Chapter 17: Too far
How long had they been sitting here?
An hour?
Two?
Izaya wasn't quite sure.
Shizuo was still sitting on top of that crystal gazing over the horizon. Waiting for nothing should be an activity boring the hell out of Izaya yet he found himself oddly occupied with various arithmetic stunts. The sun, if it even was one, was traversing the sky awfully fast. Izaya had been doing the math of its tempo and the resulting time spans that made the days and nights and only confirmed what Shizuo had told him.
A day lasted merely two to three hours it seemed.
So a demon day consisted of forty in total?
What a day.
If this were a workplace, then it would be amazing. A day with more than 24h would provide so much more possibilities.
But then again, did demons even have jobs?
Where did they live?
Izaya had yet to see a single building or campside. Or any other demon at all.
He was slowly but surely starting to think that Shizuo might as well be the only god damned demon around this area.
Glancing towards the said demon he spotted what he already had a couple times.
He was twisting his necklace between his fingers. The one that spelled his assumed name.
It might not even be his own. Maybe it was someone else's.
And yet, somehow Izaya couldn't help but feel oddly confident about this demon actually wearing it. The idea seemed too fitting to cast aside.
Gaze far and mind even further it wasn't hard to guess that this demon actually knew what had happened here.
It was obvious from the way Shizuo looked at the landscape. Absentmindedly, yet awfully concentrated as if trying to remember something.
Blurriness of foreign nature invaded Izaya's eyes and he quickly rubbed at them.
Hell was really not the best place to relax in. The constant temperature changes messed with his sight and the weights put on his frame were growing heavier and heavier by the minute.
He wasn't a fan of exhaustion, really.
The maniac from back at the inn sprung to mind and Izaya pulled a small piece of burnt coal from his pants.
It was funny, Shizuo's flames were of a different kind, obviously, but they had still ended up leaving behind burnt pieces to use for writing so he had grabbed a piece when he saw a chance to.
Not that there was much Izaya needed to note down. But for this little experiment it was the perfect tool.
He remembered them. The runes. Those that the manic used and those that he had read about in his new father's study.
Magic existed. And from what he could tell he only needed to read the syllables out loud to activate the runes.
From what he had read there had been spells used for healing and support.
And that was exactly what he was looking for right now.
The weights tearing him down were excessively annoying and growing to be so by the second. So getting rid of them was a number one priority.
Dealing with the exhaustion they brought first was the most logical conclusion and so Izaya wrote what he ought to be an order of dispersing said exhaustion.
His handwriting could probably have been better, but he was pretty sure he remembered the right symbols. Within seconds they were drawn across his palm and Izaya carefully studied the magic circle he had thought up.
Quietly, as to not draw any unwanted attention from the demon Izaya whispered across his palm.
He knew how to spell them by combining the maniac's words and letters. He had used enough to conclude the rest and so he did exactly that-
A bad idea.
The second his lips had finished asking the spell to work he certainly had triggered something, but it was neither relief, nor pleasant magic.
Dizziness assaulted his senses in a way that only barely avoided making him spill his guts. Suppressing a soft groan he tried to ignore the sensation of needles piercing his skin in the area he had drawn the magic runes in and grit his teeth.
Great, now his palm hurt and his guts had done a backflip.
He certainly achieved something by trying to use magic without knowing its proper rules.
But gladly the nausea passed as quickly as it had surged, and the pulsating pain in his palm diminished by the second.
He had probably fucked something up. Maybe his spelling. Maybe the way he spoke the words. The grammar? There were too many possibilities.
Izaya was aware that his chances to actually make this work were pretty low, but it had been worth a shot nonetheless.
"Are you coming?" The best part about his little experiment was only that Shizuo didn't seem to have noticed a thing.
The moon had finally risen and indicated that it was time for them to move on.
Quickly picking himself off the ground Izaya moved and followed as their next goal seemed to be the ascend of endless stairs. It was funny, despite the lack of electricity the marbled floor radiated soft tinges of light as if to provide a secure road.
Who even built all of this?
