After the whole “Sprinkler” incident five days ago, Priska wanted to forget about it. Not only had the data been lost, but several people in the building berated her for letting her laptop break. She sighed deeply and looked at the sky.
The laptop was in a shop for repairs and it didn’t seem like she would be getting it any time soon. She lost the ability to watch Ne***ix and Cru***y**ll, not to mention the card games exclusive to PC only.
Many companies survived the vortexes and the anti-gravity and actually have gained even more popularity. Human culture became a wondrous experience for many otherworldly beings. It was mainly the video websites and recreational companies that expanded.
She opened up one of her honey candies and popped it into her mouth. She was quite troubled as she sat outside the police department. She thought back to several minutes ago…
“I’m telling you! We don’t have that information!”
“So where can I get it?”
“Do you think I know? Even if I did, I don’t give a shit. Leave. You’re interrupting my work.”
The person at the front desk had yelled at Priska for the last five minutes about how they didn’t have any of the files that she was looking for. And so, instead of working, the person went back to playing some sort of 2D bullet hell.
“You’re not even working.”
Priska grumbled as she moved to another person. They all yelled at her, save for one person who was polite. In such a short amount of time, Priska and this other person, Nierra, became friends.
Nierra had made a comment about wanting to go back to her room full of plushies and the conversation led on from there. They exchanged contact information and Priska left after a short conversation.
Now that she thought about it, not a lot happened in that time other than her getting yelled at by some people and making a new friend. Well, she had only one option left. A place that no person should ever have to, or want to, go.
----------------------------------------
It took a few good hours with a taxi, but she finally made it to the place. A tall building that was a good eighty stories high and took up the space of five square blocks. The foundation was massive and is was like a blocky pyramid, the top getting smaller than the bottom every twenty stories.
There were windows placed incrementally and the front doors were large enough for a Goliath to walk through, which is to say, about 10 feet. The doors were bullet-proof and automatic and the glass was clearly see-through.
Inside, one could see the front desk that was at least 20 feet long and there were five people manning the one desk. There were stacks of papers that could be seen sitting behind them on a table equally as long.
There were ten rows of chairs on both the left and right of the desk. It seemed that those were the waiting areas for the clients. Priska could see that someone would perk their head up and walk to the desk as soon as someone exited one of the doors behind and to the left or right of the desk.
She got out of the cab after getting her credit card back. It was a bit costly to get here, but she wasn’t going to waste time while she was here.
She quickly moved over the sidewalk and past the shrubs placed neatly in front and all around the building. Several homeless people were being shoved off the property and some people in formal suits were walking in to the building.
After entering the building, she went directly to the closest person at the desks who was in the middle. The man seemed young, but strong as he boasted a light tan and many muscles that bulged from under his suit and tie.
As soon as she walked to the desk, everyone’s eyes were drawn to her. They were mesmerized by her beauty and many gaze either jealous or lecherous gazes towards her. Even the people working at the desks stopped all that they were doing and stared at her.
“Um.”
No one came out of their stupefied state. Only one person was not looking at her and they were engrossed in a sports magazine.
“I’m here to see Daemos.”
Everyone stopped staring and started to look away. While they were here to buy some protective services, they knew that Daemos had a short temper and many of the customers only dealt with his direct underlings. If she was affiliated with Daemos in some way, they would not like to find out how.
“W-what do you want with Sir Daemos? And w-why did you call him by his first name without honorifics?”
The five receptionists gazed in horror as she addressed him without a proper title. This was known to get a lot of people killed.
“I want to get some info. Can you tell him that Priska is asking?”
“O-okay?”
Nobody in the company save for the higher ups knew that Priska was a direct blood relative to Daemos, being his granddaughter.
The man picked up the phone and called the highest person he could reach, the rank right below Daemos’s. He spoke quickly into the phone and seemed puzzled by what he was told.
“Sir D-Daemos will come down s-shortly.”
He seemed shaken as the other four receptionists shook in fear. Apparently, everyone who was lower on the food chain was afraid of him on a fundamental level.
Everything was silent. The customers, the receptionists, and even the television was silent, since someone turned the volume down. Everyone stared at one of the elevators as it counted down from eighty. It was rapidly approaching one.
When the elevator beeped, Daemos could be seen. A six foot four inch man with a black mask with a design of two eye holes covered by black lenses and a mouth in the mask that could open and close. Blood dripped from the mouth as the smell of iron hit everyone hard.
He wore a white business suit with red outlines and several blood smears. His tie was basically drenched in blood as he walked. Several droplets dripped from his clothes to the ground. He caught several of them in black gauntlet and licked the blood that was splattered on his fingers and palm.
He strolled up to Priska with a man who was slightly taller and much more bulky than him following behind. That man was covered head to toe in full tactical gear with four primary guns on him. They both walked with ease.
Priska also strolled towards them and they both stopped in front of each other. The customers glanced at each other, uneasy of what would happen next. To their surprise, it wasn’t bloodshed.
“Eye!! How is my favorite granddaughter doing?!”
“I’m doing well, you?”
The both smiled, but Daemos’s couldn’t be seen. The customers were bewildered at this turn in events as the two hugged.
“I’m doing great! I had lunch a few minutes ago!”
“Hahaha! It seems like you’re still eating though!”
She gestured to the blood. If one looked closely enough as well, they would be able to see some flesh bits stuck to the teeth of the mask.
“Yeah… wasn’t as tasty as I had hoped, but it should suffice. Have you been eating well enough?”
“Well, if you count brownies as…”
They walked and talked and the conversation was cut from the customers by the elevator. One of the more bewildered people mouthed, “What just happened?”
