I'm back, guys! Sort of. This chapter really killed me, and for the longest time I had absolutely no motivation. I really appreciate all of your support and reviews; you guys helped me get my butt in gear for this. I hope these 8,000 words make up for the wait!
A lot a people were concerned about Agiel not being one of Furuichi's contracts, but I've not abandoned her – I've got ~Plans~ for Agiel and several other pillars for later in the story, which still has quite a ways to go. Beyond that, I just couldn't imagine that the higher-ups like the Barons and Jabberwock would allow a General like Agiel to claim a personal contract, rather than themselves. The only reason Hecadoth has one is because he got there first, and his skill set is more relevant to Furuichi, as you will see in this chapter.
Story Warnings: Some violence and strong language. Mentions of deceased OCs.
Disclaimer: If you recognize any names, terms, or concepts it's because they don't belong to me.
Chapter 6 - Grindstone
Fainor is speaking. Furuichi cannot understand the words, but it is the only sound present. The voice is muddied and vague, stifled, as though coming from the next room over, even though Furuichi is seeing him clearly. He is strange and tall and starkly white, surrounded by seven others who look like him and wear the same pale armor.
They stand together around a heavy wooden table covered in maps. The walls are made of cured animal skins, and Furuichi realizes they are in a tent when an arctic breeze slices through a hanging, passes through him and ruffles the hair of the strange beings before him.
One of the others opens his mouth to interject, but Furuichi hears no words. The one he somehow knows is called Fainor responds with incomprehensible syllables that seem to enrage the other. He responds angrily, silently, and the tone of Fainor's next words are condescending enough that the other charges forward and grips his collar…
And suddenly it is Furuichi the other is grabbing, shaking him, snarling silently. His eerie pale eyes burn with wounded pride, and his grip tightens on Furuichi's collar…
And there was a hand on his shoulder, shaking him. Furuichi's eyes shot open and he jolted up, barely missing colliding with Hecadoth. The demon backed off, eyeing him with something that was not quite wariness.
"…You were pretty deeply asleep, Furuichi," he said. Furuichi grunted, disoriented. He glanced around, trying to take stock of his surroundings, but the dark stone walls with their graying, threadbare tapestries offered no intimation. It was only when he shifted and the bed he was on let out a series of horrific creaks that Furuichi recalled that he was in a dilapidated spare room in the basement of a demon squadron's headquarters.
He groaned and tried to flop back into bed, but a large hand gripped his ankle through the dusty sheet covering him and dragged Furuichi – sheets and all – off the bed and onto the cold floor. He grunted at the impact, curled up, and tried to make himself comfortable on the hard stone.
"Go 'way. Fuck off. 'M sleeping," he muttered. He could practically hear Hecadoth's eyebrow twitching in irritation, and could not contain his yelp as a booted foot connected with his ribs.
"Get up, you little brat. Don't forget that Laymia's expecting us for breakfast at 7:30," he growled. Ah. Yes. That changed things. With a tremendous, put-upon sigh, Furuichi dragged himself up, pulling the blankets with him. He may not have been terminally freezing any longer, but it was still ridiculously cold in the early morning on a stone basement floor when he was naked from the waist up.
Furuichi had just opened his mouth to begin to ask about a new shirt when a bundle of stiff cloth collided with his face. He stumbled back against the bedpost, but successfully caught the cloth before it fell to the ground. Blinking, he examined the bundle. It looked like a replica of the uniform worn by Pillar Barons and Generals, a dark green outfit with a tie and black coat. Shuffling the clothes in his hands to begin dressing, something else caught his eye – a splash of discoloration across the back of his hand.
It had been dark and he had been exhausted the night before, but now that he was rested, the crimson sigil decorating the back of his right hand glared at him. Jabberwock's mark: four curved, inward facing claws arranged in a circle. He dragged his gaze up his right arm and stopped at the joint where it connected to his shoulder, where Naga had imprinted on his pale skin a pair of intertwined, undulating lines circling a seven-pronged star in pale sky blue. His eyes skittered over to his left bicep, where Laymia had placed her sigil, and saw six small ovals arranged in a diamond pattern in various shades of green.
They all looked like gang tattoos. His mother was going to kill him. And then skin him, so as not to offend his ancestors' eyes.
Sighing despondently, he slipped into the stiff outfit, which fit him surprisingly well. There must have been a demon exactly his size somewhere around. Furuchi wondered about that out loud, but Hecadoth just gave him an exasperated look and rolled his eyes, his whole head shifting with the exaggerated motion. Furuichi directed a frustrated scowl at the demon, about to retort, when his attention was diverted.
He had noticed before, peripherally, that a bunch of demons had ridiculous fin ears sticking out of the sides of their heads, which would have been comical, but for the fact that Furuichi knew they'd have slaughtered him if he'd laughed. Now, though, maybe he had some leeway…
"Hey Hecadoth." The demon grunted. Furuichi took that as permission to continue.
"Why do some of you have normal ears and some of you have weird fin ears?"
