, he thought; but he understood what the demon meant, so he let it passed.
"...you need time?" the demon asked again when Duo just stared at him from the ground.
"Uh- no!" Duo sprang to his feet, staring wide-eyed at the demon like a hungry child eyeing a giant candy; but the demon already turned his back, looking down at his right hand as he flexed its fingers.
They felt numb.
He needed to find Odin before his body stop moving altogether. He reckoned he still had about three days until that happened, saying if they didn't have to face anymore pursuers or monsters that make him waste more life-force to fight or to run.
"...sorry. I used your arm as a pillow the whole night..."
The demon turned his head at the soft apologetic words. Duo stood near the dead fire with his bag already slung on one shoulder across his chest, his two braids tucked neatly on his front, his cloak hood draped loosely covering half his head, letting the bangs freely played by the morning breeze. Several sunbeams passed through the leaves and branches making a surreal background for him as the remaining subtle mist providing the canvas for the lights. Heero wanted to point out that he'd used his left arm to pillow Duo's head and not his right, and that it was him who took the action for it last night, and that he didn't have his blood flowing through his veins to get a cut of circulation, and that he should be the one apologizing for the fact that he made Duo lied on the ground without so much of a covering to shield the dampness from soaking his clothes, and that he didn't mind it since it was a part of Odin's duty too.
But his words never came up to the surface, and the last part was more like an excuse that dulled his reasons. And he found himself captivated by the beauty that human presented ignorantly; and realized what was dangerous about this boy...
A small black butterfly fluttered lightly between them; cutting the distance separating their beings in halve. Duo's eyes caught the sight of it and smiled fondly at the gorgeous small creature. Then he looked at the demon's eyes staring at him mutely.
"Let's go!" he said still with the smile intact.
. . . it was him. His whole being was dangerous.
"So, ...what's a Maggart like?" Duo asked conversationally between his chewing.
"It has-"
"...many forms; I get that part already. Tell me something more specific if I am not allowed to look at it in the eyes...!" Duo cut, and took another bite of the juicy fruit.
The demon didn't say a word for a moment, looking up at a cluster of ripe wild fruits and flexed his right forefinger at the high branch; caught the fruits as they fell onto his waiting hand. He offered them to Duo who walked behind him.
"Thank-you. It's already plenty enough as it is...!" Duo accepted the fruits and added them to the collection he clasped on his chest, which he could barely hold in his arms.
"They're mostly dust-like." the demon said.
"Dust-like?" Duo's right brow arched up in incomprehension.
"In the wind."
". . . like dust in the wind?" Duo said slowly in bafflement.
"Ever see the desert?" the demon asked.
"Umm...no."
"You could imagine the dust carried by the wind when it blows through the surface of the sand?"
"Ah! I guess I get it...!" Duo brightened. "So... it has windy-form?" Duo asked hesitantly. "With eyes?"
"They took forms of animals, habitually the form of horn-lions; but sometimes of other animals you had never seen too."
"I've never seen a horn-lion..." Duo quipped matter-of-factly.
"It's sand-colored."
Duo sweat-dropped at the adequate explanation; "...and?"
"And big."
To Duo's relief, the demon's words didn't stop there.
"And has multiple horns sticking out from between its mane."
"Oh, I get-"
"But you wouldn't see Maggarts like that..." the demon cut Duo's victorious tone. "Maggarts were formed from many life-forms, so you might classify their shapes as chimera-like."
"...oh..." Duo's excitement downed.
"And you might find human faces in them, too."
Duo didn't say another word at that, already feeling overwhelmed with the possibility that the Maggart had more than the pair of eyes on the front of its face. He didn't like the idea that he found a tail of the thing's staring at him with eyes and marked him for life as its prey.
"And sometimes you find more of human parts coiled in its body in such absurd way."
"I get it already...! If there's something like that, just shut my eyes and play dead until it's gone, right?" Duo flustered. The demon turned behind to look at him levelly, but it still made Duo embarrassed by his outburst.
"Its body usually looked like coiling cloud of dust with an animal shape; it wouldn't look distorted with too many faces or eyes if it's not bothered. You don't need to worry about accidently staring at its eyes too much."
Now you tell me that...! Duo stared the demon's level face with a hard look.
"...but if you do..." the demon continued sounding hesitant enough; he paused mid-sentence and stared at Duo closely, and then turned forward and resumed his walk.
It left Duo blinking with half gaping mouth. "...'If I do', what...?" Duo demanded the rest of the explanation.
"Call out to your dead ones." the demon said unexcitedly, as if being bored.
"Dead ones?"
"Like your dead family; or your ancestors."
"...my ancestors?" Duo asked sounding more and more skeptical.
"You have parts of your ancestors inside you. Every living being has."
"Umm... will that help?" Duo asked sounding like a child.
"Just pray that miraculously one of your ancestors was someone who had survived an encounter with a Maggart."
"Tha... That's like..." Duo's face contorted in a skeptical grimace and a matter-of-factly frown; "...throwing empty buckets to try put down the fire because you don't find water...!"