The three of them, Priska, Daemos, and the bodyguard, went to the seventy ninth floor to talk.
“How is your job? Are you making a lot of money?”
“Yep! I’ve had so much that I don’t even know what to do with half of it. I mean, I guess I would spend it on hobbies… if I had some hobby to do. Even with collecting stuffed animals, you can only have enough until your satisfied.”
“... And how many stuffed animals would you be satisfied with?”
“Three hundred million. I’ve only got one thousand at the moment and I would only like to buy the ones I see in stores that I like.”
“Yeah… brings you back, does it not?”
Priska and Daemos both remembered at time when Priska was six. Daemos brought her to a toy store and bought her several plushies. Then, when walking out of the store, a guy bumped into Priska, making her drop a tiger plush.
Crying, she picked up the toy that was in near perfect condition still and sat on a bench. Daemos soothed her while he phoned several of his guards on an earpiece.
“Take him out.”
From that one phrase, the man ended up getting the shit kicked out of him and having his money and cards stolen from his wallet. In the end, Priska looked up at Daemos as she knew what happened.
“T-thanks.”
“Aww! I would literally do anything for you.”
Back at present, they were walking through the halls to Daemos’s office. His office was on the 79th floor, but the 80th floor was for entertainment and killing. Entertainment being indoor theaters and game centers. Killing being the place where Daemos ate.
“So, why do you not see me as often now?”
“This place is soooo far away. The building is stationed at the edge of the state while I’m usually in the opposite part of the state.”
Indeed, the reason she had not wanted to visit was because of the distance. That and the the fact that there were low-lifes hanging around outside the building at all times. The reason why no one should have to go is because most people do not need bodyguards nor advice from their grandparents that they cannot get from through the phone.
“It feels like several years since I last saw you.”
“...That’s probably because it was several years. I last saw you when I quit being a waitress. You know, about two years ago?”
“I remember. We went out to eat and Gusion kept asking me what was in my flask. I did not want to scare anyone by saying that it was blood...”
“Of Humans.”
Priska interjected. Whenever Daemos went out to eat, he would always bring his flask of blood as a drink.He didn’t particularly like most alcoholic beverages except for blood wine, a type of wine that implemented blood in the creation of it.
“...And I also I did not want to not say anything because it would make me look rude!”
“Well, why didn’t you just li— Oh.”
“Yes. As you know, he has this nasty habit where he knows the truth of all things said.”
“Well, I mean, it is his passive ability.”
“He could have just not asked.”
“True.”
The bodyguard opened Daemos’s office door and held it for the two of them as they walked in. It was spacious with long sofas lining the walls to the left and right and a huge screen the size of a whale above the door they entered. In front of them, his desk sat with curled corners and random things on the shelf behind it.
The bodyguard closed the door and the two were now alone in the room. Daemos led Priska to a comfy seat and then proceeded to sit in his chair. He reached for a drawer in his desk.
Soon after opening it, he produced a glass bottle of dark blue. Inside, the navy colored fluid whirled around as Daemos shook the bottle with his left hand as he grabbed out two glass cups with his right.
“Blood?”
“I’ll take a cup, thanks.”
This, however, was not ordinary humanoid blood, no, this was the blood of Jotuns, the Frost Giants of the Winter lands in the Feywild. Their blood was a blue color due to their being descendants of some Gods. Those gods held gold or, sometimes, even white blood. Their direct offspring gained purple blood soon followed by the blue blood within the later relatives.
It was actually not as dangerous to obtain Jotun blood as it was thirty years ago. While it is still just as expensive, a Pure-Breed Vampire now monopolizes the trade of it by taking the blood of criminal Jotuns and distilling it into a fine drink.
This drink tasted good while also adding a proven five years to life per gallon one drinks in their lifetime. Of course, being immortal, Pure-Breed Vampires only drank the mixture for their own pleasure. Priska drank for both the taste and longevity as she didn’t know how long her lifespan was, even though it would likely be at least a millenia.
As he poured the drink, however, he started to talk business.
“You probably have not come here just to see me, sad as it is. So, what is it that you seek?”
“I want information about an organization that robs stores and places and uses several modes of transport to escape. Know anything?”
“Uh uh uh. You have to do something for me first. It will be something easy though. So simple, even a child could do it.”
Skeptically, since Daemos’ standards of children were quite high, she slowly answered.
“What… kind of assignment is it?”
She slowly drank from her cup. The blue blood slid down her throat easily and gave a sweet taste to her tongue.
“Straight to the point! That is why you are my favorite. Well, that and the fact we are related by blood. This assignment is simple. Just go to the corner of Fate and Arch street. Should be about that way.”
He pointed out the window diagonally. Following his finger, Priska found he was talking about a drug den along the newly placed outskirts of New York. It was actually quite a bit of ways away, but it would be easy for her to travel there.
“And?”
“I want you to clear it out. There are too many… what is the word? “Business men” who sell there. It is bad for business. They kill all my customers coming from Pennsylvania.”
“All?”
“Well, maybe I exaggerated a little.”
He held his index finger slightly above his thumb to prove his point. Painted on his face, a foolish grin.
“When should I star-”
“In about three minutes.”
He looked at his watch. It read 1:57. There was no time to be fooling around now. She had to get there in three minutes and kill those who kill his customers.
“Any specific details I should look out for?”
She had just downed the rest of her drink as he finished his sentence. As she stood up, she looked back at him and he thought for a moment. She was already halfway to the door when he answered, not getting up from his seat.
“They usually have a golden and black badge that has a lot of Elvish on it. Um, but they use roman numerals.”
He was not very good with time. That was the main purpose of his bodyguard. To tell him how much time he had left for something. He also was awful at getting straight to the point, which is yet another reason he cannot get along with Gusion.
