Lucky Souls
Chapter 14: Sustained by Hate
"Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove, that hill and valley, dale and field, and all the craggy mountains yield." Magically bewitching were the lyrics that escaped her breathless lips as she sang cheerlessly, seeking any measure of hope to rid herself of the crushing anguish which poisoned her heart.
The domineering gloss of inky smoke that loomed over the dell, roaring flames that melted the buildings to ash, and the pools of maroon essence that seeped from the bodies of her loved ones hauntingly. Screams of terror echoed in the air, the crackle of white hot lightning in the skies above, thunderous winds and vicious rainstorms as cold as ice not enough to douse the flames that spread so callously.
Within her blurry tear-caked gaze, her eyes shakily fell upon her mother, lifeless and silent, her crumpled body lazily forming a shield around her dear daughter, shielding her from the evil that sinned upon their quiet dell.
Sword in hand, and courage steeled into aged body, the girl's father had tried desperately to face the depraved beings, only to find the same abysmal eternity of death at his heel.
Her gentle cyan eyes stung mercilessly with leaky tears, her tiny body was broken in more ways than one. Here she sat alone, the blood of her mother staining her bosom, the howling of her father as he met his end sounding within her, for some time.
The carnage ended, as all times of sorrow must, and in the wake of the terror she found she could barely brave an inch, her caved-in knee saw to that quite cruelly.
Death was hard to understand for one as pure and young as she, but she knew life wasn't worth living without her treasured loved ones; it seemed so empty and hollow, without purpose.
Smoothly unburying her body from her mother's shadowing form, the adolescent girl steadily sprawled herself onto the musty wooden ground of her cottage, helplessly crawling like an infant towards the outside world.
Surveying the horror wordlessly, she felt the croak of salty tears wish to fume from her yet again, but found they would not.
The sadness she felt could not be expunged by any simple means, crying would not relieve her of the stress she holed up inside, the only thing she could hope for was the sweet release of a painless death.
"Patty-Chan…? Patty-Chan, wake up."
Dragging her mangled limb behind her, a brilliant and sunny summer's day sky reflected within her eyes, ignorant to the horror that had beset her hamlet but hours ago. It seemed in the grand scheme of things, the death of her friends and family meant nothing, the destruction of all she held dear meant absolutely nothing in the steady flow of time.
"Patty-Chan! She's just…no she's alright Tsukasa, she's just unconscious. Patty-Chan please you need to wake up, they're coming."
Was it luck or chance that had damned her? Was it fate or destiny that made these sorrows reality? Did her tormentors enjoy defiling the boundless peace that held her home in its affable grip?
Pointless questions begetting pointless answers she didn't wish to know, what had passed was done, what her future held would never be the same. As she lay upon the soggy soil, surrounded by demolished buildings that still tenderly baked beneath flame, and the hacked apart bodies of everyone she cared for, something as romantic as the forthcoming life she would never live seemed utterly absurd, not to mention selfish.
"Y-Yuki-Chan! They're here!"
As depressingly droll as it all seemed, behind the darkness she couldn't help but wish for a light, she couldn't help but cling to the life that was stolen from her, maybe it was just the natural human temperament to avoid death, but it felt like much more. Something within wouldn't allow her to die as much as she begged for it to take her, as if she had more to do with her remaining time, a greater purpose, there was that striking selfishness again she mused wearily.
Regardless of what had happened, and indifferent to what awaited her now ambiguous future, as that young battered girl lay there alone and forsaken, her aimless thoughts could only flash violently to mindless revenge, retaliation for the band of souls that had wronged her so mercilessly.
"Patty-Chan, wake up."
At the sound of these words, the colorless dream that clouded her mind troubled her no more as the slumbering archer returned to the waking world, drearily shaking her stiffened face and focusing in on the blurs of pink and purple features that clouded her vision.
Her foggy eyes set themselves upon the ever-tender Tsukasa, her face painted into an expression as sunny as ever, her deep blue eyes heaving with relief at her darling friend's safety.
