whiteshade of blackness 'gaku march 01, 2007
# 11 rained
...I want You, but You don't need me..
...I found You, but You never see me..
The wind blew, unendingly tale-telling everything in its paths with its own language. The sands were blown parted and mixed with each others, grails of different times, different lands, different histories. The sunlight stabbed everything below it, while the sky a sheet of deep ocean's colour tantalizing every eyes who dared to see it with a promise of coolness to escape from the scalding heat.
A lone beast's skeleton lied half buried by the sands, the wind whistling through its holes and cavities, its remnants of spines scattered around it. Its blackholes of eyes stared unseeingly towards the whiteland in front of it.
Far behind it, the sands rippled like little waves, moving forward through the dunes like a tide closing in.
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Deia shut her eyes tightly, searching for the loose end of the lifethread that had been separated from the one with a naive prussian orbs. Feeling her tears burned hotly and flowing like an endless prayer. Still, the smaller body under her lied unmoving. Nomore of its jerky breathless gasps, nor the little trembling of his chin when he stopped his futile gasps. She felt it when his sight darkened to black as if it was her own. Felt the plunge to darkness like an unstopable nightmare's fall.
...stop falling...! Her heart begged.
Please, just stop falling !! She cried her heart out. Feeling it bleed, colouring the dark to red.
((...do You need me...?))
A soft breeze blew her mind with a language alien to her knowledge, but she understood the unspoken words.
...please...
A shining hand extended towards the falling boy swallowed by the darkness.
((...I found you...)) it said reverberating the red flows like a living currents of blood. Extending her heart to the boy's. To grasp the feeling of lost emanating from the dead boy's heart of heart. Something old and more ancient than the Fairs'. She felt a presence embracing her existence from behind. It spread like a blanket of longing and emptiness.
Somewhere outside her mind the voices calling her name eventually reached her awareness, they brought her consciousness back to the reality far above. She felt the ripples of hopes on the surface, and opened her eyes.
... and found two orbs of charcoaled prussian so close to hers.
She widened her eyes in disbelief. The prussians burned at her eyes with words unspoken for so many years.
In her surprise she gave out a yelp muffled by the boy's mouth. His body jerked a little, closing his eyes as if hurting. It's like a little tremor jarred his pains to live. Deia panickly froze with a terrified stares.
Eventually she felt the eyes of everyone burned at them, the frantic confusion of what to do next was radiating from her like a thick cloud.
"...I.. was saying that it worked, Dearest...," Lyea spoke with a stunned expression by her side, "...but I don't think THAT would work out for the rest of your lives...!"
'THEN, what should I dooo...?!!!' she asked mostly to herself, knowing the others would know her frantic thoughts without a word out.
In the background she heard Howard humming something unintelligible. While The Lord stood in paralysis with sweat running like rains on his face. Deia blinked once as the image of that was clear in her mind, then realized of the sight around her. She blinked again as cold shaky fingers touched her left cheek ghostly, she saw it in her mind before she actually felt it. The fingers pushed her face up lightly.
She looked back to the prussians, finding they didn't charcoaled as much as before, a little more transparent color shading them. She let the ghostly fingers led her head up, leaving the partly opened mouth of the boy's. He closed his dry lips, still locking his gaze with hers.
"...C.. can you... breathe ?" Deia asked not caring how her voice sounded at the present.
He didn't move for sometimes, then lifted the hand he used to touch Deia's face with, to the front of his face. He clutched his grip tightly so the skin of his palm broke by his sharp nails. The blood dripped heavily, but before it touched his pale face, shoots of blackness ran through his skin and covered the lowerhalf of it just under his large eyes. They absorbed the blood instantly when it touched the surface, and as if a living thing, the shoots reshaped themselves to one piece of half-face armor mask, with few shoots left on the sides of his face made some curves half-circling the edges of his eyes and brows, as if some tattoo pattern.
Deia widened her eyes in horror. "That... It.. consumes your blood... inside ?!" she looked back and forth to his chest and face.
The tired black-glazed prussian eyes blinked at her once.
...I can handle it... for the time being...
"Is it really okay..?! Can you really breathe through it ?!"
No... IT breaths for me...
She lifted both brows.
... I compromised..!
"...Oh..!" she replied lamely, feeling tons of relief crushed her, and the lost of adrenaline surge and anxiety. Her hands dropped to her lap, and she stared him with a dull face. She froze for a long moment, then tears dripped from her stunned eyes again. And she started to sob silently.
Wiped the tears that kept flowing with both hands in turns, she muttered the gratefullness welled up from her heart again and again.
"...I was so afraid..." she said between sobs, "..you'll have to make it up to me... or I'll hate you..."
"You don't ever do that again...!! I'll hate you...!" she cried.
The people around them gave her a smile, Howard messed her hair a little.
...sorry... He stared half stunned.