"My ears are perfectly normal, kid, got it?" Hecadoth growled. "It's a racial difference. In-land versus coastal."
"But, Laymia has those fin ears, but Lamia doesn't."
"Laymia took up with an in-land demon. Ear shape isn't the kind of thing that comes out half-and-half, it's always one or the other. Anyway, I don't know why you're so caught up on them, humans have different shaped ears, too."
"I guess? I mean, the differences aren't so extreme you could call them a racial trait, though."
"Yours seem pretty different to any human ears I've seen before."
"…What?" Furuichi froze in the act of slipping on one large black boot.
"Your ears. I haven't seen other humans with an ear shape like that. Is your race different?"
"What the hell are you talking about? There's nothing wrong with my ears!" he cried, reaching up to feel around under his hair. He froze as his fingers brushed over the shells.
"I– mirror, mirror please!" he yelped, pushing past the demon and charging back into the bathroom. He brushed his hair back and stared at his reflection, fingers rubbing and pulling at the sharp, elongated shapes. He vaguely recalled waking in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago with swollen, inflamed ears, and knew instantly that this was the result.
"Oh god," he said weakly.
"So I'm guessing those aren't normal?" Hecadoth said, stepping into the bathroom and leaning against the doorframe.
"No, no they're really fucking not."
"Huh. New addition?" Despite the seemingly concerned question, Hecadoth's tone and posture were indolent and bored as he picked at a scuff on the bathroom door. Furuichi answered him anyway.
"Yeah. I – fuck. They weren't there yesterday. Shit."
As Furuichi stared at his new reflection, his thoughts flitted back to his most recent dream. Had those pale beings had ears like this? He had been less focused on minor details, more concerned with the inaudible conversation. The only thing he could of them physically was pale. Bleached skin, light eyes, bone-colored hair, made even starker by their silver armor.
Well, he already had the pale thing down. He desperately hoped there were no more imminent physical alterations in store for him, things he hadn't been able to see in the dream, like extra nipples. He really hoped he wasn't going to grow more nipples.
Hecadoth narrowed his eyes and stalked forward to poke one gloved finger at Furuichi's left ear, but was obviously unimpressed, both by the appendage and by his contractor's concern over it.
"Well, whatever. Come on, kid, we're going to be late meeting with the commander for the unit contract," Hecadoth said, pushing off the doorframe and walking away.
"Hey, can I ask something…?" Furuichi said tentatively, following behind his dour guide, fingers still tracing over the new shapes of his ears.
"You just did." Furuichi frowned, and tried again.
"What's the difference between the personal contracts and the mass unit contract?" Hecadoth eyed him askance.
"Why're you just asking that now? You should have said something before if you didn't know." Furuichi shrugged helplessly.
"I dunno, I didn't want to interrupt, or something," he muttered. He neglected to mention that he hadn't wanted to seem foolish, but Hecadoth seemed to catch on regardless.
The demon heaved a great sigh, then whipped around, gripped him by the shoulders, and lifted him bodily off the ground, to press him against the wall so that Furuichi was suspended at eye level. He leaned forward, face coming in close, so Furuichi could see nothing past the demon's face and mane of thick black hair.
"Okay, what the hell is wrong with you? You were a cocky little bastard the last couple times you summoned me with those tissue contracts, so why are you so wimpy now?"
Furuichi frowned and glanced away. Oga had said something similar, and hearing it again rankled terribly. He had no interest in sharing his inner turmoil with this demon, however.
"I haven't been sleeping well lately. I guess it's been taking a toll on my mental state," he half-lied sheepishly, tugging at his collar. Hecadoth was blatantly not fooled.
"How about you tell me why you haven't been sleeping." It wasn't a suggestion, or a question.
Furuichi eyed the demon balefully, recognizing the look and tone as similar to the one Oga took when he was utterly determined to get his way. The way the corner of Hecadoth's mouth was beginning to curl into a frustrated snarl told Furuichi that the consequences would not be pleasant if he did not concede.
He conceded.
"…Weird dreams," he admitted finally. He refused to confess to nightmares, however – he had some pride left. "Mammon said they're memories of a past life. I'm remembering because my soul got scrambled up by Lucifer."
"So those are the 'supernatural issues' you mentioned, huh?" Hecadoth said, half to himself. He lowered Furuichi back to the floor and shifted back, crossing his arms. His eyes narrowed suddenly, a contemplative look overtaking his face.
"What's the mental state like of your former self in those dreams?" Hecadoth asked.
Furuichi needed no time at all to consider. "Depressed, hopeless, guilty. I survived losing a major war, and it seems like life was really shitty after that."
"Sounds like the predominant mental state of your past self is bleeding into your current self," the demon sighed, ruffling a hand through his long, coarse hair. "Well, I'm no doctor, but it makes sense that you'll keep feeling shitty until you stop having those dreams. I think they'll probably stop affecting you so much now that you've established formal contracts with us. Access to our demonic power will regulate your own fluctuating energies and–"
"Yeah, yeah, I've gotten the speech already," Furuichi snarked. Hecadoth scowled and cuffed him on the head.
