Chapter 1 : Kira's Life
A blade of Agrigate steel sparkling with blue fire, gleams in the waning moon light as it cuts its perfect arch of death through the air, singing a song of sadness as its twin deflects the arch leaving both thirsty and unfulfilled. The hilt shifts in her grasp as the leather straps dull the crying blade’s displeasure and the humming in her wrist. The flames lick the edges of her sight, destroying her night vision, but their light illuminates the face of her adversary, the woman she is about to kill. With every fiber of her being, she wants her dead, but she isn’t sure why.
“Surrender and be banished only.” Kira bends her knees slightly as her face slowly lights with red flame following the sneer on her face and lips. She holds a moment awaiting the answer she hopes will leave her no choice.
“Die!” The woman screams as she draws back her sword arm and the long black hair sways slightly forward and then harshly back from the motion of her strike. “She is leading every attack with a drop of her shoulder, telling me everything I need to know to win.”
The woman’s armor is destroyed, pulled apart by the whirling magics and massive energies that were loosed at the beginning of this battle nearly ten minutes before. Both of them are on the verge of being completely naked, but neither feels modesty or shame for their nudity, just the single mindedness of defeating their enemy and surviving.
“Your decision.” Kira states flatly and then parries the attack with ease. She then turns her blade and slaps the woman on the side of the face with it. The sneer from that beautiful face doesn’t look grotesque or evil, just pissed. Kira knew that if she could upset the woman, if she could make her mad, then the decisions would be clouded for every subsequent move and thus give Kira the upper hand. She also simply wants to piss her off. She wants to make this fight last as long as possible and be as brutal as possible to show this monster the feeling of dismay. The feeling that the vile beast of beauty before her made so many others feel in the past ten years. Kira couldn’t help but feel a pang of regret for all that time lost, lost due to her own misgiving…failures. It would not happen again. This blue-eyed goddess was a demon in disguise and she would not allow that demon to plague the probe any longer.
Kira could hear the sound of drawing power and the rush of energy flowing into the woman as she drew back from the fiery slap. She was pissed and about to draw enough power to try and end this, again. This time, though, it is much more than before. The woman is trying to draw enough power for a single strike to destroy Kira, no matter the defense. Enough power to destroy the very mountains behind her and possibly those beyond that. Enough power, to destroy herself if not released just right. Enough power for Kira’s plan to work.
Kira quietly pulled from her pool of magic and started the chant in her mind. A trick she taught herself back in Bugsby when having to learn to defend yourself meant defeating your opponent before they could defeat you and doing so as secretly as possible.
The woman stands before Kira, her blue eyes gleaming in the flickering flames of both blades. The light dances across her alabaster skin as the flicks of energy crackle here and there. She has the blade at eye level and her left hand forward as if ready for a strike. The sound of energy flowing into her is a thundering tide so loud that Kira can’t hear the crackling of the fires behind her any longer. The once beautiful armor the woman wore is now nothing more than tatters that barely cover her shoulders and leave her near perfect breasts to dance in the gleaming light. The grieves nothing more than a loin cloth of torn leather, with straps holding them together..
Kira knows that her armor is much the same and can feel the breeze across her chest as well, but there is no time for modesty or embarrassment. The onlookers will simply have to forgive her this moment for she is not going to allow anything to disway her from the death of such an evil beast. Not modesty, not pain, not even death will stop her this day. Today is the day her sister will die. Today is the day that her twin will ruin these lands no longer. Today is the day that she will once again hold her head high. Today, she will slay the beast.
The woman brought forth the energy she had been drawing and loosed it at the point of the sword just as she thrust the sword forward at Kira’s chest. Kira, knowing the move and seeing the same fight playing out in her head a thousand times, loosed her magic and the energy of the spell consumed her entire body only a millisecond before the tip of the sword could cut. A thunderous “BOOM!” exploded where Kira just stood and the smoldering town behind her was reduced to nothing but ash as the mountain soon followed in the destruction. The ground quaked around them and the beast was barely able to stay upright. The thunder of the explosion left everyone deaf for a time and Kira could see but not hear the demon before her. She waits, wanting the demon to believe she has won. She waits, hoping that the woman will allow her guard to drop as she know she will. She waits for the woman to feel relieved for living through their second fight. She waits, until she is finally ready.