"NO SORRY FOR YOU !! DON'T ever try to die on me AGAIN !! 'Cause I won't let you...!!!" she barked with vigor.
The boy's eyes drooped a little in soft expression.
... I know...
"Good !!" she nodded. Then blinked.
"GWHAAAAAAAAAAA...????!! I'm hearing your miiiind...!!" She yelled. "Right ?! Right ?!!"
---------------
"You really did this...?!" The Lord's blue brows lifted with awestruck disbeliefment. He looked up and down the clear ice-like shell Odin and his warsteed was trapped in. The shell shaped like flames soaring up made of crystals, he hummed to himself, thinking that it'd be NICE to be in his chamber (with the charges inside it looked more dramatics).
"Can I touch it...??" his eyes shone big and bright like a child given a new toy he never seen before.
Prussian stared at the grounds guiltily, he kept messing his fingers since they asked him about Odin some time ago.
"Milord...!" Howard roled his eyes behind his black spectacles. The six Charms stood around them with an 'O' on their mouths, only 'Thrice' scowled with something unpleasant written on his face. He stretched his neck to front and sniffed slowly.
"Smells like fire !" he said silently. He never liked fire.
The Lord snatched back his curious hand sharply as if been stung. "Really ?" And sniffing the smell.
"I don't smell any burns..." Howard sniffed the air too.
"It's not burning... It's just...stopped !" 'Thrice' answered as if to himself.
"It stopped the time inside?!" The Lord asked with brows shooting up. "Well, good for him, then! Say, maybe we could just let him in there till I got a little older than him...??" he inquired closely to Prussian's face, his brows moved up and down suggestively.
Pffth. "What's an older face good for if someone still acts childishly...?" Howard mumbled.
"I HEARD that !!" The Lord said flatly.
Howard stucked out his tongue behind his back.
Deia grasped the boy's nervous hands gently before he make them bleed each others with their sharp nails. "You can undo it, right? Noone's angry with you...!" She tried a comforting smile.
"Although... IF you'd say you couldn't, just in case, I think How-ward has many aquaintances he could ask for help, they'll go abroad if they have to...!"
Some of the Charms let out an explosive cough, that were suspiciously sounded like a choked laugh. They were the few of the ones who accompanied Howard back then when they found Deia and the boy with the Pack of wolves. Those words were exactly like what Howard had said to the Solo-beast, though at the time it was about the boy that he'd said it. It's like the boy's turned the tables on both of them. behind them, glaring from behind his spectacles, Howard cleared his throat.
...would he be angry...? Prussian took a guilty glimpse at Deia's eyes, she understood it was about Odin.
"Hmm, I think you had definitely caught him off guard, he didn't even know what had struck him...!" Deia said as if to herself. "So I guess Old-din won't remember much of it, unless we tip him off afterwards!"
Howard flicked his eyes towards the children as the realization of Deia's words struck his mind. Seeing the facts presented at them that's most likely the case, the General didn't spare a chance against the little boy. He repeated the words slowly in his mind, feeling they're a lot heavier compared to how Deia had voiced them. Prussian's black-glazed eyes hardened, a soft breeze blew around Howard told him that the boy realized what his thoughts were about.
Prussian didn't say anything and stepped forward towards the clear-shell, extended his right hand without touching it. The clear coils of flame unlocked themselves and turned to helixes of whitelight spiraling around the boy's hand and body. The light disappeared then without anymore significance.
'Thrice' widened his eyes a little. That's not his power, that was...--!
A warsteed's neigh cut his thoughts. The sound of it's front legs dropped to the grounds heard after. Still caught by the danger it sensed before, the black warsteed sprang its front legs several times in a circle, baring its beast's sharp teeth wildly.
The people around them took a few steps back avoiding the creature half panickly, while the man riding it tried to calm it down. When it finally did, Odin noticed the people surrounding him and his warsteed with large unblinking eyes, among them also the boy who was supposed to be in his arm the last he saw him.
He just blinked.
... "Shouldn't you be more surprised than THAT...?!" The Lord asked flatly.
---------------
...they're here...!!
"What? Who ?!" Deia asked Prussian out of nowhere. The boy seemed like he'd been caught, looked back at her with surprised eyes. Then she realized something.
"...That wasn't suppose to be heard by me, was it ?" she frowned.
He kept staring with wide black-glazed eyes, the clear black glass-like coating covering his prussian orbs were most likely came with the black shoots-turned-armor on his half face. If she were familiar with nightsky then she'd say they're of its colour, but since she had never seen it, Deia only felt like her prussian gems had been stolen from her sights. She didn't really hate it, after all black was her favorite colour, it's just that she felt like something missing from her Prussian. The boy felt what she felt, that's why he'd drawn himself a little since he gained his consciousness. Deia also felt it that the boy felt what she felt, it backfired at her with double force mixed with lots of things he's feeling at the moment.