"Anyway, I'll look around, see if there's a demon in the squad that's had the same thing happen, see if they've got any input."
"That would be me," a soft voice murmured from behind them. They both jumped, startled, and looked towards the door to see Laymia regarding them coldly.
"I have experience with integrating the wisdom of a past life into your current one. And to answer your previous question, the energy exchanged in personal contracts amplifies a demon's power. Those of us with whom you formed personal contracts experienced a significant power boost, so of course we were all eager. Those who are simply a part of the unit contract will only be able to use the contract bond as an anchor to ease dimensional travel.
"But I have a question I would like to ask you. Why are you late, Furuichi, Hecadoth?" the demoness asked lightly, her sweet, sweet smile a thin veneer over the slasher aura coiling around her.
"E-existential crisis, ma'am!" Furuichi yelped, shifting to hide behind Hecadoth. It was his fault they were late, anyway.
"Playing therapist to his existential crisis," Hecadoth drawled, jerking his head at Furuichi. There was a barely distinguishable tremor in his voice as he warily eyed his superior.
"…I've heard worse excuses, I suppose. Don't let it happen again, boys," she said, turning on her heel and leaving the room. They hastened after her.
"After breakfast you will receive the unit contract, and then we'll be meeting with Jabberwock and Naga to discuss your training," the baron said matter-of-factly, striding down the hall and up the stairs to the ground floor.
"What training?"
Laymia looked back at Furuichi, startled. "Well, you can't expect to be able to harness our powers when your body is so weak. At the very least we need to get you some weapons training and work on your reflexes. It would have been nice if you were strong like the Prince's contractor, but, well…"
"You really are average in every way except resilience," Hecadoth sighed.
"Well, perhaps not every way. Lamia has referred to you as Ishiyama's General, the charismatic tactician behind the Prince's army of delinquent supplicants."
"…I've been called that, I guess. Not sure how true it is."
"You were very sure it was true a month ago when we fought Lucifer together. In fact, I'm pretty sure you used the words, 'I'm the brains of this operation,'" Hecadoth snorted. "Lame, but accurate."
Laymia glanced at him sharply. "You've undergone a sudden personality change?"
"A little?" Furuichi said weakly. "It's not a personality change, I don't think. I'm just…dealing with things I haven't had to before."
"You're referring to the memories you're receiving? If you don't mind, I'd like to talk with you about that later. As I said earlier, I know how stressful it is to incorporate the memories of a past life."
Furuichi gave a half-hearted shrug of agreement, not exactly eager to share. He was saved from having to verbalize a response when they reached the mess hall.
He walked in, expecting a similar set up to the school cafeteria, and froze.
"Wha-what the hell is this?" he screeched, staring around the room. "It's an exact replica of that shitty diner two blocks down!" He gaped, taking in the cheesy wood-panel wallpaper and cracked red vinyl booth seats.
"Heh~ You like our sweet digs, Furuichi?" Agiel cooed, sweeping up next to him and pulling him into a warm, bosomy headlock. "We had our monthly pillar luncheon in that place in your home town a few times, and liked it so much we remodeled our mess hall to look like it!"
You guys liked that shitty 50s throw-back that much?! He screeched internally. He startled when he received a response.
Well, Lord En liked it that much, came Hecadoth's terrifically flat voice.
Ah.
There are pinball machines over by that wall, you see?
Yes. I see.
The formation of the unit contract was utterly without fanfare, and was utterly horrifying. Furuichi had been attempting to enjoy his breakfast soup – it had originally been some type of thick porridge, but was so tremendously spicy that Furuichi had needed to water it down in order to eat it – when Jabberwock had appeared behind him like some sort of monstrous, psychopathic murder-cat, pulled up his sleeve, dug a claw into his forearm, and poured a vial of blood into the open wound. Furuichi had stared, frozen, disgust overwhelming his senses to the extent that he did not even notice the surge of power that accompanied the contract formation.
The rivulets of crimson streaming across his arm had twisted, then, coiling back on themselves and drying into a pattern of lines centered around the small, deep cut Jabberwock had given him. Furuichi squinted bemusedly, before the pattern became clear – three 'X's, an 'I', and a 'V' imprinted in a gothic, spiky font. '34,' in Roman numerals. It made sense, but now Furuichi would never be able to wear short sleeves anywhere but at school, where tattoos were considered badass in a good way, rather than delinquent in the bad sort of way that would keep people from hiring him.
"All right kid, here's how this is gonna work," Jabberwock barked. Furuichi flinched to attention, struggling to remain upright on the bench as the demon commander's sheer presence bore down on him painfully.
"The fact is, you're fucking pathetic right now. These contracts don't work the way those tissues worked, so we can't possess you and augment your body. That means that when we fight, you'll have to be able to at the very fucking least run and dodge so we don't have to be distracted trying to protect you. I don't really give a shit how you make that happen, but I expect you to make it happen. Got that?"