“Take my bike. Choose whichever you want, but return it when you are done.”
“Alright, I will.”
She waved and he waved back. Just another friendly family experience. The bodyguard opened the door for her and closed it behind. Daemos watched as she left.
He sighed as he slowly turned his seat to look through the glass window. His left hand’s fingers tapped rapidly at the armrest while his right hand shook for he was scared. Scared for the safety of Priska.
He knew that she would come back alive and well, but there was still the chance, no matter how little, that she would either die or get defiled or both. It truly scared him to see family leave his sight. Afterall, he did watch the slaughtering of his brother, parents, and pet cat.
Sniffling, he brought his left hand to wipe his nose with a handkerchief from his pocket.
“So grown up now. I am so happy for you!”
The next few minutes was him wailing in his office which sounded like a monster mother roaring and weeping at the loss of its child. It was terrifying, especially to all those who worked on that floor and the two rooms directly below him.
One person jumped in their seat, turned to the noise, and spoke: “Gods almighty, please tell our boss to stop sounding like an injured panda.”
While he was… in distress, Priska briskly walked up to the roof and took one of his twelve different make and model bikes. However, these were not ordinary bikes, no, they were airbikes. Some of the most dangerous vehicles known to man, but Priska was able to ride it as easily as she could beat the shit out of someone.
She hopped aboard a black and orange bike whose design was like several crisscrossing zigzag lines. These bikes did not run on gasoline, ergo no fuel tank. Instead, all the bikes were powered by a fusion reactor that also used a little bit of magic.
Each bike was shaped like a bike except for the small wings on the back, the rotating thrusters in the places of the wheels, and the seatbelts like the ones on buses, the kind that only go over the legs. In the back of the bike, there were three bags. One on top of the bike and directly behind the driver and two on either side of the bike that were also behind the driver. The top one was for storing items while the two on the side were emergency devices that used a developed magic spell, Feather Fall, to slow descent in emergencies.
The twelve bikes were under a pavillion-like structure with no walls. They were also lined up in a single row so that not one of them would hit another if someone decided to drive it directly from the parked spot.
Priska rummaged in her pocket to find a small rectangular case that was as large as a person’s palm. She pressed her index finger to a small rectangle with a screen on one of the long sides. A green light appeared on the small screen and the box opened like a small chest. Inside, there were eleven different keys.
She flipped through four of them before unhooking the fifth one. She plugged it into the ignition and closed the box before placing it back in her pocket. She started the bike and it started to hover slightly above the ground.
Carefully, she moved it out from the line of bikes and entered an open space on the roof. While most of the roof was open, only a small portion of it was on the same level as the pavillion floor as the rest of the roof was raised about half a story with helipads covering them. At the moment, there was only one helicopter on the roof that had blades.
There were boxes moving from the back of the open vehicle into an automated elevator system. Helicopters with blades were not all that rare when moving cargo since they were a lot cheaper in bulk than helicopters without blades. It also depended on what the company made and shipped.
Priska stepped on the rotator, the two pedals on either side of the motorcycle that rotated which way the thruster pointed, and gripped the handles. She slowly turned them and the thrusters burned brighter as she flew upwards.
She turned the front thruster to the right and started off towards the “cleansing area” that her grandfather told her to go to. As she went, she decided to go down the building in style. As it wasn’t necessarily illegal to vertically drive down an eighty story building, she rotated the left handle that controlled the back thruster’s power and the bike turned to allow her to be perpendicular to the ground.
She sped down the building, not actually touching it, and people in the building were startled by the vehicle. Her grandfather was looking out of his window when she sped by.
He was sipping on some blood as he sighed deeply when he choked on it as he saw a black and orange blur go by. It was mainly by the sheer surprise that there was a scene of serenity that was interrupted by the bike.
There were some small wyverns on a small outcropping on his floor, but they flew away causing the window to be covered by tan and blue colors, as those were the colors of wyverns. The most surprising thing, however, was that at the speed she was going, Priska managed to literally cook some wyverns.
So, when she went by the rest of the floors, people would see a blur of two colors followed by charred hunks of meat hurtling through the sky. Some people, as soon as they realized what they were, regurgitated their lunch.
It took only a single minute, but she arrived at the drug den. She could see things that should not be described in a book that decided not to incorporate sexual content. Other than that, there were drugs, addicts, white outlines of bodies made with chalk. You know, the usual.
There was a yellow haze all around her which made her eyes water. While her mother and grandmother on her mother’s side could easily withstand this gas, she could not. At least, it didn’t affect her too much.
She took out the key from the bike and popped it back into her key box. The orange and black bike now sat in the middle of a small parking lot with only two other cars. There were tons of people eyeing up the bike and priska decided to take the easiest and safest precaution, blood magic.
She took her finger nail and quickly cut her pinky slightly. Holding her hand over the bike, blood dribbled down her pinky and dropped onto the bike’s surface. After several drops, she turned around and started to walk. Her wound had already closed as it was quite small. It wasn’t completely healed, but it did stop bleeding.
Without any rhyme or reason, she started to run down over the rooftops. She had jumped upwards and started parkouring her way in a direction. Two minutes were up as she looked on her phone.
“Gah! I’ve got no time for this shit!!”
She morphed into her werewolf form and started running faster than before and using her sharp eyes to look for badges. She was checking out multiple people’s jackets, pants, and shirts to see if there was a badge that matched the description.
As it turns out, not a lot of people roaming the streets. Maybe some people doing some of the new drug, Death, as they looked all pale and sickly, but that was mainly it. It wasn’t until she found a less hazy street that she saw more people who seemed like they didn’t do drugs.
