A Tale of One Deviant (Book One)

Chapter 182: A Wounded Duo

     "Kiki-!...huh?"

     ...peach?

     Peach-colored orbs fell from beneath her bangs, past her feet where she stood in the air, to bounce off of the white ground beneath. They rolled, varying in size, down all of the steps, clacking until their momentum and the flat ground brought them to a halt.

     What the...

     The other side of the door was quiet. Earlier, when it disappeared, upon walking into the Church the apostles had pointed towards, it had been quiet as well. She'd partially closed it, likely to be free even a bit of my musings of the day.

     But the door was wide open at that moment, and I couldn't hear a single thing from the other side of paradise.

     Nothing...nothing at all.

     Like her mind was too numb to think, and her body only moved to do what she needed to do.

     One stake flung out behind her, bouncing off the edge of the altar, clattering to the ground at Anastasia's feet. Its red-soaked tip scattered a few thick droplets around, adding just a bit of color to the column of shadow she stood in, as the stained-glass windows just missed her.

     Another stake flung out, with more force. It glided past the woman that time with enough force to send her hair flying, before sending spiderweb cracks up the grand walls of the Church, piercing into its innocent architecture and through its holy facade.

     "Kiki, stop."

     But her blackening hand reached forward again, wrapping around the next stake. Her hand trembled so badly it almost fell off, as if controlling the thing attempting to be purified, with peach-colored little mana bubbles drifting upwards, was becoming harder and harder with each passing moment.

     But she flung the thing out of my shoulder through a stained-glass window, letting it shatter and crash into a colored, dangerous mess below the sill.

     Then she grabbed the one that had struck straight through my shoulder piece, the one I'd adopted as my own with skull-and-cross, and flung it somewhere into an icon that shattered...no, turned to dust from the force of it, and pierced through the wall ultimately.

     Then the one in my stomach, next to where Seer pierced me, was sent through a row of pews, piercing through one and dragging it by sheer force into the ones behind it.

     Then the one in my thigh-

     And the one in my foot - well, what was left of my foot, since it was a good-sized branch, and I was my small self in that moment, with tattered kimono combination and missing articles such as my scarf and geta - got sent off somewhere else as well-

     "Kiki Nazira."

     She paused, only for a moment, as the black crept up to the top of her shoulder and reached toward her heart. My arm, riddled with holes and not much muscle left to move it, with less skin attaching it to my shoulder than I'd have liked, drooped down towards the ground as the lack of branches had me sagging off the wall and grimacing at the doubled pain of it tearing through my skin.

     "You're only hurting both of us and doing more harm than good at this point." My eyes flicked up to the woman still standing in the distance, shocked so badly she didn't seem to know what to do while reaching down to the blood-stained stake at her foot. It didn't burn her hands, though it clearly had an affect on her daughter and her daughter's familiar, seeing the blackened skin of the both of them, and the fury it caused them. No, on the contrary, to a being embraced by the gods and not cursed with a Demonic disposition, it probably felt wonderful holding the thing in her hands. Comforting, warm, safe. Probably a broken branch of some holy tree somewhere. "And if you bring this place crashing down on our heads, I don't think we could stand the consequences of that right now."