Moods of Blue V

Very few things were as refreshing to the hyena as a walk through the morning woods. The dew splashed almost imperceptibly under foot, as though the millions of little drops could cleanse away all the foulness of the night and all the staleness of the previous day.

Honestly, she felt a bit of pressure. With the arrival of her new "pet" as well as the company of barbarians that she didn't know as well, she had to constantly project a rough, authoritarian front. Simply put, she wanted respect from the bear and Lethe's men. It wasn't something she thought of on a conscious level, but it was ancient instinct that told her to behave as she did.

"There is plenty of room in the village. I need workers and whores. We will get these from smaller encampments that can't defend themselves from us. I have seen one on my way here."

There was a small question that remained in her head, however. It was a seed of doubt that was beginning to grow into a thorn, a nagging worry in the back of her head that had no grounds in reason. "This does not bother you... that they are defenseless, does it?"

[ EXP: 225 || +1 TEXP (2nd thread) ]

Iskra's brows furrowed as she processed Lethe's words. Clearly he had some sense of honor and empathy. These things were not uncommon in humans, who tended to like each other in the same way that the hyena clans tended to stick together. This separated them from the parak, or hell-demons as they were more generally known. Those kinds had no conscience... no care of what anyone else thought. They only banded together so that they could perpetuate more violence and strife. While she liked to think she was better than them because she acted according to what was natural, she felt that she could not change what she was, even if it would seem bad by Lethe's standards. It was inescapably in her nature that she would take advantage of weaker, more helpless things. All carnivores were that way, whether onikonjou or not.

"You are my underling..." she began, having trouble gathering the words. "...and I do care what you think... not of me, but of what you are and what's in your nature. Kindness is in the nature of humans. Protection of the weak and innocent. It's not in mine. You might see a safe haven for human women who are escaping the evils of their home villages. I see something to sell. These things cannot be helped."

She fell silent for a moment, as though she wasn't finished thinking.

[ EXP: 269 ]

"You needn't talk so loud," she answered matter-of-factly. "Not like it will matter. They're just..." she paused to sniff the breeze. "Just through these bushes."

When she parted the bushes, it revealed a quaint, stone wall made from salvaged ruins of the bygone age. They'd been neatly stacked together, one atop another, and didn't seem like they'd be much of an obstacle to anyone.

There was a gate, however. It was wooden and arched with two lanterns, one atop each of the gate posts, that burned tranquilly away with a blue flame. Holding the wicks that led into the lanterns were two long-haired statues, each depicting a gentle kamikonjou woman. Their poses differed only slightly, one looking up towards the lantern and the other looking outwards, as though to greet anyone who approached the door with her slight, cherubic smile.

Upon the gate was a cheery inscription.

Door wrote:

May our doors forever shelter you you,

May its enchantment bless you,

And may the fellowship that we share,

create happy memories and smiling, magical moments.

The incubus peeked out of the trees, almost shyly before noticing the decor. "It's so cute!"

[ EXP: 240 || +1 TEXP (5th post) ]

Run withered under the stern reproof of what he had come to understand as someone who was one of his masters in this situation.

Iskra wasn't fond of his tone, but before she could say anything, a woman gently cracked open the gate.

She could not have been born long before the dawn. The figure that now looked on them with lively, blue eyes had fair skin, the slight tan color testifying to her agrarian roots, and long, dark hair that hung down well past her waist. It was the perfectly straight, light sort one might expect on an Asian, if, in fact, Asia was a feature of this world. She leaned shyly against the column supporting the gate, half shielding herself with the door. On her fragile visage was an expression of slight, submissive fear. She looked past Lethe... past Iskra... and past the wilted incubus to the barbarians in the bushes. Her sleeve slid down from where her hands rested against the doorpost, revealing a rather nasty scar, the shape of which wasn't readily apparent, though it was a very noticeable flaw in her otherwise perfect skin.

"Can I help you?" she asked so quietly that she may as well have been the breeze whispering.

Iskra frowned and walked forward. "What are you so scared of? Look, I want to talk to the person in charge of this p--"

Her sentence was cut off rather violently. As she stepped closer to the door, the angels seemed to take on a glow of increasing magnitude until there was a flash and the wild spirit was thrown back at an amazing speed. The incubus ducked with his prodigious flexibility, and the matriarch went soaring over his head, coming to an abrupt halt with a grunt in the middle of a tree that, helpfully enough, broke in two and fell forwards atop her. For the moment, Iskra wasn't visible.

The woman gasped, and the crack in the hardly-open gate grew even narrower. "You are all demons?"

[ EXP: 377 ]

The woman seemed to grow much smaller. "This place has been blessed by a kind spirit. None of unpure blood can progress past these guardians."

Though the men moved to help Iskra quickly enough, when they arrived, they'd find that the leaves and boughs of the fallen tree had taken up a peculiar trembling. After a manner of time, the spirit burst forth, in hyena form and driven to a state of madness by her anger.

There was something different about her form, however. She had horns, and in lieu of her normal, spineless form, a number of spikes poked up from her back, splaying with the motions of her run as she charged at one of the statues [Dragon Fragment].

The woman shrieked shortly and closed the door. It wasn't her that Iskra sought, but the damned statue. She leapt atop it, and though both of them sparked with an incredible radiance, she'd braced herself against the force, directly countering theirs with hers, and soon her jaws were about the first one's head.

And so large was her mouth in this form that she was able to get her foreteeth down to the more welcoming of the statue's necks, and took the head with her when she was thrown backwards.

Dizzy, but victorious, she stood to her feet, one paw on the disembodied head of the stone. "Lethe, could you please do something about those statues? I guess I could, but it takes a lot of energy."