On the side opposite Tsukasa, Patty felt her skin crawl skittishly at the very sight of those alluring pink locks, stringing themselves everywhere in a mess of a curly mane. She allowed herself a brief meeting with the mage's eyes, her heated reflection floating angrily within them.
While she knew this girl had done her no wrong, it was the face that set her off, that tender grin that so deeply resembled another, one could mistake them for twins.
"Good, you're awake, we need to-" The sorceress' hasty commands were cut off by the high pitched squeal of an approaching horde of ticking arachnids.
"Run! We need to run!" Tsukasa hastily finished, hoisting up the listless Patty effortlessly and snatching her companions' hands within her sweaty grasp without warning, yanking both along roughly.
The lifeless automatons were at their heel, jittering noisily with a plethora of clanks and clunks as the ocean of steel converged upon the fleeing warriors.
The cramped tunnels gave the escapees almost no room to navigate through, not to mention every single one looked the same, brown and dusty. Aimlessly fleeing in any direction the trio stumbled upon wouldn't be a very useful tactic to continuously imitate, and carving a quick plan out within her nervous brain, Miyuki silently wretched herself from Tsukasa's rough clasp.
Pressing her glasses to the bridge of her nose, the enchantress steadied her breathing rigorously, until the only thing that sung within her ears was her own heart beat.
Gently her fists trembled as the inner workings of the dark arts overtook her frame, and with a sudden jut downward of her scrunched fists, the caverns rocks crumbled like dust, collapsing in upon themselves in a small avalanche and sealing the entrance behind them.
Releasing herself from her trance, Miyuki eyed her fingernails regrettably, which all oozed a light trickle of blood. Shelving the twanging pain to the back of her mind, she nodded at her companions silently, knowing the horde could only be held behind a wall of stone for so long.
The trio was rid of the bottled squeeze of the tunnels quickly, instead finding themselves in an open chamber, massive webs coating the walls dauntingly all around, yet they saw no spiders, the room was completely lifeless.
Sensing that danger was no longer pestering them, Miyuki hesitantly allowed herself to drop to the ground, a hand wrapped painfully to her chest.
"Yuki-Chan!" Tsukasa stumbled out, her voice laden with worry as she knelt next to her heaving friend, horrifyingly eyeing Miyuki's blood-stained hands.
"It's fine…I just…I've spent a lot of energy today concentrating magic, please don't worry about me." She panted out in between breaths, earning only a childish grunt from her friend in response.
"Don't worry? Yuki-Chan, you're bleeding badly, you don't always have to push yourself so hard." The apprehensive Tsukasa protested, pulling her tightly wrapped bow from her hair and tearing it in half, gauzing the mage's crimson palms with an almost motherly care.
Patty watched the scene with sympathy, and her anger could only abate steadily as a cheerful giggle bust from Miyuki's lips. At the sound of the affectionate laughter, the archer couldn't help but wonder why someone such as her earned the right to smile so carelessly.
The resemblance was too uncanny to be coincidence, and feeling a harsh lump warp her throat with torment, Patty steeled herself as seriously as she could muster for what she had to ask.
"Takara-San, I need to ask you something." She began, interrupting the two snickering girls at her feet, who looked upon their towering comrade with slight discomfort at her stoic expression.
"Anything." Miyuki responded eagerly, not being the only one who sensed the dark cloud that seemed to loom over the archer's head every time she found herself within the woman's presence.
"I know you're probably not, but…well I…look, have you ever been to a village called Yoshimizu? A quiet little town on the edge of Boletaria, built on a mountainside." Patty mysteriously questioned, not really expecting any type of viable answer from the one she interrogated, but it was worth a shot considering the magnitude of what she spoke of.
Miyuki's eyes fluttered listlessly at her inquiry, it was without emotion or thought that she discarded the intriguing query to the back of her mind; she could not allow such things to run afoul within her thoughts.
"I've heard of it, but have never traveled there myself. Are you from there?" Miyuki lied shamefully, now averting her quaky eyes from the cleaving expression Patty wore.
"No, but I had a friend who lived there. When she was young, she and her family were killed by a pair of ruthless demons, and their master." The markswoman explained in a monotone fashion, a frightening departure from anything the normally perpetually pleasant woman expressed.
