Blood 2.1

Rias Gremory was shaking.

She had never felt quite like this before. Slowly, the devil opened and closed her hands. Her thoughts were silent. Her mouth hung slightly ajar. Rias' heart thumped in her chest. Quietly, she turned her head to Koneko.

The little girl in front of her was battered and bruised. She was dressed in a tattered school uniform. The skirt was torn. Pieces of it had been ripped off, while some parts of it even looked scorched. One of her pale thighs was easily seeable from beneath it. The younger devil held one hand over her ribs. The breaths that came out of her mouth were labored. Rias outstretched an arm toward her. Koneko flinched. The older devil frowned, pulling herself away.

"What happened?"

The question was simple. The answer was anything but. Rias' face tightened with every word. She couldn't tell what this emotion in her chest was. It was sharp, violent even. It made heat run up in her ears and the power entrusted to her from her lineage flare like a black sun.

"Kiba's dead." The words came out in a low monotone. Koneko's face was blank, but Rias knew what to look for. The girl's eyes were telling a different story. The yellow orbs were narrowed into fearful slits. They seemed to dart back and forth, searching. Slowly, Koneko continued, "Someone killed him."

"D-Dead?" Rias stuttered.

She couldn't believe it. Kiba couldn't be dead. He just couldn't. Rias refused to accept it. There had to be some other explanation. Quickly, the devil glanced over at the only other occupant in the room. Akeno Himejima was quiet. No emotions showed on her face. Normally, she would've shown something, anything at all to her king, but the devil's face was blank. Her violet eyes were dark. Whatever was brewing underneath, only Akeno could tell. The glass of tea she was brewing laid long forgotten on the desk in front of her.

A deep breath came out of Rias' nose. She could tell that the emotion she was feeling certainly wasn't fear. The muscles in her hands and feet seemed to have come alive, the latent energy within them wanting to burst out. The quickly building demonic power flowing through Rias' body certainly didn't help. Air came into her lungs. Rias winced. Pain came from her palm. The devil hadn't noticed it, but she'd been squeezing her nails into it.

The devil tried to calm herself. Old advice came to her. Slow intentional breaths left from her mouth as more air came in from her nose. When that didn't work, Rias turned her attention back to Koneko. Worry came to the devil. It ran through her, rampant. The white-haired girl was hurt. Something had attacked one of her servants. Something had killed one of her servants. Small flecks of red bounced off of the devil's body. The shards of power seemed to sizzle and burn in the air as they flew. The feeling in Rias' chest, it was overflowing.

Trying not to show her thoughts, she asked, "How did he...who?" The words came out in small bursts. Rias still didn't want to believe it, but she knew Koneko wouldn't lie to her, especially with something like this. The tone of Rias' voice had betrayed her. More demonic power started to leak. The devil's blood-red hair billowed out from behind her. It seemed to drift in a nonexistent wind. Large red sparks fell to the floor. As they hit, they ate. Holes burned into the rich mahogany below.

"I don't know." Koneko's voice came out in the same monotone as before. Rias didn't fault her for it. The devil knew why she spoke like that, why she always spoke like that. The defense mechanism had been with her for as long as Rias could remember. When the next few words exited her servant's mouth, Rias finally identified the feeling burning in her heart.

"When you sent me to check on him, he wasn't there. Instead, I found it." Koneko paused. Her yellow eyes darted back and forth. The girl seemed to tremble and fearfully look for something that wasn't there. Rias hated the abject terror that started to bleed into her tone. "It was a monster. He, it had Kiba's head. One other too. An exorcist. That and an axe."

A stray? thought Rias. There had been a notable uptick in her and Sona's territory as of late, but it was nothing like this. The few that had shown hadn't been powerful, barely at the strength of a few pawns at best. If it was a stray, it shouldn't have been able to do this. It shouldn't be that powerful. If something like that had come near, she would've felt it. That, or she would have been informed. Both her brother and Sona's sister were overbearing at times, but that also came with some perks.

