I swung down. Her mini shield, the stupid-looking one that was just as much of a decoration as the rest of her, blocked my blow.
"Tch."
"I thought you were soon to show me your skills, peasant!"
"Yeah," I yelled out. The sword was reverberating back to me in my hands. Some sort of spell that she'd cast on herself ahead of time was making my head fuzzy, so I couldn't see her directly. "And you have yet to show me your power, bit-"
Her weapon was flung back over her shoulder and launched forward from a circle of a shockwave, momentum carrying it forward and somehow not ripping her arm off along with it. I spun the sword in my gauntlets, holding onto the handle on one end and bracing the lower end of the broad sword with the other, tilting it back. The spear glanced upwards from my deflection, and I slid back on the air platform holding me high up in the sky. It helped me keep a sort of mental stability, one that I wouldn't have been able to have with just flying in the air with dangling toes and flappy clothes like she was-
"Wake up!"
The spear came back. My body wasn't very injured till that point, but another notch was added to the belt when I failed to react to the second part of the attack. I always had a barrier on my body, skin-tight. My body itself, flesh and bone, was sturdy because of my race and Status. I could heal it very fast, but it could still burn like crazy when the spear could tear through my side at the speed of a bullet and before I my spells attended automatically to the wound.
"Stupid...!"
My feet were swept from under me. Being hit from behind on my waist made me fall on my back, cracking my head on the platform that was suddenly like cement. The taste of blood in my mouth, the thick stickiness of it, the way it spilled out in spurts when I coughed from the whiplash tugging on my lungs - it was all so intense, so real.
The howling wind below the clouds that I'd ridden on was yelling for justice, yelling for blood. I deprived it of that, not even sparing a thought for healing magic. I had so many fail safes in place that it was almost not amazing anymore that I hadn't died till that point, or just failed.
So fuzzy. So blurry. I couldn't see directly, properly. Something about her was such a haze-
I got hit again. Why couldn't I focus?
"Firea!"
"I don't recall!" I yelled, feeling the platform beginning to dissipate as my metal fingers crunched on it. It shattered like glass when the pommel of my sword smacked down on it because I hadn't let go. "Letting you say my name!"
That blurry woman summoned her spear back to her side, holding it in hand at a threatening angle. The gold interwoven with her bangs glinted in the sunlight. Her eyes were missing.
"Wake up!"
I smacked my hand down on the platform, palm flat, body twisting, feet gliding as I moved out of the way of her spear. It struck again and again, following me as I ran above the swirling clouds cooking up a storm down below. No matter how many spells I tried to dispel it with, they all failed. Adoray and the others were probably fine, but I couldn't help but feel that the storm would wash them all away. Heavy rain in an area like that meant eventual flooding, but a storm of that proportion meant the entire town could disappear. It was unnatural, just how hard the land was being bartered. I didn't think that Mother Nature had the power for something like that, no matter the hurricane or landslide.
So of course I was anxious. The erosion of the landscape was being exacerbated by an outside factor. If I didn't stop it soon, I had the feeling bad things would happen that I couldn't reverse.
"Adoray," I coughed out, looking down at the clouds. He was down there, somewhere. "Adoray, Adoray-"
But in that world there were gods to take the place of nature. They moved the land as they saw fit, used the people with authority, moved for personal gain only. I had yet to meet a single god that wasn't a silent abuser of their own godhood, neglecting the duty that came with properly guiding the masses.
"Gah!"
The spear was moving faster and faster, as if multiple people were catching and throwing it from around me. I was dodging, twisting, turning, rolling, playing Twister on my own to get out of the way. I had the feeling that if I got run through with it, it would've hurt like hell, so I refused to get stabbed again. The red leaking from my white shirt, streaking down from my cheeks, was proof of my failure. The lack of a hole in my thigh and stomach were shows of determination.
But it wasn't enough.
"Come on, Firea," the goddess approached. The look on her face was still so weird, but the tone of her voice and the sound of it were far stranger. It was that of a man, and that of concern. "Wake up. You have to. You can't die here."
