A/N - Man, this chapter was kind of a pain to write, and not just because parts of it made me wonder about my own state of mind. We writers can be messed up people sometimes, as you will see in a few.

I've been watching episode 30 a lot in an attempt to try and figure out Kid's fighting style for writing purposes, and I think I might have it figured out? I'm still a little doubting of my ability to write fight scenes, though, especially with someone who fights like Kid. Dude's an agile little bugger with all those flips, and I don't know if you've noticed, but my method of writing fight scenes boils down to "she knocked the guy in the face and then stabbed him and he died." Riveting, I know.

Also, there's only so many times you can write, "Death the Kid shot at a dude" before it starts to get a little freaking repetitive. Never should have made him fight four Kishin eggs across four chapters. Bad past Diana! *smacks past me over the head with a newspaper* Making me do actual work like that. Oh, well. Nothin' to be done about it now, I guess.

Now that I'm done chastising past!me's writing decisions that came to bite present!me in the ass, I'd like to thank darkmist111 and MegglesGG for leaving lovely reviews!

darkmist111: Thanks! I'm glad you like Kid, because you're getting this chapter and one more from his POV. Which I have to write. Even though writing from Kid's POV is not even close to being my specialty. Hahahaha why did I do this to myself how vital is this arc even really.

MegglesGG: Thanks you very much, and I'm glad my writing style has improved, because giving the first twenty chapters of my fic a read-through is like taking a jackhammer to my pride, so I'm really glad I've improved since then! (Man, looking at my older TF chapters is embarrassing, and don't even get me started on the stuff I can't bear to share with others. I can't even look at chapters 1-18, Jesus Christ. All hail maturing as a writer!)

Notes at the end of the chapter.

DISCLAIMER: Soul Eater is the intellectual property Atsushi Ōkubo. I have no intention of monetizing my fanwork, and this is merely an enjoyable passer of time.


Chapter Thirty-Seven - Countess of Blood - The Shinigami's Struggle Against Báthory, Part Three


There is a distinctive difference between being able to pinpoint a soul's location and being able to figure out the path necessary to get to it.

The castle was long and winding, especially in the lowers levels where many narrow passages lead to small, superfluous storage rooms. Kid would almost be reminded the Academy, if the Academy were a crumbling and decrepit castle long left in disrepair instead of the grand, well-kept monument to order that it actually was. He was reminded of her first day of proper classes, when he'd quite shamefully gotten lost in his own father's Academy and had to rely on a guide to show him how to get to Class Crescent Moon. Not that he was completely dissatisfied with how that embarrassing moment had turned out; Alecto was a good friend and a proficient meister, if a bit odd in a few ways (even he didn't speak Latin beyond the basics, and here she was speaking it conversationally as if she'd been studying it for years), and he was glad to have met her.

What he wouldn't give to have a guide to show him how to get around this place. "Damn it," he muttered, stopping dead in his tracks and looking around. "I think we hit wrong turn somewhere. We're going to have to double back again."

"I told you not to make that right turn," Liz grumbled a couple feet behind him. The tallest of the trio had pulled in on herself, wrapping her arms around her torso and hunching over slightly as if acting like a turtle could make this place any less dark and miserable. "We've been walking in circles for ten minutes, Kid!"

Circles? He'd at least hoped that he was making some progress. Then again, that crack in the wall over there did look familiar… "I hadn't made an even number of right turns," he said, defending his navigational choices. "It would have bothered me if I hadn't taken that turn when I did."

"That's what you're focusing on right now!?" Liz snapped. "Kid, we've got bigger things to worry about than that, like finding our way out of here or keeping the Countess from eating us! We can't just-"

Tktktk. The sound of a pebble being kicked across cobblestone cut through Liz's words like a knife, causing the blonde to freeze in her tracks. A few long moments of silence stretched out like hours, Kid staring flatly over his shoulder towards the darkness behind them that the sound had originated from. He didn't see any sign of movement, and it was possible it was just a rat, but still… he scoured the area with his Soul Perception. The Cook and the Countess hadn't moved, surprisingly enough, and there wasn't a third Kishin Egg to worry about, but he still couldn't shake the sense that somebody was watching him, hiding in the shadows where his citrine gaze couldn't reach. A small seed of disquiet settled itself in Kid's stomach at the thought of being spied on by something he couldn't detect.

He wasn't the only one feeling uneasy. "Y-you know what, how about we just go home," Liz suggested. "You know, our home that isn't some creepy castle basement. Yeah, we could go home, crawl into bed, and forget all about the creepy Countess lady and her spooky lackeys…"

Kid was eager to get back home, himself, but not before they dealt with the problem here. "Don't worry, Liz," he said. "The Cook shouldn't give us any trouble at all. If he were actually competent, Báthory would have had him out working with the Constable and the Seneschal."