"I-I don't know what it was." Rias stepped forward, wrapping an arm around Koneko's shoulder. Quietly, the devil pulled her close. That small act was all it took for her to break loose. The younger girl in her arms shook. A few soft sobs came from the girl lying against her breast. It hurt to see her servants like this. It hurt even more that what had caused it was still out there. The crying grew in intensity.

Koneko desperately grasped at her sides. A single hand atop her head was the only comfort the girl had as she wailed, "It killed him!"

Rias knew the two of her servants were close, but she supposed she didn't truly understand how much Koneko cared for Kiba. The girl, Koneko, was a wreck. Large tears dripped down from either of her eyes. The pale skin around them was quickly turning a puffy red. White hair was starting to fray up on its own. Rias couldn't remember the last time she had seen Koneko show this amount of emotion. It was anathema to her, to act like this. The only thing even remotely comparable was when the two had first met, back before she had given her a new name. She'd cried then, but it still wasn't as bad as now.

Rias simply held her. No one in the room said a word. For a while, the crying continued. After an indeterminate amount of time, the sobs started to subside. Slowly, Koneko pulled back. The young devil still looked worse for wear, but it seemed like she'd finally gotten rid of some of the pain. It wasn't all of it. It wasn't even most of it, but it was some. It would have to do for right now. Rias could try to help her more later. For now, the red-haired devil had something she needed to do.

"Where is it?"

That emotion that had been brewing in her chest was ripe. It seemed to grow and grow like a crimson blaze. Anger wasn't enough to fully describe it. Rias pursed her lips. Rage didn't quite do it either. Demonic power poured out of her. Like a thick miasma, it spread. A tinge of red overtook the club room around her. Rias knew of all the seven deadly sins, but this one had never really fitted her. It was something new. The feeling came upon her like an oily black slug. It was disgusting, but she couldn't turn away from it. It crawled its way out of her heart, turning into a blinding red inferno. The power of destruction was boiling in the air around her, little will-o-wisps of black and red flicking in and out of existence.

Rias Gremory felt wrath.

-|-]=[-|-

The stray devil I had killed had been more like a Lamia than I thought.

When I found the bodies, a mixture of disgust and anger flooded through me. It wasn't quite as fetid as the horrible soup left behind in the warehouse that I had awakened in on my first day in this world, but it was close enough. There must have been dozens of them. Children. They were all children. Each and every one of them were lying in varying states of decay.

Each pile was different from the last. One had old bleached bones in it, having long been cracked open and chewed. Another was stained brown and yellow, rot wafted up from it. Many more still had meat, some decayed others fresh. My eyes stonily crossed around the room.

Putrid bile ran rampant from the piles. All of them had a certain amount of deliberateness to them that made me frown. The corpses were arranged like some kind of macabre piece of art. It should've been something more than a frown. I knew it should've been, but that was all that truly came out. Nothing seemed to phase me anymore. It's like something had gone through my head and just snipped out a part of my brain. In fact, I think it's gotten worse. I could still remember feeling actual fear and real disgust when I had seen the pile of blood and bone before. Now though?

I felt deadened to it all. I couldn't feel anything when I stared at the corpses before me. There was nothing for the monster either. It smelt bad sure and I didn't like that the stray devil had killed a bunch of kids, but that was it. I sighed. It was odd, extremely so. It was probably something to do with the mark, but I didn't really know. The most I had really done with Warhammer was buy a few minis I thought looked cool and put them on a shelf. The only other thing I really looked at was some YouTube animations and a few Wiki pages. That didn't matter though. I would bet a good chunk of change that it had to do with my patron's "blessing."

Fucking Khorne.

