Lucky Souls
Chapter 24: Whence Cometh Evil?
"I expect veritable amnesty." Ayano, again cloaked under the guise of Carrot, spoke to the simmering Patricia and gratified sorceress Miyuki, warning the two before she prepared to purge the compulsory spell they were knotted within.
"Croissant?" Patricia disconcertedly asked, decidedly perplexed by the mention of irrelevant pastries.
"No, that's viennoiserie. I believe she wants us to 'play nice'." Miyuki credulously explained to her naïve consort in chilled misery.
"Gesundheit." The bow-woman blessed at the confusing conjunction of vowels, feeling great amelioration over her condition when she felt the lifting relief of the curse over her broken, allowing both her and her magician foe to stand tall against gravity's burden once more.
"Truce?" Carrot requested, not prepared to abjure on neutrality between the two.
Patty and Miyuki exchanged hesitant glances at the prospect, and while the latter was certain the former would answer in the form of steel, she couldn't help but notice the gleam of uncertainty in Patricia's eye. Perhaps it was the benevolence her enemies had so plainly handed to her, that she was so unwilling to return, it left within her a feeling of casuistry. She didn't forgive Miyuki, not by a long shot, but it certainly wouldn't be very easy to fell both an experienced woman of the dark arts and an undead crusader of the damned. While guile wasn't her strong-suit, Patty was willing to slink to such levels if it meant her enemies paid in full.
Patricia caved with a conceding shrug, readying her wholly likable dynamo nature as their mutual enemy, Minami Iwasaki of the clan Garland, approached from a nearby alleyway, maul in hand. "What is it they say? Living well is the best revenge, and I can't have mine on you if we both die here. Let's show this minty doll the power of a dream." She imparted to her adversary gamely, standing shin to shin with one of the supposed perpetrators of her homes destruction, prepared to unify with the magician if the situation forced, which against an opponent of this magnitude, it did in spades.
"Patty…" Miyuki cooed, feeling the unbridled affection from a being she had wronged so dearly was refreshing in these dark times, she knew she couldn't fail her even though her second chance wasn't absolute just yet.
Without an ounce of enervation Minami approached them, humongous maul draped over her shoulder plate. "It is times like these I am glad I'm undead, you lot have the vigor of children, I find it almost difficult to keep up." She gamboled breathlessly, ascribing their endurance to the virtually limitless potential of mortal humans and youth, even though she was decidedly youthful and humanistic by appearance as well.
"It's the hammer." Patty quipped with an outstretched finger. "And the manly armor, and the blank stare in your eyes that show a quiet sadness. Plus you smell funny." She scorned thoroughly, taking note of each and every idiosyncrasy extant in the crusader's character, for these traits surely had to be the cause of her vigor-less state.
"Am I so strange?" Minami wondered aloud, observing her appearance momentarily before reversing thoughts back to the prior engagement, the death of her enemies. "Oh, um…I mean, M'lady has requested I kill you. I am deeply sorry." She expressed ruefully as she remembered her mission, an honor which was all but negated with a hardened charge, lifting her colossal maul to the heavens and bracing it for a downward crush that would fell her enemies in a single, pulverizing blow.
Dividing herself from Hiyori's earthly trap proved easy, but unfortunately for the Dregling Kagami, felling a trio of foes of still living flesh would prove far more challenging game. Under the penitent glow of the church wall's intermingling shades, Kagami bellowed yet again, screeching fervently in a rage that toppled the disintegrating structure even further.
Falling from their fixed shelving, immeasurable heaps of enormous glass sheeting and iron bars the length of a horse toppled all around, succumbing to Kagami's fury, destroying all they fell upon with their littering collisions. One of the more impending falls proved to be an untimely distraction, for the six-foot bar of metal that had punctured the ground at Konata's feet had not only nearly killed her, but completely deadened her to the approaching Dregling with savage claws bared.
"Kagami, wait!" Konata called for pause, blocking another savage slash from Kagami's claws with her own blade, sweating with worry when she knew her human muscles were no match for that of a demi-fiend. "I wasn't ready I said! Cheap! Unfair! Hiyori throw down a flag or something!" The bluenette bellyached at her largely one-sided odds.
Thanks be an obstructive shield from her cousin Yui had the chance to leave her beholden, for her friend's deformed claws had nearly slashed open her throat if not for the timely defense. Yui followed up her strategy of aegis with a frenetic flurry of slashes, cutting deeply in a plethora of spaces throughout Kagami's demonified body. Yet even with these wounds the demon stood strong, superficially continuing her assault by tearing the guard captain's reliable kite shield from her hands and sending the tool airborne, and away further out of sight behind a pile of recently collapsed rubble.
The lapse in fortifications struck Yui alarmingly, she had no time to react to the breakneck pierce of the Dregling's claw that tore through her breastplate and skewered her sternum, from which the biting pain rendered her momentarily paralyzed, and the momentary crippling gave the demon another chance at a pulverizing blow to the knight's shoulder. The slash had eradicated her consummately crafted armor yet again; bits of metal and bloody flesh showered from her plate and caved in shoulder, littering the ground with her when she made an unpleasant fall before her victorious opponent.
"Yui!" Konata diffidently called to her downed cousin, regarding the mage Hiyori at her side, speechlessly supplicating her cooperation.
Hiyori agreed to the contract, weaving a whirling spell of icy stalagmites around her arms length, firing several of the projectiles from a distance and hitting her mark each time, but Kagami was unfazed and took the blows as to be expected from a demon, mere bee stings. Tearing each of the snowy cutlasses and dismissing them from her flesh, like a wolf with a thorn in its paw.
Herein Konata saw the futility of their goal, how does go about one subduing that which does not feel pain? Undeterred by the deep cuts and blackened bruises on her flesh, Kagami's mind steadfastly coveted nourishment in the form of human souls. Such a goal rendered her impassive to safety, it overtook her senses and spoke perpetually of its need to the host in hopes that it may stay the hunger for as long as required.
The ephemeral thought brought clarity to Konata; the answer was now far from obscured to her. When one is starving they seek food, once consumed, appetency for sustenance is done away with for a time. Kagami, in her demonic delirium, would search for a banquet of souls until, and likely it would in such a case, kill her. If the beast was properly fed, they may have a slight chance to chasten the virus within her.
"Hiyori? I need you to do somethin' for me." Konata implored, all too serious in tone, helping to heave her injured cousin upwards as she spoke. The eager magician was prepared to assist, but she likely wasn't ready to hear whatever it was the girl was about to ask. "Never thought I'd be in a situation so dire where I couldn't find a way to turn this around into a sexual joke somehow but…I'm gonna let her try and suck out summa my soul, that is what these Dreglings are after right? I know what'll happen if she takes too much…so, before that happens, stop her, she'll be bloated enough that it'll be easy." The azure knight explained her foolhardy plan in a manner that evaded the power of an argument, and being a master on the subject of souls and their most intricate mechanisms, Hiyori did not protest.
"Aye…you've probably got around ten seconds max before you lose consciousness, and if that happens I can't guarantee you'll wake up." The beholder of soul arts knowledge, Hiyori, supervised to her would-be ally.
"Maybe for the best, you're so foolish…just like that father of yours." Yui added in coldly, but with a playful mock to it. The knight couldn't help but clutch her caved in shoulder as she struggled to maintain a vertical stance, her injuries were beginning to get a terrible hold over her. "I've got your back cousin; I'll pull you off when things look hairy…well, hairier." The captain backed up valorously, contending as well she could against the prodigious pain. Konata only nodded, she did not protest her kin's role even with her grievous injuries. She would need all the help she could muster in such a daft endeavor.
"Kagamin!" Konata called to her friend, stepping away from her group and dropping her only defense, her blade, to the ground so as to be vulnerable against the coming assault. "I need you to lend me some of your courage!" Heavily the bluenette began, slowly approaching the snarling Kagami with a saddened grin. "The same courage you've used to hold me up all your life. I'm a stupid, selfish, lazy, bossy, opinionated, and egotistical little punk, and all you've ever done is allow me to stand on your shoulders just so I'd seem a little bit taller in the eyes of the world." Her words held power as she had hoped, efficacy enough to stall a demon's lust for lifeblood for but a brief passing at least.
Konata reached out sagely, caressing the blood-soaked cheek of Kagami with the back of her own sore, tempered hand. The demon reciprocated, clasping its own claws gingerly on the human's knuckles, stroking them dotingly. This tenderness, albeit brief, seemed earnest in its intent, truly Kagami remained somewhere shackled within the cage of madness, a heart within the shaded husk.
It had worked, but not as she expected. She needed frothing mad rage, not delectation."Doth I detect a hint of deredere? Even as a demon, somewhere beneath all the hot air is just a fragile girl crying out for love after all, huh?" Konata exhorted in a joke format, but it came off a mess meaner than she had hoped. Perhaps this somewhat painfully truthful analysis was exactly what was needed during an affray, Kagami's harsher grip around her hands certainly seemed to accentuate this reasoning. Besides, in the context, aggravating the beast seemed far easier, and funnier, than placating her.
The endearment in Kagami's yellow demon eyes faded promptly at her friend's words, and in its place the hellion returned. The Dregling tore its hand from the human's and tackled its prey to the ground, curling her body over her food and inhaling sadistically, she reveled in delight of her first demonic meal, unwillingly so. Her powerful breath sucking inward from an open mouth suddenly began to glow with lambency, a demon's spell for absorbing souls. Konata's mouth shined brightly as well, and from it seemed to pour an essence of filmy vapor, which slowly trickled upward into the Dregling's own mouth.
There was no pain Konata noticed, but among the sensations she was still cognizant to, she could feel her muscles turn flaccid, and an extenuating fatigue consume her mind. She struggled against all insurmountable odds to remain inert, capable of doing so only because of a captivation that took her, a goddess that so cruelly mistook her affections for playful harassment. A soul who's altruistic and debatably liberal bestowment of love gave her the feeling of cherishment. True piety of an even truer woman, these were the only things that allowed her to shake the brass of the earth with her deeply laden borrowed courage.
To her, to wake up each day was a new opportunity to see Kagami smile, another memory of the pillar which she so regrettably stood upon that made her the being she was today. As to not miss out on another recollection she may have many years down the line, Konata happily stayed alert for each strained and agonizing second her body began to shut down from the soul-sucking process, for her love effaced all fear of the end.
Watching from the sidelines, Hiyori counted within her mind as to not escape the bounds of her prohibitive time table, there could be no mistakes."Now!" Hiyori ordered to the captain of the guard Yui, forcing the burden of their combined bodies against the Dregling with a brutish push, dashing the noticeably less aggressive and far more content demon to an adjacent hilly mess of shattered glass and unfastened gates of iron.
With purpose Yui approached the downed demon, easily managing to capture her within a simple grappling art, holding her still while Hiyori advanced with a spell already in hand, which Yui so duly noted was the exact same constriction spell that used blood as its instrument from earlier. Again she enacted the spell, this time no longer precarious of the conclusion, for it reached a most agreeable one. The bindings of crimson wove themselves mindfully around the Dregling, hardening and inhibiting her movement. This time however, Kagami did not protest, instead only slothfully emitting a displeased gasp. The demon within her was content, it had fed, and for the time being a brief respite was not only wanted, but necessary to retain function.
Motionless upon the ground, but conscious, Konata stiffly raised her head to observe the results of her risky sacrifice. She did so from the only position her sapped body could afford, for the demonic technique had expended nearly all of her vitality.
"Sweet…!" Konata cheered, drooping her neck back at the expense of losing Kagami from her sightline. It hurt not to know, but somehow, she was sure she had succeeded.
To say Carrot felt outclassed as she regarded the mage Miyuki, and the gunning Patricia battle an adversary even more skilled than they would be a gross understatement. The nimble, impromptu leaps and bounds of Patty made her envious of the girls physical capacity, and the mystifying and downright depleting force of Miyuki's magic racked her with guilt, for she knew she could not claim such fortitude, in the face of death or otherwise.
Even the crusader left her humbled, tirelessly did Minami swing, crush, and slash her oversized maul into the dust, missing her far more dexterously lithe opponents. As the hammer delineated the earth with its burdening form, the gravel below fragmentized into pieces too small to lift with human hands; they rained earnestly over the battlefield.
"You're pretty good…" Patricia jeered to the crusader, masking her languor with a careful grin. "But I'm better! Better than I was before, and certainly better than you!" She proposed indignantly, tearing away a fistful of fabric adorning her cloaked arms and showing the recondite revelation underneath.
The proud adventurer's arm was warped by some foul aura, cream flesh was crusted over by puffy sores and bulging veins that came together like the outer crust of cool magma, and it appeared to be growing like a fungus, spreading deeper into unseen portions of her body hidden by her clothing.
"Patty…what…?" Miyuki questioned rightfully, abhorred by the descent into demonic influence, especially by one so willful.
"Don't look so surprised, Yuki." Patty scoffed at the sorceress' clamoring. "This sword of the Dragon God, it was never meant to be held by human hands, there's bound to be side effects. This being that I seem to be breaking out in some sort of rash, it really itches too!" Irritated by the effects of her consuming transformation, the wanderer tore across her flesh with a relieving scratch, seemingly untroubled by the toll the relic was taking upon her flesh.