The demon commander's nasty sneer encompassed Furuichi as well as the two demons beside him. Laymia and Hecadoth gave tight nods of assent, and Jabberwock stalked off after stealing Furuichi's breakfast, his suffocatingly thick miasma of power trailing after him. Furuichi was not sorry to see either one go.
And then he was seeing the ceiling, because something had latched onto the back collar of his black pillar overcoat and hauled him to the ground. He squawked in protest and twisted around to see Hecadoth on the other end of the cloth.
"The boss says it's time to train, so it's time to train," the demon said blandly, as though he was enjoying a quiet stroll through a park, rather than dragging a teenager across a sticky cafeteria floor.
"I'm sorry, Furuichi," Laymia smiled apologetically from the side. "But you walk so painfully slow, it's easier this way."
"No, seriously, let me walk, I'm getting butt burn!"
Furuichi couldn't find total fault with the arrangement, however, because he had just been dragged past a table housing Agiel and several other female demons. It was a nice view, especially from the floor.
But then he suddenly could find total fault with the arrangement, because something fuzzy and green and slimy had just adhered itself to his left thigh.
"Oh Jesus, what did you just drag me through…?"
"I'll drag you through the bathroom next if you don't stop spouting that fucking blasphemy."
Furuichi wisely decided to feign contentment at that point.
"So…about this training. You guys aren't making me go back to Vlad's Haunt for, like, survival training or something, right?" he asked hopefully, eagerly slipping into memories of that excursion to avoid thinking about the tacky black goo he had just inadvertently dragged his hand through.
"Are you fucking crazy?"
"What do you mean 'back'?"
The exclamations came at the same time from his two contractees and Furuichi glanced up, surprised by the vehement reaction.
"Er. There was an incident a few months ago where Oga and I – and Beel – got stranded in Vlad's Haunt. We took out this big group of thieves while we were there. Um, I'm surprised you didn't know about it, Laymia. Lamia was there with us."
"…No. I'm afraid my daughter did not deem fit to share with me her escapades in the single most perilous death trap in Hell."
"Well shit, this makes it easier. Guess you're not too much of a wimp if made it through that place, even if you had the Prince there with you," Hecadoth laughed.
"Well, you must not have had too much trouble with Lamia there. She would have known to find a Yople and explain the situation."
Furuichi coughed uncomfortably, recalling one of the few instances where a sucker punch form Oga was not, actually, helpful. "Right, that's…that's exactly what happened."
And then, "Oh shit, stairs, Hecadoth, STAIRS!"
Furuichi gingerly rocked back against the stone wall, letting the cold seep through his clothes and ease the throbbing bruises on his back. The trip had been less than pleasant, particularly once they had left the more well-travelled areas of the base, where the stone floors, worn down by countless foot traffic, and been smoother.
Their small, bizarre procession had ended in a starkly empty training hall, notable only for its entirely stone construction and the numerous deep, discolored scars cut into the walls. Against the wall opposite the door stood Naga, looking small as he leaned back against a deep gouge in the stone thrice his height.
Furuichi sighed and pushed off his wall by the door, stepping further into the room to speak with his contractee, but stopped and glanced back as he realized there were no footsteps following behind him.
"Er, wait, where–?" he stuttered as Hecadoth and Laymia abruptly about-faced as soon as he was stood in the middle of the hall.
"We've got other responsibilities. You'll be fine with Naga until our session," Hecadoth said blandly over his shoulder as he made his way out of the room. Laymia gave him an encouraging smile and a cute little wave, before she, too, departed.
Across the hall, the small blue-haired pillar baron was eyeing him indifferently. Furuichi rankled a bit at the unimpressed gaze, but was far too used to having such looks directed at him to vocalize any displeasure. Instead, he just grinned sheepishly and rubbed at the back of his head nervously.
"Sooo… Where do we start?"
Naga knelt and pressed his hands to the ground, closing his eyes and murmuring for a moment, before a vortex of water whipped up around him. It seemed immense and terrifying at first glance, but after a moment Furuichi could tell how underpowered it truly was – the wide spread made the vortex look treacherous and lethal, but the total volume of water was quite low, judging by the way the thin fluid walls wavered and broke, leaving the small demon clearly visible in the middle of it. Naga stood and, with a careless wave of his hand, the vortex swirled off to the side and began looping and flowing through the air, as though contained in an invisible glass sphere.
"Freeze this," he ordered. Furuichi stared blankly.
"Um. Okay, but here's the thing: I'm not exactly sure how this works. And by that I mean there's approximately an equal chance of nothing happening at all, and everyone getting skewered by giant icicles. So you might want to step back. Or…maybe call this whole thing off? That last one sounds goo–"
"Freeze it."
Furuichi yelped at the tone and sudden pressure of demonic power, bringing pricks of cold sweat to his temples. He gulped nervously, then took a deep, fortifying breath and scrunched his eyes closed, trying to recall the few previous times the ice had appeared.