The demon paused and glanced at Duo for a moment before continuing, "Names have power in them. At least you should belief your parents' names hold prayers for their descendants to live on."
This time Duo paused. He cocked his head to the side, mulling at the demon's reasoning; he didn't know what it's like with the demons' naming system, but he didn't think humans gave a child a name so that the child's descendants could later live on and on, or to survive hardships when the necessity comes; or prayers for the generations to come, for that matter. What kind of absurd names would it produce? Something like 'Longlive Ye Heirs of Strongwilled Purehearts Grace of Powerful Farmer'...?
At the time his eyes caught the sight of the demon's feet pausing, and he looked up to see the demon's eyes looking at him; he felt sheepish with his own thought and chuckled at the demon with a big grin, though the merriment didn't reach his eyes.
"Hey, supposing..." Duo's grin fell a bit; "...I don't know my family; then what? Though I don't think calling out my dead parents' names, if I knew them, would help in any way. You said a Maggart consumed the mind before killing its prey, right? What would it good-"
"Knowing the root of your existence helps center yourself; inside you there's a collection of your ancestors life-experiences, like small grains of dust coiling in your core. In a sense you're the same with a Maggart, only difference is that you still have your body to house all those lives that formed you. If you face a Maggart and it pull your awareness into it; center your consciousness to your core... you'll find that at least one of your ancestors would want you to survive and lend you their life-experience to pass the ordeal." the demon paused and added an afterthought, "...May be."
"May be?" Duo frowned with a bothered face. After all that lengthy absurd explanation that somehow started to make sense, he just had to break the hope that started growing in his heart, now?
"I don't know your ancestors and their life-experiences." the demon walked again.
Duo gave a loose grinning-grimace with drooped eyes; what could be more wrong with the demon's logics after all that?
"Like... hey; I couldn't possibly list all of my known ancestors and call out their names when the need comes...!" Duo resumed his walking too, while putting the rest of the fruits into his bag.
"You can't?" the demon turned sharply and that was the most close-to-normal conversational tone the demon made, Duo noted to himself.
"W- ...well..." Duo stuttered a little by the weight of the almost-surprised look on the demon's usually mask-like face. "...I don't know demon's naming system, but with humans... you don't find we have prayer-like names that could come in handy for the generations to come whenever they met dangerous situations, right?"
The demon paused, seemingly mulling at his words.
"Your Blood, or your Life, doesn't have a name...?" the demon asked in half-incomprehension, then.
Duo blinked a couple times in reflex of his thinking process; "...My blood? You mean my bloodline, like family name...?"
"No. More like..." the demon frowned a little. "...your soul... It should have your ancestor's name in it."
"So you mean I should call out to my soul's name if I had one...?" Duo's mind got into another dead loop with the reasoning.
"...Never mind; if you don't have it." the demon presented his back to Duo again; though to Duo's eyes, it was his baffled back. "Then, if you see a Maggart and it hasn't seen you, you could play dead. But if it sees you, even if you haven't seen it in the eyes; run and prepare to die! A Maggart's claws could rip even the toughest rocks or alloys to shreds like it was paper."
"EEEEHH? You could have said that in the first place...!" Duo objected.
And paused.
"...what do you mean 'run and prepare to die'...?" he asked accusingly.
The demon didn't say anything to that; his mind pointed out that humans were ignorantly leaving themselves vulnerable, no wonder they were very paranoid about having the war with the demons to start again... but it might just because the demons had different knowledge with things; and longer life spans to learn more than what a human could learn in all his lifetime.
Besides...
Demons had their ancestors' knowledge as they're passed to them from generation to generation; eventhough they're limited to the knowledge which the ancestors willing to pass down. It's like they didn't need to learn to read spells or the sky, the knowledge was already in their minds. Humans didn't do that; their beings developed individually and knowledge had to be taught and learned with interactions and comprehension, not by legacy carried in the blood. Demons were not individuals; they're the extensions of another demon from the past.
Humans, in the other hand, were such imperfect creatures in many ways... yet the ones facing extinction were his kind.
Why is that...?
". . . extinction by choice." he muttered softly.
"You said something...?" Duo asked loud enough still with a bothered face, not about the demon's words but about the difference in their logics; his mind took more time then what he'd like to digest the demon's explanation, it made him felt left out and inferior; and he didn't like to lose in certain aspects of life, like no compromise...ever. Such as..., he frowned to himself; when dealing with demons.
Because he should be a victor in that area...
A sense of justification crept from his inner-self at the thought; a flush of relief then washed over him, like a sighing that came from within to the center, swallowing all worries and anxiety as if they were prey.
Yes.
His core should understand what the demon was talking about; with that in mind Duo decided that he didn't have anything to worry about... for now.
Odin put his hands on his hips and stared at the stones they had set up. 'Rudd' had specifically told them what to do to make the arrangements; although Odin had started with half the heart, his perfectionist streak had driven him to do it faultless as told. While the devil was watching them from the side of the clearing still with his annoying smile intact.
