image [https://i.postimg.cc/wj9PzbP6/Vol-2-Card-20.jpg.jpg]

It took Indena a while to get back, but we were all relieved to hear her enter in.

The fear she had on her face quickly eased when she saw me awaiting her return. Naturally, she scolded me for running off.

"I'm sorry," I said, feeling bad for causing her so much distress. "But I did it because you were mean to Yamin for no reason."

"Whoever I'm mad it is none of your business."

"That's not true!" I shouted. "We're a team. So if your a big jerk, by extension so am I!"

She quietly looked at me in a judgmental way, but her eyes eventually failed to keep contact with mine.

Marek let out a loud throat clearing sound to get our attention.

"We should tell her about the plan to escape, no?" Marek asked.

"Plan to escape?" One of Indena's brows raised with curiosity.

~☆☆☆~

It was just a hair past 2 in the evening. The was sun shining occasionally through the overcast, giving me my first real good peek at its bright glow every now and again.

The sun is amazing.

Our group was hiking through the valley, trying to find the location of the car Indena and I took shelter in.

"This is such a stupid idea," Indena grumbled. "Are we even sure these car parts are going to be in good condition?"

When we saw it last, it wasn't in good shape, especially since a moose was attacking it for some reason. I also wasn't able to run a diagnostic on it since the internal computer was fried. But there was a chance at least the spark plugs would still work. That was all we needed to fix the car in the garage.

"We'll see when we get there," I told her.

"At least most of the snow melted."

I don't think she would have agreed to this plan if there was snow around. She'd be in an even worse mood, if that was even possible.

Based on my map, it was only a little longer before we got there.

Rather than continue to complain, Indena decided to strike up conversation, which I worried would be its own mistake.

"So…Blue Boy…" she aptly nicknamed Marek.

"Eh?" He turned to her.

"What's your deal? That blue coat looks awfully fancy."

He did look fancy, minus the dried up blood and cuts all over his clothes.

"I come from a prestigious family in Favana. Like my father before me, I serve as a Jr member of the Second Royal Council of Erdareich."

"So, are you royalty?" I asked with stars in my eyes.

"No," he chuckled. "I'm just a representative politician."

Uh oh…daddy told me not to talk to politicians. He said they lie a lot and you can never know what they're really after.

Should I start ignoring him? Mmm…nah. He seemed nice enough.

"So you're a bootlicker," Indena commented. "Got it.”

"How rude!" he gave her a scowl, then his head fell in shame. "Not that I'm proud of my life choices..."

"What about you, Deula?" Indena turned to Yamin next.

Yamin grimaced at Indena's name calling.

"Please, don't call me that."

"Oh, did I hurt the little Deula's feelings?" Indena folded her arms and condescendingly tilted her head up. "Why don't you ask your Eighth Star Angel to come down and strike me with lightning? I thought you guys like that sort of thing."

There she goes again, being a jerk to Yamin!

Rather than let her get away with it, I released a small electrical discharge from my crystal heart to shock her.

ZAP!

"Ouch!" Indena skipped as she was electrocuted. "Why you…"

"Keep being mean to her and I'll shock you again!"

This didn't count as an attack since it was mild. So I considered it Pavlovian conditioning more than anything.

Indena looked mad at me, but her face started to sag with defeat.

"Yeah, fine…guess I'm the asshole again…"

As disingenuous as she sounded, she did stop.

"But seriously," she tried again to chat with Yamin. "What's your deal?"

"There's not exactly a whole lot to tell." Yamin summoned the courage to speak. "I don't have a job or anything yet, and I was homeschooled for a while."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Why were you home schooled?" Marek asked.

"Well…um…" Yamin played with her necklace. "Kids used to bully me for being half Kanai."

Indena's face turned red and her body heat rose up significantly.

"O-oh…Kanai, huh?" she rubbed the back of her head. “That sucks.”

Based on my database, and a lot of subbed anime I've watched, Kanai are people of the Far East. Indena was definitely Kanai. You could see it in her eyes. Yamin obviously wasn't full blooded, but she had some similar facial features.

"Don't feel bad for me." Yamin psyched herself up a little. "I spend most of my time at church or with my mom. I even stargaze on clear nights."

Ooh! Stargazing is something I've always wanted to do!

I latched onto Yamin's arm, startling her, hoping she’d allow me to join the fun one of these nights.

“Please please please let me come with you next time!” I begged.

"I um…" she nervously patted my head a few times. "To church, shopping with my mom, or stargazing?"

Gee, all of those kinda sound kinda fun...

"Yes." I replied with a shrug and smile. "Mostly stargazing!"

"I’d be happy to have tag along, anytime." She smiled.

"Yeah!" I cheered.

As my joy was starting to peek, a horrible sight brought my spirits back down like a meteor.