The release of her power and the shock wave from the blast leaves the beast wobbly and unsure of her footing. She holds the sword more out of training and habit than of any real ability to wield it. Her power released, she was spent and had held nothing in reserve should Kira have survived that assault. The idea that anyone would live through an attack like that was beyond her.
Kira stands there, quietly drawing her power to place with the blade she holds. Her reserves coming to her smoothly and without fail. She has kept a small pool of magic hidden during the fight in an amulet that an old friend had given her way back in the days of Bugsby and that power would be enough to slay the beast now. The nightmare will finally be over. Those wronged will be avenged. She will finally be able to live her life for herself rather than her sister or mother. She feels relieved, but quickly quells the emotions, for the fight isn’t over. The killing blow has not been dealt and there is still work to do.
The thrust of her sword would be so satisfying right now, but if she did, she would miss what she has come for. That moment, that feeling, those eyes. Instead she waits to get her attention. “Lillian.”
Turning around, Lillian brings up her sword in defense, but her awe struck face shows that she is not ready to continue this fight. Thinking Kira dead and knowing that she had spent the last of her stamina in the attack, Lillian is on the verge of passing out. The shock of her name leaves those eyes bulging from her face and her mouth an open maw.
“I killed you once. I will…” Lillian begins, but Kira drives the tip of her sword home between those heaving breasts, praying that there is still a heart there to destroy. She parries Lillian’s attack with her arm guard and drives the sword out of the beasts hands entirely as it clanks on the rocky terrain around them.
“And now I return the favor!” Kira shouts and presses as hard as she can.
Those eyes light with fire for a split second and then the fire begins to dim. She stares helpless into Kira’s eyes, her life fading and her hopes and dreams becoming nothing more than phantoms that would perish with the coming of dawn. Lillian tries to lift, fight and move at all, but settles with taking hold of the sword sprouting out of her chest with both hands. They begin to burn from the shear heat and the skin begins to char, but she takes no notice for she is focused on the demons that are now coming to take her soul. The bill she rang up for her defiance and her standing on the probe had now come due and she was not willingly going to pay it. She tries to chant, move, so much as stir, but her mind no long controls her dying body and Kira watches as the wretched thing is ripped from the mortal coil to be seen no longer. The fight is over and the beast is slain and Kira couldn’t feel better for it. “IT’S OVER!”
“I can’t kill my sister!” Kira opened her eyes wide and tried to lean upward, but something prohibited her movements and held fast against her muscles. She pulled hard on the left and then the right but could not move. Her mind was foggy and she thought maybe she had lost the movement in her arms. The smell of dust and candle wax was washed away in seconds as the smell of garbage and Lilac assaulted her senses. She immediately knew what was going on and her entire body began to tremble as she raged against her bonds. “No…no, no…no!” “Wyndall! Not him. Please let me simply die right now. If any Gods are here, please let me just pass out and die, or go into a coma. Please just let me…”
“You don’t have a sister, remember. You’re a lowly orphan and as such without anyone in this world. That mixed with the fact that you have no talents, no powers and little self control leaves you to the mercies of those with these things. Thus, you are mine and tonight we are going to play.” Wyndall giggled as he poured a small amount of hot wax on her neck and down her chest. She winced in pain and tried to cry out, but the fear that now leapt into her throat caught the sound and she only let out a croak. “I am so glad you enjoy this. Because Nogera is no longer one of my play things and I am looking for a new one. You will do nicely, if you live.”
His threat wasn’t idol as he had already killed three girls and hospitalized poor Nogera. She had refused his advances and wound up beaten black and blue. Wyndall was the son of the Head Mistress of one third of Bugsby. In her half of the school, if you would call it a school, she was all powerful and could do anything she wanted with the students, or slaves, under her control. Kira was one of those students because she was an orphan. Orphan, those that did not show promise or some talent to becoming something greater, were placed in the lower bowls of Bugsby where they would try and survive the harsh treatments of Bugsby and the predators that would feed on them, until their eighteenth birthday, when they could leave on their own. Kira had survived seventeen years, though not all on her own, but the horrors that she had faced were more than most would face in a life time. This night would be no different. “Can’t move. Can’t fight back. Wouldn’t be able to do anything against him even if I could. Please, please, someone, anyone, help!”
