11.
Better Than Nothing
Dante, Reyna, and Gahn sat in a circle facing each other. The branch they were on was colossal enough to hold them with space to spare. Its dark bark was thick and twisted, and it had required several sweeps of Dante’s sword to smooth it out for them to sit without any discomfort. The now concaved tree husk even provided a backrest for the three to enjoy.
“So, are you guys gonna tell me what happened now?” Reyna asked.
Gahn leaned his head back and sighed. “Yeah, cutie. I just wanted us to get some distance between us and that asshole.”
Dante chuckled at the demon’s reference to Mundus.
Reyna rolled her eyes. “Well there’s about two days’ worth of nonstop, silent distance between us, so tell me now. What happened? Why did Auronmar surrender?”
Gahn stared at the two demanding faces of the humans before him. His gaze shifted to the wooden surface beneath them. It held such a suave and creamy, soft brown hue, a complete opposite in texture and color from the harsh bark that had coated it.
“To be honest, I’m not sure,” he said. Reyna’s face fell and Dante’s curled into disbelief.
“But I heard you say something to him. Something about not knowing if ‘she’ won’t kill him. You were talking about Blethinette, right?” Dante said and leaned towards Gahn. “What did you mean by all that?”
He met the Berserker’s stare. “Yeah, I meant Blethinette. I didn’t want Master Auronmar surrendering to her ‘cause I wasn’t sure how far she’d go.”
“How far she’d go? Isn’t it kinda obvious she wouldn’t mind killing Auronmar?” Reyna chimed in.
“She can’t.” Gahn shifted his serious stare towards her. “At least I hope she remembers she can’t.”
The two gave him frustrated looks.
“Will you just tell us already?” Reyna reached out to smack Gahn’s head, but he effortlessly dodged and gave a small smile. It wasn’t enough to light up his face to its usual charm though.
“Sorry, cutie. I’m trying to figure out if Auronmar would want me to tell ya guys this or not,” he said.
Dante harshly sighed. “Are you serious? Auronmar has been captured, we have nowhere to go, and you’re still with that?”
“Well he’s still my master. I can’t help it!” Gahn rebutted with a glare. “Look, just know that they can’t really kill each other. If they do, the other one suffers in some way. I’m just worried Blethinette is so up the crazy house that she’s forgotten that, and that’s all I’m saying.”
“I guess,” Reyna said under her breath while Dante said nothing.
A few moments of silence passed before the three companions regarded each other with a silent question: What now?
A noise rippled through the quietness and pushed it away. It was a loud, gurgling roar, easily recognizable for what it was.
Dante hugged his stomach and a scarlet wave graced his cheeks. “Uh, sorry about that.”
Reyna and Gahn looked at him for a moment before bursting out laughing.
“Easy for you guys to laugh when one of you is a demon that doesn’t need to eat and the other uses weird healing stuff to keep herself nourished.” Dante pouted.
Reyna shook her head, bringing her giggles to a stop. “No. I eventually am going to need to eat. What I really am is thirsty.”
“Yeah, me too, but this whole world is only grass and trees. I haven’t seen any bodies of water anywhere.”
“Ya guys will just have to adapt like me,” Gahn said. “Technically, there is demon essence in you and any other human.”
Sadness crept over Reyna and Dante’s face as the same thought simultaneously entered their minds. Giving into their demonic heritage meant leaving another part of their humanity behind.
Gahn picked up on their thoughts. “If ya don’t, then ya going to die, and there will be two less humans for sure.”
His words straightened them away from their slouched postures. It was an odd thing to have a demon dressed in faded, cut up jeans and remains of what was once a fitted shirt—human clothing all the same despite their shredded aftermath from Erian’s battle—telling humans that they had to embrace their demonic nature in order to keep their humanity.
“It’ll be hard at first,” Gahn continued. “Ya will feel tired and hungry and thirsty, but ya have to concentrate on what’s around ya. It’s similar to sensing Magika essence. Feel the essence surrounding ya and draw it in.”
“Okay,” Reyna whispered.
Dante crossed his arms. “Even if we do that, what then? It’s just the three of us. Are we just going to keep running to nowhere?”
“We could try rescuing Auronmar,” Gahn nonchalantly suggested.
Reyna and Dante gawked at him.
He gave them a small smile. “Sure. Why not?”