A collection of metal scrap and broken parts littered a small clearing in the trees. It was like a giant tin can had gotten shredded by a lawnmower.

No doubt about it. This was what was left of the car.

"Holy crap…ha!" Indena laughed. "That moose was pissed off!

Yeah, this wreck wasn't going to help us at all.

Yamin tried to be optimistic and say that we might be able to find something useful, but it was just a hazard to sift through those sharp parts.

"Are there any other cars here?" Marek asked.

We hadn't seen any, but I had a suspicion that maybe we would find something elsewhere. That’s when I got the idea to check from above. And what better place than to look out from our first shelter when we got here?

~☆☆☆~

Indena and I lead the group back to the rock overhang. The sun was casting a shadow over it.

Something was crawling around that darkness though. I activated my night vision and gave it a good scan.

-WARNING! THREAT SIGHTED!-

-IFF tags activated-

-Locust demon tagged; Foe-

-Enemy count = (20)-

More of those demons from earlier! They must have been hiding here to keep out of the sun.

We’d been in the daylight for a while, but I was still charging up like the solar battery I was.

“If that’s one of those demons, maybe we shouldn’t go in there,” Indena suggested.

“Sorry, guys…” I slouched with sorrow. “I don’t have enough stardust to deal with twenty of them.”

It’s too bad. We could have seen a lot from up here. Guess we just needed to find a new spot.

If only I knew how to use my wings too. A bird's eye view would be even better.

Yamin perked up, then kneeled down to my level. “Why’s stardust important?”

“It’s the only thing that can kill demons,” I answered.

Her eyes wandered until they were looking toward the shade full of dark creatures. Then she glanced at Marek before looking back at me.

“Wait…” she uttered, rising up and extending her arm toward the darkness “That’s right...”

Yamin’s eyes sparkled brightly, followed by her skin radiating rays of light all over. The palm of her right hand began to twinkle, its aura growing brighter by the second.

Finally at the peek of its glow, the light that burst from her hand outshined the sun. Most of us turned away as her brilliant challenge to the dark whipped away all the demons in the shadow.

“Damn…” Indena uttered in awe. “She’s more an angel than you, Shrimp.”

“I’m not an angel,” I reminded her. That didn’t make what Yamin did any less impressive.

“If I wasn’t so scared back home, I’d have protected my town.” Yamin lowered her arm. "But, looks like I wasn't strong enough in the moment to do something."

“Doesn't the church teach you that stuff?” Indena asked.

“No, they don’t teach the average church goer how to fight demons,” she said. “Some of us didn’t even believe they really existed until now.”

“You’re full of it,” Indena responded.

“No, I’m not…” Yamin explained that a lot of people in her church thought of demons and darkness as metaphors for evil and injustice. “We’ve only ever been told that a priest can fight against demons anyway, and even then it was a losing battle until the Eighth Star shows up.”

They were really putting a lot of their eggs in the Eighth Star’s basket. But luckily, now I wasn’t the only one in this party who could use stardust.

~☆☆☆~

From up here, Yamin actually managed to spot some more car wrecks. She had good eyes.

One wasn’t too far away, so we checked it out.

More of that dust was on the front seat. This dust was what happened when the Reaper stole the life out of the monster wolves and plants. A morbid thought entered my head, wondering if all the dust we were seeing was actually people the Reaper had stolen mana from…

Marek popped up the car's hood, then made an endearing cheer.

“Yeeah!” he shook his fists with joy. “We can use this to fix both cars!”

It was a similar model to the one he had, so it made me hopeful that we’d be out of this valley soon.

On the other end of the car, Yamin and Indena were inspecting the trunk…

"Aaahh!" Yamin screamed.

We all rushed to the back of the car.

A skeleton was inside there, long decayed from being trapped inside the trunk.

I did a bio scan to see if I could identify anything about this person, but all I was getting was that they were male and a few of his leg bones were broken. He also had some sort of bandana around his mouth.

Indena covered my eyes and pushed me away. "A kid shouldn't have to see that."

It wouldn't be the first skeleton I've seen recently. The Reaper was way more spooky than this.

Using one of the shovels in the trunk, Marek started digging up a grave for the skeleton and tossed him in. I sprinkled in the dust from the car seats, just incase those were people at one point too.

Before putting the dirt back, Yamin kneeled down and said a prayer.

"Lord, we call upon your name to ask you to claim the soul of whomever was lost here…" Her words were almost song like, as if she were praying along to a musical rhythm.

"Amen." I said as she see concluded.

"So be…Huh?" Yamin's eyes perked open.

"What?" I turned to her.

We both shared a few awkward sounds before deciding to nod and close the confusing case.

"Gee, all that praying sure is helping get this dirt in the grave," Indena commented as she and Marek shoveled in soil. “Make yourselves useful and start unscrewing the engine parts, please?”

Sigh…always so pushy.