"I see…I am sorry." Miyuki apologized in an almost personal fashion, bowing her head respectfully and allowing Tsukasa to steadily elevate her weary body to a vertical position.
"No it's alright; I seem to have been mistaken, and sorry if my line of questioning seemed inappropriate. We are being chased by bloodthirsty demons, after all." Patty joked with a mocking sneer, nodding her head back to the continuing series of tunnels all around them, sitting around discussing the past probably wasn't the best idea, she figured.
"Oh, right. We should probably keep moving. The others might be in danger; we have no time to lose." Miyuki bravely commanded to her troupe, moving ahead and motioning for her unusually silent allies to follow suit.
Cautiously watching the markswoman, Tsukasa couldn't help but notice the girls balled fists that shook airily. Normally the cowardly little girl found herself to be the airhead in these types of situations, ignorant to the concealed emotions and daggers behind every word, but as Patty looked upon the mage at her front, the deceptive smile she curled did nothing to hide the seething hate that clung to each word.
This was not the time nor the place though, even the flighty Tsukasa knew that, and removing Patty from her silent musings with a tap, she too motioned for the group to continue in their hasty retreat, she could've sworn she heard the jangling stampede of mechanized menaces at her back, and she certainly didn't wish to contend with them a second time.
It took Patty a moment to remove herself from her hypnotic state and join her companions in their desperate fleeing, but gazing upon the bold magician at her front did nothing to ease the queasy feeling in her gut that vexed her so.
"That is one big ass spider." Misao moaned in sheer awe at the terrifying spectacle before her, nearly dropping her spear at the mere sight of the colossal monstrosity.
Its fragile exoskeleton molded within a powerful steel, the beast stood at least twenty feet tall, its eight gangly limbs protruding menacingly from the bulbous thorax at its armored back, laden with pipes oozing gentle clouds of steam that fogged the entire area. The queen's plated legs were pimpled with iron studs sharpened to a filed point, the tips being as deadly as any blade.
Massive mandibles chomped greedily at the incoming supplies of nourishment her children so readily offered her, hinging open and shut in an almost cycling fashion, the damnable thing really was more machine than beast.
The colossal arachnid held no biology within, it was completely synthetic down to its radiant core, which beat hauntingly with a red light that permeated from its gullet, bleeding onto every shadow within the chamber.
The walls around the demon were crafted more articulately than the messily made chambers of her children, with each cocoon slipped open perfectly, holding their rotten victims in place in an almost artistic fashion, the entire scene looked like a painting in some hellish museum.
This queen spider worked tirelessly, her fiddling prong-like legs rolling a shiny thread feverishly around a fresh corpse, the man within seemed to be sucked of his very life, his skin hung lazily to his burgundy form, the body was weak and emaciated in appearance.
Spread around her was her children, assembling heartily around their progenitor in the masses, radiating orbs of golden light clinging like stars within their metal grasps.
"What are those things they're carrying?" Kagami asked her guide, her voice imbued with a hesitant tone.
"Well, take a guess. They're demons, and what is a demon's favorite dish?" Misao mockingly questioned, practically hearing the gulp that slinked down her companions' throat.
"Souls…" She answered as if she could hardly believe it herself, steadily holding her heaving thought at the unbelievable thought. There wasn't just one or two of the brilliant orbs of light, but thousands, how many souls had this gluttonous creature devoured? How many lives had her endless sea of imps shorted out to feed her insatiable appetite? The very thought put naught but sorrow within her, but such there were other times to mourn for such things, now was not one of them.
"Souls!" Konata mimicked playfully, still under the heavy impressions of the murky poison that streamed itself throughout her steadily weakening body.
"Konata, shush! This isn't the time for your games." Kagami groaned irately, clamping a commanding palm over the bluenette's mouth, nearly wanting to explode on the poor drugged girl when she felt the soft, wet slither of her probing tongue upon her flesh.