In just a few seconds, she saw a person with the described badge on his right sleeve. He was walking towards another group of people with the same badges. That same group of people had surrounded a car.
The car was black with a silver crest. The windows were tinted black, the frame was reinforced, and the wheels were popped. There were scratch marks on the windows and the front of the long car seemed broken.
It was obvious that the group stopped a car by forcing it to hit a fire hydrant and was about to kill whoever was inside. She had no time to lose.
As the guy she had seen first walked up to the group, he waved his hand to call them. His left hand staying in his jacket pocket as he walked and he used his right to wave just before adjusting his beanie.
“Ey-o, I’m ‘ere!”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
The last words he ever spoke had finished coming out of his mouth. It was at that moment his head burst like a pinata except it was brain bits instead of candy. The rest of his group looked in shock.
One person behind them, who wasn’t part of the gang, started booking it down the street. Where they were standing and the path they took had a trail of yellow liquid on the ground. Other people followed his example without leaving a trail.
And, from the rooftops like a certain dark knight from the comics, Priska jumped down on the pavement. And similarly to the same superhero, she threw a projectile.
Of course, she wasn’t someone who didn’t kill and that kunai she threw became lodged in a man’s eye. He was about to scream when a bullet with insane precision collided with the bottom of the kunai.
The kunai penetrated his brain and he fell to the ground, silent. A puddle of blood started to pool as his comrades watched two of their companions die.
“Ah. Yup, no, I ain’t standing here. Fuck that.”
A guy turned to leave, but found a knife at his throat. He turned to see the canine head of Priska staring at him with one red eye. He looked panicked and started to reach for the blade when she moved away.
However, being a person who didn’t like to waste time in killing unless there were only a few people, she had sliced open his throat when she was moving. The knife had found its way into his artery and blood spewed forth like a hose.
Dark red flew from the wound and he spun to the right before he slid down the car's side. His blood smeared on one window of the dark car and Priska turned to look at the rest of the group.
There were only six of them left, but two of them were trying to run away. One was trying to enter a building while the other was getting on a bike with wheels. With ease, Priska whipped out her gun. Two shots. Two deaths.
The last four yelled. They started to try and attack Priska with their switchblades. While many weapons had become illegal, many weapons had also become legal if the user owned a permit.
The first one swung and missed, rattled by the fear of death. She gripped his outstretched arm and swiveled him around. His knife ended up in the second person's heart. The first person stared in horror as he realized he had murdered his buddy.
Then, with a swift flick of a paw, Priska broke the first guy's arm causing the knife to rip out of his friend's heart and into his own eye. Priska quickly rotated the knife and drilled it further into the first man's skull.
Taking her right foot, Priska kicked up the knife dropped by the second man and easily caught it. Twirling it through the air, she caught the blade after it had spun twice and side stepped to the left as another knife sailed over her head.
She carefully moved to a spot where the two enemies left were lined up and threw it. It had enough force that it could have easily pierced an armored car lengthwise.
One the first rotation, the blade cut clean through the first man’s right eye. On the second, the hilt hit the second person’s forehead and knocked him to the ground, still conscious. However, just because he was alive, didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to go through hell.
Priska went into her original, non-Werewolf form. This was largely due to the fact that her fingers in Werewolf mode were far too large to accurately hold someone’s collar. Also, she had claws in the other form and whatever touched her talons became ruined as they were sharper than whetted knives.
The reason why most of her weapons were metal was because of this fact. However, Priska usually doesn’t touch her clothes and leaves them alone when in her Werewolf form. On top of having some other special qualities, her clothes were made of a material that would allow them to be stretched out and not break when in other forms. This idea actually came from other Lycanthropes complaining about how their clothes broke when they changed.
Unholstering her gun once again, she pointed it at the man’s right shoulder. He was suddenly much more aware of the situation he was in and decided that there was only one course of action he could take.
“Please spare me!!! I’ll tell ya whatever ya want!!”
“Huh? I don’t need to shoot you?”
“Yes!”
Suddenly, an explosion sounded, but seemed far away. Priska turned her head to her left and, after a few seconds, looked back at the man.
“Then tell me where there are more of you guys. Then tell me what your group does.”
“Y-yes!! We’re regularly stationed at this corner, but there are two more groups all down thataways!!”
The man pointed down the street. At first, he pointed to the left, but hesitated and pointed to the right.
“The right?”
“Yes!”
It was the truth. Even before the head injury, he was not good with directions.
“The main area where da boss is is near da local cemetery at a good ‘ol bar known as da Fate’s Haven. Da boss likes ta work with them other larger gangs, like da Grym or them Ragoros people.”
“And what do those organizations do?”
“I don’t know about most of ‘em, but I hear those Grym fellas work in money and da occult.”
“Grim?”
“Yeah, Grym!! I swear to God!”
“No no no, I mean, is it called G-R-I-M? Like the drug cartel in San Francisco?”
“No!! Like G-R-Y-M!!!”
“I see… Anything else?”
“Uh, I hear that dis person is some sort of royalty. Is that good nuff?”
“Yup!”
A cold smile grew over Priska’s face as the muzzle of the gun turned to face the man’s chin. He looked surprised and scared before his lower jaw was blown off.
Still alive, but fallen to the ground as Priska dropped him, she grabbed a knife from inside her jacket. It was a serrated blade that was serrated on both sides and had a small point at the end of the handle.
Flipping it into the air, it landed inside the man’s shoulder. She picked it up as his muffled cries echoed in the near silent street. Then she stabbed it into the next shoulder and then removed it. This was to prevent him from talking or writing. While he could likely relay a message to someone if he really tried, it made it much harder while also making him suffer. Then she put away her “tools of suffering” as many will come to know them as.