"That's perfect, Commander. Thank-you for your hard work...!" 'Rudd' smiled wider; the Lieutenant and the three soldiers from this morning turned their heads from where they were standing after setting the obelisks on their places.
"What are we going to do from here?" Odin asked with a frown, his mind was still thinking that he didn't like doing this.
"We'll capture the Maggart here; at the center." 'Rudd' pointed to where Odin was standing.
"...And?" Odin asked, seemingly dissatisfied with that action.
"And we don't let it leave." 'Rudd' chuckled as if finding Odin's reaction funny.
Odin's frown got deeper; "So you just needed help with the stones?"
"Ah... You're going to say that being a Shepherd I should be able to make the beasts around here moved the obelisks for me, right?" the peasant's face smiled merrily; "But I told you I don't deal with real animals...!"
"Besides, we use this place because no animals had trudged on it." 'Rudd' walked over to the center, nearing Odin.
"No animals at all?" Odin asked flatly, just wanting to get a pressure of that statement from the peasant.
"None, whatsoever. They're afraid of the smell." 'Rudd' smiled calmly.
"Hah! Why so?" Odin sniggered cynically and turned around after giving the stone arrangement a cursorily glance; and was surprised finding 'Row' stared him with narrowed eyes almost a breath away from his face.
"This is the ground of 'hatred blood'... Commander!" 'Row' hissed slowly with silky almost enjoying tone.
Odin widened his eyes with a hard look; the peasant took a step back from Odin's front pulling along a bloody grass-like leaf from the man's stomach. "This is where we made human sacrifice." 'Row' said levelly, watching Odin fell to his knees holding his fresh wound.
"If you move around, your bleeding will get worsen; this leaf here is the opposite kind for stopping hemorrhaging." 'Row' said turning his back and walked to the edge of the circling stones. "Your demon should be able to know when you got life-threatening wounds, right?"
"I told you to pay more respect to your own value; this is where you come in handy. So shut it!" hissing out the last part, 'Row' narrowed his eyes at Cail who had a sword at his neck when he reached the edge. The Lieutenant paused at the intense cold gaze, knowing the peasant could care less what would happen to them if anything gone wrong; he didn't want to provoke the 'crazy' peasant, and his logics told him to see what the peasant would do from here and take action later when he judge it necessary.
Odin che-ed with a dark grimace, looking at the bloody hand, noticing how diluted his blood was as it gush out in a large stream; "You... the brew from this morning...!" Odin hissed.
"We'll wait for awhile..." 'Row' said calmly, apathetically; all the while still staring sharply at Cail's eyes. "When your demon comes, I'll give you something for that small wound."
Odin chuckled, then; a sinister deep laugh loud enough to make the soldiers took a step back and Cail pulled back his unsheathed sword from the peasant's neck.
"YOU THINK I'M A GIRL WHO NEEDS PROTECTION, BOOOY?" Odin sprang to his feet in one fluid motion and posing his most deadly glare with euphoria pumping adrenaline to his whole body making him leer widely. Cail took a step back from his standing point by the outer edge of the array; for certain things, Odin was notoriously known as berserker, and he'd had more than just one brush with his superiors which what made him never leveled up within the ranks... there were rumors that even the General himself feared him, and The Master kept him sheltered in the Palace as a war-dog-on-the-leash just so he wouldn't gain power to overthrow the government, which meant they thought he could do just that. That he had more enemies even in the Palace more than the vultures-to-the-throne.
Right after Odin straightened his posture, a gust of sharp wind hit his back and then a huge animal-like form of wafting sand-colored smoke appeared from nowhere behind him; Odin could see the thing's shape from its shadow casted by the still oblique sunlight making the shadow looked longer than the real thing. His mind instantly processed the situation and came up with a conclusion, if it had shadow than it was substantial. He was about to pull his sword and lash at the thing behind him, but the peasant's booming voice stopped him from moving.
"STAY BEHIND YOUR STONES AND DON'T LOOK AT ITS EYES!" the peasant yelled, his presented back looked rigid and exuding a very thick anger at the thing, and he made sure that the soldiers were in the safe spots; that much Odin could sum up, so he didn't take the first move. The peasant smirked to himself, "Do you know what was special about you, Commander? That blood full of life-force that enticed that demon of yours to submit to you...!"
And he chuckled pleasingly; "So if you could pull at least one of them out of there, I'd be most grateful...!" 'Rudd' said softly. Then he placed his palm at the side of the stone Cail used as a shield, still presenting his back to the center of the stone array. "...The cage of four-corner stones..."
Cail gaped when he realized the peasant was reciting a spell of some sort; "My Commander is still there...!" he hissed with hard voice, but he gasped when a stinging power pulled his back flat to the stone surface; some surprised yelps told him that his three soldiers too experienced the same thing, likely because the peasant told them to hide behind the stones that they reflexively placed their backs on those obelisks. Cail cursed in his mind when he realized that the peasant had them played on his hand all along, he focused his mind to wait for his moment to free himself as he felt that surge of lashing power ripped his spines and made him immobile, even he had to fight to keep his breathing.