She seemed to love throwing her spear around more with telekinesis than she did wielding it up close, just as I did with the sword and the gauntlets. She, the introvert, was clearly afraid to approach me. Every time I did, some sort of fog between us descended and kept me from getting close. I, the one that didn't truly know how to use a sword and swung it around merely blocking, slashing, and stabbing with amateurish fervor, was shaking my head to clear the fog. It felt more like it was in my head than in front of me physically.
My arm twisted and I crashed. For all my dodging, I was blindsided by the appearance of a death god standing over me, suddenly pinning me down with a foot on my chest and my arm strung up above me. I knew who that was. My teeth grit together at the sight of that obnoxious appearance that was getting harder to see. The colors were warped and distorted, the figure mutilating itself. My arm was tight and furious. I writhed on the ground where I lay, trying to yank myself out of his grip.
"Thanos!"
His face was missing too. I knew what it looked like, I was so sure of it, but-
Seer was pinning me down on my other side, keeping me from moving. I was small, blinking, turning from side to side and kicking my legs. They flailed weakly. The ground beneath me was soft, so when they fell back down, it didn't hurt so bad.
"I'm gonna kill you!"
I could feel it. He was smirking at me. My left arm was being aggravated from fingertips to shoulder blade, which felt like it was being pulled from out of my back.
"Calm down."
Keir was there, holding me down as well. He didn't spare much effort with his big hand on my small neck, the other cradling my face to make me look straight up into those eyes of his. He held me down so strongly with those lucid, pure red irises that made me freeze for only a moment to stare into their liquid surfaces. I wasn't Madeline, but Firea, just a tiny girl wounded beneath the whims of deities.
"You're just making this worse for yourself. Come now, Firea. Why don't you just let your little friends treat you? Whatever you're seeing is just a dream."
"'Cause screw you!"
My stomach expanded just a little. Scales rippled over my skin like dominoes toppling over, covering the most vital parts of my body so they could not be accessed. My wounds felt poked and prodded, a little too warm contrasting the cold air that met skin.
Blue erupted from my mouth. It was lined with purplish hues, not being the pure solid dark blue that normally came out when I breathed fire. It certainly didn't look like the same color of the epic magic circle beam things I was shooting out with soul power just earlier. It looked more purple than anything, but I couldn't be sure. It was cut off fast the next second when his hand clapped over my mouth.
"Save that for our next battle."
His face, right above mine, was safe and un-blackened or charred from the torch of fire I sent up from a suddenly-enraged little half-Dragon. My nose flared. I inhaled my own flame and smoke back down my throat since it no longer had an exit, feeling myself bake from the insides as it rushed back into the core. I struggled to let it out. My body simmered like I'd been thrown into a boiling pot, smoke going up above me.
My eyes were flicking all around. The surroundings were so numbing, so dull, that the colors blended together and I wasn't sure what I was looking at anymore with eyes so wide it hurt.
"Here," Keir removed one hand from my mouth. Those red eyes were all I could see in the swirling world around me. It was a barely lit room, but those eyes were shining and distracting so I hardly noticed anything else. They were beautiful, like droplets of blood being shone through from the other side with bright lights. So distracting that I stopped bucking around and let him pull on that slick, shiny black chain sticking out of my chest, one that was curled around his hand. Identical shackles were slowly constricting my movement and holding me down to the soft ground. "Drink this."
The inside of my mouth felt blackened and crackly. The liquid he poured from above me, from yet another fuzzy bit of color, was a thin stream of bitter-tasting disgustingness that tore down the scorched sides of my cheeks and made me swallow it whole like eating embers of a fire. Twitching overtook me. I tried to fight the change, fight the way my stomach was suddenly so calm, my body was so weak, my mind was so detached. Keir just stared down at me, holding a trance that had me slip away from the reality of distress that enveloped and cradled me.
Then, my sight was swimming, and he wasn't there anymore. I could flex fingers on a left hand I didn't know I still had. I could breathe in easily with lungs that felt fixed and not punctured from being run through with Divine Ore just earlier-
"Wake up."
Really, it was too peaceful. I woke up as smoothly as I'd fallen asleep, and if I hadn't been in the Demon Territory, then I would've gladly smiled at the sunshine as it came through my closed curtains while yawning and stretching like a stereotypical heroine.
"Ah? Good...?"