The first and last times he was asleep, and the second time he was having a panic attack.
That was approximately zero help.
He let his eyes drift open again and tried to look past where Naga was scowling at him, to where the water was still swirling off to the demon's right. He honestly had no idea what to do with it.
He walked up to the swirling sphere and rubbed his chin contemplatively, before extending a tentative finger to poke at the vortex.
"gaAHH–!"
It promptly exploded and left him flat on his back, gasping for breath, and soaking wet. Naga watched on, his expression too bland to be innocent.
"You…! You let it go on purpose!"
"Consider it incentive. Do better next time, or who knows what else might happen."
Seven more times. Seven more times, just as Furuichi approached Naga's conjured water sphere, the thing had exploded violently, with increasing intensity. Most recently, he had been blasted halfway across the training hall by the explosion. By this point his bruises had bruises, and it was a struggle to stand upright with the entirety of the heavy pillar uniform soaked completely through. He angrily flicked his sopping bangs out of his eyes and tore off his overcoat, throwing to the ground in an aggravated huff. He was started to get very pissed off.
"Damn it, how do you expect me to do anything when you don't give me the fucking chance!" he snarled at demon, his frustration overwhelming his normal cautionary attitude towards anything stronger than himself.
"You are useless to us in combat if you can't think on your feet and react immediately. This ice of yours must be instinctual!"
On the last word, Naga thrust his hand outwards fiercely, and a slender, torrential dragon burst forth towards the teenager, coiling through the air. And Furuichi – angry and frustrated and so fucking done with this shit – stood his ground.
He waited until the dragon was mere feet away before flinging up his hands, his entire body thrumming with the command Freeze it.
A massive burst of swirling ice particles erupted from between his spread hands, a violent cloud easily twice his height that collided spectacularly with Naga's dragon and powered through it, freezing the fluid beast and causing ice shards to explode outwards. The ice cloud continued on, only marginally slowed by its collision with the dragon, and met its end at Naga's outstretched hand with a shriek.
Furuichi stared. Naga stared back, his eyes barely visible under the icicles hanging from his eyebrows.
"Uhh…oops?"
"Alright, got a weapon preference?"
Mere hours later, after the disaster that was trying to produce ice on command, Furuichi had been hauled off by Hecadoth for more alleged 'training.' His progress after the exploding ice burst had been minimal, having exhausted himself on that one attempt, and he had spent the rest of the session trying to dodge Naga's idea of incentive, which had become markedly more treacherous after receiving an ice facial.
Now, when all he wanted was to rest his aching body, he was instead planted in the middle of a large, cluttered training hall, different to the one he had worked with Naga in – which had been utterly bare – but alike in the stone disposition.
Furuichi briefly contemplated asking why it was necessary for him to learn how to use a weapon when he was contracted with four perfectly good demons capable of fighting for him, but he did not think the question would be well received. Instead, he took a moment to examine the weapon racks around the room, interspersed with battered and burned training dummies.
There were displays of normal weapons like swords and spears, axes large and small, hammers and maces and bows and arrows. But there were also several racks of strange hybrid weapons that frankly scared the shit out of him, great monstrous things built of chains and razor sharp edges. His eyes tracked back to the spears. There were halberds and javelins, pikes and glaives, lethal and gleaming. They drew his attention and called to him in a way that made him think of snowy mountain passes and cold gray skies.
"Spears. They're what I used before," he murmured absently, eyes raking over the assorted weapons.
"Excellent. We've lucked out, they happen to be my specialty," Hecadoth smirked, walking over to the display to pick up an eight-foot glaive with a vicious-looking spiked blade. Furuichi stepped up next to him and after some consideration, selected a shorter, broad-bladed boar spear. Hecadoth eyed him speculatively.
"That's a good choice for you. Simple, and easily manipulated."
Furuichi nodded, shifting his grip and hefting the weapon experimentally. "The shaft is a good weight for me, and the head isn't so heavy that I'll have to put a lot of effort into compensating."
Hecadoth nodded in approval. "Good instincts."
"Just recently. Just since the dreams started."
"So that means you have a general idea of what to do?"
"Um, I guess? I just sort of moved on my own the last time…" Furuichi trailed off as he continued to examine his chosen weapon. He twisted it in his hands, adjusting to the feel of it, and gave a few experimental jabs and swipes.
"Good. Prepare yourself, kid."
"Wait, wha– SHIT!" the teenager screeched as he arced his body backwards to evade Hecadoth's sudden jab.
"Hey!" Jab to the face, bend over backwards. "Aren't you supposed to teach me first?!" Swipe to the hip, dodge to the left. "Fuck, would you wait!"
"You ever heard the term 'baptism by fire?'"
Furuichi barely had time to balk at irony of a demon employing an idiom related to anything holy before Hecadoth was moving, a blur of cruel black demonic energy and wild hair, bearing down on him with a viciously gleaming, serrated blade. He stumbled backwards into a vague approximation of a defensive stance and tried to stop his knees from quaking. He thought he saw Hecadoth roll his eyes before the general was upon him, glaive descending towards his head.