And so, leaving the man as a bloody mess on the ground who was slowly drowning in a puddle of his own blood, Priska went up to the car. Not really cautious of anything inside the car, she fazed her hand through the passenger door on the driver’s side, the left side of the vehicle, and rematerialized her fingers inside the car to open the door. Quite nifty for breaking and entering.
The door opened to reveal a nice, light-colored interior. The cushions were a light shade of grey and there was enough room for six people, three people facing three people, with cup holders on the side. There were some other devices in the car, but none of them were worth mentioning.
Sitting on those seats, there were three people. There were two on the seats toward the back and one on the seats towards the front. The person closer to the front died, seemingly on impact, and the other two were huddled away from Priska.
A woman wearing a black suit and some pauldrons and vambraces was holding and arm in front of a smaller girl who wore an elegant dress and was holding a teddy bear. The elegant girl seemed a bit too old for the beat, but definitely was younger than Priska. The person trying to protect her seemed older, but still in shape. Both of them were slim, but the bodyguard was far more… endowed than the other girl who was akin to the flatness of an anvil.
Priska took a step back and spoke to them.
“I have rescued you from the hooligans who wrecked your car. Are you here to see Daemos?”
A small, meek voice that was at the same time as sweet as candy spoke.
“Y-yes. Thankth-”
It sounded like she bit her tongue as she spoke and another voice spoke, this one pleasant to listen to, but not as enjoyable to hear as the first one.
“We are here to acquire some guards for our diplomatic journey. Has he sent you? Do you lie?”
“Well, as his granddaughter, I hardly think I would lie about this. Secondly, yes, he did send me.”
Suddenly, a hand grasped the open door and the elegant girl came out. Her shoulder length, blonde hair flowed behind her with a pair of pointed ears sticking out from beneath them. Her light blue eyes shimmered in the sunlight, even through the druggy haze. Her heels clicked on the ground and she held the teddy bear to her face, like she was trying to hide from Priska.
Following her, the bodyguard came out with chestnut colored hair that was cut short. She dusted herself off and looked around before introducing them both.
“There is no reason to state my name as I am a lowly guard. She, however, is the Third Princess of Amacerine, a nation of the most magical High Elves in the known worlds, Lady Taylor Chaedi Birel Amastacia!”
Taylor lowered her bear to reveal her beet red face only for a second before hiding behind it once again.
I guess she’s embarrassed from biting her tongue… Wait a sec… This bear…
Several thoughts ran through Priska’s mind as she looked at the bear. She scanned it all over and wanted to asked dozens of questions, but only one came out.
“You like stuffed animals too?!”
This bear was a special plushie. Only five of these bears existed in the entire universe and they were worth several quadrillions of dollars each. Priska had heard that there would not be anymore made again and they were given to royal families of different races, notably the most famous and powerful royal families. That meant, of all the Elven empires, this princess came from the most powerful.
Taylor nodded as her head bobbed along with the teddy bear. The bodyguards sighed as she started to store the dead bodies of her fellow bodyguards in her spacial magic. The reason why Taylor hadn’t been freaking out was because she hadn’t known that the driver and the second guard had died on impact. The second bodyguard had died because he was only casting a bracing spell on the last bodyguard left and the princess.
“What’s your favorite animal type for plushies? Mine are wolves.”
“Mine… are foxes…”
She picked out her words carefully so as to not bite her tongue again.
“I am… sorry for biting… my tongue. I am not used to… English.”
“That’s fine. Daemos can speak some Elvish. I’m sure he’ll greet you with open arms. Just say you are friends with me, Priska.”
“Friends?”
“Hmm? Yeah, let’s be friends. I love stuffed animals and you do too, right?”
The princess peeked out from behind the bear and looked at Priska, still unknowing of whether or not to trust her. In the end, she gave a slight nod and Priska smiled. Almost as soon as the smile registered, Taylor hid behind the bear once again.
To be honest, the bear was awfully large. At least the size of half her body, and Taylor was about 5 feet 1 inch. It was quite plump and had fluffy, brown fur with a pink ribbon tied into a bowtie around its neck. This bear also was not creepy, but more cartoony in its design as people were quite scared of dolls in this day and age.
There were at least three hundred movies about dolls in the horror genre alone and some old classics were getting their seventh or eighth editions remastered. In this world, unlike Earth before the incident, movies could be remastered like games with the cgi and motions done differently.
Another great thing about movies in 2096 was that the credits at the ends of movies scrolled to the top really quickly so people could see the end credit scenes. Especially useful for Marv*l and all ninety two movies all connected to the same cinematic universe with twelve tv shows on top of the ninety two.
Only three fourths of the original actors survived the major event a few dozen years ago, but now they were on things like the children of the characters and also more questionable characters.
Priska quickly pulled out her phone as she looked around them. There could be more of the thugs, but she couldn’t smell them as her sense of smell was blocked by the scent of drugs. It actually nauseated her whenever she sniffed the air. Unfortunately, she didn’t bring a medical mask or a cloth and some coal.
She quickly called Daemos and he picked up within a second.
“Yes, Priska?”
“I’ve got a Princess Taylor… um, A-, Ama-... something with an “A”. She and her bodyguard say they are here from a High Elf empire?”
“Hmm? Do you speak of the Third Princess of Amacerine, Taylor Chaedi Birel Amastacia? I’m friends with her grandfather. Never really got along with the current king, but we are on okay terms at the moment and he kind of trusts me.”
“Yeah, her. Anyway, I “beat up” some people of that gang or whatever. They crashed the princess’s car and killed two people. Sounds like the boss is at a tavern near a cemetery and there are two more groups down the street.”