"Good morning, Princess, although it is not morning. Day and night are indistinguishable in the E'Arionus."
"Eari...?"
"The Demon Territory, as the humans like to call it," the Demon noblewoman smiled. Those lively inky eyes glittered out from the skin of a corpse. "Princess."
I found it very strange that she was kneeling at my side in a dress that looked almost exactly the same as when I'd first drifted off to sleep. My head was heavy when I tried to pick it up, although my body was well-rested. Er, my soul. It was hard to get a feeling for my surroundings when every window and door was blocked and closed, so there wasn't much of a difference when I did sit up though.
"It's best to get up from the side when getting used to horns, Princess. Getting up straight hurts the neck of young Demons with newly grown ones."
"Horns...?"
Yes, that was correct. There were horns on my head. I was in the Demon Territory. Keir had tried to get me killed earlier in his mischievous attempt to poke fun at his fellow deities. Arion had thrown me somewhere else and my chauffeur was, for some reason, "Frankenstein" in my mind.
My hands were the same small pale ones that I'd spent almost fifteen years with, marred and scarred. There was, in my left hand, still that clicking...no, would it be more correct to say popping?...noise that I could summon whenever I flicked my wrist or twisted my thumb. It was loud when I did flip my hand forward and back, checking to see that it was really still there. Being Kaya there felt like I was flesh and blood, not just a soul. A strange feeling, really.
Ah, I got off track...either way, I'd lifted my hands to feel my head. Hair that was looking a bit more onyx than usual was laying across my shoulders and falling off my arms as I raised them. The sleeves of the nightwear I'd been placed into were tight enough that I doubted I could slip a pencil up a sleeve, though comfy. My hands and skin contrasted it because of how pale they were, almost as much as that lady's skin and dress-
Ah, I got off track again...I forgot how much I used to do that. Was it really that bad? I didn't remember it being that bad. Takuya and Kagome must've been so troubled because of me, though I didn't think Kagame minded so much. I gave my eventual "uh-huh" to show I was paying attention, so that was probably good enough for her, compared to the others just sighing at her antics-
Stop losing focus, Kaya! I berated myself. The furrow in my brow broke at my mistake. Er, no! Firea! Fi-re-a!
My hands traced the horns! Yes, I focused long enough to remember what I was doing, touching the tips of my longest fingers to the center of my forehead on my hairline, brushing past hair. My first set of bangs, above my eyes, were sticking up in funny directions like they didn't know where to settle after two things had decided to grow out and disrupt their natural placement. There, underneath my fingers, I could feel with my nails pressing down, the start of the two heavy things. They faded under my skin solidly and grew out without irritating it, going in opposite, horizontal directions. The image of dual slides at a children's park popped up while tracing them all the way to the back of my head, stuck in place an inch above the back of the crown of my skull.
I must've looked stupid when I kept tracing them, confused. They didn't stop there. They did feel tall, but that was just a feeling. I assumed that they were just heavy, that's all.
But they overlapped. So, as I traced it, going slightly upwards with my brushing fingertips, my arms overlapped, coming back towards the front of my head and tracing abruptly vertical to touch at the top of two separate points, divided only by a thin divide down the middle that could fit only a nail through.
"Oh."
Something dripped on my head. My arms awkwardly came down from the twin peaks of the double-looped things.
"You should be careful, Princess. You are not immune to wounds from your own horns. In fact, they may do you the worst harm."
There was liquid on my fingers. It was strangely gray. I wondered what it was, until I saw the tips of my two pointer fingers and put the idea together that I pierced my fingers on my own horns. Again, another strange phenomenon and the feeling to go with it.
My chin was a bit difficult to lift up, but it did while she rose from my side, drifting to that door to a bathroom. The dress of shimmering onyx shed prominence with every step she took. Convinced that she was leaving physical particles of black beauty in her wake, my back straightened and I looked from my futon across the floor to stare at the space she occupied. The thought leapt out of my mouth before I'd properly chewed it.
"You're beautiful."
Her movement stopped. She eased into her pose, tilting her chin to be just over her shoulder. She did not look at me and only smiled humbly. "I'm honored you think as such."