And his focus narrowed to that single point, eyes drawn by the light reflecting off the dark metal. Furuichi's hands shifted along the spear, his left sliding to the base and thrusting out while the right affixed itself just below the blade and pulled backwards towards his chest, angling the weapon to meet Hecadoth's glaive on the downward stroke. He might have even caught the strike, too, if it weren't for the fact that his opponent was a demon.
His previously dislocated arm gave out immediately upon impact with a disturbingly visceral tearing sound, as Hecadoth's weapon wrenched the smaller one backwards and to the side. Any attempt at stable defense utterly lost, Furuichi let himself collapse into a roll to avoid Hecadoth's glaive as it skittered down the blade of Furuichi's spear and sliced through the wooden shaft just below the head.
Hecadoth's boot glanced off his temple as the demon tried to dance around Furuichi's fallen, gasping form, but the teen barely felt the knock to his head as he was overwhelmed with pain from his shoulder. His ears were buzzing with white noise and the sound of his own gasping, and vision began to tunnel and go fuzzy.
"Ah shit," he heard Hecadoth mutter, just before darkness claimed his senses.
When Furuichi next awakened, he did not know where he was. Or more accurately, he did not know what part of the pillar base he was in. The stone ceiling above him was distinct in that he'd never seen anything like it anywhere but in the base, but was ubiquitous in that every room was made of exactly that same stone. He shifted a bit and the bed beneath him gave off a terrifying squeal of creaks and groans.
Ah. I'm back in my room.
Furuichi tried to lift himself up to regain his bearings, but a jolt of excruciating pain from his right shoulder had him collapsing back into the dusty mattress with a groan. He decided it was perfectly acceptable to regain his bearings while lying down.
He couldn't have said for how long he'd been laying there, mulling over recollections of the travesty that had been his day, when a line of distinct, even footsteps made themselves aware, their owner stopping just outside his door before continuing in.
The bed-ridden contractor glanced up to greet his visitor, his attempt at a welcoming grin freezing on his face. He was barely aware of another set of footsteps following.
Black-haired Fabio is in my room.
"What the hell are you staring at?" Fabio sneered.
"Meet Dr. Forcas, Furuichi," Hecadoth said. Furuichi glanced away from the pale, dark-haired Adonis and saw his contracted demon leaning against the doorway, before said demon's introduction sank in.
"Y-you're Dr. Forcas?!"
"Why're you so surprised, kid?" That probably had something to do with the strong jaw, chiseled cheekbones, mysterious scars, and long, elegant mass of silky hair.
"Ah, well, I guess I'm just used to seeing you as a little blue blob," Furuichi laughed sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. Inwardly, he was seething. Damn, this bastard is seriously good-looking! Die, you shitty walking shampoo commercial!
Hecadoth let out a muffled snicker from the other side of the room. Shut up, you traitor, Furuichi hissed mentally.
"Well, obviously I'm much greater than that in reality," Forcas sniffed pretentiously. "You know, you should be quite honored. I've never had to deal with a peasant so frequently as I've had to with you," he continued, ripping Furuichi's sheet away and hauling the teen upright against the headboard by his collar.
"Now give me your arm so we can get this over with." The doctor did not wait for Furuichi to move his arm closer; he simply reached out and grabbed the limb, tugging roughly to bring it closer. Furuichi yelped painfully.
"Hmm," the demons mused, poking at his shoulder with a faintly glowing finger. "Torn rotator cuff. You injured this shoulder before?"
"D-dislocated a little while back," he cringed. The faint glow from the finger spread out to Forcas' entire hand, which clamped down viciously tight on Furuichi's shoulder. The boy choked out a pained groan as that strange light seeped into his flesh and set it to itching so strong it felt like burning.
And then it was over, and with the retreat of the itching followed the bone-deep ache in shoulder. Even the vague irritation that had remained after dislocating the shoulder previously was gone. Furuichi rotated the limb in awe, breaking into a broad smile.
"Thanks, Dr. Fab– er, Forcas," he grinned.
"Hmph. Next time you're injured, at least make it something interesting to heal," he said, reaching up to peel away the bandage on Furuichi's cheek that covered the nearly-healed burn. A touch of a glowing finger brushed away the ache, and though Furuichi could not see it, he was willing to bet the faint blister-scars had been washed away as well.
"Don't pull this shit with him again, Hecadoth. The kid's too weak for the normal recruit training. He'll just keep injuring himself, with his mind and instincts working at a faster pace than his body can keep up with. It would be best to stick with basic workouts, focusing on increasing overall speed, strength, and endurance."
"Yeah, we figured. Laymia thinks we should just work on his speed and dodging from now on."
"That would be best. Later, kid," the doctor offered with a casual wave as he left the room.
"So does that mean you're not gonna try to stab me anymore?" Furuichi asked hopefully.