"You're gonna want to deal with that one as quietly as possible Hiiragi, unless you want to join the legions of the damned down there, savvy?" The slave prodded, sighing with woe as she turned her attention back to the daunting creature before her, what a sight it was. For anyone but her it would've been quite the spectacle, but all she saw was a consuming, trapping monstrosity that tugged her insides just by looking in its direction.
Her murky glaring tore itself into horror at the site of a pinkish blob within her field of vision, trailed closely by two strikingly familiar faces.
"Oh you've gotta be kiddin' me." The slave whispered in disbelief, alerting Kagami's attention to whatever sight had made the girl gasp so, to which her sinking heart could only agree.
"Tsukasa!" Kagami screeched out without any measure of thought at the trouble sight, alarming not only her baffled twin and her companions, but every soul devouring demon in the area, the gluttonous queen included.
"Nice going." Misao breathed sarcastically, unhinging her spear and diving without warning into the queen's lair below her, heroically stomping in front of her comrades in a cloud of dust.
"Misakichi!" Patty excitedly wailed, halting her chirpy reunion at the thunderous boom of the roaring queen at their front, who bucked herself ravenously like a galloping steed, crushing her mighty pincers clear into the solid ground at her feet.
"I told you to stop calling me that, and what the hell do you think you're doing? Do you often stumble idiotically into a nest of demons? Or do you just enjoy having me save your sorry asses that much?" The continuously bothered drudge asked her dumbstruck companions, who eyeballed her curiously, hadn't she left the poor souls to perish in the heat of combat earlier?
Noticing their cautious gazes, Misao huffed a steady sigh, preparing herself for an honest explanation but found that the queen would allow her no such courtesy, the gargantuan demon had already began to lumber threateningly in their direction, pronging her slicing mandibles in an aggressive, territorial fashion.
"No time to explain, just stay out of my way and let me work!" The servant haughtily announced, bull-charging the demon with a forked spear, meeting its aggressive stance as much as she could despite her timid and tiny size, even the smallest of creatures could ward off the biggest predators if they looked intimidating enough, nature sure was funny that way.
Halting her advance Misao gritted her bloody soles into the squishy ground, catapulting herself inhumanly at the mech, piercing its wriggling skull with a mighty jab, lodging her spear in the demons inner circuits and brutally yanking the weapon back and forth, trying to cause as much internal damage as was possible.
The beast roared in a cry almost akin to something that felt pain, perhaps these automatons were more alive than these warriors knew, but there was no point in considering such a thing now.
A scraping limb vertically swiped itself in Misao's direction, and she ducked expertly, only further burying her exquisitely crafted weapon's blade deeper in the beasts hull, tearing it out speedily when the lashing vibrations at her feet proved too much to keep able footing on.
Dropping herself in front of the queen, her heart skipped a beat when the shuttering maw of the beast belched a consuming globe of white fire, which crashed upon her form and send her flying all the way back to her stunned companions, who could only look down with worry at their torched and black guide.
"Ugh…by the goddess, felt like I just had a horse hurled at me." The clobbered girl grumbled as she stood weakly, noticing her companions hadn't even attempted to assist her in standing, or make the slightest remark about her well being.
"You know you deserved that." Kagami carelessly joked with a vicious smirk, finishing her steady climb down to her companions and setting her bedraggled friend upon the ground.
"Onee-Chan! Kona-Chan!" Tsukasa gasped, running to her sister in a storm of childish giggles and crushing her in a loving hug, whilst the mage and archer wordlessly attended to their downed companion.
Noticing their worried faces, Kagami motioned gently that the slumbering girl was injured, but for the time being her life was in no immediate danger, instead focusing her attention towards their cowardly excuse for a guide.
"Yeah, real touching reunion and all, but what about me? I could use some help over here." Misao complained childishly, offering a glare of confusion when her companions only stared upon her with understandable distrust.
"You'll forgive us if we're not incredibly eager to jump to your aid when your life is at risk." Kagami callously belittled, practically hearing the rising animosity brewing in the slave's boiling mind.
"What are you nuts? Look, I said I was sorry, okay? S-O-R-R-Y, I apologized, isn't that goddamn good enough?" Misao muttered in disbelief, her eye practically twitching with annoyance at the antagonizing words hurled her way.