He, it, whatever wasn't really around at the moment. That sharp foreboding presence was absent. I didn't really know what to think of the god. The surrealness of my situation had long worn off. The fact that the craziness that was the warp actually existed probably should've scared me, but I didn't feel anything for it. There wasn't any worry. No fear. There was absolutely nothing at all. I was calm as can be. The thoughts simply ran through my head without worry. Again, I sighed. It wasn't fun to think about what the blood god had done to me. There was one thing I knew for sure.

He'd given me power.

That was about the only good thing I got out of it. The rage, losing parts of my emotions, and just about everything else, it all sucked. At least I didn't get turned into one of the red guys I'd seen drawings of before. I didn't think I'd look good with red skin, red horns, red teeth, red anything really. It wasn't exactly my color. It was better than Slaanesh I guess. Putting aside the other deplorable stuff associated with that particular god, purple definitely wasn't my color. Green and blue were alright though. Amusement came to me. Quietly, I let out a snort. I was going on a tangent. The color scheme doesn't matter. I had been given power.

Everything depended on how I was going to use it.

God only knew how many families the creature had broken before I killed it. Freed had probably done much the same too. They were both monsters. It was just that one of them wore a man's skin. At first, I refused to accept it. Then, I'd killed both of them. Freed came first, but that's not important. I probably saved dozens if not hundreds of people by doing so. It still didn't feel right to me. I glanced at the back of the blonde-haired head on the floor.

I need to get out of here. I thought. Being in this room was starting to make me a bit loony. Having an existential crisis could wait. First, I needed a plan.

I could take the greenskin approach, just waltz up to the church guns a blazing.

A smile came to my face. It'd be fun. It would also be incredibly stupid. Something about running in screaming just tickled my fancy. I couldn't tell why. It was probably another effect of the mark. The thing was affecting my thinking. I could tell. That would become more of a problem when I couldn't. There was a notable difference in my thinking now from that of a week ago when I was still home. Some things I just didn't even think twice about anymore. I set that aside. I couldn't do anything about it, so there was no use worrying over it. That plan wouldn't work though, I was outnumbered to a ridiculous extreme.

The church had more stray exorcists than I could count. If Freed's bragging wasn't a lie, then none of them really compared to the dead douche, but I still couldn't risk it. A gun was a gun after all. My regeneration and enhanced strength wouldn't mean shit if I had a bullet in my brain or twenty through my chest. I didn't really notice a change in my durability during any of my fights. I still got hurt. I couldn't just shrug off gunfire. There were also a small group of fallen angels to deal with. They were a bunch of worthless one-off villains in the show, but I had no idea how their abilities would hold up to mine. They had lightspears, flight, and decades of experience. It felt like I was going up against an almost impossible task. It couldn't be though. If there's a will, there's a way.

A shiver ran up my spine. I felt a ghostly something run a limb over my shoulder. I quickly turned around. Instinctively, I drew on the power that waited within me. Confusion came to me. There was nothing there. Laughter rang in my ears, entirely unlike the wanton scraping metals of Khorne's.

ASK.

The voice that came out after it was brutal. It sounded like a monster, like some kind of demon. It grated at my mind like glass. I felt wary simply hearing it. It felt like hundreds of things speaking at once, each one trying to be the one that finally reached me. It was a chorus of bloody meat screaming into my ears. I knew it, from before. They were the same voices from when I was fighting Freed. Then, it was quiet. I could feel something happening. They spoke in a way I couldn't truly understand. They were fighting each other. The voices turned from a cacophony of yells into a sordid choir of blade and claw. Just as suddenly as the battle began, it ended. Then, they all settled into one.

Blood. Skulls. Give tribute and ask.

One thing I noticed about the voice was that it didn't have the same overbearing feeling as that of the blood god. It felt noticeably weaker, muted even. I could just give it a light shove and the new presence would disappear. It was weird. It felt like the thing, whatever it was, was struggling to even speak to me. It felt vile and hungry, like some kind of bloodthirsty parasite trying to drink from the veins of the world around me. It had to be some kind of monster. An aberration. A demon.