"Possession." Minami pointed out gratingly. "That blade is carved from the bones of dragons, the souls of the dead drakes used to make it lay within. What is happening to you is possession; they are claiming a new body for their own." The knight confessed with some sympathy, but she redacted this condolence when the adventurer remained aweless.
"Duh!" Patty answered back scornfully. "I wouldn't have spent all that time looking for it without doing some proper research. Speaking of…you know the origins of this blade, Minami-Chan? Yes, yes, it's made from the bones of dead dragons and all, but why?" The archer inquired to her adversary, to which the knight remained silent, the semantics behind an old sword weren't exactly terribly interesting to her.
"Why, Patty?" Miyuki asked, deciding to be the inquisitive one and humor Patricia, whom she hoped wasn't just stalling because she was afraid Minami could defeat both of them at any time. It certainly started to seem like it was looking that way, a deep trip south.
"Glad someone's interested! Now buckle up, it's exposition time!" Patty gloated with a smarmy grin, raising her herculean blade to the skies above. "This thing weighs several hundred pounds, and I can lift it like it was a naught but a feather! That's because the possession that's enhancing my body is that of the undead, the Dark Sign, same as you Minami-Chan!" She demonstrated the unnatural effects the blade had on her to the onlookers, twirling the massive slab of bones around like a baton, tossing it into the air and catching it by its lengthy handle, allowing all to behold her magnificence. "While dragons technically aren't undead, they are immortal; some of the more powerful ones can even live beyond death. However, while everlasting, that doesn't mean dragons can't die, and over the eons they sure have become quite the nest of cowards, those drakes." Patty retold wittingly, just how many times had she told this story, Miyuki wondered? How long had she obsessed over the facts surrounding her people's demise, and the history surrounding it?
"How so?" Miyuki questioned once more, finding herself shamefully enthralled by the tale, the scholar within her was nearly salivating at the mere mention of dragons, creatures whose undying existences were complete mysteries to most.
"Because despite all their knowledge, their strength, and even immortality, they still feared death. How pompous considering they claimed to be far above mankind, huh?" Patty ridiculed yet again, her dissonance with the dragon's ways seemed almost personal, perhaps because of their unwanted impact on her life in the form of the Dragon God. "They say on the edges of Boletaria lays a small kingdom of dragon slayers, hiding deep within the mountain-side. These dragoons once tried to eradicate all dragons from the earth…they failed obviously, but points for trying. They did however, succeed in creating this baby you see right here, the sword of the Dragon God!" Again she bragged, this time darting the blade in Iwasaki's direction. "The power of this blade lies in its make, as you say, the souls of dragons. And the reason that power is so potent is because dragons are immortal, and only those with the gift of endless life can slay the undying, hence why the dragoons needed its power. But the dragons could not touch the blade, it burned them like flame, and so their leader at the time the Dragon God, launched an assault on the dragoon homeland to claim the artifact that was so dangerous to them, and he swallowed the blade in hopes that the dragons could live. They woulda been able to as well, had Allant not come along." At the climax of Patty's tale, the recently revealed undead knight of Garland Minami began to feel a bit uneasy; she had a feeling where the conclusion of this story would lead.
"This blade can kill undead, is what you mean to say. It can kill me." Minami worriedly stated, discontinuing the wanderer's bombastic apologue at the conclusion, she did not require further narration on matters of dragons.
"Ring a ding ding, my dear! It wasn't the original reason I wanted this sword, but it's so fortuitous, isn't it? Like destiny or something. The only thing I ever wanted was to have a grand adventure, finding a sword crafted from the bones of gods seemed to be it, but it turned out that same adventure would give me the tool I needed to get revenge on those who destroyed my entire existence." She stepped forth at her words, an eerie aura permeating from her body, flushing a wide range of light to dark greens. "I thought after all this time I might return the favor!" She hollered with erupting choler, and with her mercurial wrath she avowed to herself a state of abandon, recklessly charging towards her opponent against the odds death's scales weighed for her.
Minami was prepared for the direct assault, but found herself planted; startled into stupefaction by a growing fear that's origins she could not place. She had been undead for so long she had almost forgotten the exhilarating rush of the end's forthcoming, the copper taste of blood in her mouth, or the corroding throb of pain.
So when the dull end of the Dragon God's sword compressed into her side, splitting through the armor and tearing the flesh from her bone, she wept, caterwauled in anguish as her spoiled form was flung at least a dozen feet skyward, and back down again to earth.
"Goddess…" Minami wailed in pain, allowing her blurry vision to fixate on her gruesome injuries as the initial shock of the collision left her. The entire side of her abdomen had been broken inward; she clutched the gory hole with her hands, the only shield managing to keep her lower internal organs within.
"I thought you said mortal powers were useless against you?" The wanderer grilled wickedly, casually prancing over to her riddled opponent and vulgarly stomping on her open wound, eliciting a sharp shriek of pain from the crusader. "Sure don't sound like it, sounds quite the opposite! Sounds like these mortal powers of mine are givin' you a real bad hurt." Sadistically Patty took pleasure in her opponent's heaving screams, her face contorted almost forcefully in a diabolical grin not her own. Miyuki almost instantly took notice of this, this was not Patricia. Even in a fit of hysteria several hours ago, Patricia's rage stood adamantly in the realm of sympathetic anger, not masochistic vehemence.
Patty didn't desire blood, she only wished for an end to her pain, closure. The woman that stood before her now, digging the steel of her boot into the wound of a downed opponent, was not the Patricia from her youth, and certainly not the plucky adventurer that had journeyed with them thus far. It was the sword, the blade of the Dragon God, just as Minami had said; it was possessing the poor girl in hopes of a host. The gall of the dragons and their fury towards mankind surfaced within the now fragmented Patricia's mind, and this separate identity was ushering in its animosity. This anger was not Patricia's own, the dragon's seemed to be amplifying the human's feelings tenfold, Patricia would never allow herself to willingly adhere to such barbarism.
"Patty you've won! That's enough!" Miyuki protested the sadism before her, cruelty of such cowardly caliber was unbefitting of a gentle soul like Patricia.
"How have I won?" The wanderer disagreed, her voice noticeably akin to other souls who shared a demonic influence, repeating her baneful tromp into Minami's innards. "She's alive! And there's no victory until she pays for what she's done." Ignoring the disapproval of her actions, she returned to her torture her foe with gleeful malice, almost astonished when she noted the muffled snap of a flame behind her. The snapping of the flame seemed to remove her from her trance, suddenly as she became aware of the gruesome torture she was inflicting upon Minami, as her human mind once again took hold, she didn't seem as lusty towards the crusader's demise, such pointless violence.
Removing her heel from Minami's wound and at last allowing the knight to catch her breath, Patricia faced the sorceress, a spell in hand, prepared to do what was necessary for the sake of morality. The wanderer only watched in mounting frustration as Miyuki silently passed her, hands curled with flames, and curbed herself adamantly in front of the knight of Garland.
"Yuki-Chan…what're you doing?" Overwhelmed with bewilderment, Patricia asked her childhood companion the nature of her bearing. Apparently, the dragons didn't have complete control over their newfound vassal as of yet, Patricia's consciousness still lingered.
"What's right." The mage retorted fervidly, perhaps even more perplexed by her own actions than Patricia. A slightly nauseating feeling rumbled in her gut from standing guard over her crippled enemy, but doing the right thing often left such feelings.
"What's right? And after all she's done you think her side is the right side? Do you even know who's half-mangled life you're saving right now?" Again, nearly stunned, Patricia asked, hoping to receive some equivalence of faculties, but the lawful façade the magician put up said most righteously otherwise.
"I do…but you don't know what I know, Patty-Chan. Some adversity in life is unavoidable, and even harder to accept, is that it's necessary for unity." Miyuki spoke of the chronicle of Yoshimizu valley her master had told her, something Patty wasn't savvy to. For a brief instance the mage pondered outright explaining the situation to her, but surmised it would be of no use. The dragons had already dug their claws deeply into Patty's psyche, her ramped up emotions wouldn't allow for understanding.
"How curious you humans are…" Minami pondered under a husky breath, coughing up a grand clot of blood in the process. "I see now what M'lady told me about the hearts of humans, that they are so easily swayed, deceived, and contrarily…uniquely special in their might. It is a power that runs deeper than skill with blade or tongue, or the security of molded flesh and bone. How I envy you, Takara-San…" The knight of Garland thanked in her own special way. For her, it was at least an improvement over complete silence or lack of an emotional aura of any kind, demons did after all, have a difficult time understanding the mannerisms of mortals.
"Great." Patty muttered bitterly, feeling the sting of tears forming in her eyes. "I knew you were on their side…I was even thinking about listening to you, your claim of innocence. You never seemed like the type to kill in cold blood, or at all. That's all over now I guess…I'm all alone in this crusade, nobody will help me….Back to being 'Patricia the Wanderer'." Testily she finished, checking her blade to the dust several times as she wiped a streak of the first tear from her cheek.
"Rend."
The collective of voices from within the sword christened her arm as their weapon, and her body their shield.
"Slaughter."
The collective of voices from within the sword demanded her obedience; she was strung up like a puppet to their will.
"Destroy."
The collective of voices from within the sword offered a chance, however slim, of revenge.
With such a slight contingent, Patricia's entire ego faded completely, the voices from within the sword beckoned to her, and she would not refuse them. When the hushed solicitations quieted, Patty found herself in the blackest void, too dark to see, but perhaps for the best. Whatever she had become on the outside, she was no longer Patricia. The dragons used her emotions against her for their own selfish gain. And yet this foul trickery did not dishearten her, she figured it was an even trade. The dragon's souls could have her body, as long as they used it to vanquish every last source of her pain.
"Patty…" Miyuki sympathized softly, wishing she could reach out to her companion, but knowing neither words nor actions would reach the sobbing child.
"Oh my…" Carrot muttered loud enough to alert the warriors roped about her, her eyes set upon the lumbering Storm King making yet another pass over the vast dormitory grounds. It had gotten close, close enough that several of the sky-scraping pillars of the church had begun to dig into its swelled belly, tearing them from their foundation and compressing lesser structures into rubble as the litter rained down upon them.
And if the destruction from the Arch-Fiend's proximity would not destroy the land, nature's own induced storm overhead would as it grew bolder, evolving from simple cracks of thunder to violently stabbing the earth with its instruments of wrath, the bolts of lightning that collided against the stony cliffs and even further destroyed temples. The Storm King echoed the blast's drive with its own bucking impulse, weeping to the heavens to abrogate its long abided pain; it called for their wrath to deface the temples below.
The wind picked up with the destruction below, ominously setting the scene for a bizarre necromantic explosion of energy upon the crest of the Storm King. This strange spectacle bore a dizzyingly tall pillar of light, sewn from seemingly nothing; it had split vertically from the Storm King's semblance of a head in a fantastic display. As the tower of energy clipped through the overcast, it ushered in a terrible rainstorm, forcing the retreat of the moisture within the very clouds to seek asylum over the temple grounds below.
Miyuki instantly drew attention to the spectacle, realizing it could only represent danger. Whatever the cryptic tower of light was, it meant ill tidings for all in its presence. Minami too, drew in a troubled gasp at the sight, for she knew what was to come of such arcane displays, death. Her lady was certainly not winning her battle with the Monumental's servants.
"Whether thine allies up above have achieved this meager victory or non, they too shalt perish." Patty, or upon closer inspection, the dragons that possessed her body, taunted at her newly met foes in a distinctly deep male voice. The girl, externally, still seemed to be the same Patricia, but the voice stemming from her offered a different theory. Perhaps the dragons had finally fully possessed her, just as Minami warned.
"Patty…? Your voice…" Miyuki probed tensely, forcing her divided attention back to her former ally, disturbed by the dissimilar dulcet of voices the dragons offered, the voices of many flowing from the mouth of one.
"The mortal girl is no longer here. Nay, mine countenance comes in her place, the architects of thine mortal's planet's very design." The dragons elucidated arrogantly, plastering a new scale or gaseous tumor upon Patricia's flesh with every godly word.
"Naught but scaly sloths…" Minami parodied even under the immense weight of her pain. "The world is doomed to die and the gods sit by and scoff." She again derided, with a twang of hurtful squeak in her voice. The evidence of abandonment from the divine was clearly evident by her words.
"But of course." The drakes sneered knowingly. "Thou art mortals, thou sins are thine own and not by the instruction of the pure divine. Verily, the consequences actualized by thine kind must be dealt with at a mortal's brief discretion alone." Condescendingly the dragons related, referring to the miasma of the Old One that steadily consumed the world in its toxic brume, a horror brought about my men, not gods.
Carrot cringed at the words of the immortals, she of all people had come to know the selfish wrath of the beings of a higher existence all of her short life. Very rarely did gods interfere in the lives of men, but it seemed in her case, they had a spare moment to meddle in her life, and destroy one utterly that she loved quite dearly. "Not all gods are as undiluted as you make them out to be. Your kind suffers from greed, impudence, and hatred like any unwashed man." The priestess Carrot criticized harshly, noticing the reciprocated biased comments had marginally angered the gods before her, from within they furrowed Patricia's cocked eyebrows into a seething, angry grit of the teeth.