...or maybe, that surge of power was his life-force pulled out from his body.
Odin stood still when the ground under his feet reverberated with pulses, he could feel the Maggart's 'breathing' behind his head making the sounds like roaring fire, only it was freezing cold and exuding unpleasant feeling that made him feel sickened. He could feel the thing's form was bigger than the mountain-broughams and was taller than himself, probably twice his height. The wild air around them told Odin that the body was solid enough and he probably couldn't do anything much with his sword; his ears never picked up any feed like this even once in his whole life, it was rock solid and intangible at the same time; one but many, calm but boiling... He closed his eyes to hear more, centering his concentration to search the Maggart's weak point if it had any.
The obelisks gave out a synchronized ringing as it pulsated with power, the circling winds picked up in speed, the leaves of the trees around the clearing rustled along with the gusting power.
The Maggart stood still behind Odin, breathing heavily as if it was petrified by hunger.
Odin's brows twitched when his ears picked up something more than just the winds and ringing and rustling leaves... something like screeching; no, screaming...!
Voices!
He heard voices from inside the Maggart's body... screaming... frightened girls... females of all ages...!
A distinctive single voice reached his ears, but he couldn't make out the words.
At the same time, the grounds started shaking like an earthquake had struck; 'Rudd' was in the middle of his incantation, and he widened his eyes when he realized something was coming their way. "No! It's too early...!" He turned around and yelled in panic; "STOOOP! YOU'LL ANGER IT...!" and extending his right hand to the center as far as he could before in an exploding second a large long pair of jaws with pointy uncountable teeth along their lengths emerging from the ground and closed, trapping the Maggart inside.
Cail was freed from the stone almost with a pushing jerk, he gasped in a much needed air but his body was already half way into action. "Commander...!" he wanted to call out but his lungs only provided him with enough air to hiss it out.
The long jaws belonged to an enormous creature looking like ... worm; that much his baffled mind supplied him with. A nasty looking worm formed of white bone-like skin and a crocodile's muzzle only without eyes and nostrils. The creature's long body (or probably still the neck part) pushed itself out of the ground with its momentum, and it was towering in the center of the array a good five- no, six stories high; almost as high as the Palace's barbican. Some pieces of the soil, large and small, were falling from its mouth; Cail watched with horror when his logics told him to search for streaming blood on the creature's jaws too that should belong to his Commander. Petrified for a couple of seconds, his brain finally able to link all the information flooding in; with a disbelieving smirk, almost looking like he was actually disappointed, Cail's eyes found Odin stood undisturbed on the place he was at before the creature surged out from the ground, still closing his eyes in calm concentration and looking mighty... But that can't be; his logic mocked him. It's true that only the ground around Odin was still intact, forming a circle of calmness compared to the chaos around it; even the creature's body dispersed into gills-like or feather-like limbs opened up around him almost like the opened fingers of two hands.
"Ha... ha ha... haa...!" Cail laughed with wide eyes, a crooked un-merry laugh but he knew now why other people feared his Commander behind the man's back; saying things like he's the cursed-child or luck-eater or other people's jinx. Perhaps the man himself didn't realize it... something like what Cail was witnessing now must have happened before too, right?
A shout broke his thought.
"STOOOP! IT WILL EAT YOU TOOO...!" Lui was the one screaming with desperate tone, he had fallen to his knees a couple steps into the array when the ground broke. And as if hearing its cue, the Maggart exploded inside the creature's mouth.
Like a blow of sand with wild living-like tendrils shooting out from between the creature's teeth, it clutched the jaws tightly like an immovable harness. The creature tried to shake it loose, but the Maggart's clutch seemed to only becoming tighter with each effort.
"Uwaah...-!" one of the soldiers managed to yelp when the ground started to shake harder and cracked to the outer edge of the array, making the obelisks lurched to every sides unsteadily; they somehow realized it collectively that the stones must not tumbled over or they'd meet their demise; so greeting their teeth, they pushed their feet onto the breaking ground and willed the stones on their backs to be steady, acting as the stones supports instead, including Cail who somehow was half disappointed that now he couldn't witness things happening around his Commander with his own eyes anymore.
A single pulse reverberated from the stones when their will united; the men felt it as if the stones on their back were four parts of a big heart... they could feel small pulsations tapping their spines in steady rhythm, the cold of the uneven rock surface gradually turned warmer with each beat. A sudden realization hit them then; a fear more freezing than the fact that they had a Maggart ran berserk behind their stones... was that the stones were actually living-things. When they closed their eyes, they could see it in their minds how there were shining veins in the rocks, transporting their life-force from their backs into the core of the stones where the 'hearts' beat.
And then gentle, transparent white hands touched their shoulders from behind, helping them to steady the obelisks.