Then she disappeared into that modern room that I was yet again surprised existed while my eyes drifted down to my fingers bleeding gray. A tongue tip stuck out from my mouth without much thought, catching the next droplet that dripped down after sliding down the side of my nose. That tongue flicked back into my mouth, pressing against the roof, squishing the flavor around. It was oddly salivating. That tongue began to squirm in my mouth, and only by pressing down my teeth did I stop it from stretching out again to collect the next droplet.
"Not only should you be careful of your own horns, Princess, but also your bodily fluids. As a former Living Vampire, yours may be considered intoxicating to others. It would not be a favorable notion to entertain the thoughts of exciting others when the smell hits the air."
"Why are you holding a handkerchief over your nose?"
"Oh." Her eyes glistened down at me. She seemed to be eternally smiling. What about, was beyond my mental faculties. "I'm merely attempting to keep my grace."
Internally, the bit of me that still screamed for red hair and insanity was aware that my dense personality was inhibiting my understanding of the world around me. It was like someone had taken sandpaper to my brain, and if Kaya hadn't been so consciously blissfully unaware of my own dullness, then she would've been screaming along with Firea in my subconscious.
"Here, Princess. Burn it with this."
The separate handkerchief she'd handed to me to wipe my horn tips, face, and fingers with, for that tiny amount of gray blood, was burned in the fire on the palm of her hand. It was a blazing, bewitching neon green, one that held my gaze from the second it was in my vision to the second that it vanished. The cloth I'd been handed burned to a crisp in less than a second, sending up no smoke. If there was any, I hadn't noticed.
"What's that?"
"Daimon Fire. Every Demon can use some version of it."
"Not hellfire?"
"That's a human concept, Princess. There certainly is hellfire, but only the God of Death and his followers are capable of utilizing it."
"Oh." My eyes slid up to her face again. "You're a very beautiful lady."
"You've said that before, Princess." Yet she seemed more pleased than the first time.
"Am I wrong to repeat it?" It didn't seem that way. She really did seem to like it when I said that, and it was true. "I'm sorry."
"No, Princess, it is fine. Forgive my rudeness for making you doubt yourself." Her head shook from side to side, slightly bowed. Slightly, she kept her smile, withdrawing that flame from before me. I tracked it the whole way, watching it slowly fizzle out. It vanished from the world, leaving no trace of its presence.
"Hm? You were not rude."
"Others would not view it as such." Her thin lips were painted black that day. It felt like that was the usual color for her, seeing how it fit so well. She really was a nice lady, giving off a more motherly, sad feeling than she did one of a daring, confident woman as her looks made me think she was.
A few moments of silence passed by. She stared at my hands, clasped on my lap, before slightly starting to look up at my face.
There was a knock at the door.
"She's awake," the lady chimed. Her presence was really so consoling. I wanted to keep her close to me, and it was like I'd lost a light near me when she moved away to go answer the door. My hand reached out towards her, a sudden pale spot in a room of dark shades, and it caught my attention. I didn't startle easily, but it did certainly send me blinking confusedly at the hand of a child.
"Ah...?"
I turned it over and over. I flicked my wrist. It clicked, still, but the only lines on my hand were those I was born with, on my palm and fingers. They were not inflicted by outside malevolence.
I felt...small.
"-still very dazed. I believe it would be best to call the physician for now-"
I turned my hand over and over. There was something about it that was different since I first woke up.
"-yes yes, Neusa is still at the Bone Antechamber, so it would have to be one of the Mages of Old from the campanile."
"They still aren't back yet?"
"Yes, yes, the generals are still stirring up a commotion at the front about the ceasefire and haven't attended to their delegations yet."
Fingers flexing before my sight were small. They turned over, back and forth, and something familiar about them kept me from looking away. Really, I was sure they were mine, but just a minute ago they were much bigger...and weren't my feet almost to the end of the futon before?
"私の髪...？"
My tongue slipped into something else. The rough Daemon no longer poured out when I didn't speak to that lady, though she still spoke it with that other person and I still understood them.
"Yes yes, Princess?"
It felt like I was being called. Ah, that's right. Why were they calling me that again? I had a name. I was Ka-...Firea. Firea. Yes. So why were they calling me "Princess?"
"..."