"Hmph, perhaps we were presumptuous in our claim." The drakes feigned guilt, arcing the body of their puppet, Patricia, into a striking war stance. "But our own crimes are obscured by time, yet thine crimes are known to us. The slayers of the ageless embodiment of our will, the Dragon God, by our host's mortal hands no less. Before we depart to greater things, we wouldst have a chance at revenge." The almighty issued to the mortals before their holy grace, staunch in their solid slant, sword of the Dragon God within their hands still stained by the blood of the undead.
To beg for a reprieve was Miyuki's first instinct, there were far more pressing matters to attend to than an emotionally razed girl possessed by an equally unpredictable mass of gods, namely the destruction of the Storm King, and Kagami's rejuvenation. Dragons saw themselves as far above human affairs however, the battle of the Arch-Fiends, the life of a single human, or the Old One's anabolism of the planet's life blood bore them no tremor of nuisance, not even slightly; it was utterly insubstantial to ones such as they.
To those who lived endlessly without the weight of sin holding back their closed claws, the end of the world was immaterial to them, and astonishingly romantic. When the last man carried out his final breath amongst the ashes of the afterglow, the dragons would be there still regardless of the outcome, prepared to remake the world in their favor as they had done in the wake of many a worldly cataclysm.
"What will be, will be." Miyuki precariously declared, knowing too well the fabrics of destiny had no intention of allowing her to assist in the Arch-Fiend's destruction or Kagami's rescue, nay, she was bedeviled to combat a timely irrelevant otherworldly foe.
Carrot too stood by her side not as a warrior, but as an extra arm or leg should she need it, which assuredly against a foe of such moonstruck force, she most definitely would.
Far stranger was the appearance of Minami, quaking with a vitreous stutter from her torn stomach, but nonetheless remaining recklessly cocked. "Were I to be with M'lady now, twould be fate. But alas I stand here, gut wrought upon like a dogged animal." The Garland Knight repined flatly, somehow maintaining her composure. Duly did she clench the severed crack of flesh down her abdomen and closed it by some felonious aura of green gases. And while the wound faded, it left with it a horrific scald upon the showing bits of her flesh; even the undead held the scars of the past. "If I ever wish to see M'lady again, I find my greatest chances lay on a less godly side." While hidden beneath self-regard, the crusader still seemed to abjectly inaugurate a truce with her foes, if only for the sake of combating a greater threat.
Carrot was wholly crestfallen with the unforeseen harmony between bitter enemies, but for a more improvident reason that expected. "Had we discussed this like rational people, this entire fight could have been avoided…and we would not have required your aid after your attempted murder of well…everyone here." She disparaged meekly, to Minami more selectively. The crusader brushed off the comment with a shame-filled blush; it was conjecturable that the knight was following a similar line of thinking, but to the opposing sides.
"What will be, will be." Minami echoed Miyuki's words, bearing her maul towards Patricia with them spoken idyllically.
Miyuki complied with a hum, now fearful of Patricia's chances of arriving at the end of the action unscathed. "Try your best not to harm her, please." She made the request grimly, knowing well such lenience could nary be provided against such a dangerous enemy, but her allies seemed to acknowledge the plea, no matter how hopeless it was.
"Such foresight. 'Tis the way of mortals after all, no?" The dragons dissented mournfully, readying their host Patricia for the upcoming melee. "Unchanging." The underhanded comments held inside them a mingling truth, one that the mortals surrounding the god's sterling visage could not deny, yet could adversely espouse.
"I disagree." Miyuki clashed back at the comment. "It is mankind's greatest asset, is it not? Free will, the power to change…something an endless being such as yourself could not fathom." It was abnormal for the sorceress to be derisory in any context, but the superfluous hurdling of insults by the dragons seemed not only childish and unnecessary, but a further example of their hubris. One she would make known to them, if only in defense of innocent mortals everywhere.
"How droll." The dragons pondered whimsically. "Now…die!" With their killing commandment they leapt from within Patricia, hurdling her body at a flashing speed towards the trio of mortals, effortlessly knocking all of them to the ground with a swirling thrust of a kick.
From below the dragon's waist Miyuki latched on boldly, trying her hardest to warp the rotten soil below them both to provoke the endless thickets of weeds buried within. She succeeded despite the rough handling, and a timely array of thick, pliable vines burst forth from the ground and knotted and twisted themselves around their target. The pouring rain seemed to supplement the otherwise dry, unnatural plants, it was almost as if it ingrained within them a hardier vitality, thanks be at least the tower of light jutting from the Storm King's head had done them at least one kindness.
"Thou seeketh to use the very foundations of thine planet against mine countenance? Bah!" The dragons belittled, tearing from the suffocating hold of the grassy wrappings and boundlessly leaping into the sky, far above the temples rooftops and long since dead chimneys, only to fall back down to earth crushingly onto the still ground-bedded Miyuki.
The stress of Patricia's metal-tipped boots, combined with the depth and speed of the dragons soaring leap had nearly grafted the cleats onto Miyuki's still magic infused arm. Her forearm bones snapped grotesquely, ripping through her thin flesh and protruding out in the open air, summating her pain by the uncaringly astringent beats of wind and icy rain.
Though she did not scream, not even to relieve any immediate, and likely immense, stress she was feeling at that moment. Miyuki moaned and sobbed, muffled by a clamped duck-lipped frown, and this was all she could allow by the mandate of her people's morals. The body is only a shell, it is what is intangible within that taps into man's true potential, as such, the body can be disfigured yet repaired with time, unfortunately the dormant souls within were offered no such charities. In addition to her people's slightly questionable ethics, a mage in pain, weakened in mind was the perfect target for any demon or body snatcher looking for an easy host to invade and control. As such, she couldn't allow herself a display of weakness, even for something as trivial as physical pain.
However this pain was readily apparent, and Carrot spied the gruesome affliction as she watched humbly, and knew that in defiance of her prowess in combat, she was a cleric and she saw an ailing that was within her power dull. She wished to assist Miyuki, but secretly couldn't help but thank the force that saved her most anemic well being from a likely fate, in the form of a far more contentious Minami that gave a full charge past her, waving her maul with a heavy force in disobedience of Miyuki's passive orders.
But a killing blow would not be achieved; Patricia's strength in body had been amplified to staggering levels, surpassing that of many great and powerful demons thanks to the ancient gifts bestowed upon from the endless dragons within. The dragons employed an exemplary model for this trait of might by stalling Minami's human-sized hammer with Patricia's free hand alone; palm delicately flowered over the broad end of the weapon.
"Impossible…" Minami croaked in disbelief, pressing her own brawn into a penetrating push, frighteningly finding that her own strength was no match for that of the dragons. Another bullish heave of weight again hit the point home; she couldn't drive her opponent even an inch backward.
She returned her maul from the guard, and figured being anything but succinct in the matter of fighting a god would only be straining to her. She swung again, a second time, third time, until her swings gushed in full force, each and every hammer down of the maul being locked from advance by Patricia's open palm.
Minami exuded despair at the battle's outlook; despite all her demonic aptitude she was utterly inferior to these deities. She knew she could not fail here, her lady depended on her comprehensively, the grand import of their journey to preserve the Old One's seal could not fail.
"Be it time for our turn?" The dragons asked cockily, perceiving the crusader's silence as an affirmation. "Wonderful." With the celebratory term, Patricia disappeared completely, nothing but a vague outline of a human body stood in the eventide. The flooding rain made seeing the cloud of bodily essence nearly impossible, and even whilst playing defensively, Minami readied herself pensively for a brutal assault.
And it came sumptuously, a series of lightning-quick, jarring punches to her bruising cheeks a dozen times over. They knocked the pooling spit and blood by droves from her throat, until the finale of the onslaught of fists ended with a rudimentary kick to her armored chest, which thanks be took the brunt of the pain.
Yet it staggered her drastically, leaving her tripping over her own armored boots until the slick, slippery mud beneath her feet caved into an amalgamating puddle of filth and pooling rainwater. She fell hard, the weight of her armor crushing her fragile body within, sweeping the breath from her lungs.
Minami struggled to stand, but her movements were rendered inert, a mild shock coursed through her bones that disallowed her an opportunity to even stand to face this threat, the fatigue she was beginning to feel was decidedly human, despite her demonic vigor.
"Thou be a demon, aye?" The drakes inquired from a place of uncertainty, their host's body still cloaked in a superlative camouflage. "Then how come thou do not ken our powers? We are cut from the same cloth, gods and demons, thou be our spawn after all! Yet the strength ye rely upon…it be human, ye do not tap into thine true potential…for what purpose be this, demon?" The gods asked rather confusedly, empathetically nonplussed by their opponents lack of tenet towards their own design.
Sitting upwards coolly, free of her shock, Minami felt the presence of the dragon encircling her; nonchalantly observing it's spoiled prey. It procrastinated purely for pleasure she guessed, the gods saw mortals, human or non, sentient or unaware, as tools and playthings for their august compositions of the cosmos.
But as to the answer of the invasive question, did the reply truly matter? The god had gauged the reaction it had hoped for, one of abashed despondency. She did not see her demonic blood as a luxury, or her undying body as a shield from death, she saw them only as tools to further her lady's ideals. She hated being a demon; it disgusted her to see her wicked body regenerate wounds, or to remain youthful even as time passed. She did not rely upon her demonic strength save when she was forced to do so, in situations where she truly believed her lady's life was in jeopardy.
"She needn't answer you." Carrot retorted heatedly from the sidelines, hands on her hips as she fearlessly walked into the direction of the combatants and settled herself near an injured, and still in shock Miyuki. She did what little mending she could, placing the same emerald bubble of magical gel over the sorceress' broken arm, allowing the radical herbal remedy to desensitize any pain it could.
"And ye needn't interrupt a god's questions, mortal!" The dragons furiously vociferated, emerging from the blank illusion it had cast upon itself, directly behind Carrot's kneeling form.
To counter human's brusque tongue, the gods drove an implacable jab to the thick of the priestess' neck, emitting a crumbling cough as her weak body collapsed onto Miyuki's. Carrot mollified her burning neck by sobbing gratingly, ever more mirthful when she felt Miyuki's unsteady hand brooch around her own, genially holding it for support even as the mage lost consciousness from the now alarming blood loss from her shattered arm.
"S-S-She needn't!" Carrot repeated, feigning bravery despite a clear stutter. "Her course is her o-own! A g-g-god could never u-understand a mortal's p-plight!" She keened sorely, clamping her body rigid when she rightfully expected another malevolent bash.
And it came twice has hard, again drooping the cleric onto a now defunct Miyuki, lost in unconsciousness. Carrot's bangs hid her billowy eyes, oozing with tears and delineated over by streaks of blood escaping the gash upon her neck and skull.
"G-G-God's needn't question m-mortals, we are far too disparate." Carrot suggested to her tormentor's fury."Humankind constantly questions the rights and wrongs of the gods, because to your kind it is a mortal's place to question everything, we couldn't possibly comprehend a god's will. But for you to question us, those you created, how insolent! How cruel!" She wailed, staining her frilly white sleeves with the blinding tears and blood upon her face. "You made us the way we are, irrational, empathetic, and sometimes hateful. You know our design and yet dare to question why we act as we do?" Decorously, the chaplain asked, both rhetorically and in the hopes of some type of enlightenment from a mind of higher thought, but knew deep down any answers given would be circumspect, vague, or all around irrelevant, as seemed to be the way of gods.
To Carrot, when it came to the gods and their relationship with humans, it was as if a set of parents conditioned their child to dislike certain varieties of food, then for whatever sake presented said foods to the child as the only type of nourishment. When the child refused to eat them, the parents, instead of being understanding of their offspring's fear of the food, are confused and admonish the child for their own irrational behavior.
Therein showed the redoubtable similarities between mortals and divinities, more alike in their own obstinate ways than they realized, particularly on the side of gods, who so arrogantly claimed to be of a superior way of deliberation of all things. When in reality they shown just as much hypocrisy and ignorance as the men they created. Perhaps it was this that caused the dragons to display such wrath at Carrot's catechisms of a common thing like morality. It brought the dragons such discomfort for the same reason it brought man woe to misinterpret and falsify the god's words, because they did the same to mankind.
There was a barrier between them, impassable; neither side could ever fathom what it would be like to be the other, for their entire existences were built upon separate wavelengths.
While inconspicuous to the mortals, reflectively the dragons saw error in their own statements, and terrible truths from the cleric. Nevertheless, a god's imperiousness was peerless, largely narcissistic, to admit imperfection would be mortal, something a god could never do.
"Impudent…mortal trash!" The dragons castigated, completely demoralized from being looked down upon by a human, a being as expendable as mere objects to those who do not die.
In response to this defiling of a god's apperception, they willed Patricia's hands to raise the Dragon God's sword overhead, preparing to cleave the contumelious Carrot in two for her disrespectful commentary on the nature of gods.
Were the blade to reach the target, both the magician and the cleric would perish, their bodies a mess of disjoined limbs and organs. Yet this would not come to pass in the eyes of another, touched by the cleric's altruism, and disregard of a god's will to fight for the respect of mankind.