"I forgave you, but they didn't." Kagami coolly explained, gesturing towards her friends with a flaunted wrist. "Why don't you make it up to us, as a sort of consolation?" The lilac knight suggested deviously, almost enjoying playing it so calculatingly a little too much for her own good.
"The hell are you driving it?" The drudge wondered shakily, constantly switching her vision flutteringly between her advancing foe and her wary allies.
"You have arachnophobia, right? Which is an unnatural and irrational fear of spiders? Alright, well I have a pretty rational fear of being left to die by a coward like you, and I won't stand for it." Kagami dominatingly affirmed, leaning down and running a hand calmly across the slumbering Konata's flushed cheeks. "Because of you someone I care deeply for is on the cusp of death, and if we don't help her soon she is going to die. I don't think sorry cuts it in a situation like this." The tsundere continued, her azure eyes dampening harshly with a wash of tears.
Streaking a hand through her hair collectedly, Misao reaffirmed her aggressive stance once more, sharply heeling her feet into the sticky cobwebs that clung putridly between her toes.
"So here's my proposition to win back your companions shaken' trust, you're going to get over this little fear of being leashed up like a dog, alright? You're going to fight and kill this monster, alone, and if you perish I pray your bones find peace in its belly." Kagami cruelly joked, but behind her stinging words clung a resonance of wisdom, she didn't wish for the poor slave to meet her end, she only wished to see her observe the error of her ways.
Misao knew this in some respects, but couldn't help but wish she had made that a little more clear-cut anyway. Acknowledging the proposal with a faltering nod, the drudge steered herself distressingly in the path of the queen, readying herself for the horrors that awaited her.
The massive arthropod bucked once more, reaffirming itself as the predator and not the prey, but the jittery slave Misao had moved beyond the intimidation tactics, it was time to do battle.
She charged with hardened courage, once again launching herself speedily at the beast, this time horizontally swinging the bladed edge of her spear as she did so, managing to cleanly lob off one of the dangly legs that draped from the creature's back.
The missing limb didn't seem to ail the queen any, and it wasted no time in counterattacking with more lashes from its mighty tendrils, each one pulverizing the ground effortlessly but missing their target with each lightning speed quickstep she could manage.
Miniscule pebbles and bits of web rained all over her form, and she tried her best to ignore the niggling rainstorm but to no avail, the split second of distraction was all the queen needed to horizontally swipe a leg brutishly against her prey, smacking against her frail body harshly and crunching her into a stone wall in a scene of carnage.
She didn't even question it when she felt the snapping twang of her bones breaking one by one within her, she knew what had happened and knew that to any ordinary soul such an assault would be instant death, but she was dealing with somewhat extraordinary circumstances.
Gritting her teeth as the bristling pain shook throughout her body, Misao breathed inward sharply as she felt each piece of her shattered figure click back into place, fill the holes and gaps hastily, and every last piece reconnect.
As the process finished the regenerating girl forcefully pressed backwards against the compressing metal limb, inhumanly jutting it backwards in a herculean show of strength and freeing herself from its stapling embrace.
She wasted no time in thrusting her spear upwards into the leg that still clung to the stone wall, carving the fussing thing from its owner and toppling it to the ground in a heap of cogs and wires.
Another charge of white flame began bellowing from the spider's jaws, which exploded once more in a wrathful expunging force of fire, which managed to strike the dodging servant's flailing arm, which was broiled under the heated pulp of blaze.
Retracting her smoldering arm to her side and stumbling slightly at the domineering pain, Misao steadied herself as she felt the torn muscles and flaked skin begin to repair itself knowingly, forming an arm that looked nothing short of good as new.
The continuous pincer attacks by the restless legs continued just as aggressive as before, and a series of dodges as graceful as ballerina leaps removed the skillful drudge from any immediate danger, and in fact placed her exactly where she needed to be.
It was now that the swarm of infant arachnids waiting patiently around their mother decided to strike, catapulting strings of sticky webs from their maws and latching the adhesive strings all over Misao's body, hundreds of the webs cohering to her flesh and tearing at it barbarously with each tug they gave.