Izaya had thought demons to be rural, bloody, brutal and definitely too stupid and greedy to uphold a society. But looking at this staircase, obviously built to honor someone they had to uphold certain rules to their way of living.
The path they were trying to climb was in fact a shorter mountain than the one Izaya had eyeballed from afar.
His senses were tricking him, or maybe he had just not paid close attention, but somehow the mountain they had been heading towards seemed to not only have not approached even an inch, but instead seemed to have extended its distance.
What kind of landscape was this anyway?
The fern he had been told to stay clear off had finally ceased growing and the thistle like trees also stayed clear of the upscaling hill. Instead there a couple flowers too large for their own good had sprouted from the steep ledges. Bright and yellow they provided a gold shine to follow.
It was quite pretty. Remembered Izaya of the flair lantern festivals usually held.
Especially a few red ones every here and there picking out from between its outnumbering rivals enhanced that idea.
Made Izaya wonder whether these flowers had been planted here on purpose or just happened to grow around the landscape.
The crystals too.
Soft vegetation of white purplish sword lilies were sprouting from the gaps in between and serving quite the pretty picture.
But despite all the beauty presented up front, it was obvious that climbing this staircase was only a side step in reaching their goal of the mountain ahead.
"Why circle it and not go straight up?" Izaya asked as he followed, addressing the peak of the small mountain. After all, it was pretty and everything, but definitely not efficient in the way it circled the mountain in sweet spirals.
A shrug was all that he received and an awfully confident gaze of sarcasm.
"You don't look like you could handle a climb."
Izaya snorted, "Was that supposed to be an insult?"
"No, just the truth."
A truth that was a bit too close to reality to Izaya's liking. He wanted to protest, but at the end of the day he was merely a human and keeping up with Shizuo's speed alone was already a hard task to achieve.
He was offended, but he was not stupid.
"I feel hurt," he shrugged with the confidence someone would show who only slightly agreed with what had been said. But Shizuo merely shrugged.
"Better that than a real injury."
It was then that Izaya felt the brush of something soft.
A flower.
Different from the rest by the way its color screamed in deep magenta. Izaya had simply walked and been pretty sure he had not been in the way of any plant, yet suddenly it was there.
The petal of the plant grazed his palm by a mere millimeter.
It was awfully soft, clean and a pleasant smell radiated from the flower calyx. It was a pretty sight for the fraction of a second that it bloomed- because within the blink of an eye the flower quit.
Down.
Quick.
Gone.
As if having been sucked into the floor the disappearance of the blossom had opened his sight for a corridor- a corridor of corpses.
Flesh, bones, creatures of all kinds gnawed in half as if serving a short snack had been bound together by a spiral of threads-
Down, down the pitch black tunnel and towards the set of eyes.
Spider-
Huge-
Run-
Those were the three thoughts that splintered off Izaya's mind in the short moment that he got for his eyes to widen.
Because not much more was given.
Faster than any horror movie the scene in front of him unfolded as the creature rushed towards him with sets of death spiking sharp black legs with terrifying speed.
Shizuo's name was on his lips for some reason, but Izaya didn't even get to spell it.
There was no time to move, there was no time to speak. His body hit the marble ground with an impact too harsh to be healthy and the creature towered above his body with fluids of saliva and poison dripping from its jaw.
He was dead.
That's it.
He was dead.
Nothing in the universe was as sure as that fact as the spider-like creature, larger than Izaya by ten times, bore its poisonous fangs. Izaya had no time to be scared, no time to scream, not even a second to think but funnily enough, as if in slow motion Izaya suddenly spotted the magenta flower at the end of what appeared to be the spider's tail.
Almost like an anglerfish.
And the jaw rushed down to snuff out his life.
The blast that hit Izaya's ears blackened out all sight for a moment.
It was loud-
What was that? Had it missed?
Screeches of agony caused the crystals standing around to tremble and Izaya's breath stood still. He didn't know when he had closed his eyes, but right now he opened them and what he saw caused his breath to choke.
Shizuo.
