I
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I . . . who.
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Who am I?
The lord of dreams.
No….
No………
I am
The lord of dreams.
No….no………………
Sleep now, my lord.
Save me…
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Hana
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Alice…
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❀
After an hour of searching, the group had stumbled upon a door made from feathers and nothing else
Tsuki pushed the door – it didn’t even have a handle – but it didn’t budge. Instead, the feathers attacked her. Her hand was shredded to pieces before Vergeltung could use his flaming rod to burn the feathers. As they caught fire, they produced a piercing shriek and the door disappeared in a ball of smoke.
“Sister!” – “Miss Tsuki!” said the two brothers, seeing the bloodied hand of the girl.
Instead of screaming or clutching her hand in pain as would be expected from how mangled her hand was, Tsuki instead pulled on the brown cloth around her wrist and made petals dance around herself. “Flos muto!” she said at the same time as her glaive formed.
Her simple dress changed into a floral costume. A long skirt went down her ankle as multiple layers stacked above one another, light as a petal yet strong and firm. A white blouse formed while hard twigs created a chest plate with black petals acting like scales. The ribbon in her hair reacted to the change and became larger as the endpoints took in ethereal petals from one side and pushed them out on the other side.
Black petals crawled down the girl's legs until they formed hard boots reaching her knees. Delicate while gloves sprouted from her hand after a handful of yellow petals managed to heal her wound before shifting into a golden tiara with white and black ornamental wings just above her ears.
Tsuki caught her glaive and attempted a cute pose for her companions. Her hand was completely healed, and she looked battle ready, although her dress was strange to everyone except Hoomaikai who knew where the girl took her inspiration.
“IT WAS YOU!” screamed one of the snakes. “Tsuki! You stole my artifacts!” Back then, the world the two girls were in suffered greatly. The artifacts Hoomaikai talked about were old VHS tapes. They were like relics of a long gone past that was used to learn the ancient language.
“What?” responded Tsuki with a mocking smile. “Hoomaikai~, I never stole anything from you~. Are you~ mistaking yourself~ for someone else~?”
The small violet snake turned red from anger and embarrassment and spoke in a low voice, not as Hoomaikai but as Kanga, “You should have told me you had a way to watch them… I…I would ha—” She was suddenly interrupted as a tongue of lava washed over them after dispelling the smoke.
Again, it was Vergeltung who intervened. He used the rod like a shield and divided the magma into two streams. The fur on his paws burned but anymore damage was stopped when Fi appeared behind the cat and lent her support. She didn’t just cool him but made it so that heat couldn’t be transferred out and into his body.
It was a double edge sword that the cat instinctively distinguished. Using this, he charged upstream wanting to stop the lava at its source. He was like a lone salmon braving an impossible challenge. Fi couldn’t support him more than that as she was focused on managing everyone's oxygen intake that was quickly disappearing from the flames and heat.
When the detective thought he had finally broken through, he saw to his despair a large horn break into the lava and threatened to impale him. Little Bakasura pushed down the cat while his brother summoned a flesh golem to block the now-flowing lava.
Tsuki was powerless in this sea of magma, but she felt as if someone was pushing her forward, and so joined the others just in time to protect them from a powerful whip which she barely managed to cut.
*Pop*
The golem had its inside pierced as sprays of boiling blood sprouted from its back toward the group. There was only one thing she hadn’t managed to make hers up to this point and her intent resonated with the mouths on her leg. If she dies, they die; If she lives, they can eat their fill. What more was that their creator had gone missing not long ago but the girl they were attached to shared similarities to him.
The mouths started moving down her leg, each at their own pace like petals detached from the bud. When they reached the tip of her toes, they manifested out and devoured the boiling blood: little aberrations that only existed for a fraction of a second and consumed everything in their path. The curse that should have killed her in a few years’ time was turned into a blessing instead.
*Crack Pop*
The golem’s inside were boiling and exploding; even the aberrations wouldn’t be able to consume the river of lava. Krimira was doing his best even as his brother supported him but making something tangible wasn’t his specialty; he was more apt at making illusions and such.
[Dispel!!!]
A wave of magic came from a bundle of snakes which caused the flow of lava to stop. When the haze and the blaze were gone, all that was left was a large being veiled in smoke.
Its form couldn’t be distinguished that well, but Bakasura jumped at it. His hands turned into sharp knives. He slashed at the unknown form, dispelling some of the smoke, and drew the first blood. Not of the opponent but his own as a large horn gored his chest open.
His lifeless body was sent tumbling by the side of his brother who didn’t even react to it: they were apt at illusion after all.