"Ah, yes!" The person standing outside the door snapped their claws. The sound was akin to sharpening a blade on a whetstone. "Yes, Princess! You've reverted back to your Daqmon form, it's so lovely! Oh, no no, but that's not good."
My what...?
The lady looked troubled, suddenly. Her expression was no longer that light smile with narrowed eyes, but instead a blank look with a small furrow in her brow. More than her expression, her eyes told me that she didn't like whatever that...person?...was saying. The onyx depths felt like they'd somehow darkened, although I wasn't sure if that was something I of all people would've been able to pick up on. Then again, even though I missed many things, I could still be quite sharp. There were the times when I stopped Takuya from using expired yeast when he baked or reminded Kagame to do her homework before coming to school in the early morning. There were the times I remembered to bring a soft cloth for Kagome whenever we walked to the train station on winter nights, as her glasses always fogged up and she failingly thought that wiping it with her scarf would suffice. There were the times that I reminded Takahashi-sensei to hold club meetings and organize for our school festivals every year. Ah, there were also the times where I had to remind him to schedule the students that would stay after class to clean our home room. Oh, and there were the times where I reminded him to elect a new class president for the year. Also, there were a few times when he seemed to forget to bring lunch from home, so he would run out the door and try to find something before class was back in session. He also-
"Yes, no, Princess?"
"Ah?" I looked up at the speckled...person. They held their tiny hands in front of a large form, pulling on the ends of their gloves. All five wide eyes were staring down at me with a rainbow of colors and placement. I didn't know which one to look at, or really, where to look. It felt rude to be staring at its studded torso of skin and metal, or at its furry bottom half. I was also more busy trying to figure out what it was rather than what it was saying, though that was interesting too. "Eh-"
"No no, Princess, it's not good to revert to your Daqmon form during the autumnal season. Even if we do not experience the changes here in E'Arionus as the sky is always dark and deathly and plants do not grow," they smiled, or did something that made me think they were smiling with that vertical mouth, "our bodies react varyingly to the seasons, depending on what form we assume."
"Guerentum," the lady spoke up from the door. She still stood in the same place. How did that, er, person, get beyond her? I hadn't noticed her stepping back. In fact, how did it get through the door at all? "Please do not shock the princess. She has only just woken up from her reformative rest."
"Yes yes, then she must be hungry."
"Yes-"
"-but before-"
"-sustenance, she-"
"-needs a physician."
They were both silent. Two voices had completed the same grammatically-correct sentence.
"Guerentum."
"Yes, yes. I shall go fetch a physicia-" it bowed its head repeatedly, shaking down dust upon me. My nose twitched, head tipping back. "Oh, no no, you shouldn't do that, Princess."
I sneezed inside a bubble. I knew it was a bubble and not just a barrier because of the shiny film that had thrown itself around me, perfectly round while holding me up in the air above my bedding. My hands were pressing on the bottom of it, reaching out for something to hold onto. If I didn't, I would've been floating easily inside. My spandex was again put to use when I began to turn around and around in the bubble, weightless.
Or rather, they weren't, because my clothes were hanging off me like they were too big. My sleeves flailed over my hands, shoulders of my uniform beginning to rise up to my chin and cheeks as they floated off of me. I tugged it down and, like in water, they suddenly changed direction. I did the same for my skirt while waving my head to the side, seeing my hair - much shorter than I was used to - fan out and spin slowly to follow my body.
"Guerentum."
"Yes, yes. Putting Princess down now."
The bubble popped just above the ground. The mist of it covered my skin, leaving me feeling like I'd run through a light rain.
"Guerentum."
"Yes yes, going to fetch an old skull from the campanile."
They seemed nice to each other, but I wasn't really sure. I was more distracted by the way my skin looked really shiny, like I'd just taken a bath in oily water. My clothes also seemed like they'd been washed. When I sniffed them, holding up the crumpled cloth to my nose, my eyes lit up.
"かぼちゃ...！"
It smelled like pumpkin. The scent filled my nose so much that I looked around for an oven where Takuya was likely baking from. Sadness drooped over me like pie crust in a pan when I couldn't find a metal contraption emanating the delicious aroma.