"Look, ..." She sighed. "I don't know how it came to this, but I'm certainly hearing your mind right now and more ! So your suppressed anxiety felt uncomfortable on me to say the least, couldn't you just make it easier for both of us and tell everyone who's here...?!"
"What are you murmuring about ?"
Deia turned her head sharply to her father, "There's something bothering..--"
"Chieftain...!" One of the Charms called repressively. They were all looking at the same direction towards the outlands.
"How many ?!" Odin asked flatly.
'Thrice' closed his eyes, "...about 30-50, at least !" he murmured.
"30 and 50 are quite a distanced sum...!" Howard lifted one of his brows.
"I couldn't get the exact amount,..-"
"..-They're Wilds, aren't they ?!" Odin said low with a hunger burning in his eyes. People who don't know his nature would say that it's almost sounded like a purring tone.
"They're underground enclosing in..-"
..ME !
"They're coming for me...!" Deia halfconciously said centering all her senses to the boy by her side who was looking at the direction of the outlands.
...'He' must have called them when I lost it... my inner-self !
"Your what...?!"
Without any warning he dashed off towards the dunes of sand laid far in front of them. "Wait !!" Deia ran after him without thinking.
"Deia !!" The Lord chased them too. "You can't just dash off out of the Circle like that !! You're still not reliable on your own outside !!"
The Charms spread into two groups automatically, ran in a straight line on each sides of them distanced by some intervals. Four maintaining their Harmony Circle mostly for Deia who still couldn't stabilize her Wave especially outside the Land's Barrier, while the other three acted as the hazard shield. Normal eyes wouldn't see their doings, though, since their field was in Waves that were not even visible in specific ways such as aura. It's mostly their forte since Harmony-user's action could only be detected and counteracted by other harmony-users too. That's why most outlanders were that frightened by their abilities.
The OWLs, though, have their own notorious capabilities that were developed in their absurd ways in times. Their two sides were always like snakes and mongooses, although they haphazardly exchange the positions depends on their skills.
Prussian stopped when he felt the sands brushed his running feet and that the semi-damp soil under his soles turns to dry grains, above him he felt the sky's eyes on his being like he always liked it. The wind almost felt like it blew through his body, and his senses' sharpness were awakened by the many informations he could extract from the open air. Surroundings were drawn in his mind like maps super-imposed with each others, a complete set of every object around him. Although his sound-map was most likely monopolized by Deia's readings calling him, his movement-map was concentrated on the readings from the open grounds lied in front of him. He couldn't smell the air through the halfmask of black covering his face, but the thing in itself has its own senses and his mind automatically dechipering its readings.
To his surprise, the blackthing sent pulses similar to feelings to him, almost like when you tried to speak with someone of foreign language that you open your 'atmosphere' around you sending invisible waves of comprehension so that you could at least grasp where the unknown words were leading you. At the moment, the blackthing was intrigued by something that was most likely going to happen.
The boy blinked once. That's odd...IT doesn't read something in physical. Something expanding like lines lengthen from back to front in paces...? He widened his eyes. The extends of Time !!
"Prussian..!!" Deia's outbreathed voice broke his concentration from close behind. Followed by her repressed yelp when suddenly the sands around them exploded and some foul-smelling projectiles flew targeting on their bodies.
A clear Wave shot by the Charms behind them blasted the things back quite a distance. The exploding sands hit the ground backward like a tsunami tide, from its wall flung some creatures that were immediately landed on their fours. They were mostly looked like human, although quite disproportioned. Their limbs and fingers were long and thin like branches with bones sticking out of their joints, the forefingers were pulled close to the thumbs with a deep gap cut the palm between the fore and middle fingers, it reminded Deia of reptile's. Their upper trunks were hunched with bones on their upper spines stucked out like a shark's dorsal fin. Their disfigured heads and faces were mostly covered by the dirty long-cloths that wrapped them from heads to ankles like messy bandages. Their faces were almost flat with nostrils two holes in their front faces that could close like those of seals. Right now, they were breathing their smell with scrunched up faces. Slimy drools dripped from their wide ruptures of mouths with disorganized sharp teeth sticking here and there.
"Watch out !! They use poisons..!!" Howard yelled from behind. The Lord got to them first and instinctively enfolded one arm around Deia's shoulders and covered her body with his wide cloak. She tried to pull Prussian's unmoving body close but compromised to just hold his cloak and sleeve.
"They're not of this area..!!" Odin stopped his warsteed between them and the OWLs. "I've never met OWLs like them!" He said to The Lord.
The attackers made a rapid clicking sounds with their jaws to each others, which somehow represent their way of communication.
Deia opened her eyes wide. These are the OWLs..?! She heard stories about them fairly often, but she thought that they were kind of like bandits and thugs, not as such disfigured creatures like them. SO, how could they compared my cute little Prussian with THOSE...?! Unconsciously she scowled and pouted.