"Y-yeah, but what about Báthory?"

"Báthory won't be a problem either," Kid said with complete conviction. Báthory might have been able to subjugate an entire village, but in the end she was still just a single Kishin Egg, and he was a Grim Reaper. The difference in their strength didn't even need to be pointed out.

"Oh, don't be so scared, sis!" Patti exclaimed, grinning broadly as she gave her sister a cheerful shoulder nudge. "We've taken on much bigger things than this lame old Countess lady! I'll bet we can kick her ass, no problem!"

"Yeah… Yeah, you're right. We can handle it." Liz didn't sound too convinced of that, but she mumbled "we can handle it" a few more times and fell quiet as they navigated their way through the labyrinth that was the lower levels of the castle.

Soon, after a couple more wrong right turns, they finally found an ajar door with a thin line of light pouring out into the dim hallway from the other side. None of the storerooms had been that well-lit, so even if this wasn't the kitchens it had to be something different.

Kid checked his Soul Perception again, only to tense up when he realized that the Cook had moved. "Be careful," he murmurs to his partners as he approaches the door, reaching out to pull it open. "We don't know what lies on the other side of this door." He opened the door fully and walked inside.

And immediately felt sick. To say that what lay inside disturbed him was an almost grotesque understatement. The room looked like some sick perversion of a butcher's workplace, with hooks hanging down from the ceiling and various mutilated animal carcasses of different types left lying everywhere. The smell of rot invaded Kid's senses, causing him to reel back a couple steps, eyes wide with horror as he realized that not every one of the carcasses belong to an animal. Some of them were human, with a disembodied hand here and a flayed skeleton there.

Behind him, Liz let out a horrified shriek and backed away, her hands flying to her mouth. "Oh… oh, I think I'm going to be sick," she muttered, leaning against the far wall and looking anywhere but the room. Patti stared wide-eyed at the scene in front of her, her mouth forming an O of surprise.

Kid gritted his teeth and entered what had to be the Cook's kitchens, turning his gaze downwards to the bloodstains on the floor. The tell-tale spots of dark red formed a path, one that he followed straight to the back of the room to a massive cauldron filled to the brim with a thick, equally dark red liquid that bubbled and boiled over the open fire the cauldron was standing on. Bile rose to the back of his throat, and he forced it back down with a grimace. "I think this is where Báthory has those 'baths' prepped," he said, his voice quiet and sharp. "The ones Diana mentioned."

"Let's just go," he heard Liz moan from the kitchen entrance. "I can't handle any more of this, let's just go back home…"

The more Kid stood in this kitchen, the more he understood Liz's stance. He didn't agree with it, but looking down at the pot of boiling blood he could certainly understand it. It seems that the Cooks does more than prepare meals for the Countess, he thought. He also prepares the blood baths that she uses. Perhaps that's why Báthory didn't send him out to collect souls for her with the Constable and Seneschal; he was more useful here, helping with the other evil practice of hers.

He was so wrapped up in his revolted contemplation that he barely registered Patti's shout of, "Kid, look out!" until it was nearly too late. He turned around just in time to see the shining blade of a cleaver knife slicing through the air toward him, and ducked down in the nick of time. The blade whistled over his head, causing the wielder to let out a snarl of frustration and giving Kid the split-second opportunity he needed to kick out at the ankles of his assailant. The foe stumbled, back, and Kid somersaulted out of the cleaver's reach, pivoting about to get a better look at what he was going up against.

A sallow-looking, malnourished figure stood before him, with pale eyes wide as dinner place and wearing a grotesque grin too wide for it's gaunt face. It wore very little, merely a pair of ragged trousers and a chef's apron that was stained with blood and other substances tha Kid prefered not to think too much about. This… abomination was the Cook. It had to be.

"F... f…" The Cook staggered over his words, his thin tongue tripping over his teeth as he struggled to put his thoughts into words. Then his widened even further, and he screeched, "Food!" before charging forward and swinging his cleaver once more towards Kid, who ducked away and made a mad dash to the entrance where Liz and Patti were standing. Once glance between meister and weapons and the latter instantly changed form, flying into Kid's hands just as he turned around again and opened fire on their aggressor. The Cook let out another animalistic snarl and charged forward, throwing his own weapon in an overhead arc towards Kid. "Food food food food food food!"

Kid ducked, the kitchen-tool-turned-weapon burying itself into the open door next to him. "Sorry," he snapped, not even a little bit sorry, "but I really don't feel like being Báthory's dinner, thank you."