“Please don’t.” She stated, not actually begging as she knew it would do no good to beg him and even less good to try and reason with him. Wyndall knew all the passages and other hiding places within Bugsbsy’s lower halls and could get into any of the rooms. He would cover himself in Lilac to try and mask the smell of his normal stench, which was garbage, at least it smelled that way to Kira. He would sneak into the girls dorms once a week and have his way with which ever one caught his fancy. Often enough, Kira was the one. Since she was nearing her eighteenth birthday, he was coming in more and more frequently. “Please just….humph!”
“Shhh.” Wyndall pressed a dirty towel in her mouth and then poured hot wax over it to seal it to her lips. Some of it got in her nose and she began to panic that he was going to suffocate her again. The hot wax burned her lips, but she had spent a night of him taking her breathe away and she did not want to have that again. The wax stopped just inside her nostrils and left enough room for her to breathe. She sighed in relief. Wyndall moved some hair out of her face, almost affectionately so that he could see her eyes. “Now be quite while I play. And don’t think that you are going to close those pretty eyes and keep me out. If they close at all, I will fill them with wax. Blink if you understand.”
Kira did not blink for she knew if she did he would fill one of them with wax. Instead she nodded slightly and starred straight at him. His weaselly black eyes seemed to gleam in the candle light and his long black hair, with the occasional knot, seemed to stand disorderly atop his head like some animal thinking on escaping. His breathe, of which was garlic and onion flavored, seemed to water her eyes enough that she could easily keep them open for a long period of time. Eventually, though, she knew she would have to blink and if he caught her it would become very painful.
“Smart girl. Now, what game should we play tonight?” He asked, as if actually giving her a choice. She felt his hands on her stomach and wretched slightly at his touch. Wyndall was a monster that loved his games. He wasn’t like some monsters that would come after the girls and take sexual liberties. Those monsters were evil, to be sure, but when they were done the girl at least could walk away from the ordeal and live to fight another day. Wyndall liked doing things that would truly harm his prey. Things that would be lasting. “How about we play, rabbit punch?” “No, please no. Don’t hit me. Don’t hurt me. If there are any Gods listening, please just let me die.”
His fist shot into her stomach and she felt the bile come up to her throat, but with no where to go, it simply stayed there and burned her chest. The pain made her try to curl into a ball but the ropes were far too tight for that and she couldn’t so much as move an inch. She was going to have to endure this the entire night. He would punch her until she had black and blue bruises over her entire stomach and then would use his magic to heal her and start again. This would continue until early morning when she was left in tears and begging to be let go. The pain would not be relieved for Wyndall had learned how to heal the bruises look without actually healing the bruise itself. If someone were to look at her, she would look fine, but a simple touch to the stomach will leave her in such pain as not to be able to stand. She was trapped, again, and again she would have no choice but to endure. The true story of her life. “Please, let me die, or save me, but don’t let this happen again. Please don’t let this happen again!”
The rest of the night went as she had thought and her screams were so muffled that even she couldn’t hear them. He stopped only twice to ensure that she would not actually die and healed her before starting all over again. It was close to morning before he finally grew bored and then punched her dead in the face, knocking her out.
Her dreams were something different this time. Something she had not experienced before. She dreamt of a well, where she saw water quickly rushing out the bottom and leaving her alone in nothing but a rock circle of walls. There she could see carvings in the stone around her. The carvings were glowing and swirling through the rock. She looked at one and it looked like the symbol of water, but different in some way. There was a symbol of fire, and many other symbols as well, but all of them seemed slightly different in some way. She reached forward to touch one and light rushed into her world. Light from a flickering fire.
