Date A Live: Red Crown Chaplain

20 - Carrion Living

Miku: "Gabriel: March!"

A song that enchants selected listeners, she never thought she'd need to use it to empower herself. The song March was used to empower Laura as well, hoping that it could help her with whatever she was trying to do.

Miku would be right in that regard, as the song resonated within Laura's heart, awakening her internal spirit. Her eyes began to glow a splendid yellow and her skin started feeling smoother than the finest of silk.

Miku: "Gabrie—Kuughck! "

Before she knew it, the short sword's edge had pierced her throat. The shock from the attack and the pain that followed caused her to let go of Laura's hand. 

Laura: "Miku...!"

Miku: "Laur—Kgglg-! "

She choked, spraying out blood from her mouth.

As if to mock her weakness, the Powers bullied her with a barrage of punches, breaking bones in her body. The brief barrage had used so much energy for the Powers. Its iron halo, spinning in its honor, blinked and flickered away from its golden light, indicating insufficient power.

Miku watched as the open but absent-of-life eyes of the Powers stared into her soul, mouthing something to her vaguely.

Miku: "'What-...? It hurts so much...' "

But as a lover of girls, she somehow, innately, felt a sense of despair from her.

Laura: "That's enough! Alright, screw it!"

Laura yelled from the ground as she became surrounded by dark yellow lightning.

Laura: "Keter! 'Why am I doing this? What even is the point? There is no absolution, only the famine... I guess not. There is power.' "

A small pool of dark energy bled onto the ground from Laura's throat, coalescing into a rising relic. Three sharp points aimed at the sky, sides diagonal to resemble a mountain, and a single yellow eye.

Laura: "Keter Tsahov: Heke—!"

Black. Unconscious. The light—buried.

The relic of the past melts back into the puddle from whence it came, never to be seen again.

Such a dark and blackened puddle that smelled of blood remained on the ground to taint the grass.

An ash-blonde woman appeared behind her. In her left, she held her right arm—severed. The stump of her right remained wrapped with a tourniquet. Stripes of blood varying in thickness dripped down her face from her forehead, even her nose. She breathed heavily as if always at the risk of collapsing.

"... Adeptus 1 reporting..."

She spoke with labored breathing as they carried another girl—a Spirit with purple hair.

The Powers let the siren fall. The one-winged angel took the sacrificial lamb.

With every ounce of strength she had left, before losing consciousness, she shouted, creating a blood-curdling shriek.

Miku: "LAURAAAAAA!!"

---

She had lost the ability to use her throat, to speak, to laugh, to live.

Miku began to further suffer the effects of blood loss, and the growing feeling of someone awaiting to collect something from her continued growing eerily in the back of her head.

Miku: "This... cough... is the end...? 'It's so cold... but I feel so warm as well. Is this what dying feels like...? Laura...' "

She thought back on the person she wanted to really love.