There was a pause. She could faintly hear the sounds of buttons being pressed.
“Alright, I have dispatched a crew that will arrive soon. Go out there and kill those cultists.”
“...”
Priska looked back at the bodies. They didn’t seem like cultists. More like a biker gang that lost a lot of blood.
“Cultists?”
“Yeah. They bring people back to life and use blood in rituals.”
“Alright. Thanks, bye.”
“I will see you later!!”
He sounded cheerful for some reason, a reason that Priska couldn’t place. Maybe it was the fact that she was finally relying on him some more. Who knows? If only someone could see into Daemos’s mind without falling into madness.
Priska hung up and put her phone away. Then she turned to the still embarrassed princess and her bodyguard.
“There is an extraction team coming. Wait here. I’ll kill the rest of them. Okay?”
Taylor nodded as the bodyguard gave a slight bow. With that, Priska left as she darted down the street in the direction the cultist pointed. Daemos knew where the two Elves were as he quickly found where Priska was by locating where the call was coming from.
Priska quickly morphed into her Werewolf form and padded down the street. Civilians scrambled out of her way as addicts and prostitutes were shoved aside by her paw, not claws. As it turns out, there were a great deal many cocottes and users in the streets, far more than the amount of regular people.
She soon came upon a crashed helicopter. It was burning and some people with the same badges as before were carrying out boxes enchanted with durability magic. There seemed to be twenty three of them, far more than last time.
Of those twenty three, there was a man who seemed to overlook the operation and was giving out orders. He was wearing a black mask that covered his eyes so that everyone could easily tell who his true identity was, if they knew him outside of gang work.
It seemed like now was a good time to use a special attack she had been saving.
Quickly, she drew her gun and fired three shots. One went through the black mask on the man’s face, another struck a man’s throat, and the last entered a man’s eye and found its way into a fourth person’s heart.
All four people fell to the ground as Priska reloaded her shots. In less than seven seconds, she had reloaded, gone ethereal, and became surrounded by a mob of nineteen men and women.
“Cap her ass!!”
“Don’t let ‘er live!!”
“Shame though. She’s a looker.”
Nineteen guns were drawn, none were fired. Instead of shooting, the cultists started to claw at something that was crawling on them. It was red and like a living slime. It’s iron smell and stickiness gave the material away.
Priska used the blood of the four dead people to climb on the people’s bodies and block their airways. It looked like a wet ball was covering their mouths and noses like a medical mask.
Even though there were nineteen people, zero people managed to get the blood off. One after another, they fell to the ground, asphyxia being the cause of death. The guns fell to the ground, still in their rigid hands. Some pistols went off, but it only helped Priska’s cause as they hit other gang members.
The entire circle of people fell to the ground and silence ensued. Priska looked left, then right and shrugged. A normal massacre size for her. Although, she would preferably like more of a challenge with at least fifty people against her, but the world isn’t that perfect.
One gun, belonging to the first dead person, the one with the mask that now had three holes instead of two, was a gun smaller than a regular shotgun, but was not sawed-off. It was the size of a medium sized machine gun and had a clip size that, after Priska counted, was twelve shots. She picked it up to add to her secondary collection. She had a special spot for this gold and purple beauty of a gun.
No shots seemed to have been fired and she was left with a full clip of ammo that she wasn’t able to refill… yet. She hefted it in her right hand and started walking, like a fucking badass, to the next location before she headed to the tavern.
Along the way, she found that there was a drugged up person who decided to walk up to her, while she was holding a gun. He had bloodshot eyes and shaky hands and wore a business suit and tie.
“Hey, how much?”
“How much? For what?”
The man gestured to the entirety of her. She realized what he was now asking. She should have realized with all the prostitutes out. He thought that she was a hooker.
“Priceless.”
“C’mon, everybody’s got a price. Now, be a good little hooker and tell me how…”
He never finished his sentence. He had tried to reach out for Priska’s arm when it fell to the ground. Who knew that a knife, if used with enough force, could cut bone and flesh at the same time? Obviously the one who used it did.
The arm splattered to the ground with a forming puddle of blood underneath. The man stopped speaking as now he was on the ground, wincing and whining about how Priska should have just gone with him and not cut off his arm.
She kicked him in the stomach and crouched down to look at him closer. Then she leaned in and whispered something into his ear.
“I. Am. NOT. A. Prostitute.”
Then she reached down with both hands, shotgun now on the ground. One hand clasped onto the upper jaw and the other on the lower. With a simple pull and push, the mouth elongated to become a foot longer. There was now a lot more blood.
Priska picked up her shotgun and stood up. With zero mercy or pity in her eyes, she spoke.
“You’ll live. Just not well. As for me, it won’t count against my record.”
Then she walked away.
A massacre later, she reached the cemetery. Next to it, the tavern, Fate’s Haven. She first decided to look through the iron fences around the cemetery to see if there were any cultists within its grounds.
All there was were multiple holes in the ground, far larger than a single coffin, and many tombstones in the dead grass. The grass was black and the tree were dead. The stumps remained, but they were a grey color and some parts seemed to blow away with the wind.
There, however, were no people there. Only death and wind on all three floors of the cemetery. Since there is too little space in the world, people are cremated eighty percent of the time and the other twenty are buried in large, multi-story areas.
The cemeteries now were square-ish in shape with several stores and had a square hole in the center for sunlight to pass through. There were no walls on the floors, but there was dirt and plants, or what used to be plants. This was all mainly to conserve space, even though it was quite disrespectful in four sevenths of all cultures on and introduced to Earth.
She walked onwards to the building. It was five stories tall and the foundation was made of red bricks which lined the first floor and every other floor, like a candy cane because the rest of the building material was whitish grey cement blocks.