Kira woke, her face throbbing and her stomach on fire. She wasn’t sure how long she had been out, but she was no longer tied to the bed and her clothes were placed neatly by the bedside. She tried to rise and dress herself, but the pain in her stomach stopped her from moving. She tried to curl into a ball and was successful, but it did not stop the pain or even slow the aches of her guts. Her throat was horse and she realized she still had the towel in her mouth covered with the wax. She peeled it away slowly, feeling the pain of her lips being burned from the night before and the wax trying to stick to that skin. She ignored it as best she could and ripped the wax away, spitting the towel on the floor. She coughed, wretched and the threw up slightly. Then she simply lay there and cried. “What did I do in a former life to deserve this? What did any of us do? How could anyone allow them to treat us this way? If I live through Bugsby, I will come back some day and… And what? I have no talent, no skill and no abilities that would make me able to even get through the front door. I am probably going to simply be left on the street where this will be my normal treatment anyway. With all the things that I am learning at Bugsby, maybe this is the most important. Maybe I do deserve everything that is being done to me and as such it will train me for the things I will have to endure in the future. If that be the case, I will find a way to end all of it.”
This was the way of Bugsby Hall. Those that had power could prey on those without power. Only the Nobles escaped this treatment and even some of them were bullied as well. In Bugsby those that survived the ordeal usually went on to live very productive lives. Those that took the training to heart had become the actual rulers of this world in one way or another. Those that don’t learn find themselves on the wrong end of the shovel as the ground is thrown in on them. Kira was a girl with no talent, no abilities, and no way of learning most of what Bugsby had to teach. She could not master a single thing even though she had tried three times as hard as the other students and practiced three times as long. Something in her simply would not allow her to learn anything beyond the most rudimentary of talents. Though she was incredibly smart, she couldn’t get her body to do what she knew it should. Even combing her hair was a chore due to this “curse” and as such she was cast down with the lowest of the low into the bowls of Bugsby where she was destined to live a life of servitude and displeasure. Those that lived within the “C” Wing of Bugsby were the cannon fodder for those that maked up the other two wings of the campus. They were often killed in one way or another and no one cared. No one, that is, except for the fellow companions of those that lived with them, but there was little they could do.
Kira sat up, after an hour of retching and crying and finally could move her feet flat on the ground. She looked at the door and saw that there was light coming through the cracks, which meant that it was morning, but what time she wasn’t sure. She may, or may not have missed breakfast already, of which she wasn’t certain if she cared. She had two friends in Bugsby and one was away on some mission for the school. Kevin would be in the cafeteria, saving her a seat like he always did. He was a great friend, though she knew almost nothing about him. He had come to Bugsby on her fifth birthday and they became friends when he took three shots from one of the kid’s harpoon guns to shield her. The harpoons were very small but they could be deadly. Luckily Kevin has the ability to alter his skin to different types of rock, or something like that, and the harpoons simply clanked to the ground. He had shown up three more times over the years in just the right spot at just the right time to shield her from certain death and as such they became friends. Though they spoke seldom, he always saved a place for her and was always leaving her things. “I am not certain if he is truly a friend or just wants something from me in the end, but right now, I wish he were here. I…”
A knock at the door caught her attention and she jumped. The jump brought every muscle in her stomach up against her and all of them revolted at the same time. She retched again and folded over to try and appease the stomach gods, but was only able to shift the pain from the muscles to the gut itself and its reaction was to try and throw up more bile to keep her busy.
“Kira?” Kevin’s voice came through the door. “Are you alright?”
“I…” was all she could get out before she retched again.
“I’m coming in.” Kevin announced as he pushed the door open. “Wait, that door was locked from the inside, how did he…Oh, who cares. Thank whatever gods that he came now, because I am not certain I would have…Wait, am I in just my panties?”
Kira sat there, her body clothed with only panties while she weekly raised her face to meet his. The look in his eye told her that he understood what was going on and he immediately got to work. She was trying to figure out what he was doing, as he always knew the exact thing to help heal her, but the lights grew dim around his face as he said something she could not understand. Then the lights around the room grew dim as well and then there was nothing. The dreams that would follow were the Demon-Gods of Nightmares.