“Please! Don’t kill me!” The lanky man pleaded with her. She had held up the man by the back of his neck, holding him over a hole where they dump their sacrifices. Though, this one didn’t grow as much as the others ones did.

She accessed her memory banks, recalling that he had been with the Crimson Spear Luke. He had tried to run away, and they of course found him and captured him.

“I cannot follow your order.” She told the sobbing man. “My master has asked to throw you down there. Your chances of living is twelve percent.”

Before he could continue begging, Ariel released the man. The last she saw of him were the whites of his eyes as it fell into despair. She calculated his chances at twelve percent at the moment of landing.

“Aghhhhhhhh!”

It surprised her that his scream could be heard. Ariel had to guess that he had been unlucky and that his scream had somehow escaped the Territory down below. Through the simulations that ran through her processing unit, she calculated a ninety-nine percent chance that he had just perished.

A near certainty.

“You’re so awfully cold, Ariel.” An armored woman sat on the perch of a big rock said to her. Her hair was dark brown tied into a ponytail. Her ears were pointed just like hers, and just like Ariel, she too was a servant of her master. She rested her head on her hand, and gave a small smile. “I wonder when you will awaken to your emotions?”

Ariel computed this. “I’m not sure. Master said that it would be soon, but I wonder what that means? I have been with Master for five years. By definition, that isn’t soon. You awakened yours when you were created.”

“That is true. Not many people can be as perfect as me.” Titania placed her hand on her chest. “Take for example Ophelia.” She motioned at the brown haired woman floating face down in the pond of water near them. If Ariel didn’t know her, she would have considered her dead. “She looks like a drowned corpse all the time.” She voiced Ariel’s thoughts as if she had read them. “Yet, she awakened just like me. The moment she woke up.” She flicked her finger to her. “The Warden says you’re special, and that’s why you haven’t awakened yet.”

“Special? I wonder what that means?” Ariel searched herself, and felt a gaping hole within her chest, unsure of what it meant. “I wonder when I can succeed in achieving what Master wants me to.”

“I think you will soon,” Titania said, rising up and stretching. “It’s a feeling but my feelings aren’t wrong. Anyways, we have some company coming.” She pointed to a tree.

Ariel saw the former Black Sun assassin climbing up the tree to look at what was beyond their wall. She aimed carefully, predicting the likelihood of where he would hop next on the tree, and then blasted a beam of light at him.

The tree fell, and Titania put on her helmet.

“Ophelia! We have company! Help us out!”

#

Using him as bait was the right choice.

The tree fell in a thunderous thud, and Subaru’s body was missing. Cedar got the feeling that the man survived, he seemed like one.

Cedar formed a flame blade in his hand.

“They’re coming.” He told the three. He stabbed the ground with his flame sword, and waited. He watched all of them eat a Key. The mongrel peeled her blade free from her shadow, the giant grew into a ferocious red ogre, and fake hero’s sword changed forms from a ball of light to the sword that looked like a burnt battlefield.

He planted his sword into the ground, laying his hands on the pommel of his flame sword.

A moment later, something landed in front of them. Dirt exploded and soon settled. The doll that looked like an elf with a beehive hair stepped from the crater she created.

If Cedar remembered right, she was named Ariel?

He was sure that she had been to shoot the beam of light at the Subaru.

“A little excited are you, Ariel?”

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

Then two more walked across the bridge behind Ariel. One was a woman in armor who had just spoken. The other was a blue haired woman in a white summer dress drenched in water, looking like a fresh corpse fished out of the ocean.

Her crazed eyes scanned all of them.

“Oh what lovely men I see.” She pressed her cheeks. “I wonder, I wonder, which one I should take with me?” Her eyes seemed to land on Bell and she pointed at him, a wolfish smile showing her fangs spread across her face. “This one looks just so precious.”

“None of them will be your plaything Ophelia. They go down the hole with the others.” The armored woman told her.

“Such a shame, such a shame. But I’m sure he would forgive me if I played with him first before we drop him.” She looked at the armored woman.

“Ariel?” She sighed.

“As long as they are alive, then it should not matter,” Ariel told them in a robotic voice. “Though I think Master spoke of-”

Ariel sliced the boulder that was thrown at her in two. Walnut picked up another one and chucked at them. The armored woman shook her head and sighed, while drenched woman gave a shrill and joyful laugh at the chaos thrown at them.