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BUUUUUOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
A scream was let out that caused the ground to tremble and completely dispel the smoke. Bakasura had created an illusion to reach the thing’s head and pierced its eye. The boy was thrown by the pressure of the scream and Krimira caught him just in time before crashing into something.
Now they all could see the beast clearly. It was a gigantic water buffalo bisected in half from top to bottom with dark tendrils keeping the two halves together. One part was laying dormant with its half-head resting on a bed while the other was raging in pain as its lone eye was destroyed.
Tsuki lunged forward with her glaive. Black petals allowed her to spearhead forward by protecting her from the intense pressure. Dark tendrils came her way which she cut using white petals.
As for the yellow petals, they were almost guiding her body. She followed them as they pushed her feet just a little further and supported her arms which held the glaive in a way she wasn’t used to.
“Dodge!!!” screamed Hoomaikai.
Tsuki responded instinctively by jumping backward a moment before the buffalo’s head came crashing down. The impact lifted her into the air which the beast's tail was whipping furiously toward.
A strange mist appeared in front of Tsuki which caused the tail to disintegrate on contact. Following this, an air vortex pulled her down to the ground. She looked around and saw Fi giving her a thumbs up. The spirit was still as unexpressive as before but gave the impression she was proud of what she did.
“Thanks!” said Tsuki before looking at the two brothers and the cat. “Baka, Kri! Divert his attention. Vergeltung, find out why he’s still able to see us!”
The three approved and followed the girl's orders. It was odd how the beast was able to perfectly target Tsuki in the air, even just knowing she was in the air. Its other eye was closed after all; could the other half be awake?
Tsuki rushed forward again. She allowed Fi and Hoomaikai to do as they liked. The girl didn’t know what Fi was capable of and felt it was best to let her do her own things. As for Hoomaikai, Tsuki saw the patterns of the snake she was directly controlling move slower; she was tired for sure.
This time, she held her weapon to her side ready for an upward strike. A large hove crashed in front of her which she tried to cut. The fur was hard like metal and only a shallow cut was left. She kept attacking, without infecting her foe with flowers like usual as close to half her strength was already gone.
During her flurry, the two brothers were dodging a barrage of whipping tails. They were like hydras, as the ones cut grew two more. They used illusions to avoid dying: Krimira was on the defensive while Bakasura was on the offensive. Whenever it was possible Krimira would create bats of fire to block the tails. Sadly, they weren’t hot enough to stop the regenerative ability of the tails.
Bakasura created the illusion of a giant demon ready to carve the beast while he went below it. Giant gloves covered his hands as he punched at the dangling entrails, but his fists struck an invisible shield of some kind.
Sensing someone below it, the half-buffalo got up on its hind leg so that it could look down, but its head was leaning on the wrong side. The boy looked up; all he saw was the insides of the creature moving as if they were whole. No blood dripped down from the perfectly cut organs.
He found it strange and odd, but his instinct told him to move. Instead of escaping toward his brother, he went closer to the other half still sleeping while changing his limbs into sharp blades.
Tsuki sent a drape of black petals his way which came just in time to protect the boy from an onslaught of dark vines tying the two halves together. Krimira remade his golem which tried to trip the only leg of the beast still on the ground. Surprisingly, it didn’t do much. It was as if the buffalo was flying as it brought down a heavy hove toward Bakasura.
[Paralysis!]
Hoomaikai cast another spell which caused half of her snakes to dissipate but had the effect of tensing all of the beast muscle which caused it to fall on its side, its inside skyward.
This time it was Vergeltung who moved. He had realized what was going on. It wasn’t that the beast was cut in half like two pieces of meat in a butcher’s freezer, but that each part was a whole: they simply couldn’t see the other halves.
He screamed, realizing the one sleeping shouldn’t be woken up, just in time, “Don’t attack it, boy!” With Bakasura stopping and getting rescued by his brother, the cat jumped on the invisible part and struck where the eye should be with his burning rod.
Fi’s spell was still in effect. The heat his body produced and couldn’t exude, burning his inside and slowing his mind. That primordial rage and discord eating his mind. His eyes bloodlust, lost in anger: the cat transferred all that dissonance heat to the rod which lit ablaze like a star.
The invisible eye boiled and popped while the flesh around it sizzled loudly. A tail came round and slashed across the cat’s back, opening it as bones cracked and showed themselves to the light of day. He was sent flying and Fi had to use magic to slow him down or else he would have turned into a paste after hitting a wall.