[ EXP: 280 ]

With those obstacles out of the way, she trotted over to Lethe. "Thank you," she growled in an unearthly snarl. Her tongue shot out, and provided he didn't recoil in horror, she'd lick him on the face before stepping on the poem. Her strength and weight made the door into a welcome mat as she made her way in. "I tried to be nice, but I can see that you will have none of that! Very well, then. I'm taking everything! Show yourselves!"

"That's far enough, hellspawn!"

Iskra turned, her blue eyes filled with a particular malice due to the effects that pain had on her psyche.

She beheld a kami standing in front of the main building of the compound. She was in a fighting stance, her wings splayed, apparently to make herself look bigger. She was a full-figured woman, perhaps muddle aged, and possessed of the strange, maternal air of someone who'd watched after many people for a very long time. The other women were nowhere to be seen, but no doubt they were huddling, scared, in the building.

Iskra grinned maliciously, a dark cackle wafting from her throat. "If I have to fight you, it will be much worse for the female creatures you have behind you. If you really cared for them, you would make things easy for me."

The martial artist showed not the slightest hint of fear or intimidation. "This is your last chance. Leave now, while you still draw breath into your loathsome body."

It was obvious that there would be a confrontation. Iskra paced back and forth before the still lady, her head low to the ground and her bestial lips lifted in a snarl.

[ EXP: 222 ]

Hardly had Lethe finished his words than the kami was upon the hyena spirit, but not with her body. It was a great and radiant spell that sent a flash over the entire area.

Now Iskra had many weaknesses, but few that she'd known about. It was her first time fighting a kami on such terms, and all she really knew about them was that she had an insatiable lust for their blood and pain.

The spell, and it was a blessing to all others than her, but her in a rather weakened state of affairs, and she seemed hardly able to keep her footing. "You..." she murmured, limping towards the good spirit. She moved easily out of the way.

"Why do you help this creature?" She asked rather demandingly of Lethe, indicating the plainly frightened women peeking out of the windows. "I sense the spirit of purity in yourself. Doing this will go against what you are. Do you really trust this vile thing around these poor women? Look at them! Haven't they been through enough?"

[ EXP: 197 ]

The kami frowned, an expression of fierce, almost maternal protection giving her glare a potent dose of righteous fury. Eventually, though, that expression was temporarily replaced by faint surprise, recognition, even. For a moment she seemed hesitant to proceed in the battle.

"I admired you, Samael, but you've changed into something that I cannot forgive," she said, solemnly. At length, she tilted her head up and bored into the man's soul with her chilling blue eyes. In a rigidly formal and condescending voice, she spoke to him for the last time.

"You have betrayed our race, our cause, and everything that we stand for. For that, I find you guilty based on the undeniable evidence in my possession; and by the power vested in me by our kamikonjou heritage, I sentence you to die."

With that, her hand would come alight with a brilliant force that eventually coalesced into a sword, and the battle would begin with her arm coming down in a furious swing.

Iskra continued to stumble around, almost drunkenly in the background as her race at her own incapacitation built.

[ EXP: 220 ]

The bless had been relatively weak. That is, Iskra found herself shaking off its effects in relatively short order and her full awareness and strength came back about when the kami landed at her paws.

She wasn't used to seeing Lethe so angry, but those thoughts went on the backburner when she saw the woman laying there, coughing up her own life and leaving a red stain on the ground before her as she glared at the demon. "You... you did this, didn't you?"

The hyena was past the point where she could answer coherently. Her true nature had taken over, as it often took over at the sight and scent of a class of spirit that was both her ancestral prey and hated predator, so she told her feelings with her teeth. She hadn't eaten anything since the morning.

The angel moved, trying to crawl away, but too weak to. The beast placed a paw on one of her wings and the movement accelerated. This was a source of pure delight to the monster. She inhaled the alluring aroma around the site of her impalement. The feathers tickled her nose. She took one wing into her mouth. It struggled and tickled her tongue. The hunger was acute. Her jaws came together, gently at first until the full infamous biting power of her species pressed down on the bones. There was a sickening crack, then crunching. Warm blood ran into her mouth. It tasted delicious. It was meat, the same kind that she had subsisted her entire life on, but it was from a heaven-spirit and therefore better.

The screams were musical, like a dinner bell, for if any creature could scream beautifully to her, it was a kami. The hyena's weight kept the guardian angel pinned as she swallowed the first wing, feathers and all, before inhaling the second with with great, tearing jerks of her jaw. The beautiful flesh was torn off in great ribbons. The limbs were eaten first. The screams continued. The eyes were eaten out long before death came, and death came only after the beast had torn through the unfortunate woman's ribs and gulped down her heart.

It didn't take her long at all to devour the carcass, perhaps the space of a few minutes, but if there was anything that they had, it was time. Rivers looked slightly sickened by the carnage and backed away, leaving to sit out in the bushes. The women in the compound wept helplessly as their friend, mentor, and guardian was shredded to pieces before their eyes. To all of these things, the demon was completely oblivious. She was elated. The lust to kill and torture angels was upon her. Her breed gave her this purpose, and it was a meaning for her in this world. Feathers still floated down like a snowfall.

Her rationality returned when the once beautiful creature she'd assailed with her teeth was no more than a dark red stain on the stone ground. She licked her jaws and cackled. Her entire face, neck, and chest were soaked in that wonderful blood, the kind that she now wondered how she'd gone her entire life without sampling.

"Lethe, we're done here. Get your men to round those women up and we'll march them to the city. They can have any possessions they can carry."

[ EXP: 628 ]