There were windows, about four per floor on each side of the building, eighty windows in total, that were tinted black and had shades that were barely visible behind them. The doors were made of a dark wood, but seemed to be reinforced with a metal frame. There was a set of double doors in front of the building and a single door behind, but Priska couldn’t see that one.
She walked down the broken sidewalk and moved past a person who was lying on the ground. He seemed to be still alive, but his skin showed that he was about to die as he had taken too much Death, the drug. Well, that wasn’t Priska’s problem.
She pulled the door on the left open, as that was the door she was closest to, and entered. It seemed to quiet outside with the wind howling and the leaves blowing around, but inside was a cacophony of sounds that clashed against one another. The sound of yelling, slamming, insulting, and punching.
A smile drew across Priska’s face as she thought, What a nice place!! Of course, she wouldn’t have gone normally as this was a tavern/bar and she didn’t like alcohol. Too bitter and not sweet enough most of the time. Also, even though the drinking age for her was theoretically 19, because of her being a Vampire, she was only 19 and it would be bad if someone saw her drunk, especially on a job.
The thing she liked about the place was the danger and fighting. She loved fights. So much so that she begged a person to teach her to fight and even got a job as a mercenary. And, being the brawler she was, fisticuffs was her favorite sport, no matter who told her it wasn’t.
She carefully slide past several tables of people to get to the counter where there was a man, not tough looking like bartenders in movies, but rather lanky and skinny. He was mixing a drink in a container and opened it for a second to pour in a red syrup that smelled of fruits.
By now, several of the customers had noticed her and they showed a certain cautiousness, like they were expecting her to be a government agent, which she technically was. They peered at her out of their peripheral vision and she noticed. Her sense of sight and smell, although still somewhat blocked by the scent of drugs and lesser than her Werewolf form, was still far better than a regular Human’s. She could see that a total of nine customers and the bartender were looking at her, a grand total of ten out of the thirty three people drinking.
Priska swiftly moved in front of the bartender, she was still on the opposite side of the counter as him, and placed her right elbow on the table.
“A caramel root beer for me, thanks.”
The bartender and three people around her laughed. It seemed that that drink was one not suitable for bars as “tough” as this.
“Oh, and add a cherry on top please.”
“Sure, sure, sure. And then what? Some milk and teddy bears?”
“Ah! I’ll take the latter.”
The bartender sighed deeply. He was not willing to talk to a customer who was like this. They were just too annoying for him. Instead of talking, he just opened a can of root beer and poured it into a glass cup with some ice chunks in it. He didn’t have a teddy bear though.
Once he handed the glass to her however, she leaned in a started to talk in a quieter tone. The bartender looked surprised, but then slowly leaned towards her as well, wondering if she had anything important to say.
“Where can I find a boss of a cult? One that deals with resurrection?”
“Sorry, lady, I don’t know nothing.”
“So, you do know something.”
Not only did she know he was lying, but he was also using double negatives in his speech, one that was a cliche line in a movie whenever someone did know something.
“I-I said I don’t!”
He started to panic. Several people at the counter and at the tables were turning their eyes to look at her. Some people were even looking at her through the reflections in their beer bottles and phone screens.
A moment passed, then another. In the next few seconds, people sprung from their seats, guns drawn and magic circles deployed. They all aimed at Priska and she calmly stood up from her seat.
Priska turned her head, right, then left, and sighed. Quickly, she whipped out her knife and pointed it at the bartender. That kicked it all off.
Bullets fired from all directions towards her. It all happened so quickly, the shotguns and pistols and machine guns firing at her. It only stopped after a minute as the smoke of the surrounding area dissipated.
“That all you got?”
You could hear the smugness in her voice as she spoke. The surrounding gang members looked in surprise as the could of dust settle and priska was holding a pistol and a shotgun. Only one word was uttered by the rest of the people, “Fuck”, before she fired.
It was like a scene from Hell, blood swirled from the dead and attacked the living, bullets rained from every directions, but none touching Priska, and people yelling and running and trying to escape.
Not a single soul was left alive except for the bartender. The shotgun that Priska had picked up was fairly useful in this situation. Not only that, but each round seemed to be able to tear through several people at once, a sign of a truly amazing gun.
A single bullet from the pistol wiped out the brains of two people in a row and the person behind them’s left lung. A shell from the shotgun was able to paint the walls of the bar with the blood of the opposers. In the end, the bar was littered with organs and corpses. Even some of the chandeliers had some intestine lining it.
Before wiping everyone out, she became ethereal, thus why she had to stand up from the seat, and the bullets travelled through her. It ended in the death of six people just by having them accidentally shoot one another. Thus, the total death count was thirty seven deaths within the bar.
She sighed, disappointed that there was no other challenge, and started to sip her drink. It was unharmed for the most part. The actual glass was broken at the top, but the shards of glass that separated from it were on the floor and not in the drink. Also, she was using a straw.
After a long sip, she reloaded her guns and placed them in their respective positions. Then, as if she were picking up a fallen object that was not heavy, she plucked the bartender off the ground from behind the counter. He was pretending to be dead, but his heavy breathing gave him away. That and the fact that he was slowly moving about to escape, but was breaking bottles underfoot.
She hoisted him to his feet and then slowly walked through the counter. Only her lower body became ethereal as she did so and her left hand slammed the bartender into the wall of what was now broken glass. He yelped in pain as some shards entered his back, but he tried to keep quiet for the most part.
Priska sniff the air around her. Yes. There was the stench of fear emanating from his body, but she was not the source of it. In fact, he seemed to be sweating because of what was above him.