"B-Báthory?" The Cook lets out a wheezing, raspy laugh. "Milady? Oh… oh no, boy…" He staggered forward, his laughing ebbing and flowing in short, harsh bursts. "You see, ahee… poor old little Cookie doesn't get souls like the others, ahee ahee… Milady gets the best souls, the ones she chooses. She eats the souls and makes me prep the baths from the pretty girls' blood, heeeee." Kid's stomach churned and his face contorted into a grimace, but if the Cook noticed he didn't care. "The other two, they get the souls of those who try to fight. Those foolish boys and girls who read about rebellions and think they can stage such a thing about milady… and what does Cookie get?" He suddenly stopped laughing, his face falling from its twisted grin. "NOTHING!" he roared. "Not even the table scraps of! I was left to stave off starvation with mere flesh in the basement while the others get to feast on the true delicacies: the souls, boy, the souls and the power they bring. I used to get souls, that's how I became like this, but when we got here milady decided that because the people weren't going to see me, I wasn't going to get souls anymore." His lip quivered in what would have been almost sympathetic if he weren't a murderous, cannibalistic Kishin Egg who'd just tried to put a cleaver through Kid's skull. "Cookie hungers, boy."

Still, Kid couldn't help but pause. Strange, he thought. This Kishin Egg has been forbidden from eating human souls. No wonder he's behaving like a rabid animal. It seemed like the inner workings of Castle Nagyecsed were not as harmonious as he'd originally been led to believe. "If your Countess has been starving you, why do you still follow her?" he asked.

The Cook seemed genuinely confused, as if he'd never really considered the option of just leaving before. "Because she's milady," he answered bluntly. "She's promised to protect me from people like you, and she has." His menacing grin came back in full force. "But I hunger, boy, and I'm sure that the Countess won't mind if I have just one soul. Yours can't be that powerful, I'm sure she would have just thrown it to the others."

Kid narrowed his eyes. Not that powerful, hm? "That's where you're wrong," he snapped before running forward. The Cook had made the fatal (and quite frankly idiotic) mistake of throwing away the one edge in combat he had, and now he was completely vulnerable.

Another sweeping kick was enough to knock the Cook off his feet, and as he fell backwards Kid drove Patti into the center of his collarbone and shot, sending him crashing thoroughly into the floor with enough force to crack the flagstone. A few more shots with the help of his partners was enough to put the Kishin Egg down, and soon all that was left was his soul.

"Wow, that was super easy!" Patti exclaimed. "I'da thought he'd have put up more of a fight!"

"It's not surprising," Kid replied. "He hasn't been eating human souls with the same frequency of the others, so he didn't have the same level of ill-gotten power." He paused. "Well, than and he probably just wasn't a very good fighter to begin with."

Patti giggled. "Yeah, he was really stupid!"

"Uh huh yeah that guy sure was a creepy idiot glad we managed to get rid of him can we leave this crazy place now?!" Liz interrupted, shooting off the words in a rapid-fire string fueled by equal parts panic and frustration.

That sounded like a perfectly good idea to Kid. Their surroundings were starting to get to him (why are the hooks hanging from the wall clustered about haphazardly like that they should be arranged neatly and evenly spaced damn it), and he was once more starting to get the feeling that he was being watched. "All right," he said, heading towards the door. "We'll find the Countess and end this quickly. It shouldn't take too long to locate her."

A shrill burst of static exploded through the air stopped Kid dead in his tracks, followed by the faint hissing noise that could only come out of a really shoddy intercom system. Then a voice spoke. "Well, well, it seems we have a rat in the kitchens, and the Cook's not around to do anything about it." It was a woman's voice, a rich contralto that exuded authority with every word spoken. "How wretched. You just can't find good help these days."

In the back of Kid's mind, he could see Liz yelp and flinch backwards, while Patti looked around wildly for the source of the voice. It was up and a little to the left, and Kid figured that if he looked in that direction, he'd find an intercom speaker speaking nestled in the ceiling corner. He didn't look up, though, not wanting to give the person speaking the satisfaction. "Elizabeth Báthory, I presume," he said.

"Did I give you permission to use my name, boy?" the voice spat, confirming Kid's suspicions. "I am the countess of this region, and I will be addressed with the respect that title grants me!"

"Funny," Kid deadpanned. "I thought that respect was something that those in power had to earn."