"Hold!" The crusader, Minami, christened to the antagonized gods, throwing herself with her maul as a shield, in front of the downed Carrot and Miyuki and absorbing the whole of the attack through her hammer's breadth. Even though her health failed her, she found it judicious to apply at least a fraction of her demonic endurance, even though it was for a cause other than defending her lady from the world's evils.
"Thou wouldst…defend humans? Those who hate thine kind?" The dragons asked challengingly, awestruck at the lengths one of its own spawn would go to save beings who inherently despise her.
In retrospect, Minami didn't entirely understand her actions either. It was true they were her enemies; they had even attempted to take away her lady's life once before, a thing more precious to her than her own. These aberrant thoughts were alarming and intrusive, yet she did not turn away from them. They were deviant in essence, but to her the justifications for doing so seemed to outweigh the sin of the actions themselves. These human thoughts, how nostalgic they were, she longingly recalled, for she too, in a time long ago was but a mortal girl.
"I…I am unsure of myself…" Minami articulated poorly, confounded by her own behavior. "Yet I feel…strangely as if I have done this before, for another...in a time when I still feared death." The crusader related mysteriously, voice replete with uncertainty, she seemed to struggle to recall the specifics of the memory she spoke of.
"Ha...ha…hahaha!" The wyverns cackled with amusement. "Mortals…"
Bestriding over an appeased, considerably injured, and attenuating Kagami, Konata Izumi glowered with a rough choke. It was difficult to maintain dispassion when her friend was rendered in such a state of throe, heedless of the impending time limit she suffered, or the uncanny sky-manta, the Arch fiend, above that required a heavy dose of slaying.
She watched sorrowfully as it passed overhead through a gaping hole in the church's caved in ceiling, leaving the cliff side yet again to stride over the open seas, bringing about rain with it as the tower of light seated atop its head sliced through the overhead clouds.
The battle was out of her hands now, perhaps it was never even within her grasp to reinforce her friends, it was her desire and obligation to stay behind and ensure Kagami's safety. After all, her friends curse was placed upon her by her own unmindful actions. So even if she felt left out of the struggle as she became aware of the chaos channeling in the form of the mysterious ray of light, it was selfish of her to think as such.
"Now we can only wait, right?" Konata asked weakly, still fatigued from her near-death soul-sucking experience as she clutched her heaving chest for a hold to its restless quake. "Wait until the others…" She stopped herself, fretful of their ambiguous safety. "Until they bring that sucker outta the sky, right!?" She directed the question at Hiyori with a light and happy cheer, but the magician frustratingly offered a disconcerted shrug.
"Yeah, that's the idea." Hiyori noted offhandedly. "But I have the upmost faith in your friends! They're fighting with the powers of love and justice, they're practically invincible! Pointy things for stabbing help too, and they've got lots of those." The mage guaranteed to the presently doubtful bluenette, a trait likely adopted by the soul-crushing despondency of the unfolding of recent events, one she certainly hoped wouldn't stick with her as her journey to destroy the Arch-Fiends hopefully continued.
From the sod below them Yui huffed an interrupting cough, slaving to sit upward from her resting slouch thanks to the injuries suffered from the Dregling. "They could use a few more, we need to help them." Insisted the knight, holding up her heavy body with her scabbard, but a skeptical Hiyori only nervously chuckled at the assertion.
"The two of you can barely stand." The bespectacled witch pointed out, rather obviously. "And I'm far too laz- I…I mean, I need to stand guard over Kagami, to make sure the soul transplanting process goes accordingly." She shunted smoothly, but the loutish attitude held with it a certain truth, neither Konata nor her elder cousin knew anything about the soul arts.
"But it feels so wrong…plus, sitting around in comparison to fighting a giant demon in an epic duel is pretty boring, huh? Who knows what fun I'm missing out on!" Konata furthered her frustration, keeling slowly onto her knees with a declining energy, next to her sick, Dregling friend.
"Well…" Hiyori sputtered faintly, resting near the Dregling as well. "Lucky for your anxiety, I have an announcement! There's more work to be done." She revealed, placing a finger on Kagami's chest for indication of the next step.
"Whaaaaaat?" Konata inquired as she gripped her aching body, protesting by a hard voice at having been misled.
"Ya, I neglected to say earlier, mostly due to love here going bananas, but um…" Hiyori began her excuse carefully, tapping her pointer-fingers together timidly. "I've…never actually…successfully transplanted a demon's soul to a human body without…well, side-effects." She confessed censurably, feeling the prickles of animosity spread her direction.
Yui head jerked forward heatedly, and perhaps more aggressively, than need be. "Side-effects!? That's the type of thing you should probably mention from the get-go! What type of side-effects!?" Solicitously the captain demanded, only drawing out more sinking shame from Hiyori.
"Tentacles." Hiyori started, triggering revulsion from the cousins. "After that, wings and feathers." She seconded the horror. "There were also scales, claws, eye-balls in places they shouldn't have been…and bunions and contusions oozing neon slime that would put rainbows to shame." She concluded, one-upping herself with every disgusting addition befalling previous test subjects, or in those cases victims, who succumbed to the demon's soul during the transference process.
Konata clutched her throat with an eye-twitching 'yeesh', imagining what Kagami might look like if she underwent the transformation, it was a abominable manifestation she couldn't find herself backing in any respect, not even jokingly. "While the erotic possibilities of monster Kagamin are endless…yeah, that probably won't do…but by your earlier enthusiasm I'm guessing you've got a plan?" She questioned of the earlier claim of success, and unsurprisingly, Hiyori remained optimistic.
"Right!" The witch confirmed with a nodding wink. "For the longest time I thought only the soul of a human could be used in the transference process, that there could be no substitute. How limited my scope was…I feel ashamed just recalling such imperceptive times!" Hiyori recoiled, cringing with visible antipathy at her memories.
"Long story short?" Konata begged, realizing Kagami probably didn't have enough time remaining for a long-winded story.
"Ah, right, sorry." Hiyori started with an apology. "Well, long story short I discovered that human beings are capable of being implanted with the souls of demons too, but, there's a bit of…psychology involved, not exactly my area of expertise. Everybody's brain is different, and therefore not every brain will react the same to every external and internal phenomena it undergoes…in this case, soul implantation from a demon." Hiyori explained as thoroughly as possible, minus the core of the theory, which thankfully Yui actualized on her own.
"So, she could reject the soul?" Yui asked for confirmation, even though she knew she was correct.
The sorceress concurred with a half-nod, but remained expectant. "Yes, there's a good chance if we don't do anything about it, so it's great that we've got a full supply of damns to give! We can force, erm that is to say, coerce her body into accepting the soul with a little in depth exploration of her mind." She related, again impalpably, drawing the cousins doubtful eyes together.
"Uh, what?" Konata wondered aloud amidst a murmur of chagrin, or lecherous excitement, Hiyori couldn't really tell.
"You heard me." Hiyori rebuked, hands no longer idle, grouped fingers checking Kagami's pulse in various areas before she seemed content. "The human mind is an inclusive world of thought, impulse, memories, observations, inclinations, desires, apprehensions and perhaps most important of all, emotion." She laid out for the cousins. "It's stunning that while we know everything there is to know and more about our own minds, somehow the patterns that human thoughts can take continue to confound us more and more by the day." Puzzling the sorceress pondered, peeling fatty cheek skin from underneath Kagami's eyes to examine her pupils carefully.
The cousin's silence on the lesson of the human mind prompted a still delaying Hiyori to take from the calm as an insinuation of an unspoken 'therefore'.
"Therefore." Hiyori stated, reeling herself from perplexing thoughts. "I can temporarily link your soul with hers, allowing the two of you to share a dream world of sorts, in which you can redirect her natural human emotions to become accepting of the extrinsic soul." The mage finally made clear, to which of course the two kin were noticeably bewildered.
"So, I can enter Kagamin's dreams?" Konata proposed correctly, at the very least retaining that key piece of information.
"Precisely." Hiyori complied, hands tied behind her back scholarly. "And from within, all that is left to do is locate her within the dreamscape, and convince her to take the Storm King's soul into her own." The witch concluded, again using a peculiar word like convince, a term implying insecurity.
"Why would I have to convince her?" Konata challenged at the command, perplexed as to why she would have to convince any right-minded individual to accede a cure for a deadly illness into themselves.
"Ah…well." Hiyori stuttered, iffy of the revelation. "You'll see, it's hard to put into words." With that enigmatical asseveration, Hiyori returned to the ground at her feet, digging her fingers into a pile of rubble fanatically, Konata could only scratch her head with confusion and instead decide to focus on Kagami's jaded expression.
Unbeknownst to the bluenette, Hiyori had just located a considerable brick of charred church-wall stone in her hands, which she hoisted above her head and merrily skipped over to the inquisitive Izumi.
"Hey…what're you doing?" Yui asked aghast, but the mage did not respond.
"So, how do I get into her dreams? You gonna remove our brains, or something awesome like that? Like something out of some mad scientist…" As the endless sputtering of words left Konata's lips, the rebuttal arrived in the shape of a hefty wallop to the back of her skull from the slab of stone Hiyori held, which effortlessly knocked the petite girl unconscious with a resounding chain of gasps and drafts of dust and rock upon her collapse.
"Like so!" Hiyori jocundly replied, purposefully a second late.
"Aw great…we're too late for…whatever the heck is happening up ahead." Misao whimpered in her condition of lassitude, misjudging the grounds distance from her galloping feet with each long stride she took, the fatigue muddied her acumen concerning length it seemed. The epitome of a maze around them, the endless forest of the Storm King's hide, would be impossible to traverse without the beacon of light that carried them forward.
What she spoke of in the context of their eleventh-hour arrival, was the esoteric citadel, a seizure generating column of light in the distance where Yutaka had fled to. Whatever lay in the direction of the mysterious panorama, it seemed ominously oracular, a premonition of supernatural workings at hand.
The occult happenings rocked the forest with anxiety, animals fled in all directions opposite of the consuming glow, the trees bent themselves contrariwise, pleading to escape from the pressurized suction beget from the spiraling light.
Any plant or animal not rooted or matured enough to outmatch the overruling gusts were swept up in its current, carried away into the green blanket of trees overhead and up away, to the sky. The current of wind, furious like a river, almost took the feathery Tsukasa with it, had Misao not expeditiously grabbed the girl's hand and pulled her forward.
To seal their connection, and attempt to counterbalance the raging winds, Tsukasa reached out her other hand and fastened it into Kuroi's, making a hopefully unbreakable chain that would allow them to slowly reach every robust tree trunk.
Immovably they ascended the unsteady ascent, which they noticed stemmed from the climbing angle the Storm King had suddenly taken, moving farther above the clouds, likely to escape whatever commotion was unfolding upon its hide.
Despite the impermanent current, which turned on and off in levels of harsh to easier flows, the trio managed to scale the short distance by clinging to the burly trees, at last arriving at the stem of the cylinder ablaze with color.
There stood Yutaka, hands outstretched, etching her fingers into the fluidic avatar of devilry, the enigmatic tower of light. Entranced, she mingled her hands within the goopy tower, water-like in composition, reaching within for some unseen object feverishly. The ubiquitous monsoon diverged from its gravity-destined path, resistant to the pull of the wind; it mutinously bypassed the area of operation which the priestess worked within, supernaturally circumnavigating the tower by exerting the rain and winds diagonally away. In the presence of the column of light, the Monumental's warriors could stand easily, no longer under the heavy threat of the storm's furious winds or drenching rain.
The base of the glowing shaft was fused to the grassy hide of the Storm King by engrossing wedges of fleshy globs that netted themselves up the tower's height in a web of pulsing veins and tumor-like swells.
While the majority of the Storm King's forest appeared to be lush and vibrant, the setting about the fleshy tower of light seemed almost monochrome. The trees were broken and dilapidated, the grass was snarled and black, everything the light of the tower came upon decayed.
"Hey you! You…" Misao trailed off perplexedly, removing herself from the human link of her allies hands and covering her eyes from the oppressive flash of the blazing light. "What am I even looking at?" She asked dumbfounded, at this point she was almost considering completely disassociating her brain from all future events regarding the Arch-Demons to preserve her sanity.
"The apotheosis of mankind's will." Yutaka explicated hazily, having finally came upon the object she sought in the gelatinous tower, made apparent to be a long, thin, blood-covered tube somewhat resembling an umbilical cord.
"Mankind is so messed up." Misao jested, shaking her head in disbelief.
"On the contrary, I find mankind to be flawless in its beauty. Erroneous and immature in their incumbency, yet so powerful and determined." The priestess Yutaka remonstrated, working as she spoke, unsheathing an elegant dagger from a small, strapped scabbard hidden up her sleeve. With it, she raised it to the tower, bathing it within its structure and producing a resplendent array of sheen from its metal.
"Let us not make the mistake of hero's past, yes?" Kuroi counseled to her allies, unlatching her own blades in preparation of the death of an endless cliché. "No villain monologues from this one whilst we stand here mouths agape, she dies now." The assassin advised, being the first of the three to storm the tower of light's personal space, only to smack face first into an invisible force field apparently wrangled around the area which propelled her to her buttocks.
"I didn't know you could fall down!" Misao fooled with a hearty laugh. "You were probably more anchored when you were drunk earlier." Somewhat rightfully she joked, for one so aloof like Nanako Kuroi, to even see her in a state of very human vulnerability was somewhat amusing.
