The Thief Lords from Beneath
CHAPTER SIX
"Calm down Kanda, it's just magic, you use it, I use it," Allen is trying to be casual about this; he has had his suspicions about his powers, how they were, for the lack of a word, different from the magic of most people he's met. The fact that Kanda is making a scene is probably proof of the fact, but he still prefers to give himself the benefit of the doubt.
"I sense black magic." It isn't surprising really, that Kanda's glaring at him furiously, but the former heir finds himself cringing.
"Really?" he replies weakly, wishing that the swordsman would just set the issue aside for now.
Kanda grunts and Allen catches him rolling his eyes-- his wish is granted. "I'll get back to that eye of yours when we report to the Head Strategist; for now we're heading for where that voice is coming from."
"Right," Allen replies, business first, of course. He scans the room, the strange red aura surrounding his scared eye pulsating rapidly. "There's some decent amount of magic being used inhat direction and I doubt it's any of our friendly resident squatters," the former heir remarks, pointing to the wall in front of them. It is the wall that is supposedly separating the room they are in from the outside.
Kanda brushes off what he takes to be an attempt to be funny and witty, and examines the wall. Minutes pass and the swordsman is still just placing his palms in random parts of the wall (or at least Allen thinks they are random, he couldn't figure out a pattern of any sort). "Channel your life force into your arm again."
"Why?" Allen could predict the answer to this question of his, he immediately regrets asking it.
"Just do it."
And conceding to the command he knew would come, the former heir transfers all his life force from his eye to his arm, which immediately morphs into its silver form.
"Now what?" The snow-haired one asks, looking at his companion questioningly.
Much to Allen's surprise, Kanda positions himself behind him, and places his hands on his shoulders. "Walk," he said. "And make sure your hand goes first."
The former heir just obeys, places his large silver palm on the wall, and gasps softly when a pool of silver liquid appears beneath his hand.
"Stop gawking, bean," Kanda says irritably, pushing Allen forward.
Not a second later, they're through the silver pool and in another room. The first thing the former heir thinks when he catches his breath and looks around is that the room is very old. The furniture is covered in dusty cloth, and practically everything in the room looks like it is from a past century. On another note, the place is huge, and Allen wonders who would bother to conceal all this with magic; is their target just that special?
"Who could be supplying the magic to hide this place?" It is meant to be a rhetorical question, but Kanda answers him.
"Probably the one who's supplying the magic for that singing girl."
'Assuming that it isn't the singing girl herself who's doing all this,' Allen is about to add, but then the swordsman's eyes grow wide.
"What's wro—"
"Stay on your guard!" Kanda snaps, hissing thereafter. He transfers his life force into his sword and looks around the room cautiously.
"What's going on Kanda?" The former heir asks with a serious tone, looking around just as guardedly.
Whatever the swordsman mutters after that is probably a curse. "I've made a mistake, a damn fucking stupid mistake."
"What?" Allen gives him an incredulous look; he hasn't known Kanda that long but he doesn't seem like the type to overlook things during a heist.
"There are two mirror demons," the swordsman says through gritted teeth. "Let's advance, be wary of your surroundings, the demon can be anyone of these things."
Abruptly, they hear the girl erupt into song again. The sound of her voice echoes throughout the room. It's a beautiful sound, her voice is lovely, but at the same time the effect it has is eerie. Just as abruptly as it had began however, the song stops.
"Why do you think there are two of them?"
"When I first came to that room we were in, I saw that lower thief, Toma—" Allen tries his best not to comment on the term 'lower thief' "—but it felt like something was off with him, I turned around sensing someone behind me and there you were, except it wasn't really you obviously, it was a mirror demon."
And Allen gathers, that in the second Kanda realized that, he is thrown against the wall. "And how does that proves that there are two mirror demons?"
"They were there at the same time, the two fakes, when I was turning around I could see them both from the corner of my eye, but then I was attacked and then I had to save you so I really didn't really think about that fact much until now…"
"Couldn't the mirror demon have just made both co—"
"Cross didn't teach you anything did he? Mirror demons don't make copies of things and beings, they become a copy."
Ignoring the insults, Allen says, "So you think this mirror demon is behind all this? Setting aside its lack of actual intelligence, I don't think the demon has that much magical power."
"It could have leveled up—" Kanda grimaces, he seems disgusted with his own words for some reason "—or there could be a puppet master behind all this, either way, there's another mirror demon, and we'll have to deal with it."
Allen is about to ask another question when they hear a voice calling Kanda's name.
"Sir Kanda!" It goes.
"Toma?" Allen asks to the general direction of the voice.
Kanda's black golem descends to level with the former heir's face, "Yes, Sir Walker, it is me, we have a situation sirs."
"Report" the swordsman says.
"The windows are shut solid sir, no bars are broken, and the squatters are closing up all other exits." Toma says, worry in his tone.
"Great," Kanda says. "Just great."
And as if on cue a demon leaps from behind them. Sensing the movement, and seeing the obvious large shadow looming above them, Allen and Kanda simultaneously put on a defensive stance and block the attack. The previous demon looked more like a thin demonic clown than anything; this one looks more demented. Its chest had a face and the Roman numeral two on it (the former to the right, the latter to the left). Its face looks like it had a net over it, and its disgustingly long tongue is sticking out, Allen didn't even want to look at the thing's lower extremities. He exerts as much upward force as he can to push the demon off. From the sound of his companion's scream, he thinks Kanda did the same.