Lui gasped when the ground around the creature exploding white-light like a geyser, following the cracks of the ground to where the stones were. He stared wide-eyed as the air was filled with raining light, like it was snowing. The geyser-light made a form of seal on the ground; Lui had a split second to cover his ears before the creature burst into light with a deafening screech.
Odin furrowed his brows deeper in concentration, he didn't really understand what was happening behind and around him; all he could sense was that there was a burst of warm puffy-like substance raining down on him. He could picture it white colored, and light as it swayed in the wind; like cottony seeds of flowers in the springtime where he used to chase around without a care in the world when he was still a snotty brat. Right... His mind brought him back to that flower field, leaving the shattering ground and screeching air behind him.
A horror-filled scream broke his trance.
And it was heard again, high-pitched desperate cry that shook everyone's soul upon hearing it.
Odin opened his eyes instantly as the screams sounded getting near and nearer his back, as if it tried to reach him. He spun around and reflexively extended his right hand towards that scream, and got petrified when he witnessed the coiling tendrils of sand and what appeared to be shining white-shoots that were sprouting from the grounds, making grand arcs like a bizarre cupola; twisting and writhing on the center-arc as they tried to subdue each other. A whiff of feather-light touch brushed the ends of his reached-out hand, it felt familiar like when he'd accidently touched his demon's feathers; he sought it without thinking and gripped the air... and then wisps of white smoke wafted from between his knuckles, swirling wildly as if being pulled by the coiling sand-tendrils of the Maggart.
It was quivering in fright..., Odin realized.
...the white smoke.
It's like it was alive; like if he gripped it tightly without letting it escaping from between his fingers it would feel like a frail hand.
"-Pu... Pull her out of there...!" Lui cried out, pleadingly; while bracing himself on four and tried to move forward on the quaking debris.
Odin jerked from his petrifaction, and his body moved as told before his mind realizing what he was doing. Putting his body weight behind his back, he pulled as hard as he could, and was expecting his body to tumble behind with the momentum. But the pull from the twisting coils was too strong it seemed; half dangling by his hand, Odin kicked his feet backpedalling from the center of the clearing; if it was himself witnessing someone else doing what he did, he'd probably make a remark like that person looked like he was fighting control over a bizarre kite and was pathetically losing the game.
Gritting his teeth, groaning with the effort and growling with the building frustration... And then slowly, wanly, the quivering smoke started to gather around his tightly clutching fingers. Odin recognized the sensation all too well, the unearthly softness that evaporated when he touched it, wafting and coiling on his skin as his fingers ran through it... At that moment, his heart whispered the fear into his mind; that the worst possibility was that his demon was already fallen prey to the Maggart.
With an angry shout Odin pulled his hand, even if the force would rip it off of his shoulder. He could backed away a small step behind, and then another larger step; the twisting force in the center became restless and he felt like his soul was about to be sucked out of his chest. Suddenly as if the writhing Maggart took a breaking gasp, the pulling force slowed down for a second; Odin's body lurched backward with the momentum, and he stared wide-eyed as he saw what he was pulling all along. It was a little girl made of smoke.
"-Liya! Liyaa!" Lui called out in haste and tried to get on his feet and moved towards Odin. "Pull her out! Please, pull her ouuut!" Lui plead in panic, he knew he couldn't make it in time to get to where Odin stood... -or in the middle of tumbling behind, to be exact.
And as if mocking his desperate plea; the gasping Maggart suddenly pulled her again with multiplied force, sucking in even the arching shining-shoots suspending the writhing sands to the ground into its coiling body.
Odin's body yanked forward again before it managed to fall to the ground, an excruciating pain shot out from his arm joints and he heard several crack-sounds reaching his ears in the same time, numbing his mind.
The smoky little girl called Liya, sought Lui's face in dread. She cried something out but her voice couldn't be heard between the billowing winds and the unearthly groaning-cry the Maggart made. Lui ran towards her fumblingly, he knew she'd let Odin's hand go because this time the man would be sucked in by the force too. And while letting go her grip, she screamed desperately to him.
Odin fell on his back with a groan, gritting his teeth in anger that he couldn't do it like he was asked, like he wanted. The smoky-girl stared at him now, knowing that her voice couldn't reach the young peasant; she tried screaming the same thing to Odin, trying to claw on the invisible air to stop herself from being sucked into the angry Maggart. But her resistance was futile, and the Maggart mocked her effort by coiling several tendrils of sands around her rapidly wafting body and pulled her instantly.
Odin heard her screams in his mind when she vanished from sight; then the other screams from all those females meant that there were others beside her inside that thing, he realized. Stood up with a renewed anger, Odin pulled his sword out and charged at the coiling chaos, intending to rip that thing apart, even without knowing how to do it.
Lui lost his fervor when the Maggart swallowed Liya back; he was sitting on the ground half kneeling supported by his hands. He knew what the girl was trying to say to him, what she told him to do; he didn't have to actually hear the words. Looking half bewildered and petrified at the same time, he stood still watching Odin fighting the sand tendrils and slashing at the boiling core. He heard the cracks of the obelisks as they broke and started to crumble; he heard the yelps of the men as they freed from the stones and were gasping for air on the grounds, as they bewilderedly watching what their Commander was fighting against and couldn't will or summon any strength or bravery to join the brawl.