“What happened to you being loyal to Auronmar’s orders? Didn’t he tell us to run?” Dante asked.
Gahn shrugged. “Yeah, but he didn’t say for how long. Besides, what else are we gonna do? It’s either that or just keep running to nowhere like ya said.”
“But how?”
“If we get close to a portal, I’ll be able to sense it and summon it,” Reyna eagerly added, her eyes gleaming with the idea. “We can cross back to our home!”
“Something tells me ya excited Auronmar was taken, cutie, giving ya this opportunity to go back.” The demon raised an eyebrow at her.
She shook her head. “I know the seriousness of our situation, Gahn. I’m just…I want to go home regardless of how our world may now be.”
Dante nodded, feeling the same way.
The Teleporter placed a one hand on Reyna’s shoulder and the other on Dante’s, connecting them all together with his touch. “Alright. We’ll rest here a bit before taking off. When we do, Reyna, you’ll take flank and let us know if ya sense anything. This world has many tears that can take us to the other one, some of which even Master Auronmar and probably even Blethinette don’t know about, but it’s still gonna probably take a while to find one.”
He grinned at them and put his arms down. “Now take a nap or something.”
“That sounds awesome,” Dante said as he leaned back and slumped up against the curved, makeshift backrest.
Reyna scooted over to him and placed her head on his chest, cuddling as snuggly as she could against his body. Dante looked down at her in surprise before placing an arm over her shoulder.
Gahn smiled. “I’ll keep watch uh, up there.”
He jumped out of their wooden crater, perched himself on Dante’s sword—deeply embedded into the trunk of the tree that housed them—and used it as springboard to jump to a higher branch for a better surveillance point.
Dante watched Gahn disappear into the thick canopy of rosy leaves. “Are you okay?” he asked Reyna, keeping his sight up.
She moved her hand up his chest and came across one of the many holes in his clothes caused by Cerus’ fangs. Reyna placed a finger through the cloth and met with Dante’s warm flesh. “Yeah. I asked him why he left.”
Dante patiently waited for her to continue as he observed the fat, red leaves above him.
“He gave me some stupid bullshit of how he basically paid his dues of me helping him get his body by saving my life, so he was free to go back to what he was doing before he met me.” Her ring finger entered another hole in his shirt.
Dante looked down at her, slightly taken back by her cursing. He hugged tighter. “Forget about it and just go to sleep.”
She retreated her fingers from his shirt and smoothed it out the best she could. “Yeah. You too.”
Further up the enormous tree, Gahn was crouched on the edge of a branch as equally gigantic as the one Dante and Reyna were currently sleeping on. He suppressed his Magika and kept hidden behind a curtain of thick, rubicund leaves so passing demons could not see him but he could to them.
He sighed. I am sure she won’t really kill ya, Master Auronmar, but it’d still be my fault if she did.
The Teleporter momentarily lowered his gaze down to the dark timber under his feet, but instead of seeing rivers of wooden veins, he saw a polished silver floor. Under the brushed on gloss were pebbles of various colors. They were embedded within the silver tiles and gave the impression that one was walking on crisscrossing rainbows.
There was something else creeping on the lustrous floor: blood.
It fell from the only other demon standing in the room. He was dressed in regal white with a growing explosion of crimson by his side. Slim, clawed fingers pressured the bleeding injury, but the scarlet liquid squeezed through his palm and continued to plop down to the ground. Occasionally, the red drops would grace the side of his pants.
“Gahn,” the figure spoke in disbelief, “how…did Blethinette…gain access?”
“No,” Gahn said, his eyes closed in an attempt to push away his self–inflicted vision of the past.
When he opened them, twisted bark and ruby foliage greeted him and framed within it all was an unfamiliar figure. Gahn leaned forward and pushed some of the interfering leaves and twigs out of the way for a better look because what he was sensing from this new individual could not be possible. She gave off a moderate aurora of Magika, but it wasn’t from a demonic body.
Gahn’s eyebrows furrowed with disbelief. “How can a human be out here?”
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Author's Note: Gah! Sorry this chapter is so short. x.x
Speaking of chapters...the next chapter will probably be delayed for a few weeks. I want to work on editing and revising Book I a bit more, so I'll be focusing on that. I'll say now I'm sorry about the wait you're gonna go through...>_
Thanks so much for your support though!
(I'm terrible... T.T)