Tsuki came to him and used her yellow petals to heal his wounds with the help of the floating spirit. The cat then whispered with a pained voice, “Move both halves from one another. Cut the vines. Kill it…” the pain was too great for the poor cat and his mind shut down. Although his wounds were deep, they weren’t deadly: with Fi’s help and Tsuki’s petals, he would recover.
Tsuki gave the spirit a few of the yellow petals, enough to heal the cat, and relayed what he said to the brothers.
The first task went surprisingly well. When the beast got up, it charged toward Krimira who was shouting at the top of his lungs. Bakasura followed by cutting each vine at a surreal speed. He was under Tsuki’s protection and didn’t have to worry much about the onslaught. The few vines he missed were sniped cleanly by a few blades of white petals.
Time was of the essence as Tsuki was starting to tire already. She only had a third of her power remaining, just nearly enough to change into a bundle of petals herself for two seconds, which would be useless in this situation.
Bakasura jumped high while cutting the last vine.
*Crack!!!!*
It was as if glass was broken and both halves were instantly pulled to one another like magnets. The poor rakshasa in the air was almost trapped when the two parts slapped with one another, remaking the beast whole. Bakasura, seeing the beast below him reforming, didn’t give it a moment of rest as he changed his arms into one large bony mass which he smashed against Paundraka’s lower back.
Paundraka, who was just waking up from a nightmare, lost all sense of its hind legs as they buckled down. A burning pain shot up to its brain which caused it to scream while tears rolled down its eyes. “MASTER!” It cried out of fear and sadness, but no one understood his words.
The animal could only remember up to when it left Naraka to find its master. It wanted to be by his side and be of use like in the old day. His hand that caressed its head whenever conflict happened, the field that spread as far as the eye could see that he gave it, the cold night he spent sleeping by its side to warm it up… Paundraka cried for his master as a freezing blade pierced its neck.
Something spread and took hold of his throat; the girl had spread her flowers and commended each she had ever grown to spread. The words it wanted to say got stuck in its throat, never able to reach its lips; Tsuki twisted her glaive and pulled it back with a spray of blood.
It wanted to scream, to tell its master to pet him again, to caress and brush its coat, to feed it and care for its need, to tell it stories and go on adventures, to display his might and generosity. It cried the words that wouldn’t come up, that could never come up. As darkness engulfed it, the image of its master leaving it in the crumbled temple remained.
It breathed while roots found their way into its lungs; blood dripped down its mouth with flowers adorned with its memories: small lotus’ floated above a lake of red, crumbling and drowning with only the reaper left to cup up…
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Hoomaikai looked intently at the girl who took a strange flower which she bit down on. Broken petals fell down while she swallowed the rest. The gaze, the downcast glance, the watery eyes, the mournful look. Hoomaikai saw someone she thought was lost in the girl. She saw the little shepherd back in their world, not the one stuck caring for a sick girl, but the one who sang in the glade like a fairy reborn; she saw Tsuki as she was before her amnesia, the girl who saved her life.
It was only for a moment that she wished could last an eternity and in the hope to extend it said like back then, “What is your name?!”
The brothers and Fi gave her a weird look, while for Tsuki, she smiled with a pensive look. She twirled above the warm blood and stopped with her glaive horizontally behind her back. Gave a smile, a bow, and said, “Tsuki.”
Hoomaikai felt a ball form in her throat with her heart beating faster. She was about to say something else, to extend that moment even more but the girl in front said with a disgusted face, “Hurg…Why is it so bitter? I thought it would be sweet!” It was too late…
“Sorry to interrupt,” said Fi who felt that something was wrong. “This, behind you. Do you all see it?” She pointed behind Tsuki.
Tsuki turned quickly and felt something drag behind her. A strange semi-ethereal tail dragged in the blood. Everyone had some kind of extreme reaction, Tsuki tried to remove it to no avail, the two brothers had stars in their eyes, and Hoomaikai was at a loss for words.
Only Fi didn’t react to it and kept looking above the buffalo’s corpse. There was something/someone looking at them. A woman with long waving golden hair whose left half of her visage was that of a monster and the other of a horrified lady. She spoke and no one other than Fi heard her.
Kill them!
No! NO NO NO NO!
Corrupt them!
NO! STOP!
And she disappeared…Fi turned around to the door they came from and saw a man there who had also seen the mysterious woman and had a fearful expression. A stack of papers was by his feet as he brushed the sweat from his thick browns. A golden crown that knew better day adorned his head while an oily beard in disarray warmed his cracked lips. He looked tired and haggard.
Fi looked at him with pity, sensing he used to be someone great in the past but lost his glory, and said loud enough to warn the others preoccupied about a random tail, “Good day, sir. You have finally decided to show yourself.”