What if that's what it was? A demon...No, how did they say it? A daemon. It was a daemon of the warp.

I frowned again. I should be shaking right now, trembling in fear. Instead, I felt nothing. I knew what these did. They possessed people, to try and gain a vessel into the mortal world. Despite this, there was no fear, no mortal terror. I was calm, if a bit annoyed. I didn't like it when things intruded in my head. Rage that wasn't my own shot through me. I pushed the thing away. I could feel the creature's thoughts. Its presence here was weak. Something was tearing away at it as the daemon tried to claw itself closer to me. It was pathetically easy to overpower. I pushed again. It almost felt like something else was shoving it with me. Something didn't want it here as much as I did. I had no idea what it was clawing at the daemon as it tried to pull closer to me, but I guess I could give it thanks later. The daemon's screams faded away.

"Well." The word rolled off my tongue. I could hear the annoyance in my voice. Maybe all of this was getting to me a bit more than I thought. Walking toward the only door within that small room I was in, I commented, "That was something."

-|-]=[-|-

The church was exactly how I remembered it, broken and rundown. I looked it up and down.

Large stone walls greeted me. It was a mix of colors. The panes of broken mosaics shined in the morning sun. Green lichen and moss mixed together eating into the weathered stone. The wooden cross sitting atop the church was still broken, almost in half. The large double doors I'd soon have to walk through looked almost innocuous in the morning light.

Looking at the place left me with a certain sense of foreboding. This was it. This was what I've been talking myself up to for the past week. I'd been training, fighting, and coasting along with everything that this world had given me. It was time to truly live in it. Oh, who was I kidding? As soon as I killed Freed and Kiba there wasn't any way to go back. I'd already said it before.

My being here had sent ripples out into the pond. It was about time to try and make a wave. At the time, I had no idea just how big of one I'd truly make.

I'd made a plan.

Before I ran over to the church, I took the time to really think. Everything was boiling down to one thing, I wanted to get Asia out of that church and away from this town. Leaving her to Issei wasn't an option anymore. I'd accidentally burnt that bridge. I didn't know what I was going to do after this, but everything else could wait. The feeling of urgency yelling at me to act on the first day wasn't with me anymore. I had internalized it. I had to stay focused. I had to keep moving, keep acting. If I slowed down, I'd stop. If I stopped I'd die. The future could wait, I was in the now. The plan I ended up with was simple.

I'd just go in and act like I didn't do anything wrong. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch for Raynare to believe that Kiba had killed Freed, especially with how the stray exorcist usually acted. Not having Asia there with us made it easier to believe too. Freed was a lot more squishy than me, without having the regeneration and all. The head I was carrying with me would be my proof that I still followed through on her orders, getting rid of her "undesirable" neighbors. It made me feel somewhat uneasy carrying around the thing, but I needed it to have some proof at least. The guilt I got from holding it faded with time. The emotion had been easy to force away. I just gritted my teeth and ignored it entirely. I did have another problem along the way though.

I really didn't think about how walking around town with a severed head would look. That had made getting over to the church a colossal pain in the ass.

It turns out that if you walk around a small Japanese town in the middle of the day with a severed head and bloody axe, people tend to notice. The first person I saw on the way over had thrown her garden trowel at me and then ran screaming bloody murder. I didn't blame her. It still hurt though.

When I got shot hurt more. Turns out some of the cops around here actually know how to use their service revolvers, go figure. I'd heard the older police officer before I'd seen him. A gruff voice yelled at me from behind. I'd turned to see the grizzled man holding a barrel out toward me. Unlike the one from before, he was calm, completely unshaken. I still couldn't understand a word he said, but that didn't really matter. I wouldn't have listened to him anyway. When I moved, he fired. The three-fifty-seven round that had hit didn't hurt that bad. The wound it left in my shoulder was still bleeding, but I knew a few easy ways to fix that problem. I'd ducked into an alleyway after that, continuing to head further uphill. He'd given me chase, but the officer's age caught up to him quicker than my blood loss. It was a good thing that the church was easy to spot. It was one of the only to Victorian-styled buildings in Kuoh, the other being the academy near the other side of town.