Lui straightened himself, sitting on his bent legs; his shoulders sagged as if he'd lost the fight already.
"...You! Do something!" Cail shouted, out of breath and looking like he was about to collapse from fatigue; "What should I do?" He was kneeling and still tried to keep the rest of his obelisk standing.
Lui glanced behind with dead eyes at the man; he smiled a goodbye-smile and shook his head. Cail was about to shout his anger at the young man, but Lui already resigned; taking the Druid dagger from the waistband behind his back, he stabbed his left palm with the pointy end of dagger handle.
"...I'm sorry..." he muttered, pulling the dagger from his hand and letting the blood dripped onto the ground. "Please, die...!"
He smiled.
Cail gaped in disbelief.
The light from the ground instantly died.
The arcing lights started to solidify with multiple cracking sounds, turning to wood-like substance with broken uneven surface. Just when Odin was slammed to the ground and about to get stabbed by a sand tendril, uncountable white-shoots sprouting from the ground, twisting and coiling and solidifying instantly. Odin knew he had to get away from there and was fighting his way out between the sprouting shoots and breaking debris and the still flailing tendrils of the Maggart. He didn't really care when he was eventually crawling on four and knew his men might be watching him doing so; and then the quakes subsided...and the wind stopped billowing.
When he thought he'd reached the ground where he didn't find shoots sprouting around him, he turned his body around, still crawling on the ground, fell to sit when he realized the sight presented before him. A white giant tree stood gloriously on the center of the clearing, just where the core of the fight should have been; undoubtedly trapping the Maggart inside its coiling trunks; some parts of them were transparent and glass-like, while the others were glazed with white-smoky color. It's like the tree was an ice-carving. Its canopy was fully made of flowers; the petals were white and luminescent, shining a green light on their surface. They lightly rained down with the wind, marking the calmness on its wake.
The flower scent filled the air, infiltrating the men's minds and their consciousness.
Odin thought he saw the Maggart's tendrils frozen inside the transparent trunks before his surroundings turned completely white.
"...-Ow! Sorry!" Duo said reflexively when he bumped his face to Heero's back; although it was the demon who suddenly stopped in front of him.
Took two steps back, Duo asked while rubbing his face; "What is it? You surprised me...!"
The demon didn't immediately reply; instead, he flicked his wings half opened from under the hat-flaps. Duo half-jerked half-shivered when he saw the fluttering feathers; he knew the demon realized it that he reacted too much to his wings, but he was grateful that the said demon looked like he didn't mind it at the time.
Wait.
But that's not right; demons should be overly self-conscious about their wings all the time...! His mind reminded.
"Heero...?" Duo moved to his side and braved himself to poke at the demon's shoulder. "What's wrong?"
The demon looked baffled and (almost) shocked himself to a whiter-shade if he hadn't already dead-pale. He took times to opened his lips and found his voice.
". . . . . . . . . Odin-" he whispered breathlessly.
"-gone . . . !"
"What?" Duo blinked rapidly in incomprehension, and jerked his hand away when the demon's wings suddenly fanned out and closed tightly on the sides of his face violently; he almost expected to hear a slapping sound when that happened. And without a warning, the demon's body fell forward like a puppet cut off from its strings.
"-Whoaa!" Duo yelped catching him mid-fall. "What? What happened?" Duo asked aloud in panic, realizing the demon was somewhat unconscious; "Someone tell me what's happeniiiing...!" His hysterical voice only made some birds fly from the trees in surprise.
"-Finally!" a relieved face looming above him when he opened his stinging eyes; "We thought you wouldn't wake up at all...!"
Blinked.
That should be the face of one of the bedridden soldiers.
Frowned.
He looked okay, though... only some scrapes and light bandages around his neck and arms.
"...you okay?" he asked at the soldier; who froze for several seconds before turning his body swiftly.
"Miiiiiiisssss, my Commander lost his miiiiind! Please help hi-...! Owh!" A boot to his head stopped his yelling.
"...the hell? What do you mean I lost my mind...?" Odin growled and sat up; a shot of multiple pains stopped him from moving and he let out a small groan; and cursed angrily when he realized the soldier heard it.
The said soldier shrunk on the floor holding his abused head, avoiding the man's eyes knowing Odin was undoubtedly glaring death at him.
"Waaah, it's good that you're finally conscious, Commander...!" A little girl came bouncingly with her light steps from the stairs to the first floor, she had a tray filled with a mug and two small bowls of colorful pill-like candies... or candy-like pills; that made Odin frowned deeper.
She cheerfully hummed a song while checking Odin's wounds; and Odin realized with surprise.
"...Liya?" he whispered.
The girl stopped and stared at Odin's eyes; then smiled a full bright-smile, nodding her answer.
"Wha-..." Odin gaped.