My blood felt like it was moving faster, even though I was just a soul. It was like I was back there, in the Masumi kitchen, waiting to steal a little slice along with Ayaka as we sat at the kitchen table. As I helped her with her homework, I couldn't help but glance up once in a while to his back, watching him work. His elbows were constantly jutting back and forth, whisking, rolling, slicing, pounding, washing. Ayaka would sneak over once in a while to swipe a bit of batter out and lick her finger, only succeeding once out of the hour-long process.
"あやか！"
She'd smile and run. That little troublemaker would hide behind me. I thought I could almost hear Takuya's voice calling to her in reprimanding, see him bustling about in a pink apron Kagame got him for Christmas, feel Ayaka gripping my arms as she dashed left and right to escape the kitchen after dodging her brother and using me as a shield, when I closed my eyes and focused my hearing. It wasn't just some random ringing silence that greeted me when I searched for the pumpkin-scented memory, which was easier to summon to the forefront of my mind than when I was Firea. It was easy to think about anything from when I was Kaya when I was in that form.
"Princess, please lay down." The lady approached me. I looked around, searching for that pumpkin-smelling Demon that had so suddenly disappeared. I wanted to know if he'd eaten some recently or if that was really his scent. It smelled sugoi. "It would be best to stay laying down as long as possible. Three days is not enough to entirely recover your soul, and we cannot keep you here for much longer." Her eyes narrowed again. It didn't seem to be out of disdain, but what was it? "Paivla wouldn't forgive anything much longer than this."
"Paivura?" My tongue felt strange.
Her gaze remained on me while closing the door behind her, pressing it shut with fingertips. "I do not often agree with Guerentum, but please, Princess. A Demon should never wear their Daqmon form in autumn. Change back to your Darmon form."
"Eh? My what?"
Hearing those harsh words coming out of my little mouth with that voice was, again, something that made my blood feel like it was moving with some sort of excitement.
"Princess," she approached a step, studying my blank look. "Could it be that you've never taken on your Demon form - any of them - before?"
"Hah...?"
The light above our heads swayed a bit, flickering out. I didn't feel anything trembling for it to have suddenly moved. It winked out for a second, leaving the impression in my eyes of something that had been on the wall, but there was nothing there when the light came back on.
"Princess, forgive me, please. It would not be good for the Dafmons to seek you out."
"Eh..."
Uttering noises was all I seemed capable of. She was towering, more than before, and the light seemed to brighten her outline while darkening the front of her body facing and leaning over me. It probably had to do with my changed perspective, due to a, for some reason, smaller body.
"Look into my eyes, Princess. It won't be painful."
"There's no need for that, Lady Hellott."
"My sincerest apologies, Master."
My heart, one that I was beginning to think was physical and real at that point, jumped over the moon.
That is to say, I was so shocked that being shocked was painful, and I stopped drawing in breath for a few moments. That hand reached out to me with shockingly white skin, even paler and more wan than my own. It pressed onto my forehead with just the tips of some fingers - it really seemed like delicate-looking Demons loved to just brush things with fingertips - and almost distracted me from those vivid pink eyes staring out with darkly circled hollows in his skull.
"Eh...ah....no." Enough with the noises. Even I knew when to start forming coherent sentences. "Arion-sama, you look like you need to sleep."
He really did. Those circles didn't look very healthy, and compared to when he was standing in my body and I caught a glimpse of him before he sent me away, the person before me hardly looked as regal as that. The robes he wore hung off of him in a way that my eyes watered. A picture really could be worth a thousand words...and more. Firea in my subconscious put the pieces together, and Kaya at the forefront got emotional for seemingly no reason at all.
The man before me...no, the boy-eh, no, the god...
Was a lot more human than I thought.
"Kaya!" I shook a little in place, eyes glazing and mind hazing. My heart was already palpitating in a strange way for someone I'd never met before, someone that only snapped at me the many times I trash-talked him in my head, but that voice. It made my eyes water a little more against their volition from being in that form and hearing how loud it was, being outside my head. I knew it was probably just my soul guardians coming to get me, but the way that the Demon God's eyes tightened and his mouth turned displeased told me that something wasn't quite right. "Kaya-chan!"
"Takuya...?"
AN:
...ehe~