The creatures let out high pitched screeches almost at the same time, and more of them were bursting out of the sands. The foul-smelling projectiles came floating and opened themselves into semi-transparent yellow eyeballs about the size of an adult man's fist with hairs on top every each of them. In the eyeballs were several irises that moved at multiple directions rapidly.
"...yuck...!" Deia murmured to herself.
The hair on the eyeballs coiled and turned to stings, and launched at them without any signal from the creatures. Odin unsheathed his talisman-sword and gave a swing. The air blasted and hit few of them while the rest floated back with pupils enlarged as if storing up informations.
"Don't break those...!!" Howard caught up to The Lord's side breathing heavily. He's too old for footworks.
As the eyeballs broke, they bursted out with each iris turned into another eyeball connected with one another by some foul-yellowy slime webs that dripped heavily to the sands. A hissing sound heard when the slime dissolved the sands into boiling liquid, vapors and smells wafted in the wind to all around them.
"...Euh, that's disgusting !" Deia scrunched up her nose. The Lord just blinked and thought that his youngest child was quite superficial sometimes.
The irises in the other eyeballs spasmed and they crashed into each other multiplying their numbers, and the slime rained on them from everywhere, making the vapors fogged their surroundings. Hissing sounds were heard constantly, even from The Lord's Veiled's surface floating above their heads.
"Something like acid, I bet it's lethally poisonous too!" The Lord muttered to Howard. "Isn't it a little odd that they ought to kill us without even identifying who we are first...?"
"Hm, seems like we're not their genuine target here..!" Howard whispered. The Lord tsk-ed staring straight to the boy's unmoving back. While Deia embraced in his hand stared up awestruckly watching how the blue-shimmering surface of the Veiled Spell rippled each time a drip of slime touched it.
"This is like rain, isn't it ?" She asked half-thrilled. The Lord rubbed his chin with the other hand, staring at the melted grounds around them, realizing that she had never seen rain before. "Well, usually the rain wouldn't kill you...!"
"Pffth, I asked Kyllea once how the rain would be like inside, and she called me superfluous! Saying in length what's meant and not meant to be...!"
The Lord snickered, "She's an orthodox..!"
Deia hummed as answer, stared back to Prussian's back, thinking about a lot of things she'd never seen that were probably unexceptional things for him. The fact that he didn't seem bothered by the poison-rain could mean many things, her heart squeezed a little when the thoughts of 'the rain that kills you' was natural in his daily life before. The words 'more than hell' popped involuntarily in her mind again, that's what they all phrased about the OWLs' lives to her. What kind of hell were you brought up in...?
She tightened the grips on the boy's cloak and sleeve. Like triggered, he stretched out his hands to his front, making Deia loose her grip on the sleeve. She made a little noise of surprise and disagreement, but he brushed it off.
As if responding to him, the creatures started to let out screeches simultaneously and launched themselves on them. Two of the Charms at their sides reflexively extended their right hands going to let out destruction Waves, but before they let loose, a reverberating sound wave broke the high pitched screeches from behind the creatures. For a slight moment the creatures were like stopped, suspended in their launch tracks, then suddenly out of nowhere an enormous tail of bones swept them in a single movement.
As the fogged vapors also swept along and cleared somewhat by the wind made by the bones, they could see the creatures that were hidden in the sand had come out and surrounding them like vultures with the look of hunger on their faces. But another sound wave reverberated in the air, this time sounded more like a deep howl, broke them into chaos. They started screeching in panics and turned tails. Quite far behind them a lone beast's skull that was half burried in the sands emerged, followed by the long trail of spinal column bones circled under the sands.
The enormous columns of bones snapped in wide swing like a whip and struck the rest of the creatures, and repeated in a few liquid movements until most of them eliminated. The bones' movements were not very fast, but their massive size was more than enough to cover it. The 'tail' end of the bones was the one thing did most of the work, it swiped and lashed everywhere in flashes.
The humans and Charms stared with wide eyes as the slaughter occured in front of them, half paying attention that the rain of slime-poisons had lessen dramatically almost to nothing. The few remaining eyeballs closed down and dove under the vapors of melted boiling sand.
The huge mass of bones swung again rapidly, throwing a great mass of sands on them.
Deia halfconsciously stepped back once in her father's hand, "NOW it's raining sand..?!" She half-shouted in the reverberating sound wave of howls deffening their ears.
The Lord turned to Howard, "...What is it doing ?!"
"Looks like it's covering the melted area on the sand's surface around us...!!"
"Really ?!" The Lord shouted louder, "Then I think it can stop now if it really doing this in our favor !!"
"Before we have to dig a tunnel to get out from here...!!"
The warsteed neighed on its hindlegs.
The Charms blinked.
The boy let his hands down..
The bones stopped, the skull stood high in the air like a snake's head with it's face focused down on them... and he ran towards it.