"Nope. It just means I'm not gonna expect you to retaliate. Your training with Naga will remain the same, though."
Fuck.
The second full day in hell, Furuichi woke up to a bedroom painted white and glistening with hoar frost. He couldn't remember if he had dreamed or not, but his cheeks felt strange and stiff, and when he reached up to touch them, his fingertips encountered frozen tear tracks. He must have dreamed, then. He was glad he didn't remember.
Unfortunately, his moment of forgotten emotional upheaval did not go unnoticed – Hecadoth had arrived to awaken him again, and frowned at the state of his cheeks.
"Well, damn. We weren't that mean to you yesterday," he grumbled awkwardly.
"No, this is…I'm not really sure what this is. I woke up this way," Furuichi returned helplessly as he struggled to put on his uniform.
"More past life shit, huh? Well, you and I aren't training today, you'll be with Laymia in the afternoon instead, after your morning session with Naga. You can talk to her then."
But I don't want to talk to her! Inner Furuichi whined.
Too fucking bad, Hecadoth snorted. This whole lack of mental privacy thing was seriously starting to get old.
"It ain't that hard to keep your thoughts to yourself, kid. I manage just fine. It just takes practice. In fact, I recommend practice. I'm getting sick of hearing your whiny pubescent voice in my head."
Asshole.
Now you're getting the hang of it.
Furuichi huffed a bit, taking advantage of his status as an adolescent to pout unashamedly, then broke into a grin when he caught a genuine snicker from Hecadoth.
By the time he met Naga in the same training hall as the day before, Furuichi's grin had died a swift, painful death, which had a lot to do with the way his horrifically spicy breakfast had swollen his lips shut, but had even more to do with the way he had been flattened and soaked with a miniature geyser the second he walked through the door.
"God dam–glurORP," Furuichi said.
"Incentive," Naga reminded.
"FUCK YOUR INCENTpfffphbbt," Furuichi said.
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch thgrrssst."
Furuichi snickered from his place on the floor, unapologetically smug at having been able to freeze the thin layer of water coating the floor between himself and the demon. He was so going to set Naga's surprised hiss at slipping and falling as his new text alert tone.
Furuichi couldn't even bring himself to regret his prank when the small baron surged upwards in a five-foot tall bundle of righteous fury and promptly spent the rest of the training session gleefully knocking Furuichi on his ass.
"…This whole training thing doesn't seem to be working," Furuichi huffed into his pillow later that afternoon. His back and ass were too bruised and sore for him to lie prone, so instead he was stretched supine across his dusty dungeon bed. Comfortably seated in a cushy armchair beside him, Laymia gave a soft laugh.
"Well, it's only been two days. Let's not give up hope!"
"Yeah, but I have to go home tonight so I can go to school tomorrow. Even if I train every weekend, I don't think I'll be making much progress."
"We won't know until we try!" she assured, unforgivably chipper at his expense. "But let's not worry about that now. We're here to figure out how we can ease the incorporation of your old self into your current self. Why don't you tell me about your dreams?"
"Why do you have a note pad?"
"Oh, don't worry about that, it's just to keep track of your…issues."
"Oh my god, I don't need a therapist."
"It's alright, I have degree in psychology! I printed it out just last night."
Furuichi stared. Laymia stared back at him, her gentle smile oozing expectation.
"Do you have any questions you'd like to ask?" she prompted, after Furuichi had done nothing but remain petulantly silent. He sighed finally, and resigned himself to what was gearing up to be an incredibly uncomfortable conversation. He turned his face back into the pillow to think, and recalled something he'd been wondering about. He turned back to face her.
"Mammon said that this past life stuff happens when your soul gets damaged, or something, and then Hilda said that sometimes demons do it on purpose. Um, did you…?"
"It wasn't an intentional injury," Laymia sniffed, affronted. Then she paused for a moment, seeming to debate with herself, before continuing hesitantly. "My injury was caused by Jabberwock, when we were younger. We were childhood friends, you know, but he became wild and vicious as he aged. We were having a mock battle, and he decided to try out an idea for a new technique on me. It… it did me a lot of damage, and it was a very long time before I came out of the coma. Behemoth sent him away after that, and he only returned just before we made our move against Prince Beelzebub's contractor, your friend.
"Well, I suppose I was lucky that all of the memories returned to me during that coma, rather than a confusing, piece-meal integration, like what you're going through. It seems as though your past life is more real for you than it was for me, but I should be able to help you regardless."
She finished with a gentle smile that softened her eyes and made Furuichi think more of harps and feathers than the pitchforks she should have evoked.
"I was fighting in a war. I was an officer of some kind, and I wasn't human. Not a demon, either," he added when he saw the demoness about to interject. She sat back with a contemplative frown.
"I don't know what I was, but these ears," he brushed back his hair from the side of his face, "are a hold-over from then. Any way, there was a war with some other race, I think, and we lost, and– and a lot of people died, on both sides. It was a massacre." He went silent here, overwhelmed with visions of crimson snow and crumpled bodies and his glorious leader, the Snow Prince, as he slumped to the ground with a sword through his chest.