"Ha! Let's not saying anything we'll regret, kiddo." Kuroi beamed with annoyance, standing to her feet and smearing the dirt from her chin.
Being the only one frozen in place with horror, Tsukasa felt the resounding need for answers she knew her fellows would not seek, as warriors, Misao and Kuroi were far too at peace with the paranormal, something as a more genial soul she couldn't even begin to understand.
"Yutaka…what is this?" Tsukasa repeated Misao's line of questioning; observing that in this instance the crusader offered a more funereal expression at the question.
"I spoke truthfully, this is a glorification of mankind's will for the Old One to remain made manifest by myself." She again inferred from her earlier comment. "I drew upon the Storm King's fractured psyche using our mutual demon blood as a link of energy, and gave it an extant form outside of its mind…this…tower of light you see, is pure soul energy, an accumulation of the many thousands of souls the Storm King has devoured since the Old One subsumed itself within its mind." She apprised, still slightly indistinct in her explication.
"Psyche…? Made manifest…?" Misao replicated the explanations key misunderstood phrases. "Is there a science behind that, or…?" She honestly asked, questioning the legitimacy of some of the things the priestess spoke of, it sounded like a bunch of gobbledygook befitting such a bizarre situation.
"Um…" Yutaka flushed with agitation, realizing she barely understood it herself; it just seemed to come naturally to her. "Magic, perhaps…?" Penitently the crusader hypothesized, mewling with a disconsolate frown when her asperser's shook their heads, or at least Misao did, miffed like a child who didn't receive a wanted answer from their parent.
"That's what I thought. This adventure is dumb!" The fanged drudge wailed, submitting herself to the ludicrous position she found herself in. She realized the futility of fighting the crazy current, better to just roll with every crazy punch and reluctantly endure the crazy journey.
"Why have you done this?" Tsukasa probed further, more curiously analytical than she ought to have been, Kuroi noticed suspiciously; perhaps it was the tone of desperation.
"To stop you." Yutaka began sorrowfully. "The Monumental and its agents cannot coincide with the Old One, your fight will encompass the world within its defoliation, this…I cannot allow." She reconciled, pulling the knife from the jelly tower and examining the clingy goo of a soul mass upon its steel.
Dagger in hand, and fleshy tendril fished from the tower in the other, Yutaka proceeded to carve a suitable hole within her belly, flinching profoundly at the needling ache as her stomach tore open.
"Woah! What the hell are you doing!? Stop kid, stop!" Misao shrieked with unexpected worry, slamming her fists on the impenetrable bubble of a force field in hopes of stopping the display of madness.
"The Storm King and I…" Yutaka breathed out strenuously. "We must be made one flesh." She divulged, luridly pulling one of her intestines several inches from her open wound, and attaching the fleshy cord from the tower of light to herself with a fusing blast of fiery magic, connecting her to the tower by her body alone. "To ensure the Storm King's continuance, I meld my life with its own, so that our fates may ally, and our power, may be united." Each word lengthier than the last, Yutaka explained the unpleasant means by which she fused herself to the Storm King.
"Macabre, man…why is everyone I meet an anomaly? Completely dysfunctional! Freaks, everywhere I go!" Misao protested to the absurdity, resigning her banging upon the bubble and cautiously observing as the milky white glow began to permeate around Yutaka's body as well, incorporating her into its illustrious blossom.
Kuroi put two and two together while discerning the phenomenon; coming to a most useful conclusion should they have any future altercations with the crusaders. "That blade, you doused it in souls so you could injure yourself genuinely…a brand of demons only harmed by the soul arts?" The hit-woman claimed rightly, but was offered little more than a bashful pout.
"N…No! T-That's not true!" Yutaka argued against the claim, but her blushing cheeks couldn't hide the truth, nor could the very girlish, very childish mewling of sadness.
"Yeeeees. It so is!" Kuroi snickered proudly, content with herself for outwitting a child, though she ought not to have been.
Misao sighed with relief, preparing another dose of bellyaching at its end. "Thanks be with the gods for that analysis sensei…not sure our readers could take any more proper nouns and contrived bits of lore." She plaintively moaned, ascribing her alleviated fears to an unknown source.
"What?" Kuroi asked, brow raised, believing her friend to have reached the nirvana of madness.
"Nothing." The slave Misao hastily amended, returning her attention to the situation at hand.
"Warriors of the Monumental." Yutaka declared somewhat affably, her face alight with an almost positive aura; she seemed to childishly enjoy her role of profligate. "My will is known! The will of our world!" She stated joyously with a smile, wondering juvenilely what Minami would make of her bravery, fighting their enemies by herself without the brave knight to defend her. The hoydenish behavior made her crack up slightly with a girlish giggle; all faces opposing her were blank with awe.
"Is she laughing?" Misao wondered in astonishment. "Next stop, crazy train! I'm hopping aboard too! Bahahaha!" She cracked up witlessly, dropping to her knees in a broken and infuriating laughter.
"Forgive me, warriors of the Monumental." Yutaka pardoned herself, wiping the tear of laughter from her eye. "It is most unusual for me to act on my own, without my trusted confidant as my aegis. It is…humorous to see myself act this way." She exposed unpleasantly, or pleasantly from a certain point of view.
Misao stalled her manic chortle at the sentiment. "You hear that? She thinks it's funny…pfft..." She ended as she reclined back into awry snickers, perhaps as a way of coping.
"Storm King, lend me your strength!" Yutaka began powerfully. "Cast down those who would harm you!" By her words, Yutaka's outline of glow ruptured into an expansive cocoon of fluorescent shine, the Storm King wordlessly seemed to heed her call and offer its aid, agglutinating its own demonic force with her own in an effort to stop the invaders at any cost.
From the blinding light was born an extensive band of demons. Skeletons, Dreglings, shadow-men and more curious tentacle-laden things stepped forth, swords, claws and fangs bared at the aliens who desecrated their master's confines.
An orchestra of snarls and growling roars were flung the Monumental's warrior's way, and they armed themselves readily, regardless of the very uneven odds in terms of bodies on each side.
Affrontingly, the Storm Kings lesser manta spawn shoveled a heap of lightning-bolt magic the trio's way, stabbing the earth with the electrically infused icicles by the dozens, seemingly only for intimidation, as they missed every mark.
"Misao, upsy daisy, the fight is here." Kuroi commanded, glaring disdainfully when the slave showed no signs of setting her poise.
"I can't, I've been driven insane." Misao reposted, heeding the behest when the assassin dug an uncaring boot into her stomach, forcing her to jump upward to grasp at her fuming belly. "Jeeze, alright! I don't even have a weapon!" The weaponless drudge fretted, smugly watching as Kuroi looked left, then right, and finally back as she pulled one of the manta spawn's electric icicles from the ground.
"Use this." Kuroi awarded, tossing the frozen spear-like entity to Misao's awaiting hands.
Now a spear-woman once more, Misao caught and examined the lance like a fisherman, scraping its surface for affirmation of its authenticity, for the elusive fish she truly wished to catch, or in this case the right weapon for use in stabbing things barbarously. Misao was always more of a taste tester however, to see with the eyes or listen with the ears was great and all, but something's true constitution or worth could only be found by the sense of taste. She glided her tongue carnally across its surface, convulsing into a series of shivering shakes when she recognized the nauseating taste immediately.
"Pee. This icicle-spear is made out of pee." She affirmed, not noticing her ally's faces of appropriate disgust. "Yeah, this is pretty fitting for me, huh? My whole life is a mockery at this point." Again Misao complied to the majestic sadist that was life as a whole, rolling with the punches was all she could do.
Preparations made and peace with god attained or not, the demons barreled at their human prey, so unassuming towards the hinging battle. An unlucky shadow-man was the first to be cut down, by of course the already livid Misao, who didn't even give it a second glance as she melted from her relaxed stance into that of a warrior in a mere movement of her feet.
The icicle of frozen urine she wielded proved to be a respectable weapon in its own right, as she beheaded several approaching skeletons and sent their remains crumbling into dust with a simple twirl of its surprisingly sharp ends.
Kuroi followed up the impressive assault with one of her own, dodging the lanky and rubbery arms of several of the shadow-men with an acrobatic leap, their ropey appendages as broad as a small tree's width, one whack at the right speed against an unprepared opponent would mean an instantaneous demise.
From her hop she landed upon the head of a larger shadow-man, choking her thighs around its neck and reddening when it almost appeared as if the gangly bugger was so immodestly turning red with blush himself.
"W-Weirdo!" Kuroi screamed at the demonic display of perverted antics, twisting her torso as to snap the neck of the jelly-beast and end its life, melting it into a pond of blackened goo on the earth. "I mean…I'm looking for love too, but not with a demon!" She regretted to inform the lovelorn creature, despite the fact that it was deceased.
Its brethren seemed to follow the suit of affection, each of their featureless faces cloaked in a lusty blush at the alluring assassin. They converged upon her with open hands, prepared to demonstrate the extent of their adoration by any means possible. Kuroi recoiled in antipathy as the horde of love-struck shadow-men approached her.
"Irony! Cold-blooded irony!" Kuroi squealed indignantly, slashing at a plebe's level of skill in her cowardice, managing to sever arms, heads, and as many as she could, puncture featureless groins in an effort to separate whatever testosterone the demons seemed to be ingrained with.
And while Misao and Kuroi effortlessly worked through the horde, Tsukasa as always found herself at the crux of the hectic and frenzied combat without a clue, equidistant between her two allies, fighting for their lives against a horde of demons while she used subterfuge to best what few foes came her way.
Tsukasa didn't even bother using her sword, for she knew her own artistry of the blade was akin to a blind painter, or an armless sculptor. She instead relied upon her voluminous timidity, a trait that brought about almost ostentatious leaps and rolls of fright, which more often than not caused an enemy to strike its own ally in confusion.
Tsukasa employed the defensive stratagem, cowering downward into a messy ball as two of the squid-headed demons approached, both jingling their bells of blasting energy and missing the crumpled target entirely, instead hitting one another and obliterating the entirety of their upper torsos, the gore from which splattered into the eyes of several nearby whirling shadow-men. The chain reaction continued as they spun like tops, now blinded with messy innards, tearing skeletons and other shadows around them to bits and before long, one another.
In the aftermath, Tsukasa peaked from her rampart of fingers over her enclosed eyes, by some miracle having actually succeeded in her not-at-all chancy plan. The corpses and detached bits of unnamed things covered the area in carnage, and in while contempt of her dislike of battle, Tsukasa was strangely proud of the indecorous achievement.
In her chirping of slightly undeserved satisfaction, the younger twin didn't manage to notice a creeping shadow-man, still alive from the indirect assault, dragging its disfigured blob of a body in her direction.
Forming its extensible arm roughly into the shape of a jagged blade, the shadow-man chopped downward upon the unsuspecting human, incising a shallow but capacious carve down the entirety of Tsukasa's back, badgering about a cry that would wake the dead themselves were they not already skulking about.
The initial concussion made her hysterical; she could feel the streaks of blood slither down her back uncomfortably, bellowing speechlessly to the allies for any assistance they could manage.
Misao as always, was the first to notice the most hopeless of their group's attention seeking sobs, ridding herself of the final intrusive skeleton by lobbing it in two with a horizontal swipe before she dropped all attention any other pursuers gave to her in favor of doing anything she could preserve the pigeon-hearted Tsukasa's life.
"Little Hiiragi!" Misao yelled distressingly, brutally lobotomizing the demon who dared to lay its flagitious hands upon her ally. With its demise, she flocked to the injured Tsukasa's aid, lifting the girl's chin with her palm to ensure life still distilled purely within her. Tsukasa was sniveling, blanched with angst, and shaking from the startling pain, but was otherwise more frightened than severely injured.
Misao welcomed the inconsolable crush of a hug, which she knew the poor girl did only out of distress, knowing the efficacious Kuroi could hold her own against the remainder of the horde whilst she herself tended to the wounded.
"Hush now little lamb, it's alright." Misao assured irrefutably, stroking the girl's head to her slowly dampening shoulder, awash with mitigation at the girl's asylum, derelict of the battle at hand.
"A billion mirror fragments…small…light…taken…angel's…singing…voices …zeno…gias…" A discarnate utterance hissed, hovering within the vast, empty void. "Reference…not obscure…enough…wish I could…think of…another…" The oration proponed to itself smugly before it came to enjoy the occupying feeling of a manifesting physical form.
Yet it was dark, too dark to see, where was the sun in this world? There was none, only darkness, all encompassing; she prayed that somewhere in this span of nothingness laid the light she sought.
As if on cue, a thousand shards of light blinked in the gloom of the darkness, lighting the way for the expressive tongue, gradually illuminating the makeup of a young girl with cerulean hair, protracted and wagging behind her like the tail of a beast.
An inducing draw of fresh air that spilled from the light brought with it clarity, her mind was still muddled, but the vague monologues dribbling from a still-stretching mouth seemed to have ended thankfully. It was just a shame she had no eyes with which to see the enlightened path before her, how she wished she could see, tripping over her slightly longer left foot with every miniature pace was becoming vexatious.