"Here, please finish all of them...!" Liya shoved the tray to Odin's hands; "You're the last one to wake up; your men were already saying prays for you, you know?" she grinned; while the soldier still on the floor looked pale and shook his head hastily with a wide gaping mouth.
Odin stared at the man and to Cail who poked his head from the stairway and nodded to him, cueing for Odin to follow him.
Turning his face to the still smiling girl, Odin asked; "What are these?"
"Candy, of course." she said lightly.
Odin stared her accusingly; "Why do I need to finish up some candies-...?"
"Just do it, already!" Liya poured the bowls contents into the steaming mug and forced it to Odin's mouth.
Odin eyed her with a subdued irritation and gulped the warm water down. The candy-pills have somewhat melted a little into smaller gel-like goo bullets on the base of the mug. He downed it all and made a loud strange belching/retching sound with a pale face in the end.
"...whaaat was thaaaaats?" he asked robot-like failing a death-glare to the smiling girl.
"The mug content was a very effective one-dose-only medicine that could do wonders just take a look at your subordinates but tastes verrrrry bitter so I brought you some pill-shaped candies to ease the bitter aftertaste but thought that you might not like sweets too much so I brought along some bitter candy-colored pills to ease the strong sweet taste of the candies so you could finish the medicine first and take the candy and pill in turns to ease the tastes... ah, I forgot about that, but it's faster that way, right?" she said cheerfully.
Odin eyed the girl with drooping accusing eyes and gaping mouth, hadn't really decided whether to get angry or just pretend he didn't hear the reason why he had to take some medicine two times bitter than it was supposed to be... and the candy did leave strange aftertaste, after all. But since it already happened, he let it passed; and decided he should check what Cail wanted to show him instead.
Liya chuckled pleasingly and offered her small hand to help Odin get up from the bed. He took her offered hand just to make sure it was the same hand he'd gripped in its smoky form; but he couldn't really tell.
A fast inspection of the room told Odin that it was exactly the second floor of the peasant's house... -the peasant's sister's house...! He corrected his thought.
But something felt different...
"Liyaaa! Come help us with this...!" a woman's voice called out from outside the window.
"Yeeeess!" she called out and nodded to Odin when she let his hand go and trotted bouncingly downstairs.
Odin frowned at the window and gave a full death glare at the soldier when he offered him a hand to walk around. While putting on his boots, he realized that he wasn't as wounded as he was supposed to; his body was just extremely tired as if his life-force was forcefully sucked out of him.
He frowned grudgingly at the idea.
The soldier followed him downstairs and joined the others on the table; Odin left them and followed Cail who waited for him by the front door.
"Something's different." Odin muttered to the Lieutenant, eyeing the ladies being busy with their daily routine on the single road and their houses... the houses that looked never been abandoned at all. "Are we dead?"
"I don't know, Sir; but you should check this...!" Cail walked outside the house towards the end of the road, which was barricaded by a high cliff made of ice-like crystal, with clear transparent parts and white-glazed parts intermingled into some kind of woven wall. Two stone pillars stood at either sides of the road end; he remembered them like they were the picture of an enemy's face leering with a mocking grin at him.
"The four-corner stones...!" Odin muttered. Cail nodded beside him. "Did you check the other end of this road?" Odin pointed the single road with his chin.
"I had two of the soldiers to do so, Sir. They said the other two are there; and the cliff too." Cail answered softly.
"This crystal-like cliff..." Odin rubbed his white-bearded chin in thinking; "We're inside that tree?" he asked with a teeth-baring grimace.
"I don't know, Sir." Cail frowned, and continued when Odin stared at him with dissatisfaction; "What I can tell you, Sir; is that you were most likely the last one to have lost consciousness in that fight, that made you the last one to wake up here."
Odin silenced already thinking about that before the Lieutenant said it. "You don't find him here?" he said it like a question but Cail knew his Commander already known it as a fact.
"No, Sir. All this village's residents are females."
"Really...?" Odin smirked at the cliff; "I wonder if our young Shepherd actually know this place, at all. Didn't he say his sister was gone somewhere?"
"About that..."
"I know. There were no paintings or anything of animal-like in that house." Odin cut. There were not even the sounds of chirping birds, much less the sight of a living animal anywhere. Their horses weren't there; and most noticeably, the Lessard wasn't anywhere in sight...!
"Sir." Cail scooted over towards him; "This place might look similar to that village, but it must be a different place, all together." he said low at his Commander; as if afraid one of the ladies caught him saying it.
Odin gave him the stare. Cail looked unnerved for a moment.
"Of course it is! This thing didn't exist over there...!" he said matter-of-factly and slapped his palm on that cliff.
A booming shattering-glass sound instantly filled the air.
Odin jerked in surprise and reflexively covered his hurting ears. Next to him Cail did the same, already down on his knees as if he couldn't stand it. The soldiers came rushing out of the house covering their ears with various grimace on their faces; some of them looked pained and the other looked like they were just being disturbed by the loud unending sounds and two of them just looked down right surprised.