"Shows how much you know about being in power," Báthory snapped. "I govern these people, keep them under my wing, and all I ask is the tribute required to keep the strength I have that demands such respect. And what do I get in return? Death's little brat, called here to exterminate me and my own. I'll have to punish the pitiful little villagers later for such insolence, but first I must punish you." Kid tensed, casting around a wary glance as Báthory continued. "My servants were sub-par, yes. My Cook was a fool to think he could get away with stealing a soul that rightfully belongs to me, and my Seneschal had the remarkable trait of being both arrogant and a drooling sycophant. The only reason I kept him around is because he was good at paperwork." She let out a short bark of a laugh that was loud enough to cause the intercom system to let out a burst of static feedback. "They were worthless servants, but they were mine, and to have their blood spilled on my floors… well, I just can't allow that, can I?" There was a brief moment of silence, and Kid slipped into a defensive stance, keeping alert for any possible sudden attack. Then, "You know, you're not actually the only visitor I've had recently. There was another a few days ago."

What does that have to do with anything? Kid was starting to get the feeling that Báthory was talking just for the sake of listening to her own voice. "I don't care about any of that," he said. "I'm here to stop you in the name of the DWMA, I'm not interested in your guest list."

"Oh? That's a shame, because she was a very interesting guest indeed. She was the one who told me that the Grim Reaper child would be coming to try and claim my soul. And here you are. Imagine that."

Kid snapped his head upwards towards the corner where the intercom speaker sat. "What?!" he exclaimed. Someone tipped her off? But how is that possible? Who could have… "Who is she?"

"Ah, now you're interested," Báthory hissed. "That's just like you filthy villeins, only listening when it benefits you, only looking when something catches your eye. If I were this woman, I would be offended." Another short pause. "Though, I am glad to not be her. She was quite plain, if I do say so myself. She had the most interesting hair, though. Such a lovely shade of red."

Kid froze. Red hair? He remembered what Lizzie Borden had said some weeks ago.

"I don't understand. The lady with the red hair said that I could do whatever I wanted."

Could this woman that the Countess spoke of be the same person? It seemed too unlikely to just be a coincidence. If that was the case, then perhaps there was something more going on here than just a dangerous Kishin Egg.

Báthory seemed to take his stunned silence as an invitation to keep talking. "You've defiled my home with the blood of my own, and for that I will see to your death myself. Find my throne room, boy, and we shall see just how strong the Academy really is." The intercom hissed with static before shutting off with a faint click.

"She must have been the one watching us, before," Kid murmured. If Báthory had put intercoms in the old castle, hidden cameras would not be too far a leap, and it would explain that strange sense that someone had been keeping an eye on his actions. Still, he felt uneasy. Being openly invited to her throne room did not bode well, and then there was the matter of the red-haired woman. Who was she, and just how did she know that he was the one who'd taken on the mission?

"Kid, we're not really going to go find her, are we?" Liz asked, her voice kicking up an octave in pitch. "It's obviously a trap!"

"I bet we could take her, sis!" Patti said. "She can't be that tough if she had these guys doing all the work for her."

"W-well, yeah, but she was still eating human souls, right? I say we not walk right into whatever this lady's got planned."

"Trap or not," Kid said (and Liz was right in that it was almost certainly a trap, and a pretty transparent one at that), "We can't risk her being around any more than necessary." He stalked out of the kitchens, his face set in a hard mask of determination. "This isn't going to be an easy fight," he said. "Báthory obviously assumes she has the upper hand, so we should assume that she has a good reason. Be ready for anything."

"O-okay."

As Kid made his way through the castle, using the faint distant hum of Báthory's wavelength as a guiding point, he couldn't help but wonder just what was going on. There was more to this than any ordinary mission, he knew that much.

Regardless, he thought, I cannot allow Báthory to live. After all the people she's ordered killed, the souls she's devoured… I'll enforce her death myself.

Her existence upsets the balance of good and evil in this world.

I will restore that balance.


A/N - Nothing to be done now except totally COPPING OUT, ahaha. Yeah, that's totally what the fight with the Cook was. It was a total cop-out. Look, I'd planned on having this be a three-chapter arc and now it's a five-chapter arc that's beginning to drag along a bit, you can't blame me for trying to curb my wordcount a bit and consciously control my tendency to slow-burn everything. I got plot to write, don't got time for these one-offs, past me!

Also, taking the cheap way out and killing the Cook in a paragraph was partially my sister's idea, so blame her too. I was whinging about how I hate writing fight scenes and her words were "Why are you writing a Soul Eater fic, then?" and "No one cares about the lackeys, just kill 'em off already, jeez." My sister repeatedly proves herself to be smarter than me. The lackeys were not my best creative idea, narratives-wise, but I promise this arc has a payoff. Pinky swears.

Also oh hey mysterious redhead fancy seeing you here getting your fingers into all the pies again.

No Latin, no translations. That'll change once we get back to Alecto et company, though.

Chapter thirty-eight will be out at a point in the near future. In the meantime, feel free to favorite or leave a review!

- Diana "Nocte"