Priska’s truth deciphering generally depended on how a person’s body reacted to questions. She could hear the heart skip a beat, someone hold their breath for even a moment, things like that allowed her passive ability to be applied. And so, she was also able to tell if someone was afraid and in what direction the source of their fears were. However, she was not able to read a piece of paper and know it was a lie or not. However, Gusion could, but that was because he was a Daemon. This ability, Know Truth, was based off of Gusion’s instinct to tell truth and lie and the ability to understand the body and how the blood works from Daemos. Know that she thought about it, she received a lot of gifts from both of the two.
Back on track, Priska looked upwards, the direction that the man was glancing towards. It was so clearly obvious that whatever was above was something to be feared. Then she pointed upwards as the bartender followed her finger with his eyes.
“Is that your boss?”
“N- Yes…”
He was about to lie, but resorted to telling the truth. She grinned slightly. Maybe this one would be harder to kill than the rest. Ooh, maybe their blood would taste good. Maybe they would even have an amazing weapon!
“What are their powers?”
“He can summon greater demons and can use r-”
A small shadow snuck up behind the two and snapped the bartender’s neck. It was so fast, so simple, so… brutal. Then it tried to strike Priska in the next second.
However, the “shadow” had to materialize to snap the bartender’s neck. And so, it also had to materialize to attack, but Priska had whipped out her knife at that moment.
She would have liked to say that she managed to kill it in one hit on purpose, but she took out her knife and was about to take a swing when she tripped on a bottle and fell over. The knife, still in her grasp, slashed across the shadow imp’s face and it fell to the ground.
One of its eyes were sliced in half and its lower jaw was divided in half. The juice from its brain had started to leak out and its body was punctured by glass when it hit the ground. The green blood from the gashes were leaking and the body itself was dissolving into ashes that floated into the air and dissipated from reality.
It is commonly known that some demons and imps dissipate and return to the Underworld. Once they reach the underworld, they either reincarnate into a greater or lesser being depending on what they did in that life, but they always remembered their past lives.
“Tch.”
She clicked her tongue. If she was caught off guard from this, she would surely have a much harder time fighting the boss. On top of that knowledge, the bartender was dead and her drink was now spilled on the ground. What a waste.
She looked around the bullet ridden room. There were two staircases in the room, one on either side of the bar counter. They both looked identical and seemed to lead to the same place.
“Well… let’s head up this one.”
And so Priska started towards the stairs to her left and easily hopped up them with long strides. This prick was not going to get away with nearly breaking a teddy bear on top of spilling her drink.
The staircase was actually in pristine condition, despite the shootout, and only had one bullet in the first step. Both the railing and the steps were made of some sort of sturdy wood and they had a purple carpet going up it. There was some sort of design dyed into it, but it was worn away by all the walking.
The staircase was actually connected to the next three floors, up to the fourth, and hallways of doors were seen on the middle three floors. This building must have been used as an inn… before Priska got there.
When she reached the fourth floor, she encountered some resistance. There stood three demons, but not the intelligent kind. They wore armor, but there were to of the same demons behind a larger demon that could still fit in the hallway.
The two behind the leading demon wore iron armor with flexible kevlar pants. They held chainguns that had small rectangle shields on both sides of them, right and left. They wore helmets with holes in them to fit their three horns. Their red eyes glowed through the metal helmet’s visor.
The leading demon was wearing full mana laced steel, save for a helmet, with kevlar underneath, but it seemed to be thin, like the other two demons’ pants. He held one magnum, in his left that was pointing at Priska, and one saber in his right hand. He had spiked pauldrons and knee pads. On his head, he wore a blindfold that was burned at both ends, but was extinguished already. His skin was red, but he had no horns on his head.
The leader roared in a bloodcurdling scream that seemed to make some other people in the rooms yelp. Someone opened the door to the look at what the fuck was going on, but they ended up back in their room.
Most people enter their rooms on their own, but this man went back into his room with a bullet in his head. The leader of the trio fired a single shot into the man’s head. The now dead man twitched on the floor for a moment and then stopped moving.
The two demons behind the leader seemed excited now and they launched their attack, but against Priska. Their gun barrels started to rotate and bullets fired out from the muzzles.
The bullets fazed through Priska, but, when they hit the walls, they stopped for a second before a sphere about several inches in diameter appeared. It seemed to be made of darkness and, once the darkness faded, there was a small ball of whatever was in that sphere crushed into a smaller circle, like a gravity manipulating trash compactor.
That would surely be fatal if they hit her, but luckily fate was on her side. The man who had just died had blood dribbling from the hole in his head and the corner of his mouth. If he hadn’t been there and died, she would have had to resort to a more tricky and dangerous tactic of phasing in and out of the current plain of existence.
The blood stealthily rose up behind the two behind the leader and Priska dove for cover against a wall only to find that she fell through the wall. Well, that would still be useful. While she couldn’t see and her grip on the blood magic would soon fail, she decided to expand it into a huge sphere with numerous spikes that jutted out. The spikes elongated and pierced both the walls and the enemies.
When Priska peeked out into the hallway, she realized that both the enemies with chainguns were dead, because holes in the body would lead to blood loss, and the leader had lost his legs and was screaming in pain.
Without taking another step forward, she pulled out her knife and threw it at the demon’s red forehead. He shook violently before Priska fired three more shots into him with her pistol.
“Well, that… wasn’t really a challenge…”
She spoke to herself as she walked down the hall. There was a hatch on the ceiling at the end of the corridor and she wanted to open it up. However, she first left the ethereal plain and picked up a chaingun and both chunks of ammunition that the demons left behind. She would have someone study some of those bullets later. For now, though, it was time to face the boss.