She looked past the pain; she had to, because when it came to a mission the only thing that mattered was her goal. The feeling of accomplishment she felt when she fetched like a good dog, the burnings of lashings she received piteously for her failures.
She was tasked with guarding these souls with every fiber of her being, she would use everything at her disposal to see that these brave warriors accomplish their goal of global salvation; failure was no longer an option regardless of her cowardice or the circumstances.
Bouncing her body with as much pull as she could muster, the slave competently removed herself from the silken bindings wrapped around her arms, allowing herself to wretch her spear upwards with unheard of ability, mightily cracking open the swaying abdomen of the beast and showering herself with the onyx liquid that poured from its belly, nearly dousing her in a waterfall of the pasty liquid before she saw fit to move out from underneath the collapsing monster.
As its inner mechanisms failed one by one, the synthetic arachnid toppled to the ground in a deluge of pain-streaked cries and broken pieces, humming out a few final agonizing toots of rage before shutting down completely.
At the death of their dear mother, the countless children fled skittishly in every foreseeable direction, vanishing behind heavy boulders and inside the shadowy nooks of tunnels made just for such an occasion.
Removing a few clingy strands of web from her person, the heavily panting woman turned to her on-looking allies with an arrogant and well-deserved smirk, signaling the defeat of her powerful foe with a doughty thumbs-up.
"Well, how was that? That a good enough performance to win back your trust? Enough entertainment value?" She wearily asked, continuing to pick away nasty cobwebs from her body as her allies approached her wordlessly.
"Misakichi, that…was…awesome!" Patty beamed brightly, hopping up and down excitedly as a spasm of girlish giggles croaked from her throat. "Where did you learn to fight so wickedly like that, and that spinning thing you did with your spear? That was too damn cool! Or, or, or how did you learn to jump so high? I mean, I for sure thought you were dead when he pinned you!" The archer gushed with the inappropriateness of a fan, pouring on a thousand and one questions she didn't really even expect answers to.
"You fought very bravely, and I am honored to place my trust within you once more." Miyuki applauded, bowing her head sternly to the slime-covered girl with a warm smile, Tsukasa nodding in agreement at the thoughtful mage's words.
"Yeah, yeah man, I'm so proud of you Misakichi…I could just kiss you!" Konata bellowed out in a series of toxin-induced slurs, feeling herself drop to the ground from Kagami's arms roughly and without warning.
"Y-Y-You could what? No, you don't what you're saying Konata, keep stupid comments like that to yourself! That poison must be frying your brain…" Kagami abashedly joked, feeling her face heat up to a tender pink at her own words.
"Oh, that's right…sorry Misakichi, no victory smooch! Kagamin gets jealous." The bluenette chuckled as she struggled to keep herself conscious, feeling a rough kick to her stomach at her continuous apparently bad series of comments.
"Like hell I do! I don't care who you kiss, y-you can kiss anyone you want…moron!" Kagami huffed angrily, turning to leave as steam practically fumed from her glowing red face.
Hoisting the sickened girls arm over her shoulder, Misao sighed in relief at her acceptance within the group once more, she certainly couldn't allow a slip up of this magnitude again, she had almost botched the whole mission there, and then these girls lives would've seemed inconsequential to the punishment her master would've laid upon her.
"Well, glad we're all one big happy family again, sincerely, but we should probably keep going." Misao suggested as she turned to leave, feeling the gentle grasp of Tsukasa yank lightly on her collar before she could attempt to do so.
"Wait, aren't you injured? Don't you need to rest?" Tsukasa wondered quite soundly, nobody should've been able to withstand such attacks without a scratch on them, but apparently this strange woman could.
"Nah, I'm a fast healer, don't worry." The burnt out drudge assured, once again turning to continue their journey deeper into the seemingly endless mines.
Her companions bravely followed her walk-weary steps, once again having the upmost confidence in their guide's skills and instructions, knowing she would protect them at all costs.
The troupe found an archaic opening at the opposite end of the queen's nest, yet it wasn't a formation wrought by nature. Following through the passage, the group found themselves below the first step of a mighty stair case.