The hope she professed inwardly became a welcome subsistence in reality, a welcome pair of eyeballs opened horizontally like a butterfly's wings upon her face, it tickled for a brief pass. Her first ideation was to pursue the summery, tender rays of light, they persuaded her with their valuing demeanor, putting aside all of its responsibilities just to provide her with lucidity.
She permitted her mind to make a contract with the light, by making contact with her body. She blanketed herself within the blinding luster, deaf to the suffering of the world, satisfied with the peaceful union of her wavelengths alone.
What was this feeling of serenity, this complete centralization of modest accord between she, and herself? It was both congenial and alienating; she wanted to be one with it as well as an individual. Yet how could that be? How does one desire the warmth of hearth and home yet wish to bask in the cold, disconsolate world in unison?
These feelings of uncertainty, she wished only to break away from them. The light had lied to her, it swore harmony and offered discord, it tempted her with its lulling pull only to push her astray. This cruelness she would not stand for, she envisioned a world without the light, inundated with shade alone, where falsehoods could not be spoken, where truth bestowed the hospitality she desired.
However she knew she could not discard the light entirely, regardless of its lies it was her only way to traverse the dark, there would need to be equality between them.
With the heartwarming rumination came another conception of her subconscious, the secluded terrene she had hungered for, a land plentiful with dark but not bereft of light. It came with the predominant effulgence of the full moon that defined an illustration of the sea, though not one comprised of water.
The boundless swell in question was composed of a verdant, flowing field of tall grass that stretched onward into eternity, counteracted by a single, lilac-laden tree. Under the shade of the moon, buried deeper within an underlying layer of the tree's own shade, sat a girl that resembled one the nameless blue-haired presence had come to know all too well in her time spent awake, but here the girl seemed far different.
The azure-haired entity trekked across the grassy field, far lengthier than she had anticipated, indulging in the carefree breeze that swept throughout it thanks to the lack of proper obstacles aside from the great tree. Had she looked to the sky above she would have been mystified by the complete lack of stars, perhaps thanks to the moon's overbearing emission of pale blush.
Within moments she came upon the girl sitting under the tree, the one who made her feel so wistful and, due to her discrepant aura, ill at ease.
"Hello, you remind me of someone." The blue-haired sentience greeted, waiting for a long pause before the huddled girl looked up to her, virtually emotionlessly.
"That would make sense, Konata." The somber, toneless look-alike pointed out.
At the name Konata a consciousness was suddenly conceived within the blue-haired entity, she no longer was the same faceless, tactless, being within this abstract world. She was Konata Izumi, the Azure Knight, the one who escaped the ire of destiny's threads, and she had come to free her friend Kagami from the frenetic influence of the Dregling disease by traveling into her very dreams.
"I…agh…" Konata scrambled to speak coherently as a flood of memory and emotion applied a thick coat to her brain, rendering her whole once more. "Kagami…?" She asked under a sibilating buzz, holding her head in discomfiture as her disorientation left her.
"I am, but not the one you seek." She clarified in a way that was open to interpretation; Konata certainly was racing to make sense of the comment. Whomever this not-Kagami was, it seemed the girl before her was a piece of the 'wait and see' whole that Hiyori had spoken to her of, a thing that was easier to see than outright believe.
"Gonna be one of those types of adventures, huh? Allegories give me gas." Konata huffed disapprovingly, having read at full length of such pretentious enterprises back home. Noticeably, said tales were light on the subjects of sexual deviance, violence, depravity and the regular genre element of an insurmountable paradox, so often lazily written into defeat with the assistance of an almighty dues ex machina. So too would it be for her adventures in the mind of her friend it seemed, and to this end she was understandably unsatisfied. "So! Here I am, in a dream. Wild, so how do I save Kagami?" Strangely unabashed she questioned the illusion of her friend, surprisingly at home in such a surreal plane of existence, perhaps strange individuals were simply more at peace with such aberrations.
Contradictions aside, no rejoinder was offered from the phantasm of her friend. It had apparently fulfilled its duties and speechlessly began preparations for the pursuing of the true Kagami. She did so by humming a surprisingly memorable beat to her audience, the lone tree, heralding a hidden entrance within the bark.
As the tree's bark unfurled, revealing a sweeping gloss of violet glow within the hole, Konata couldn't help but feel homesick. Something about the melody the not-Kagami hummed brought about a remorseful grief intermingled with humiliation, imaginably because she was unaware that any facet of the old childish hymn existed within Kagami's memory.
"That's…Motteke!" Konata recalled gaily, struggling for a moment to recall the title of the ballad. "We used to sing that when we were little kids! I didn't…I didn't even know you remembered that." Bashfully she blundered, assuming that she alone was the sole bearer of the memory, one she had presupposed her friends had forgotten long ago.
The illusion of Kagami exhibited indifference, but the Azure Knight could spot the carefully concealed tweaked nerve. "You would be surprised of the things Kagami remembers." A commiserative, yet stiff and soulless response, unorthodox for one such as Kagami. It was this trait that made Konata ruminate what aspect of the usually greatly emotional Kagami's identity this consisted of, for it certainly didn't act like the fiery girl she had come to know and love.
Amongst her hazy musings Konata scarcely noticed she was being left behind, and collected her competency swiftly to chase after the specter into the lavender mist pouring from the hole of a passageway in the great tree.
Catching up falteringly, Konata nary had the strength to return a second glance to the absurdity around her, an endless abyss of seizure-inducing flashes of various shades of purple that was engulfed like a river ever downward into a noticeable whirlpool of gossamer energy. The two stood upon a descending staircase composed of twinkling flower petals abandoned by unseen foliage. This makeshift pathway noticeably led in a single, linear direction, forging a path throughout the air and dipping into the chasm of colors below, where a black hole made its home.
Disinclined at first concerning the arduous declension, Konata reassured herself that the images she was seeing were entirely fabricated, nothing more than a dream, surely she was in no real danger.
It was this disregard for rules set in places concerning physics in dreams that nearly sent the poor girl tumbling to her doom, if not for the quickly-acting grasp of the phantom Kagami, who squeezed a tuft of the ignorant one's collar and pulled her forward during her awkward stumble backward that almost sent her falling into the rainbow abyss.
"I believe this is normally where Kagami would call you an idiot, however considering I do not contain that particular aspect of her personality, I will simply warn you against taking unnecessary risks simply because this is a dream." The revenant warned apathetically, with little care to be found within those empty eyes.
"Y-Yeah…" Konata stammered, holding in a deep breath as she dizzily admired the sheer depth of the drop surrounding her on all sides. It was at this time she wished that dream stairways into the endless beyond contained handrails, it would make her job, whatever exactly it was, far easier.
And just like that, as she wished it, so it was. A lavishly crafted and tempered steel hand-rail plated in the finest silver and gold abruptly jutted forth from the walkway of petals, securing their safety down the long walk undoubtedly. The stairway was the ideal embodiment of greed; precious jewels crafted it, tarps of the finest silk and embroideries of unknown family crests. The fortune amassed to construct such architecture would require wealth of a king, nothing less.
"Okay, that is like the fourth or fifth time that's happened. Does that mean like, if I imagine myself naked and covered in chocolate it'll totally happen?" Konata questioned to the specter, who she deemed all-knowing of the nature of dreams purely by association of existing within one.
"See for yourself." The ghost pressed; resigned to the fact the invader from the corporeal realm of existence would chance it anyway.
Looking downward, instead of being rightfully ashamed, Konata busted outward with a raving laugh, smearing a glob of chocolate from her naked waist and holding it to her face, prying her fingers apart and snickering as the liquid confectionery webbed between her fingers.
"This is totally the coolest thing I've ever seen. What's the deal with my thoughts coming to life anyhow?" She asked the dream Kagami distractedly, licking her fingers clean of the sweet substance as she did so.
"You are in a place of introspection, everything you see, including myself, are creations of Kagami's psyche. Everything you create with your own mind, is a product of your own." Phantom Kagami explained to the walker of dreams, still pleasantly sucking wind-dried chocolate from her fingertips.
At the thought of such elucidations, Konata couldn't help but wonder how she should interpret them. A secluded breadth of darkness and light, a moon-lit field of flowers adorned by a single lonesome tree, ornate constructions of avarice incarnate.
Not to mention this phantom created from Kagami's own mind, emotionless and logical, guarding the way to an unswerving path to oblivion itself bathed in amaranthine radiance that led directly into a black hole; this entire dream land was the very epitome of questions that desperately needed answers.
"I hate foreshadowing." Konata grumbled, knowing full well these designs of her and Kagami's imaginations surely had some deeper meaning, one she was neither savvy of nor eager to find out. "But I do love chocolate, and suddenly the stairway of epileptic flashing bulbs fashioned itself into a staircase crafted by the chocolate gods themselves!" She commanded the thought to exist, and to her pleasure a staircase made entirely of caramel filled, chocolate-chip laden, strawberry imbued craftsmanship appeared underneath the journeyer's feet.
"Kagami is dying." The apparition of Kagami pointed out candidly as she observed in confusion, a scene of a girl rolling around like a hound in grass, except in chocolate. Absent of worry she lay, stuffing her face full of handfuls of apocryphal bonbons and pudding that she likely couldn't even taste, truly an example of mind over matter in a quite literal sense.
"Oh crap, that's right!" Konata yelped, recalling her important task. "Quick, lead me to whatever the heck will help me save Kagami! Take the form of a flying unicorn and lead me there post haste!" She forced upon the specter, beholding in amusement as the girl's illusory body formed into that of a mighty mare with a human head, belonging to that of her friend.
A pair of dashing wings sprung from the horse-Kagami's back, and a horn sprouted out from within her purple mane. The look of stoicism was never lost upon her during the uncanny transformation, complete with a collage of fireworks erupting in swirls and coils from every sparkly inch of the chimera, more workings of Konata's eccentric mind.
"Were I capable of emotion I believe this would be the correct time to express humiliation." The Kagami-ghost-unicorn surmised based off of her knowledge of human thought.
"We've no time for that!" Konata commanded to the she-beast, struggling to mount the high-reaching back of the creature until she realized shamefully she was at least a person's-length too short to even attempt the climb, sliding from the rotund flank of the horse and plopping disgracefully onto her bottom.
An obstacle for an Izumi was just an excuse to attain greater glory for overcoming said obtrusion, in this rather inane case, ascending an indomitable bunny hop up a meter's length. But ever sharp and of perpetual wit, Konata knew just what to do in such a situation.
A sword fashioned from her imagination two sizes too big, strength beefed within her arms that was not her own, and the skillful artistry of an engineer of esteemed caliber. These tools and traits were made manifest by the dream world and subsequently used for her desires, in this case to carve a three-stair step-latter purely from the chocolate at her feet.
She did this in a flash thanks to her newfound creative ingenuity, and victoriously she slammed her creation upon the sweetened dust and climbed its mighty marshmallow steps to situate herself astride on the unicorn-Kagami's expansive backside.
"A thought occurs; I could have just willed myself upon your back with my mind-y dream-y powers, huh?" The bluenette concluded without shame, the achievement still resonated warmth within her despite the near-sightedness. "Such is the ways of those of higher-minds! Now, hyah Tsunsteed!" An authorization as good as any, the phantom took heed of the declaration and flew from her ground-bedded position with a rocketing jump, nearly yanking the rider clean off the bucking back had she not grasped the thickness of the beast's neck with all her might.
"To save Kagami we must travel to the lair of Kagami's conscience, she can show us the way to the instincts. There, we can dive into the core of Kagami's emotions and find her true self, where you can convince her to accept the Storm King's soul." The illusion explained, lining up her angling as she adjusted to the alien movements of her quadruped form, zeroing in on the heart of the forever tunneling black hole at the bottom of the winding, ethereal staircase of chocolate.
"Sounds complicated! How do you know all this?" Konata questioned, curious as to how the phantom could possibly know of her mission to help Kagami within the void of her dreams.
"I know all you know, for we share one dream, hence one mind." She made clear at last; in an answer so ambiguous in sense the bluenette's knowledge of the situation would've remained the same had she not asked at all.
"One mind…?" Konata stuck on the chosen phrase, coming to the conclusion that perhaps she didn't wish for Kagami to know all the inner workings of her mind, life would be a lot less fun if her friend saw every ill-intentioned movement she made in the dark. "Also horses don't talk!" She reminded to her steed, gleeful when she noticed the horse's mouth clamped forcefully, made so by the power of her mind.
"I mean neigh!" Horse-Kagami corrected logically to appease the charge of the facts established by Konata's psyche, no longer able clarify the essence of their mutually communal dream where secrets could be laid bare.
Flying forth into depths of the darkened eye of the twirling black hole, naked as the day she was born, covered in head to toe in syrupy chocolate, and riding a quasi unicorn-pegasus hybrid sporting her friend's head, Konata suffered the most instinctive sinking feeling of ill premonition despite the hilarious, and utterly insane circumstances.
It stuck longer than she would've liked, and it took more than a few hard swallows to erase the tension in her belly, but it passed like a dream from memory all the same. The worst part about these hunches of hers, they were usually right.
Tapping into her hidden powers as an undead was strictly forbidden by her sect, the order of the thorny rose. The Dark Sign was an evil, foul thing that branded all the undead in the land, marking them as accursed, damned beings hated by the majority of the living world.