Arriving at the church, I planned on telling Raynare a bit of an "edited" version of what happened the previous night. I was still banking on two things though.

The first was that Raynare and her little group didn't send anybody to watch Freed and me on our little escapade. Considering that Dohnaseek said they were already low on manpower, I hoped that was the case. If someone had seen me kill Freed I was screwed.

The second was that I could actually get in there and get out without getting caught somehow. That would be a true miracle. I wasn't the best actor, but I thought I'd give it a try. Asia would believe anything that'd came from my mouth. Dohnaseek wouldn't care enough to ask. Raynare would be the easiest. She already hated Freed. She would see him dying as a good thing. Hopefully, the fallen wouldn't look too much into it. I didn't really talk to many of the other people at the church anyway, so as long as I kept my mouth shut, it should turn out alright.

I suppose that it still had a good chance of ending up like my first plan. Hopefully, it wouldn't end in a blaze of glory. I still felt the low pitter-patter of excitement running through my heart. I tried to keep my face still. My lips slowly came up anyway, forcibly curling into a grin. I wasn't exactly some Khornate Berserker, but no small part of me was hoping for some kind of fight. I bit my lip and shook my head. Thoughts like that wouldn't do. I couldn't screw this up, not when Asia's safety was on the line. My face settled back down. It was getting harder and harder to control myself. It felt like the part of me that stops me from acting on the intrusive thoughts in my head was disappearing. It was worrying. Everyone had a facade of sorts over their real thoughts, and the mark on my palm was destroying my own, forcing me to act.

In the few short days since I've come here, I'd changed.

I would've never thought of something like that before. I was actually hoping that I could get into a fight, like swinging my axe at someone was fun. It shouldn't be. I know it shouldn't be. It, this, everything about this should be scaring me. About a week ago it would, shitless in fact. I went from just an average guy to this in just a few short days. Was that all it took? I was about to risk life and limb to help Asia. I could die again. That was a sobering thought. If I didn't have this pumping sense of adrenaline and anticipation running through me maybe I would've felt something different. I didn't care though, not anymore. I don't think this mark on my palm would let me. I just didn't have it in me to be afraid. In fact, I was almost hoping something went wrong when I opened up those doors. The feeling of exhilaration in my blood was singing to me.

"Come on, Jack."

I tried to keep it down, but there was a smile on my face all the same. I reached a hand out to the doors in front of me. The gnarled wood pressed up lightly against my fingers. I took a deep breath. One way or another, I was going to be done with this town by sundown.

The doors creaked open.

AN: Howdy folks!

Were moving back into the thick of things again. I used this chapter to show the aftermath of Jack's actions. Whether he was in control of himself or not is debatable, but it doesn't matter. Actions have consequences, he doesn't quite realize how far-reaching those consequences are just yet. We'll be getting into that real soon though, so don't worry. The second half of the chapter laid out Jack's plans and mindset as of the current moment. I guess we'll all see how it ends up going for him.

I also used this chapter, to give you guys some more intrigue about Jack's mark and how the ruinous powers are interacting with this world. It's all about the build-up with that, I'm trying to give pieces of the puzzle as we go. I wonder if any of you will put it together before our boy Jack does?

Speaking of that, please tell me what you thought of the chapter! Reading reviews can give me ideas for the story and also help to improve my general writing if I missed something. If you guys noticed any mistakes of any kind, please point them out. I hate leaving outright typos and such in my writing if I can help it, but sometimes shit happens.

No recommendation for you today. I'll throw one in on the next chapter. That chapter will be up either on the fourth if I got time, or this weekend. We'll see how it goes. Until then...

~ciao