"Prussian !!!" Deia shouted in horror as the boy's figure missing in the cloudy layers of sands still wafted in the air. Watched fixedly as the skull dove and swalowed his body between its sharp-teethed jaws. The skull lifted its face high again, the sands that were also caught by the jaws poured down from the hollow under its chin. Deia panicked when she saw that the boy didn't fall down from there too.
The whip-like trail of bones closed in on themselves like a snake circling its body. The men noticed immediately that they were actually the vertebral columns of the huge beast. A hysterical scream broke their paralysis.
"...No! Deia !!" The Lord pulled the small girl's arm back, preventing her to run towards the beast of bones. She kept screaming in hysteria trying futilely to pried her father's strong grip from her arm.
The enormous skull slowly came down towards them. It stopped a couple of meters above the grounds and opened its jaws as if in slow motion. Deia stopped her frantic effort and stared with wet eyes, as the jaw lowered little by little. Inside, under the shade of the upper jaw/head, they could see two human's bare feet in a faded olive green loose pants floated in a standing pose, up to the body in deep green long tunic which its ends were longer than his feet with the side-cuts started from his waist's sides, the black hair divided to six braids that were almost as long as the tunic's ends, the hands were folded on a flat chess, and a Prussian who in all the likelyhood was strangling the neck with both his feet on the shoulders.
The men sweatdropped. Deia froze.
The snake-skull covered half of the person's face cocked to the side, 'seeing' them.
"You're with him...?" the man asked them without any greetings. His words was slow and strangely overlaid with sounds like of many whispers, and talked by moving his lips only without opening his jaws. He was about the age of early twenties and his body was was of slim built,you could say almost feminine, but his air was heavy and sharp like a blade, it spoke of a very long time spent in dangerous grounds –or in the OWLs' case, undergrounds- as a predator.
"You better be, because if not, you'll be joining them...!" he continued flatly. Pointing the parts of the slain creatures that buried by the sands with a flick of his head and snake-skull.
"You swapped pack again...? You're pretty easy selling yourself !" the snake-skull turned forward again facing the boy's face so close to his visible half-face.
Deia made a sound of protest, she stared the hollowed snake-skull's eye-sockets with anger.
The snake-skull cocked again a little, 'staring' down at her. His lips smirked profanely in comprehension. "Ah, new 'buyer'..? 'cuse my mouth's words..." He leered showing his long six-fangs –four upper fangs, and two lowers- wetted by saliva. Then purred, "It's really poisonous, you know...!"
Deia's face showed a little revulsion. Prussian made a small low growl, his whole body trembled with his effort of strangling the man that seemed like only a waste of energy. The man closed his jaws for a moment, still with a leering lips, and froze as if enjoying the boy's another longer and more frustrated growl, then wetted his upper lip slowly. His tongue was a greenish-black colour, longer and slimmer than the common human's.
Then he snapped his head back to the boy, "Stop that!! You're still not strong enough to hurt me..!" Prussian froze instantly. They stared at each other's face in a long time.
"How much damage you suffered..?" the man asked flatly. That made Prussian awakened, he shoved the man with his fours, but as he stood solid like a brick wall, it was prussian's body that bounched backward. He landed lightly on the beast's lower jaw, both feet on two of its pointed sharp teeth. Gave a good glare to the man, then climbed up the beast's skull and disappear in one of its cavernous eye-sockets.
The man snorted. Sharp rattler's sound was heard, a big skull-less snake skeleton with two rattle-tails slithered down from the beast skull's hole where the spinal cord were supposed to be attached to its brain. It circled and rubbed its long mass to the man's body like a cat fawning its master and the upper part of the ribs opened out behind his back like fingers unfurled as if going to embrace him, attaching itself to the snake-skull on the man's head.
Howard lifted his brows. The strange-OWL's figure in front of them reminded him of a mythical-creature's form he once read in a book of old-era, or was it an old-era creature that was believed as mythical nowadays...? A round spiky-haired object almost hit him on the head, it landed a few steps behind him. He flickered back, and finding that it was a dry coconut 'head'. He sweatdropped sighing to himself.
A crash, some clangs of metal, another coconut landed near his feet, A rotten disfigured hand almost hit Odin on the face, another crash, somemore trashes flew on the air, a louder crash and a slimy liquid leaked out from the beast's eye socket that looked like mucus dripped down to the sands. Thankfully NOT from the nose...! The Lord thought. Behind him Howard cleared his throat directed to him.
The man let out a long hiss. "What're you looking for?! Don't mess my space, it's already chaotic in there..!!"
...You shouldn't collect trash..!
"I don't, they huddled on around me..!!"
A humanoid skeleton remains landed besides the Charms on their left, he stared at it noticing it resembled a bug. Deia stared at it for a moment until The Lord's hand turned her head back from the smelly thing.