"Were you killed in the war, Furuichi?" Laymia questioned softly. "Is that why you're having so much trouble, because of a traumatic death?"
"You make a horrible therapist," he grumbled, and then felt guilty when he saw her face fall into stricken, abashed lines. He sighed and continued grudgingly. "No, I survived the war, was one of the few left in my contingent. I was involved in a campaign afterwards, though, trying to do as much damage to the enemy as possible. We iced villages and sunk ships and stuff, anything to hurt them for chasing us out of our home."
"You iced their villages? Not raided, or burned?" she prodded, recovered from his earlier chastisement.
"The ice stuff I'm having trouble with now is another hold-over, like my ears. We were really good at ice magic, I think. I don't know much about that, though, or anything else about who we were. I've really only been having dreams about the war."
Furuichi desperately wished it were the other way around. Oh, what he wouldn't give to dream about everyday life, and to only conjecture about wartime.
"That war was likely the defining time in your past life," Laymia concluded, a triumphant gleam in her green eyes. She leaned forward a bit, earnest and easy. "I imagine it's very mentally taxing to not only dream about the war, but also about magic and races that don't seem to have equivalents here. I imagine the integration itself is very stressful for your brain, which impacts your mood and behavior."
"That wasn't a problem for you?"
"Not to the same extent. My memories were of a more mundane life than yours, it seems, and one that held no surprises for this life. My greatest shocks and tragedies were losing my parents. I did not even have to see my former husband die, as I went first. I'm sorry, Furuichi. I had hoped to be able relate more closely to you, but…"
"No, it's fine. It helps to talk about it, I guess," he lied, sighing into his pillow. He hoped that if he just agreed with her, she would leave him alone. Her earnestness felt too much like pity.
Laymia shook her head. "No, it's my job to help you with this, Furuichi. I want to help you with this." She paused and bit her lip, and Furuichi was just about to say that he really didn't think anything could be done when she looked up, eyes glittering determinedly.
"My transition was easy, probably because my coma kept me from awakening. Maybe we could do the same with you. Do you think it might help to force yourself to remember? To get it all over with sooner, rather than later? If we place you in an artificial coma, the memories might come all at once, when you can't wake up from them. Dr. Forcas could pull you easily from an induced coma if you were needed conscious."
That sounded beyond horrible. It sounded like the kind of treatment that would leave him catatonic with rage and fear for days, even weeks. He wanted desperately to deny her immediately, but his cursed strategic mind was already whirling with possibilities.
Fuji was still out there. Furuichi new almost nothing about him, but given the way others spoke about him, quietly and deferentially, he was considerably more dangerous than Takamiya or Nasu. If Oga needed him and he wasn't up to the task, if he was plagued by nightmares again or had stunted his own potential by wallowing rather than acting, he would never forgive himself.
But who was to say Fuji didn't attack while he was catatonic after the treatment? If he was catatonic after the treatment. If the coma even worked, if it didn't make him even worse were too many unknowns, and too many dangerous possibilities. It seemed a terrible gamble, but now that Laymia had laid it out for him, he knew he could not afford to postpone the decision for long.
"Give me a week to decide."
AN: There is not a single character in any fandom more fun to tease and torture than Furuichi, and no one can convince me otherwise.
Also, please note that I don't have anything against tattoos. I think they're pretty cool, myself, but it's my understanding (according to a friend of mine) that having visible tattoos in Japan is the sort of thing that would decide whether you or the person next to you is hired for a job.
Now for Story Time, guys! If you're familiar with the Elder Scrolls series, the majority of Furuichi's history should be obvious by now, but if not, here's the gist: in the past, Furuichi was a Snow Elf, or Falmer, an ancient race of extremely pale, highly cultured elves that had prodigious skill with frost magic, archery, and spearmanship.
Tensions grew over a couple centuries following human incursion into a mountainous tundra area that was historically Snow Elf country, and the two races went to war over it. The war culminated in the Battle of Moesring, in the Moesring Pass of a small arctic island, where the Snow Elves were annihilated. The race's greatest warrior, the Snow Prince, was killed there on the battlefield, which utterly wrecked morale and turned the tide of the battle. Remaining Snow Elves fled underground or were systematically hunted down. This occurred several millennia prior to any playable content, and the race, as it was, no longer exists in game.
I've set Furuichi in the role of a talented young field commander called Fainor, whose first major battle was at Moesring. He lost all of his friends and family to the war, but survived the battle and returned to the mainland, where he instigated a campaign of guerilla warfare against the victorious humans. He was killed several years into this campaign by a wolf.
If you have any questions about his past, let me know! Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Let me know if you spotted any errors; I tried to be thorough with editing, but it's quite a long chapter, and I may have missed something. The last scene, too, seemed a bit stilted to me. I might redo it if you guys don't like the way it turned out.
~Breather