Plucked parrot

"H- How did? How?" The guy trembled crawling away from Uli.

Uli stood there, looking at the corpse.

"Now I am truly lost" he said. There was no trace of the usual joy or mockery in his voice. He said it thinking about the corpse not vanishing, but his words had taken another meaning the moment they came out of his mouth. He didn't know how, but he knew the crystal heart was Jax's. He could sense something lingering in it. A will.

He had only known him for two years, when he was first appointed to travel with The Father instead of doing errands around the country, but he took a liking to him. And he had felt something else coming from him too.

He spoke to Sui in a fatherly manner. Not Fatherly, but fatherly. He had always dismissed his advice as old man's ramblings, and he still did, but what got him good was the fact that they were meant to help him. And that, for him, was a first.

It was already rare that someone approached him knowing what he was. Let alone talk to him. But helping him? That turned Uli's world upside down. That was, for him, like a wake up call. He had complied to kill, kidnap and torture people with no complaints, he had been trained to withstand that life from a very young age. They fed him, they covered his necessities, and gave him every thing they thought a man would need to keep him in line.

He wasn't a greedy person, and he just did his job, read books he found interesting, and trained. But Jax briefly showed him what he was lacking: freedom.

Jax knew exactly how to talk to someone like this. Jax was very old, and didn't have anything to fight for, so he just picked up things on his way to death, as he liked to put it to himself.

Uli was one of these things. He pushed just enough to tilt him in the good direction. Like a little rocket altering an asteroid's orbit path a fraction of a nanometer, his words were enough to avoid the collision a million years from then. When he thought he had pushed him a bit more than necessary, he just stepped in to calm him down, to tell him to be smart and patient. He didn't like people not being free. He didn't like people living like he had lived.

So now, Uli knew he was dead, and he felt an anger he had never experienced before.

His muscles had hardened everywhere in his body. And something was boiling up from his heart, expanding to every inch of skin. His eyes glowed with a silver light, and, slowly, his robe started floating, his hair shook wildly around his head, and his feet stopped touching the ground.

To the adventurer, he looked like Satan coming for him to bury his soul in hell and to bring him a world of pain. He was sweating profusely, and his fear had just builded up when he saw that, somehow, his boss hadn't ended his run. He just lied there headless, dead, and very, very bloody. Parts of his skull had sprinkled around his corpse, and he could see the pieces of brain scattered between the leaves. When his mind started to pick up this fact, a fact that he had trouble assuming, he realized that, for the first time, his life was in danger. Minutes passed and he didn't dare to move a muscle. He saw the demon levitating before him. It was looking in his direction, but it was not staring at him.

"Tell me" the demon said. "Where do you come from."

The guy startled. He had entered some kind of trance in which he had, too, spaced out. He woke up, and realized, again, the situation he was in. He trembled like jelly, and noticed the warm feeling of pee flowing against his thighs.

Uli twisted his face in digust, and repeated his question.

"WHAT ARE YOU?"

The guy gathered every minuscule portion of bravery in his heart, and tried to explain him how they were sent from another world, how they hunted for beast cores to increase their stats.

But to no avail. The demon guy didn't seem to understand, he just stood there staring at him with those cold silvery eyes. He noticed his skin had turned reddish, instead of the dark grey demons usually showed.

"Are these the beast cores you are referring to?" he asked, pointing at the crystal hearts with the guy's severed hand.

"Yes, they are."

"Do I look like a beast to you?-"Uli said.

The man didn't respond immediately. He decided not being sincere.

"No."

Uli turned to the side, and started breathing. His feet touched the ground again. He felt shame. He didn't like to get angry. He had survived that long because of his ability to detach from matters of the heart.

He knew how to collect himself to a point were he looked like a psico. Suddenly, Uli's flooding rage had cooled down. Only disgust remained. Disgust and sadness. He was already tired of being free. He could hear the birds fleeing from the direction of the caravan, so he knew more adventurers were probably approaching. He decided to gather the immediately useful info.

"Okay. How do I stop your little friends from chasing me. If they could kill that many guards, they are probably over 50. You guys have a way of finding me. Tell me, with as little words as you can, how do you do that, and how can I escape without committing a genocide. Its not that i care about you, and i have no desire for vengeance, it's just that i am tired, and I want time to think in peace."

"That is very simple. You are, right now, the objective of our mission, so there is a locator on you, this means that we will always find you. No matter where you go. The missions are given to those in charge. Only them can forfeit that mission. Since you killed everyone here, and I am next in line, I can forfeit the mission. But you can guess my condition."

The guy started panting heavily. He had talked without taking a single breath.

"Very well then" Sui answered with a cold smile. "I will comply to those conditions, if you comply to one of my own. I will take you up this tree right here, and tie you to one of the high branches. You must stay there for two days. I will give you this parrot, as well." To the adventurer's surprise, he took a plucked dead parrot out of his tunic. "After exactly two days, you will kill yourself. I know you don't die, you just go somewhere. You guys wouldn't be so cold when your friends die if they did for real. With the exception of this friend here. Don't ask me, i don't know. It was a pleasant surprise, though."

"You plan on studying my hand?" The adventurer was dumbfounded.

"That is not your business. You stay up there eating this parrot, and just kill yourself or whatever after two days. I suggest you not to jump. Jumping from that height will probably kill you. If you do it heads on, it will most likely do the job, but you don't wanna know what happens if it doesn't. You have sharp things in there, so you shouldn't have a problem to end it cleanly."

The adventurer could not help but comply. He could tell the beast didn't really know how to kill him for real. But at this point, he felt so intimidated by the demon that he couldn't even dare to think about not doing what the monster wanted him to do.

The horned being grabbed him by the ankle, and started jumping between the two closest trees. He was shocked by his strength. He could jump back and forth between the trunks and gain altitude at an astounding speed.

At one point, he just released him, almost giving him a heart attack, but suddenly, something else grabbed him by the waist. He realized it was his tail. A long, dark tail with a clean spike at the end. It was a weird situation. He was, again, surprised. It didn't look like a very muscular thing. Yet, it was enough to carry his seventy kilograms, plus the armor and the... The beast core bag. Fuck.

When they arrived at the top, Sui noticed his brief look at the crystal hearts in the ground.

"Don't even think about it- he said. He threw the parrot at him. And the guy almost lost his balance while catching it."

"Good bye, mister demon. Thank you for sparing me."

The demon looked at him mockingly.

"You know? We "demons", as you call us, are very similar to you. Would you walk around carrying a bag full of whatever you have on your chests?" The adventurer made a surprised face. "Yeah, it's a weird thing to do, to say the least. Two days."

The demon made a good bye gesture with the severed hand (for the second time). His skin had gone back to the usual dark grey. He put his hat on and took a step into the void. He wondered how did the hat not fly away when he did this kinds of things. It must be enchanted or something, he thought. He was about to crash into the ground at rocket speed, but somehow, slowed down and arrived lightly besides the beast core bag. Then, he took his own bag out, and the crystals started flying towards it. The ones that didn't fit, he mercilessly destroyed them with his naked foot. At least he had a plucked parrot for him, he thought.

Suddenly, something hit the demon. The demon was pushed against the tree beside him, with such force, that the trunk couldn't withstand it, and broke apart.