The Dark Sign held within its influence the power to remain undying. Bearers of the cursed mark were doomed to die, be reborn and die again, be reborn and die yet again endlessly cycling until the end of their days, in which their minds would be wholly consumed by madness and they would wander the lands as the innumerable shambling husks called Hollows.
The more the undead relied upon their power of rebirth, the closer they would get to the inescapable end they would all eventually meet, insanity followed shortly by being cut down by some random adventurer in a forgotten cave in a forest nobody had ever heard of, or something equally as pathetic.
It was for this reason Minami loathed the use of her powers despite their usefulness, and in most cases, flat out assurance of her victory. But in fine tuning them with the fibers of her body and spirit, her performance could be tripled in every area and attribute.
Bunny hops would change to bounding leaps, a tooth-cracking punch would evolve into a head-removing jab, and the swing of a weapon would tear the earth asunder with explosions of radical energy the more she relied upon the Dark Sign's power.
Were any of her order to discover she had tapped into such a depraved power, even as a tool for the driving of genial causes, she would be excommunicated or worse, executed permanently, exorcised of her undead blood and put to death as a normal human being. To this end, there are certain types of magic that even the undead cannot escape, whose hegemony even the most powerful of the undying cannot escape, such as the soul arts. The very same mythical devilry that King Allant used to destroy Boletaria with the ever encroaching colorless fog.
So while she could now easily block each and every thrust of Patricia's possessed, magically attuned fists, or even the lofty swing of the Dragon God's blade hurled her way, she knew she did so at a great cost. She had tapped into her powers regrettably, but the sorceress Miyuki and the priestess Carrot would die if she did not, not to mention her own life was very much at risk. She used this power to block an incoming slash of Patricia's Dragon God sword, that collided with a thud against her maul, the dragons that now controlled Patricia's body couldn't help but cackle evilly.
"Tis more like it, mortal! We prayed that thou wouldst tap into thine true potential! How delightful it be to us to see mortals succumb to the age old quandary of folly!" Conceitedly the dragons proclaimed, pervaded with contempt.
Minami remained mute, derision was a child's game, and it only furthered her claim on the true demeanor of the gods as Carrot had suggested. Combat was no game, it was a serious matter, it was disgraceful to any currently locked within its clutches and the many countless who had died by its asperity. Her taciturn ways also remained as such usually because she wasn't the most proficient at thinking up comebacks.
It also bolstered her concentration, wherein details would go unnoticed by an exasperated mind; they would be easily exploited by her unadulterated mind. The maintained focus showed patterns of foot movement engrained in the dirt, exposing agitated and cowardly missteps and trip ups easily. Lingering perspiration could be seen set upon an opponent's brow, revealing their exacerbating endurance. And perhaps most useful, the ability to regard the tightening of a weapon's handle or girth to levy strike, slash, or thrusting capacity.
Being highly attuned with one's opponent was a warrior's greatest asset, studying their movements and reacting to them instead of allowing them the courtesy of countering your own.
And even with supernatural stamina, the dragon's true power originated not by their own strength, but the natural human obstinacy of their host, Patricia. A human determination and willingness to submit and serve, this was what allowed them to hold themselves up. Without this alliance, the disembodied gods would have no hold over the human girl; it was entirely within Patricia's power to end their reign over her body whenever she pleased.
The application of laconism had done her a service; it produced within Minami's mind a most remarkable idea. Patricia's lust for reprisal was an adolescent one, a gloom that placated the pain she was forced to endure throughout her many years of loneliness following Yoshimizu's destruction. To this end, even as a steadily maturing young woman, her brain still registered the event by a child's perception and understanding, for this was all she possessed at the time of the calamity.
The mind of the divine pitted against the structurally weak mind of a girl that never quite grew up, with this collision of temperament, how could the product of their opposition be anything but discord if they were forced to confront one another?
"Patricia-San." Minami called out to the lost child within the puppet before her, sparking with interest when she saw the faintest glimmer of recognition within her placid, aqua eyes. It took all the courage she could muster to even let the following words slip from her; she loathed herself even as she thought them. "Your family, your friends, everyone you ever loved is dead. They are gone forever. Killed by me, their blood forever stains my hands." Composedly she instigated, despite the harrowing sting the of the words.
The apperception of Patricia was no longer visible; the dragons simply cocked the girl's blonde brow in a puzzling smirk. "She cannot hear you where she is, demon. 'Tis commendable effort attempting to reach the human child, however!" They praised cynically, following the verbal blow with a physical one, a flailing slash of the Dragon God's sword that carved a hefty crack within the ground following a swift miss of their target.
"They begged for me to stop as I cut them down." Minami continued, unfaltering in her subliminal advance. "Women, children, pets and elderly…burned to ash along with their caving straw homes. Men who defended the village against my assault, cut into ribbons by my blade, their sacrifices entirely meaningless." Powerfully she goaded, ensuring her facial features remained stoic, despite the immeasurable pain they caused her, she could not appear weak before her opponent lest she fail.
"And thou did well, undead!" The dragons admired, glorifying the massacre. "Unfortunately for thou, disremembered this poor, impoverished child did ye. And by her actions did our holy testament fall to the blade of a human! A mortal! Disgraceful." They redacted the commendation, twirling the Dragon God's sword like a baton and pushing the pinwheel spun blade against the grossness of the crusader's maul.
While not sharp, the Dragon God's sword was as hard as the most ancient of sculpted bedrock, and immense in size. The sheer power it put out was enough to leave scrapes and massive cracks within Minami's weapon, and had the momentum not subsided, it would have cut clean through several feet of tempered metals.
"Your parents died especially pitifully." Minami admitted, under the guise of an apathetic frown. "They could not even save their own child from a life of madness and death." While the cause was just, inwardly Minami simply could not handle the atrocity she created even by recollection, speaking of it demoralized her completely, showed to her what a monster she had become since her transfiguration into an undead demon. Yet she did now show this weakness, not to these gods, the immortal divine could never comprehend her sadness even if she conveyed it.
"For the better, say we!" The dragons roared, thrusting a stab of the rounded tip of their god's sword in Minami's direction, and shockingly, managed to hit the crusader. The humps on the edge of the sword cracked cleanly through Minami's thick armor, and glided with a grainy scrape across her hip that took with it an ample layer of flesh.
Minami crowed in pain, and her shuddering cries exacerbated her irritation, but her buckling knees did not give in. She recuperated quickly, and with haste flung her open hand to the throat of Patricia, locking her plated, brumal gauntlet around the wanderer's palpitating neck.
The initial friction forced the Dragon God's blade from Patty's hand, tumbling the weighty sword to the ground as her petite body was lifted into the air by the undead conscript. The dragons kicked and shoved with their thrashing human limbs, but the fearsome choke kept them locked in place without any hope of abdication.
"And Miyuki-Chan, ever the saint… M'lady and I, we despoiled her fragile mind to do our bidding, she killed countless innocents without ever even realizing it." Fervidly, and without a hint of intensity, she finished her plea to the girl entombed within a god's unfathomable shackles, praying her appeal had ameliorated Patricia's fading individualism.
Carrot, with what trifling vigor remained in her dispirited and shattered body, twitched with alarm at the notion of the magician sprawled underneath her unconscious, was in fact a mass murderer. She didn't act upon her fear however, she merely watched, stunned into silence, as the dragon's laughter began cracking louder than the thunderous storm overhead.
"Yea, how we weep for you, undead!" Chaffing the god's did chuckle under a hiss, struggling to breathe past the choke's squeeze. "Thou gambit has failed, and this child shall serve as our vessel until we…until…we…how…?" Turbulence within the void of minds, the dragon's deep male voices faded for a brief instant, replaced by Patricia's ever shrill, high-toned voice. "This cannot be…we be dragons…timeless…for a mortal's concupiscence to exceed our own…? Pro…poster…" A last few trailing words, and the faint voices of the dragons were completely gone.
Disorder had sprouted within the competition for reigns of Patricia's mind, for the time being, the dragons had been lulled back into their hidden crease in the archer's brain, awaiting their next revival. Acknowledging she had bested the gods, Minami unhinged her brawny grip on the child's neck, letting Patty tumble to the ground in a storm of wheezing coughs and misty eyes.
"You…speak the truth…?" Patty asked under a cough, still attempting to recompose herself and find her lost breath.
"Aye…" Minami professed glumly, holding her bruising torso as she looked down upon a defeated, frightened child. "Understand, the words I spoke were not spoken out of ire, I meant only to provoke you. Not a day passes by that I do not feel my heart throb for the people of Yoshimizu…nay, all whose lives have ever been claimed by me." She reasoned, hoping not to bring about any unwanted rage from a still very bloodthirsty combatant.
"And Miyuki? She truly is innocent..?" Patricia asked hopefully, the remnant of a smile forming upon her face.
"Aye." The crusader again affirmed. "That child knew not what she did; it was forced upon her by M'lady and I…for the good of mankind. I make no claim of innocence however, hate me as much as you like, I deserve as such." Morosely Minami presented an offer of hatred, one she was more than willing to bare considering the circumstances.
Forgiveness is an anomalous thing to most; it brings with it a multitude of different feelings, heaps of contending thoughts that require careful consideration. Amnesty isn't reached without these careful deliberations by most, and the length of time required for afterthought can reach distant milestones, such as an entire lifetime. It's up to the victim and their familiarity with their own thoughts to decide when, if ever, they are prepared to forgive those that had wronged them.
Forgiving Minami and Yutaka for destroying her very way of life wasn't something that could be fully forgiven, if ever, even it was for the good of the world it still held a burning question. Why did it have to be her? Why couldn't it have been somebody else? Why her village, a dell so secluded and peaceful and detached from the unwieldy corruption and contamination of the rest of society? It seemed unfair that a people as just as they were made to suffer when so many were far more deserving of destruction.
Patricia didn't know the full story however, for all she knew, her people truly were a necessary sacrifice to ensure the safety of a far larger amount of people, more important people, kings and stewards and dukes, those that would help shape the world into a more harmonious land for all with their power.
Asking outright wasn't an option, words were just words, and they meant nothing to Patty if she couldn't see the byproduct of such words with her own eyes. Yutaka and Minami destroyed Yoshimizu; however they clearly were not evil, far from it. The reason behind the massacre likely lay in the only place it naturally could, ground zero of the catastrophe, her home.
"I do not forgive you, not yet." Patty declared, somewhat cautiously. "That's why there's something I have to see for myself, I imagine I'll be meeting you there someday if fate has anything to say about it." Vaguely she explained to the knight of Garland, who after a brief passing of confusion, seemed to realize. "Konata and the others will slay this demon! I know they will, try stop them if you dare! And you, priestess! Tell Yuki that when she wakes up, our star still shines as bright as ever! And that Patricia the Wanderer has returned to doing what she does best!" The wanderer directed to Carrot, so lost in confusion concerning the context of anything anyone spoke of at this point that she had all but given up attempting to understand.
With her declaration made, Patty lifted her Dragon God's sword back into her arms, her weapon once more, slinging the weapon dutifully over her shoulder. With her free hand suspiciously she buried her fingers within her slightly-ajar robe and skillfully removed a battalion of small, metallic balls, patterned between each finger. Spiritedly she pitched the orbs to the ground below her, cackling maniacally, or heroically from a certain stand point, as the spheres exploded into clouds of darkened smoke, ensuring her escape as the outline of the archer vanished from all sight.
"She's gone…" Carrot noted in wonderment, surveying the area for a moment before gargling sympathetically, spying the escaping wanderer but a few dozen feet from her original position of departure.
"They don't make smokescreens like they used to!" Patty whined, full-stride in an eluding sprint. "Kill ya someday, Minami! Or my name isn't Patricia the wa—" Her goals announced proudly, the pitch was cut short as the hopeless archer tripped over an unseen stone, scraping her chin with a browning bruise. She took it in stride as the amiable do, hopping up with a ferocious bounce and beginning a more honorable escape, were there a such thing as honor for being a coward. "The wanderer!" With promotion of her legendary title aptly made, Patricia the Wanderer finally sunk below the shadow of the many temple alleyways and out of sight, where her adventures would take her would surely be a mystery.
"That girl…" Ayano sighed wearily, reaching her limit of stress for the day steadfastly. "Mm?" She muttered noticing the knight of Garland, Minami, had already begun to relocate herself from the situation, despite her disfiguring injuries. "H-Hold on! You're hurt badly, as a cleric it is my oath to heal even those that would do me harm." She granted in reconciliation, wishing to rejuvenate not only the knight's body but the personal friction she seemed to have with the priestess' temporary traveling companions.
"You are kind, daughter of sin." Minami blessed, jittering as she cradled her wounds. "Yet I fear your alleviations with miracles would do no good…not to one such as I, an undead. Your talents would be far more suited for Takara-San." An advisory that Carrot took expeditiously, amicably baptizing Miyuki's body in a sage glow of healing magic, a spell that did its best to pacify the great pain of her broken arm.
Were she less weary or another not in need of aid, Minami would've gladly accepted the clerical stint despite the lasting effect it may have on her undead body, the severe pain would be worth the abolishing of her grievous injuries. The only grace she could offer those she was malign towards was her own misery, even if it settled nothing, it made the sore knight feel appeased for the interim.