"Hu, you met my janitor..!" the man looked down at it with indifference, and shrugged. He opened his left palm up, several long blackthings uncoiled from his arm's veins and dove to the sands under the shade, one of them slithered to the skull's eye socket with its 'tail' still attached to the man's arm. A multiple of crashes sounded, and from the eye socket the black 'snake' pulled out Prussian's right ankle backward. Deia gasped as he scratched along the beast's skull muzzle-bone trying to stop. The thing only stopped when his hands not touching the skull anymore, his small body dangling in the air by his right foot suspended.
The man floated forward without leaving the beast's skull shade, "What ?!" he asked low to the boy's face. Prussian swung his right hand to scratch his face. He got a firm hit, but it only left reddened lines on his cheek that disappeared in notime. In a flash, the man grabbed his head with both hands and roared, showing his teeth, and bent his neck as if going to bite him.
Deia lunged herself reflexively but her father's hands pulled her back.
"What ?!" he asked again, pulling the boy's head forward it bended his dangling body like an 'L'.
Deia gritted her teeth. "...Mother's sight..!!" she hissed out. The Lord flicked his head to her.
The man shut his mouth with a flat face, scrutinizing the boy's defiant eyes on him. He roared again, this time opening his jaws with the four tusk-like teeth/bones spread his cheeks open wide from the insides of his mouth.
Deia gasped in shock, he could swallow her Prussian's head as easily with his beast-mouth, and she let out an involuntarily yelp.
Prussian didn't react, still staring at him with defiance. The man closed his jaws and leered widely. "You have no mother..! By the way, it was partly my fault for my poor metaphor about mothers and skies !"
"Fuck you..!" Deia hissed again. The men around her snapped their heads at her hearing the profanity.
The man chuckled and let the boy's head go. Floated back and dropped his body backward half reclining lazily on the snake-skeleton behind his back that curled acting as his seat under his floating body, and continued to chuckle like crazy.
After a long moment he stopped suddenly. "If you let your minds leak out like that, more low-lives would bug you..!!" he said flatly. As if on cue, several shreeks heard from far away, some were muffled like covered by something that were most likely the sands. He didn't say another word until the last whining screeches died down.
Odin tightened his grip on his talisman-sword's hilt. This OWL's a nightmare! With Voidscraft abbility and no penitence! He searched his mind, something about the One who will come to get you-...! He felt he'd heard about this OWL before, but it's too foggy right now...
The man loosened something from behind his nape. He stretched his hand out and let the thing dangled from between his fingers. It was a silvery thread with a crystal pendant that shaped like a small column at one of its ends. The crystal was black but clearly transparent, inside it several bluish-silver speck of lights moved incessantly in their orbits making a pattern. Prussian stopped pricking the black 'snake' from his ankle, and widened his eyes. He tried to lunge forward scratching at the beast skull's palate as his solidground, but it's futile.
The man chuckled again and stood up, dangling the crystal in front of the boy's half-covered face. When he snatched it, the black 'snake' dropped him, and before he managed to fix his position in the air, the man's hand grabbed him and flung his body to the skull's teeth and brought down one foot to his chess and neck violently, keeping his neck trapped between two sharp teeth. His temple got quite a cut, and started to bleed.
The men moved by his belligerence and stepped forward.
"I'm NOT your SPECIMEN...!!" Deia spat the hiss out disgustedly. The man just smirked.
"...Really ?"
The word specimen hinted Odin immediately. "You're The Collector..!" he said wideeyed. Wasn't he supposed to be only an OWL's legend to scare children off...?!
The man turned his head to them, "You know me? ...We've never met before, because you would've been in there or joined those rotten dregs..!" he flicked his head pointing the beast skull's brain cavity and the direction where the creatures' screeches had died down earlier.
"Ah, talking about specimen, you just reminded me about that one, the pack-leader of your ex-wolfpack..!!" Prussian made a low growl at that. "Yessss, he'd likely worthy enough to be in my collection, don't you think...?!" The growling got louder and angrier. The man snickered, "You certainly have good eyes for collecting..!"
That did it for the boy, knowing what implied in those words. Like he'd let him ever laid a finger on his Human..!! He flung the pendant crystal down, and using both hands to scratch the foot planted on his chest. The black 'snake' caught both his hands before he managed to touch the man's pant-leg, and pulled them tightly above his head.
Deia caught the pendant flying towards her, the crystal felt warm in her hands. She snapped her head back to her Prussian. The Charms including Howard accelerated their Wave, but Odin stretched his hand signaling them to stop. The Lord gritted his teeth.
"What, can't bite this time..? Learn something new, then !" The man bent forward and brushed his face slowly, Prussian flicked his head in abhorrence and anger. The Collector brought his smeared-with-blood fingers to his mouth and licked them clean, making a fully delighted face. "...sweets..!" he hissed out. Then flung the small boy down, he landed on fours relexively.
Deia plunged forward and pulled him back without even thinking to where her father waiting.
"He's mine ! But if you insist, I'll let you borrow him for the time being...!" The Collector said smugly looking down at them.