"So you were right after all," Allen comments, to which Kanda replies with a loud, irritated exclaim of the word 'focus'.
The swordsman swiftly lifts his sword up into a horizontal position, carefully positioning it adjacent to his neck and shifting his right hand to the end of the sword handle near the blade. He lifts his left palm to touch the other end of the handle and mutters a few words thereafter swishing the sword to his right. In his sword's wake appears ghostly bug-eyed skeletons (snake skeletons from the looks of it, although it didn't seem to be as simple as that). The skeletons briskly charge for the demon, it all happens so fast that neither the demon nor Allen has any time to think before there's a brief flash of light and the demon falls limply to the ground.
The former heir gapes for a few seconds, Kanda returns his sword to its scabbard, and dusts himself. "Why didn't you do that before?"
"This is a higher leveled demon; I would have been wasting precious life force if I attacked the first demon the same way," the swordsman says, a tinge of mockery in his tone. "Now make good use of your life force and scan the room for the target."
"Why didn't you think of that before? Using my abilities to search the room I mean…" Allen teases as he channeled his life force into his eye again. "And why can't you do it yourself?"
Kanda shoots him a glare, "So you fucking expect me to do all the thinking for you? Why didn't you think of it bean? You're the one with the strong senses, mine are just above average. Of course, I never use black magic."
The snow-haired one bites his lower lip, frustrated over how the swordsman has an actual point (except he isn't really using black magic darn it!). He probably needs to do a lot of explaining once they get back to the Order. Sighing in defeat, he turns around, scans the parts of the room they'd already walked past, then turns around again, and walks forwards slowly, eyes frantically darting in every direction. They hear the girl singing again, high pitched voice echoing throughout the room.
"I can't single her out," Allen says, sounding frustrated. "This entire room suddenly radiated with magic."
"It happened after you began surveying the room?"
"I'm guessing you felt that sudden surge of life force too?"
Kanda takes that question as a yes then says, "There is someone pulling all the strings here."
'Which probably means we're in for another fight,' Allen thinks. "Alright, having said that, how do we pinpoint our target?"
The swordsman looks thoughtful for a moment. "Do you know any draining techniques?"
"No, that's black magic," the former heir looks offended.
Kanda snorts, "Exactly."
Allen takes a step forward, face furious. "Are you accusing me of being Weed?"
"A Weed? Nothing of the sort, you're too strong for that, I'd say you're a full-fledged Willick."
"I am not a Willi—" Blue eyes grow wide, as the snow haired one stills suddenly. "Do mirror demons dissolve into thin air when they die?"
Kanda raises an eyebrow. "No."
"Oh, well, damn. This could be bad." He points towards where the demon had fallen, Kanda quickly turns to look and finds that the demon is not there, his eyes widen.
"We have to—" a sound interrupts the swordsman's words; the two briskly fixate their gazes towards the general direction of the noise and see a bright light at the far left corner of the room. Allen channels his life force into his arm once again, and Kanda channels his into his sword.
"Move," Kanda says, but he doesn't really need to because both of them are already running.
"The magic's really strong there!" Allen exclaims.
"No shit, beansprout!" The swordsman shouts in reply.
The former heir huffs. "No, I mean it's really strong, how could a mirror demon be that strong."
"You don't know much about leveled up demons do you?"
"Well apparently you don't either! Else we wouldn't be having this problem!"
"Look, bean, cut the shit for now; we've got work to do."
"It wasn't as if I started it."
"But you had the option to ignore it."
Allen grunts in frustration, turns to Kanda when he says, "You're so hypocritical you… you… effeminate bastard you!"
"That's nice coming from a former prince, Earl Millennium raised you well."
"Now see here, Earl Millennium did not raise m—" suddenly Allen is thrown back by glowing green force, it takes a few moments for the former heir to get into defensive position to start pushing back against the force. It becomes apparent that he's also been left behind. 'Stupid Kanda, distracting me and then leaving me behind,' he screams in frustration and somehow that's all he needs to win against the green force.
Allen scans the room, panting. It's eerily quiet until another blast occurs, the frustrated screaming voice tells him Kanda's involved. The former heir takes a deep breath then sprints for the direction of the now roaring loud fighting sounds.
……………………….
You may or may not be reading an edited version of this chapter (refer to A/N in chapter 5 for details)
NOTES:
Black Magic—'regular magic' utilizes 'life force' as its power source, life force draws power from 'pure' part of one's soul, some people are born with the tendency to gravitate towards black magic, in such cases the 'pure' part of their soul is smaller compared to others and so they draw energy from the impure part, some people choose to do so even if they are not born with the tendency, however utilizing the force of the impure part of the soul is very much frowned upon in Dorian and supposedly forbidden in the Order, but—(more on this in a later chapter)
Weed –a person who was born with the tendency to use black magic
Willick—a person who has highly developed skills in black magic, one does not need to have been a Weed to be a Willick
(definitions are all made up and are therefore my property?)
Also, the golems don't appear as much, as they tend to hide during heists in places where it's easy to document, but difficult to get hurt or caught during a battle. They are however, swift to return to their owner's side when there is a call or something else of equal or greater importance.
A/N: Actually, this chapter, the previous chapter, and the coming chapter could easily all just be one chapter, but since I want to have almost the same number of words for every chapter, I cut them up, you could say I'm sort of mimicking the way James Patterson makes his chapters (except not really, I don't know, haha). Next chapter would likely be up in the coming week, expect familiar DGM characters from Volume 2 or DGM (: Thank you for reading!