The ladies stopped their activities immediately and stared at them, wide-eyed as if having been caught in the act, but they smiled gently in the end.
All of them.
...A parting smile; Odin realized.
Thanks for reading, and for being patient with this weird-monkey.
Saru's note:
...if you noticed the date up there... yes it's written 25th february...! But, duh...!
(these things written down here would be complaints and all... that's your warning)
so, we had this project for an entry for a comic exhibition in Canada (said our editor), which the entry-date should be ended on 31st March; and despite given the project briefing still from January, we only started making it 3 weeks before our deadline on 10th March because we had other novels to be illustrated and all, while the entry should be 32 pages of printed comic...that was, we started around the last two-weeks of February... heheh...
thus, lining the work at 2-3 pages per day, we got ahead of schedule on 25th Feb and Oni-tan said she wanted to photo-hunt a cosplay event on the next day (26th Feb)... which was why saru thought to take the night off to write some fic...
annnnnnnd saru should've known that saru is always have this 'instant-kualat'-cloud looming above head (Javanese word loosely translated as 'cursed').
on 26th Feb, Oni-tan came back in the evening (or was it night...? -forgotten- ...forget it!) saying she's not feeling well because she said she got herself under the rain on the way home; and taking the next day off only uploading some works at an internet-rental in the neighborhood, the next day she got sick for over a week. bedridden. off-work. off-schedule.
and saru worked alone trying to keep track with our deadline.
on 6th March Oni-tan got back to her tracing table, saying she got adrenaline pumped up her veins for the rest of the project;
while saru on the brink of fatality said 'give back my life-fooooooorce...!' (loosely translated as 'the several-milimeters- thick of flesh under my skin -specially on the back- which was eventually collected after about a year-span of not pushing self too much that has now gone showing this rib cage again only in a week-span') . . . . . . . and everyone keep pointing at saru that saru is too thin...
well, duh... knew that already...!
Bah...!
fearing that Oni-tan wouldn't make it to the deadline...
saru already made most of the work including hers, too... T.T talking about ironic...!
so when she started again, we only had 5 pages more to go... (aaawh, my life-fooorce...! come baaaack...!)
and, the 10th March fell on Saturday, right?
saru thought while Oni-tan came back all-recharged and pumped-up, saru could take a couple days off getting drown in some too-sweet-milk-coffee and all that (kualat-asking as usual) things... and hand the comic on Monday. and somehow got too lazy making the last 2-pages without any reason...
on 10th March, around 4PM, our editor called... informing that the entry to the exhibition should be a 32-pages-oneshot only; which meant a work of 32-pages as part of a longer-pages of work WOULDN'T be accepted; which meant that our work of the first-two-chapters of originally 130-pages comic work was ABORTED.
-insert jaw-drop here-
and so he asked if we could alter it into a 32-pages oneshot instead.
and he said he's very sorry that he got the announcement via email just last night, that he'd got stressed by it too that he didn't go to work that day... and saru said it's alright, we're thankful for the opportunity instead and wouldn't want to miss it.
Right? (of course it is so.)
and after adding several balloons here and there on the finished pages... changing some dialogues a page or two... saru could get it down to 8 pages to be remade from scratch...plus an additional cover that was only so-so. (yaaaay! life-coffee-force!)
so the editor said he could manage it if we hand the work at least on 20th March, but as we're paranoid-monkeys, we tried finishing it as fast as we could and hand it on Friday the 16th.
saru was barely had an hour to sleep that day and was half-alive when we got to the office... and just couldn't really live it when the editor (and his colleagues) -seemed to- praise our work, and just stared the surrounding with a frozen half-grimacing smile with wide half-sleeping eyes like a dakochan (that was... an already extinct-type children toy of cheap rubber doll sold here before there were plastic dolls in the market)
...and there was this trial-printed pages of another comics lying there on the editor's table, and just so happened saru half-aware-ly took it and read, and it was a shounen-type of GREAT work made by one of the local comic-masters who was 'imported' from another city just to make that comic (with another bunch of some masters-gang, too), which was already listed for a launching after the MOVIE entered the local cinemas, which was (heard on the news later on) already bought by Hollywood to be...-oh, you know what should be the rest of that-
okay, so the dakochan thought 'what's so great about our work compared to that, now? it's just some comic-like drawings in pages made by some monkeys pretending to be some comic-illustrators; I don't even feel like we deserve the praises you guys gave for our work...bla bla bla'
Right?
-slap the negative-monkey-
(although it was loosely translated as 'can we go home now so I can have some sleep, please?' in dakochan language...)
hm? wait...
the exhibition starts on April... so... those-things should be on their walls now...
ha hah... -insert dakochan-smile here-
-hide to watch some anime-
(for no reason saru had a weird dream today, that a colleague from the museum-gig about a year ago who's an illustrator from UK came visiting saru's house... which was highly-unlikely, ever. now that saru think of it... he was probably in the exhibition and saw those-things on their walls...?)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . euhhhhh . . .
-insert dakochan here-