"Don't!! He can capture you and steal your ability! Better be safe as not one of his target..!" Odin whispered low, knowing the Charms could hear him.
The Collector snickered and dropped his body backward again. Reclining leissurely with one leg on the other, his fingers interlaced on his stomach. The rattler-tails sounded as if mocking them.
"Free advice...!" He said loudly. Deia felt Prussian froze in her arms. "Don't let him use his Voice, it'll get a whole kingdom annihilated...!!"
Prussian trembled, and Deia pulled him close, glaring with full ferocity at the OWL.
"He's A Mourn-child...!!" The OWL singsonged loudly.
"So what..?!" Deia hissed with hatred.
"You don't know...?" he asked dramatically. "A Mourn-child have Siren's Voice !! Faaaarr greater than a Siren's-.."
"I'm not your weapon..!!" Deia barked, in her arms Prussian burned his fiery eyes at him.
The Collector stopped mid-sentence and back to his flat expression. "No, you're one of my collection...!" he said calmly. Prussian growled loudly at that admition. "Hehe...You liked it being with me before I told you what you are to me...!!"
"I'm more civil compared to those low-lives...!" he said as if to himself. Suddenly the other black 'snakes' he let loose bursted out of the sands under him, which shaded by the beast skull's shaddow, and return to his arm, coiling to his veins. He snorted and without saying anything else, the beast skull's jaws closed and dove into the sands. The ground's surface shook a little as the enormous thing disappeared under it.
Deia let out a breath slowly, feeling Prussian's rigid body melted eventually in her arms.
"... They're the ones who's 'here'...?" she muttered, already knowing what the answer would be.
"Phew..! Seems like you have quite a flock of fans..!!" Howard laughed dryly.
"How-ward..!! I mind !!" Deia pouted angrily.
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The journey back to the Castile was quiet. Prussian was literally attached to Deia the whole time on the back of one of Howard's summon-beast. He seemed like frightened and didn't dare to see the other humans' eyes even once, only hiding his face on His Human's shoulder and curled as small as he could.
Deia noticed it started after the OWL's words about the Mourn-child.
Weapon ! They used him like that ?! And when he refused they tortured him...?!
Her heart squeezed painfully, she felt like wanting to know the boy's past and not wanting to know at the same time. She kissed the temple lightly , brushed her cheek on the brown-haired head a few times. Then looked up to her father's face behind her. The Lord held the reins with both hands, using them as the safeguard for the children seating in front of him at the same time. He felt her stare on him and stared back, then smiled. He's not very good at this, his late wife was the one always more mature even for his sakes. Deia smiled back, despite the deep concern written on her childish face.
Prussian was halfconscious when they arrived at the Castile. Deia didn't get panic, however. She said that he was just dead-tired and needing sleep, as if knowing everything about him. The men only exchanged glances at that. He slept for almost the full two weeks without any significance. Deia continued her life's routines just as before Prussian was there, with only her spare times spent in his company. The adults were worried about her dependency to him before, but seeing that she could continue her life in the normal rythm, they let one worry go. Somehow they knew that she'd realized it too that if she got more attached to him in the unusual way, they'd be separated by one way or another, sooner or later. The incident with the power she had released blindedly was more than enough to teach her the lesson. She almost lost her Prussian twice, in physical and in soul, so she wouldn't want to repeat that again. She knew she had to be stronger for her Prussian's sakes too, strong people make their lives, not being caried away by fates or curses. She had to be stronger so that she could share her life with the dying boy, so he could survive when he lost his. Deep in her heart she knew that that was the only thing she could do to help him, that there was no cure for his illness, that it wasn't an illness to begin with.
Lyea who went back with Kyllea to the Castile before them from the Forest that day somehow looked more gloomy when she thought noone was watching. Deia knew it, though, from the way her eyes less shining even when she smiled or laughed, the worries hidden in her eyes when she looked at her secretly.
She spent more times in the underground libraries, searching for what, she didn't know, nor care to ask. Lyea's unspoken language always told her to brush it off, to not worry about her worries. Deia had to let her go, though. Kyllea always tailing her 24-hours a day. Since the time when she tried to assault her with her unknown power, Deia always felt a bit alarmed around her pressence.
The Charms had put the Castile back together in about 10 days. Deia got strict prohibitions for using her Harmony after that, not before she could proven her control over her power. But something's moving behind her, looming around in the invisibles taunting her awareness with harmful intentions towards her and her Prussian.
Her Spell was always restless in her sanctuary.
Prussian woken up on the 12th day, Deia was waiting by his side as if knowing it's the time for him to wake up. She greeted him with a smile, brushed his half-covered face gently with her hand. When the black-armor responded to her touch and retracted to the craft-plate back, leaving his whole face visible again, she instinctively bent forward and covered his mouth with hers. Letting him breathe through her, feeling they were of a complete cycle and not needing anything else in the world to be alive.