Left arm stuck between the spider's fangs he had punched its head with his right with enough force to blast its head off. The sight was gruesome and any horror movie had to hide in shame from it as that already walking corpse screeched. The heavy behind of the spider's body spasmed in grotesque motions as Shizuo ripped one of its death bringing teeth from its jaw.
Legs screeched along the marble ground, carved desperate lines of struggle but Shizuo was more powerful than the creature.
One of the legs was gripped, the other kept in the spider's jaw and with one fluid motion he tore the monster apart like it was nothing.
Guts flew. Dark purplish blood sprayed their surroundings.
And the corpse finally stopped moving.
It was dead.
And Izaya was not.
All of this had happened within the bat of an eyelid. Not even seconds, that's how fast all of this had unfolded. Too fast to comprehend even for Izaya or his body.
Only now, still on the ground and with the creature motionless, Izaya's heart started to accelerate in speed.
His adrenaline spiked, a bit too late considering the danger was already dead, but that didn't change the way Izaya's body's reaction.
Izaya couldn't even tell when exactly his body had moved backwards, but he suddenly realized he seemed to have tried to back off as his back was pressed harshly into one of the crystals.
Quick gasps of air left his mouth as he looked at the spider.
It was no spider obviously. The tail alone already told Izaya that it was just another hellish creature. Now that he looked at it up close for longer than a second he noticed the off number on legs as well. Ten in total and only two eyes in fact. Even the body was off by the way it stretched into a elongated shape.
Izaya wasn't quite sure how long he had been sitting there. How long he had looked at the now dead monster.
But after what had felt like barely a minute he noticed Shizuo's gaze.
The demon was looking at him.
He was just standing there.
Awfully quiet, with an unreadable expression.
"What?" Izaya asked, trying to sound composed, but he failed spectacularly as his voice just broke midway.
Shizuo was hurt.
The gratitude that suddenly surfaced to Izaya's mind came too late and the realization of what had just happened caught up only after his retort.
Shizuo had just saved him.
And not only that, he had gone out of his way to do so.
The arm he had blocked the spider's fangs with- it was bleeding.
He had taken the hit on purpose to keep it from getting to him. Izaya had always been a fast thinker and even faster schemer, but right now his thoughts were a jumbled mess. Guilt, gratitude, fear and an odd sense of thrill mixed in his brain as he watched Shizuo's palm graze to his temple.
A glare of some sorts spread across his face and he sighed.
"You should stop following me now, there will be stronger opponents ahead."
Stronger-
The mere idea of meeting a creature of just the same strength as this was already exhilarating, really, but even stronger? What was this place?
… right.
Hell.
But no, he couldn't turn back. Where to? He was no demon.
"No. I-" Izaya tried to argue and the speed he had seen Shizuo execute was demonstrated once more as he suddenly rushed up close.
His bloodied hand clutched the hem of Izaya's shirt and for a second those eyes of Shizuo turned into full blown slits.
The horns sitting left and right on Shizuo's head seemed to pulsate for a moment as a crimson glow illuminated soft patterns of spirals.
He was mad. Or he was trying to appear as such.
It was funny.
But in a really weird way this situation seemed familiar. And in an even weirder way Izaya felt not a shred of fear facing the very angry demon.
"You know I can make you, right?" Shizuo hissed, and to any sane human being his intimidation would shut them up, really.
But Izaya was far from sane it seemed.
"Go ahead," he hissed back, with confidence he wasn't quite sure where he pulled it from.
But there was no going back.
As if going back would change a damned thing.
The goddess was still probably worse by a hundred times than the creature Shizuo had just killed.
Visible surprise flashed across Shizuo's face and for a second he seemed awfully perplexed. The grip on Izaya's shirt had not moved, but Shizuo's face did.
His nose twitched for just a second and it was as though someone had blown the madness from his eyes as they reverted to their initial form showing nothing but stupor.
"What?" Izaya found himself asking with as much bite as Shizuo's words- but the answer was not the one he had expected.
"You are human."
to be continued~
Finally things are getting interesting xD