The Olympian stretch of steps flowed upward to the apex of what appeared to be a colossal stone monument, a divine temple older than time itself, towering pillars carved with clay the size and girth of the mightiest of tree trunks.
Hundreds if not thousands of illuminated torches with blue flame clung to the walls, eerily glossing the room with their azure shadows. In the center of this behemoth-sized shrine stood a door, eroded by the passage of time and steadily broken open, a swaying citrus glow seeping from the features within.
Statues adorned this palace of the ancients, each one more broken and antiquated than the last, rustic in their interpretation, and strikingly haunting in their foul expression, the bust of each was that of the eternal Dragon God, silently watching over its destroyed civilization after millennia of loneliness.
"Wow, that one is big ass building." Misao muttered as a flighty sense of vertigo overtook her, clasping a hand over her eyes as to shield them from the brazen glow of the torches.
"Guys…do you know what this is?" Patty whispered in amazement, the astonished girl's voice nearly cracking with every syllable that escaped her. "This is the temple of the Dragon God! The Dragon God! This is what we came here for; this is what I…this is what I've spent the last six years of my life looking for!" The archer beamed enthusiastically, bubbly skipping to the foot of the long climb with a confident smirk, her eyes glistening with wonder as she lay her gaze upon the incredible structure.
"Six years?" Misao groaned in amazement, it seems only someone as relentlessly dense as this amiable markswoman could waste such a monumental circuit of time on a fruitless endeavor.
"You mean this is where that mythical sword you're looking for is hidden?" Tsukasa questioned, wondering why a seemingly useless trinket such as a blade would be safeguarded in such an unreachable location, just what was this weapon?
"That's not all, if what the Monumental says is true…the Dragon God itself is in there, and we need to destroy it." Kagami hummed with displeasure, practically feeling the sense of dread her comment permeated throughout the rest of the group.
"C-Can we do that? Is it even possible to kill a God?" Tsukasa wondered, already beginning to regret agreeing to anything that a talking statue had told her.
"Maybe it's not really a god in the divine sense, but perhaps just a creature these ancient people worshipped as a deity." Miyuki suggested, trying desperately to convince herself that was the cause of the title, were this beast really a god any hope they had of defeating it was surely gone.
"Whatever he is, he's standing in the way of our goal. Lizard breath is goin' down, and so help him if he's a god 'cause I will tear him down from the sky itself!" Konata heroically boasted, removing herself from her tsundere's arms and snapping a ridiculous pose, only to fall post haste as she succumbed to the fizzling pain that spread within her chest.
Dropping to her friend's side, Kagami could only gently smile and lift the foolish girl back into her arms once more, draping the blunette's soft arm affectionately around her neck.
"Hey, no heroics alright? I'll protect you this time." The lilac knight whispered to her ailed friend as she slipped into a steady unconscious state once more, a line of steady drool leaking from her parted lips.
The brave warriors stood at the ready as they surveyed their goal, a mountainous tomb erected to honor a beast of cataclysmic strength, their own power in comparison to the mighty god of dragons was akin to a match a thousand leagues under the sea, but their convictions could not be broken, their courage braced heartily within.
Blurry was her vision as the azure knight Konata was dragged along like a ragdoll, but in the eyes of her friends she could see an unbreakable bond, and a steel tipped clout that would allow them to overcome this unnatural being, one way or the other, the beasts death was assured.
Author's Note: Sorry for the short chapter, the previous chapter and this one were originally supposed to be one chapter, but I decided to cut it in half because holy hell that would be one monster 14K word chapter, and I figured that would be a bit much for anyone to read. Will definitely crank out the next chapter as quickly as I can, because it's the finale of the whole "Dragon God Arc", and the start of a new adventure! Plus that means I'm all the closer to introducing the rest of the cast, and holy hell am I looking forward to it. To stay any confusion, Konata and Patty's nickname for Misao "Misakichi" is a mocking name Konata bestows upon Misao in the manga, and the town Patty spoke of, Yoshimizu? Named after the creator of Lucky Star, Kogami Yoshimizu.