A metalic clang heard, and Lyea tried to balance back the tray in her hands. The sounds she made broke Prussian's trance eventually, and he stared at her with a serene look in his eyes. He moved his chin a little, indicating that they could stop for now. Deia dreamily came back to her awareness, still centering her senses to him.
"What..?" she smiled, whispering the word in the gentlest voice, fingers brushing the bangs out of his face.
Lyea flushed, and cleared her throat. She tried a few times, and found her voice back.
"Deia-Saraleighsthē Cyrianthea Martelé-Luna...!!" She admonished her with the most authoritarian tone she could muster. Deia froze instantly. She's in deep trouble when Lyea started to say her fullname like that, a defiant thoughts popped up in her mind that THAT was the superfluous thing, her fullname, not the curiousity of only wanting to see RAIN. She knew Kyllea was standing outside her door. She turned her head slowly to Lyea and gave a nervous grin.
Lyea sighed. "If wrong kind of people see THAT...!!" She pursed her lips, and frowned. "... Well, let's just say that you shouldn't do that in the pressence of other people, okay...?!" She sighed deeper, remembering how their father's face when she first did that in the Forest. If she were a bit of Deia-ish, she'd laughed maniacally back then.
"... 'That' what...?" Deia seemed not getting any comprehension. Lyea frowned deeper, her cheeks flushed again.
Deia stared her a little longer, then it hit her. "Oh!! That... you mean...!" She frowned back. "But we just share...!" she scratched her cheek with her forefinger.
"Prussian needs a share..!!" she added seriously.
Lyea closed her eyes and snorted to herself. "You're still too childish to know about what I'm saying...!" she muttered under her breath.
"Hu...?"
"...Nothing..!"
Lyea put the tray on the nightstand on Deia's side. She sat on the bed behind Deia, noticing the boy's face already half-covered by the black-armor again, his eyes on her. She smiled. "I think you need to retract that armor to eat...! She had made a good effort to make some food for you !" she flicked her chin to her sister.
Deia widened her eyes, her face flushed a little. "I told you not to mention that...!" she whispered frantically through gritted teeth. Prussian's eyes turned to her.
"Why not ?! Prussian will relish it more since it was your making..!"
Deia stared at her lap, "...if it's not to your appetite..." she mumbled almost incoherently.
"I'm sure it tastes good, considering the prize paid for it... you blew the kitchen again, but you shouldn't worry because half of it was usualy not used, anyway!" Lyea chuckled.
Deia turned redder. "Lyeaaaaa...!" she groused.
"Ahh, you should see how high the kitchenwares were blown, the guards outside even betted on which to fall first on the grounds, or wether something would hit someone when they land...!!" Lyea's laugh brayed out after that.
"AAAAAGHHHH!!! I TOLD YOU DONT MENTION THAAAT...!!!!" Deia flapped her hands frantically like a hen in panic, then grabbed a pillow and shove her face in it kind of like what the ostrichs used to do in dangers.
Prussian's eyes lit up under his drooped eyelids. Deia pulled her head up, "You're laughing, aren't you?!! You aaare...!!!" She exclaimed. Then shoved her face back in the pillow.
"So are you going to feed him with the (in)famous-Deia's cookings, or not...?!" Lyea asked between laughs.
"Oh, shut up...!!" Deia's retort was mumbled by the pillow. There was smoke wafted from it, something smell of burning...
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It was something that he couldn't escape. He already knew it from the beginning he set his foot on this land.
The Lord's words didn't really entered his mind at the moment.
He stared at his neatly interlaced fingers on his lap.
The Air was closing in on him.
Deia was not here with him... She had a session with 'Thrice', she wouldn't miss it even for a second, 'Thrice' was someone who never teach someone else, not even spare a comment for someone else. It was a priveledge for her, she accepted it without a second thought...
The Air was closing in on him... It was something he couldn't escape...
Deia was not here... She said she wanted to be stronger for both of them...
...something... someone he couldn't escape...
"... -nd he will be your private attendant from now on, ..-"
...the Air was closing in...
"...-including your education such as -..."
He stared trancely at the red-haired young man standing beside his bed...
... the Land was closing in...
"...-your health back...-" The Lord's voice sounded farther and farther...
Kylle smiled sweetly at him, his angelic smile he'd seen before...
...he's closing in...
... it was as if the rain of poisons looming over him, ready to pour down and banish him any moment...
He stared...
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...it's going to rain...
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tbc...still
sorry for the slow plot, Saru think graphicly like in comics-sequence, not the prose-sequence (that's why making the comic-script was a torture!! ►the improvise-ism comic-artist who always got scolded by the editors...). Some said something nice about the details, but Saru know it got kinda boring when you're wanting to read more and make the plot faster. Yes, Saru wrote something about this chapter would be the last of the present timeline in the previous chapter, it's gotten a bit longer so Saru add one more. Please bear with bakaSaru a bit more...! nn"