“It’s rude to interrupt a conversation. Thought you would know better than that, Walnut.” The armored woman glared at Walnut.

“There is no time for pleasant conversations anymore. Only barbarianism, Titania,” he roared with a deep voice.

“You’ve made a mistake.”

Cedar turned his attention to Ariel who was fighting Yoru in a battle of shadow and light. Then, he watched as Bell tried to cut the drenched woman, but his blade went through her. Her body transformed into a great wave of water and crashed against Bell. She formed back on top of him, cackling as his blade was thrown out of his reach.

“You’re so cute when you’re scared.” She licked her teeth. “I can’t wait to see how you squeal.”

With a swing of his sword, the woman turned into steam.

Cedar glared at the woman. She was already reforming. “Don’t do such vulgar acts in front of me. You’re not animals.”

When half of her face reformed, she gazed at him with her only formed eyes. Her voice like a scratching blackboard. “You’re pretty handsome yourself.”

“Fake Hero. Stand and pick up your sword. Show me that attack that broke the space. Aim it at that woman if you don’t want to be consumed by her.”

“Shu-shut up!” He snatched his sword from the ground. “You don’t think I know that? And why don’t you help me?”

“I don’t help the helpless. Did you feel fear when your Gate was cracking? You needn’t worry about that. My flames mended the cracks, and saved your life. You should be able to go all out if you wanted to,” Cedar said.

“What’s with you? Saying such nice things? You’re supposed to be the evil prince I slay! You killed all those people didn’t you?”

“I did.” Cedar admitted easily, planting his sword back into the ground. “For the sake of my country, I did the atrocities because they were necessary.”

“Heh. So you are evil after all. That’s great, I’ll make sure to kill you.”

Cedar glared at him and the fake hero flinched. “Go ahead and try if you can.”

“Wonderful. The friendship of men.” The drenched woman said. “Are you two done now? I only meant to take one, but to even take the prince too. I am a unsightly woman.”

“You’re much more than that, doll,” Cedar spat.

The drenched woman clapped her hands together. “You know what we are? Then you should know how scary we are.” Her form dissipated like ink in water.

A crack spread through the air where she was turning to water.

“Huh?”

And it shattered the space. The drenched woman had reformed, with her arm gone. Wood splintered and blue liquid dripped from stump of it and she glared dangerously at Bell. Cedar looked at the blade enviously. The blade with the face of a burnt battlefield did damage to the woman and that was only one of its forms.

He licked his lips. The blade was tied to the fake hero, but he had a way to make it his own. But, he shouldn’t act on it yet. He still had to deal with Kagami first. It was best not to get too greedy.

As Bell rose his blade high in the sky to finish the drenched woman off, he was hit by a thrown Walnut.

“I would ask that you refrain from doing that.” The armored woman stepped up to them. “I can’t have her die after you killed Oberon now can we?”

The other prince. Cedar narrowed his eyes to that.

“It wasn’t me that killed him. But he died a worthless death against someone he should have won against.”

“What are you talking about?” The armored woman said in an exasperated voice. “I know you killed him. We have Ariel here to confirm it.”

As if timed, Yoru was thrown his way from blinding light. She landed on her legs, and skidded towards him, stopping by his side. Blood dripped from her forehead.

“You’re not doing a great job fighting, mongrel.”

“Shitty prince, why don’t you stop planting your sword in the ground, and actually plant it in one of the three monsters in front of us?”

“He’s acting differently.” Ariel said. “His aura is different from before. I have accessed a book from my memory where there was something like this. He might have two personalities in one body and the current one we’re seeing is the prime personality.”

Cedar gave a small smile. “That trash would never be born from me. He is just a parasite that I willingly took in.”

He gave a look around. The fake hero and Walnut were still down. The mongrel looked ready to fall to her feet and the three dolls in front of him looked well enough to continue fighting.

Cedar snorted. The flame sword dissipated.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Yoru demanded to know.

He rose his hands.

“I surrender. Please, take me to the Warden to speak. Let him know that the Flame Prince, Cedar Oswell wishes to speak to him.”