With her foes defeated and unconcerned, the thought of ending them forthwith scuttled back and forth between morality and duty. She was indebted to her lady, the one thing in this world she truly cared for, and yet striking down the deplorably touched was not something that she, a soldier of virtue and compassion, could bring herself to do.
And so she turned her back upon the cleric and her patient, limping into the outset of the cliffs to begin the descent, for she knew she'd be meeting her master upon the beaches below the cliff side soon enough. The spiraling tower of light shining atop the Storm King proved Yutaka's desperation, she was on the losing side of a battle she never had a chance to win, and while she feared for the sixth saint's life it was not within the confines of her destiny to assist in this matter. She would simply go to the shore and wait, sorrowfully, for her beloved to return to her as she had so many times before.
Ripping her serrated knife from the cleanly split skull of a totally demolished skeleton, Nanako Kuroi gritted her jaw as the grizzly bite of adrenaline slipped from her resonating muscles, slowing her rabid heartbeat as she became aware that the last demonic entity she had struck down, was indeed the last.
The patch of forest hide they found themselves within was now caked with blood and demon entrails, shattered splinters of teeth and bone fragments, and teensy bits of flesh so small they could only remain nameless. Nearly from head to toe Kuroi was lathered in a showering of their ghoulish blood and slime, their slashed, bisected, beheaded, and vertically furcated bodies surrounded her in a hilly mess of whole and severed pieces.
Tsukasa and Misao sat nearby, the latter still cradling the former, whose injury had turned out to be far more astringent than initially conceived. Along with the carving pattern down Tsukasa's beaten back, a simmering, red-hot burn had impinged upon her neck's space, down the entirety of her spine to the hem of her pants. It was grisly looking, like a massive rash, and no doubt its caviling sprawl consisted of a similar prickling irritation.
Yutaka loomed cumbrously; her intestinal siphon had nearly drained the whole of her vehemence against her foes. The Storm King demanded considerable vigor to allow the two to remain as one. It's own well of power was significantly deeper than Yutaka's own, and she found it nigh impossible to keep up with the onerous sapping, and if it kept up much longer, the Arch-Fiend would seek to suck her body dry of its quavering verve.
"B-Bath…need one so b-bad." Kuroi bawled, shivering uncomfortably at the gooey mess that draped her grotesquely. She wiped the most critical concern; the glob of crimson streaked across her face, but found the interruption to its natural canvass of horror only made the mess claw further athwart her features.
"Yu…taka…" Tsukasa appealed hoarsely, clearing her throat of the lumped croak before she continued. "Please, we don't need to do this…I…I don't understand! If the Old One dies…our world dies…but if the Old One survives…our world dies! Either way people suffer." Brokenly, ignorantly, she tried to make sense of it, grasping fruitlessly from their foe for an answer to all. "If we are to live a long, dreadful life…or a short, happy one…does the latter not sound better?" Reasonably she asked, but Yutaka's dissonance shown brilliantly, it suffused from her quivering lip.
"I am sorry…I am so sorry." Yutaka apologized profusely in an almost foreign way, the simmering emotion of anger was a nonresident of her soul, an unfamiliar and unexplored passerby in the widespread scheme of her mind, but it seemed to radiate within her voice all the same. "This alternative you speak of…it is one I would prefer. And yet, I did not misspeak before, the world cries out for the Old One to remain, it is our only option at this point. The children cry, they weep as to return to their mother's bosom…to feel her warmth yet again." Esoteric, avoiding the point, and regrettably vague, a fermenting mix of despair that a far more impatient Misao could no longer accept.
"That's so crap!" Misao lashed out, providing dissonance to the overwhelming despair Yutaka presented. "We'll find a way, we always do, right? Every time humanity is on the brink of killing ourselves, melting into giblets and goo from famine, or torn across time by ignorance and hatred, we've always found a way to fester like the cockroaches we are!" Inarticulately she disclaimed of Yutaka's forlorn answer.
"Couldn't have said it better myself." Kuroi chimed in, a loutish creak in her upturned face. "Well, I would have said it far more gracefully…but indeed, mankind is as tenacious as a mother separated from her child, we won't rest until that faithful day we're in ecstasy imperishable, until our child is back again in our arms. We'll push past the enmity and prosper like we always do. Old One or not, mankind will find a way to ensure our world's survival, somehow." The assassin explained more tastefully, earning the ire of her compatriot.
"Thanks for one-upping me in front of the bad guy, sensei." Misao grumbled in embarrassment, leaning on fuming rage when she eyed her ally giving her the old 'no problem' wink.
"Mankind cannot…" Far more laboriously than before, Yutaka expired a sputtering breath, husky and distant. "They must not…I can not…Minami-Chan…I didn't expect to lose so much blood…" She called out to her missing companion in her delirium, wiping the sweat from her ever bleaching, pale face.
"Yutaka, I—" Tsukasa attempted to entreat, a pursuit thwarted by Misao's dry intolerance for negotiations.
"Ah ta ta, enough." Misao interrupted, intermittent of the chance for pacifism, the dirge tolled for the crusader's lives ended the moment they clung to their convictions. By her usual aloof habits, Misao retracted her cuddling clutch around the younger Hiiragi twin forcibly, tumultuously abandoning her duty as protector and crunching her way through the debris of the recent battle, thoughtlessly stomping on slain bodies with each callous tip and toe of her clanking boots.
Thoughtfully rubbing the invisible barrier surrounding Yutaka with her dirtied, blistered hands, Misao discerned the nature of the impenetrable shield's essence. She felt the souls of the dead resonate upon her fingertips, vigorously compacted into thin layers of soul art fortifications. Only a demon could pass through such a barrier considering their close attachment to the realm of souls, and their understanding of the entities ambiguous properties. To any normal human being, the barrier would simply act as a wall, or hurdle between them and their progress.
It so happened, luckily for her for once in her life, Misao was not a normal human being. She was not normal by any stretch of the imagination. Now and again it brought about a dark consideration, one she mindfully ignored, of her heritage. Doors of forgotten temples winded and whimpered at her very presence, revealing hidden passages, divine heirlooms hummed with magical fulminations at her touch, and the tools of the gods themselves were capable of being wielded in her decidedly non-mortal hands.
And perhaps the trait her inhuman form bore that disturbed her most, was her inability to die. The universe seemed to deem the drudge's life ending as fallacious, and therefore would not allow it to end until some great purpose had perhaps been fulfilled, or maybe the irony of the gods had just collapsed upon her shoulders and they poked and played with her life for amusement.
It was this truculent existence that forced her to obey, that tantalized her with the prospect of learning what she truly was if she continued to succumb to her master's will. And obey she would, any matter concerning any individual, any altercation with any demon or foul creature, and journeys to the deepest chasms of ancient temples, she'd make them with a crooked smile.
And this simply crafted, translucent barrier would be no match for her supernatural skills, and would not be the deciding obstacle to keep her away from discovering the secrets of her past. Be it human, demon, god, whatever power coursed through her hands, she'd use it to the fullest extent of her abilities to obtain the truth. The truth was all that mattered, and while it pained her to admit it, the destiny of the Arch-Fiends and King Allant seemed entirely inconsequential to her, she assisted Konata and her companions by the alluring draw of the truth being revealed alone.
And with this vigor, the sway of her desire for certainty, she plunged her charred knuckles into the bubbly sphere, shattering the force field away like glass and leaving Yutaka without shield, and thanks to the deaths of her underlings, a sword as well.
Kuroi's cheek tweaked with an uppity spasm, her disbelief was grand. "You…you kiddin' me, kid!? Could you have done that from the beginning!?" She griped, wiping the ghoulish grime from her suit in a fury, who knows how many baths it would take to remove the stench of death from her body thanks to Misao's inept foresight.
"Wasn't sure, now I am." The drudge sputtered, lax of birr in her voice. "I'm not human." Misao affirmed to herself out loud, closing the gap between her and the hounding demon Yutaka. Threateningly she tipped the urine-spear to the achromatic-cloaked demi-human's throat, in preparation of the end that could never come by her hand. "And neither is this one, as if we already didn't realize that. What reason would she have for defending the life of an Arch-Demon? The Sixth Saint, that ring any bells? The Monumental told us about her! And this order of the rose? Crusaders for peace? Pah! I may not be a scholar, but I'm not stupid, Umbasa has no disciples, this order of the rose she spoke of hasn't existed for millennia!" Deliberately she revealed, hoping to dissuade the demonic Yutaka from her courageous foothold.
Yet a sharp tongue may not have even been necessary. With her slaves dead, her barrier crushed, and her life wavering, Yutaka drooped wearily to the ground, clutching the engorged tube of bloody mess in her hands.
"Then she…?" Tsukasa queried, pausing her intrusion to noisily gripe about her injury.
"She's an Arch-Demon!" Misao hollered under a crack, visibly distressed herself by her bold statement. "I know because…I just…I can feel it. Look, you guys I'm not…what most would consider normal. I can feel the power in her, spouting outward, touching everything else. It's...terrible, and it's the same feeling I get from the Storm King. She's just here to protect one of her own." The revelation of her inhuman nature didn't bode well for her social standing in the group, but she knew it would've had to come out sometime. "I'm not an Arch-Demon, but…whatever Yutaka is, whatever demons are, I…I'm beginning to think I'm one of them. They feel just like me…and I can use that to discern weaknesses, like this kid's barrier. Only demons can pass through it, and only demons can disable it." A certain type of sadness laced Misao's annotation, an anguish neither of her human companions could hope to comprehend.
"Yet there is something…m-more…" Yutaka supplemented, heaving with a gasp. "A soft, fragile thing beneath the otherwordly convergence that threatens to swallow your heart whole…it is distinctly human." Yutaka proffered, blinded to the true amorphous shape of Misao's being. The child reeked of demonic essence this was true, suffusing around her like raw clout, yet even past the veil of decidedly unholy influence laying dormant in the deepest trenches of the slave's being was an unseen, unconsciously acting authority that was anything but demon. Yutaka could sense it, but only just slightly, it vexed her as much as it did the child herself. Misao was no demon, but she certainly wasn't human either.
"What can say I?" Misao ushered nervously, more afraid of the truth of her lifeblood than she let on. "I'm a deep person." A quip born of abhorrence, Misao made known her casual attitude towards the bleak unknown. "Now back to business, what I mean to say…is that Tsukasa, we cannot show mercy. You said it yourself, a long and harsh life, or a brief and wondrous one. What this child and her drudge support is most definitely the former! Even if what they desire could potentially save this planet… we have a chance to stop the Old One for good, she cannot succeed." Her tribulation brushed aside along with any answers held by the priestess Yutaka, Misao was stunned to see that in her brief turn away from her opponent the demon had begun to sink like a stone into the fleshy earth itself.
Kuroi was quick to act, but not enough, the assassin's dagger came crashing upon a sinkhole of nothingness. The Monumental's pawns watched demoralized in bewilderment as Yutaka sank into the depths of the crevice, a cave of orifices and arteries, the belly of the Storm King.
Before the decision to give chase could be made, the hole suctioned itself inward, sealing the passage. Exchanging brief looks of frustration and worry, the three soon found the ground beneath them to be raging violently like the storm around them, a convulsion brought about quite likely, by the recent invader of its internals.
"Be easy, my brother." Yutaka soothed, squished between the wet, slimy press of a mass of flesh and organs, her entire body drenched in the gooey, filmy entrails waste and byproducts. Where she was, she wasn't sure, it appeared to be the tight cavity between the goliath cage of ribs and the demon's pulsating, sphere-like heart. The cadenced drumming of the organ could be heard, as well as the sailing squish and squirt of bloods transportation to various devices.
The reverberations of the behemoth's fleshy caverns grew more and more restless; the recent havoc taking its toll had frightened the creature far beyond its capacity to handle such things. Despite its demonic powers, it was not born to be a predator, biologically it was a peaceful herbivore of the skies, and its mentality towards danger was instinctually cowardly.
"Easy…rest easy." Yutaka again urged, following the fleshy coil attached to her bellybutton to its source, the massive, thumping heart suspended above her by a web of squishy, pumping tendrils. "I may have come too late. The enemy's numbers are great, and they have mages, supernatural beings, old familiar faces, and even the daughter of Kanata Izumi amongst their rank. We wholly underestimated the Monumentals, I fear…" Dismally she lamented, working as she spoke, severing herself with her knife from the bond of blood, the entrails tube, the key that allowed her to tap into the bounteous well of the Storm King's demonic power.
Without the sedating effect of Yutaka's gentle psyche imprinting itself within the Storm King's own simple, rabidly animalistic one, the monster understandably bucked in response to the severance. The drug that had placated its frightened mind had abandoned it, and the chemical imbalance returned, leaking throughout the creatures systems as they each surrendered to its swell, replacing the cool behavior with a far more aggressive, primal one.
Yutaka knew this was her only hope at this point, a last ditch attempt to destroy the Monumental's servants. The Storm King's rage would not only destroy the plateau, but the shadowed temples, her enemies, and quite likely the beast and its spawn along with it. This gamble was what she placed her hopes within, unlikely though they may be, for a world that cried out for the Old One to remain.
Author's Note: Sorry for the week-long wait. Here's another chapter. Sorry it's so long.