The Bleeding Skies (2/4)
Freyya and Haalfrin fly away for a little bit, and they only land when they spot a small cottage, hidden beneath a canopy of trees.
This cottage is one of the many properties under Haalfrin's name in Lareen – a gift from some local businessman.
"This yours?" Freyya asks as she points down at it.
"….Yeah."
"It's quite drab. It'll do nicely."
She sets down on the ground (with Haalfrin still draped over her shoulder). She then ruthlessly lifts her leg up and kicks his front door down.
The goddess when walks in and casually uses some magic to rewind time on the door – fixing it again.
Freyya looks around the room and finds a simple space for a kitchen and a large bed in the corner. Other than a few cushioned chairs and a fireplace, there's nothing else in here.
Unceremoniously, Freyya drops Haalfrin to the ground and starts circling around the house – closing all the curtains.
"Freyya? What are you doing?" he asks. "The list didn't say anything about this part."
"It's still part of the Ritual," Freyya mumbles. "It's important for you to not know some details."
"Why're you closing the curtains?"
Freyya doesn't answer. Instead, she only stops when the room is dim and dark. She then steps up to Haalfrin and wraps her small arms around his chest. "We haven't seen each other in a while…"
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Right now, Das is frantically flying across the landscape, searching for any signs of Freyya and Haalfrin.
He knows that Freyya has a head start on him and that she can easily kill that human in a few seconds.
Despite knowing how vulnerable Haalfrin is right now, the old god is more worried about losing track of Freyya than he is about Haalfrin getting killed while he's not looking.
In fact, he's not really worried at all about Haalfrin's life at the moment.
'I can always beat Freyya up before she can escape this world with Haalfrin's soul. I can then use my magic to resurrect Haalfrin again.'
It doesn't even take him a minute until he catches Freyya's trail, and he follows her Aura all the way to its source.
…
Unfortunately (for him), he does find the same cottage, but he senses no thick Death Aura anywhere.
Sure, he can feel her residual Aura here, but he can tell that nobody died.
'She and Haalfrin were both here, but nobody died. They must be somewhere else by now… But where?'
Sadly, Das can think of no circumstance where Freyya wouldn't take the first opportunity to kill Haalfrin herself.
It seems that he didn't account for Freyya's and Haalfrin's lust for each other.
Indeed, that pair of husband and wife isn't trying to kill each other. Instead, they're engaged in a very different kind of *battle* right now.
To twist the knife in Das even further, Haalfrin and Freyya are so preoccupied with each other that they don't even notice that their enemy was 3 inches away from walking in on their private time.
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Several hours later, Freyya and Haalfrin finish *catching up* with each other.
Panting and sweating, they both lay beside each other in harmonious silence – both of their hands clasped together.
After they both catch their breaths, Haalfrin turns on his side and says in a low voice, "You brought me here with a purpose. Why not just kill me right away?"
Freyya turns over and rolls her eyes up in thought, "Hmm… It's just part of the Mantling ritual. I have a feeling that if I had gone to kill you immediately, things wouldn't have gone my way."
She then pulls out Drakavar's scale and holds it up. "I'm not particularly compatible with this thing, so I can't use it very often. If I had fought Das now, I'd probably have lost. Then, he'd just resurrect you again."
"Oh? Are you free to tell me what future event we just imitated?" he asks.
"Sure. It went like this…"
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-The Far Future-
Drakavar must have a thing for thick, dark forests. Whenever she descends on a new world, if she spots a huge splotch of green from orbit, she always chooses to land there.
There's a certain comforting sense of privacy whenever she's in darkness. Plus, she's an introverted loner at heart, so walking in a civilized city has always made her feel stifled. Thus, being out in nature has always felt relieving in some deep way.
When you think about it, being in a dark, overgrown forest is like a Spiritual home to her.
So, as per usual, Drakavar walks through some random, wild forest – aimlessly following the scent of an Elder God.
Now that she's a lot closer to them, she sniffs the air and senses…., "Eh…? There's more than one Kindred God here? All the better!?"
She starts running through the forest – weaving around the trees like a hawk and crouching low to the ground like a panther. The forest floor is so dark that the only thing visible from Drakavar is her two glowing eyes, which are streaking through the forest like a pair of comets.
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After several minutes, Drakavar gets tired of being slowed down by the trees, so she flaps her wings and takes to the skies. From there, it hardly takes her any time at all before she flies halfway across the world.
She only stops in her flight when she senses the two Kindred Gods below her – coincidentally, in another forest.
With her mouth dripping with saliva and her stomach growling with hunger, the black dragon crashes into the ground.
As the dust settles, Drakavar is expecting to a great God as tall and intimidating as herself. Her claws are extended and sharp, and her body is crouched low in a battle stance.
...But whatever she's imagining, she's completely wrong.
After the dust clears away, Drakavar is, instead, greeting with a rather pitiful sight.
Before her is a pair children - a little boy with white hair and silver eyes, and a little girl with black hair and golden eyes. Both of the children have animal ears atop their heads, as well as little, furry tails sticking out behind them.
Obviously, these children are Rehkin..., but more concerning to Drakavar is that they're both dressed in rags and shivering in fear at the crazy lady who just landed from the sky.
"AAH!! ##&*%$*#!!" the little black-haired girl screams in a strange language as she hugs the white-haired boy next to her.
Drakavar looks down and wonders to herself, 'These are Kindred Gods? Aren't Kindred Gods supposed to be like me or Asharrothe? – powerful and intimidating? I mean, Asharrothe is a wimp compared to me, but there was once a time when all the gods quaked before him!'
The black dragon stares at those chubby, rosy cheeks on the children, and her eyes get lost in those big, googly eyes.
'These children seem… so WEAK!? They don't have any elemental spells around them to keep them warm. They don't even have any furry clothes to wear!?' Drakavar looks around and sees splotches of snow scattering the forest floor. 'It must be so cold here… Are these kids going to freeze to death?'
Of course, due to Drakavar's pitifully weak spiritual powers, she can't sense that both of these children have colossal Spiritual Auras on them. If a Rehkin were to look at them, they'd faint from fright.
In fact, the children have such magnetically strong Spirit Auras that the moment Drakavar looked at them, their subtle magic began to work on her Spirit.
Drakavar may have unparalleled strength, but there's no way that she can resist the emotional pull coming from the two Gods of Spirits.
Without any of her previous killing intent, Drakavar bends down on one knee and says in a low, friendly voice, "Where are your parents?"
The kids glance at each other and huddle even tighter together. They can't understand her… and their instincts are telling them to be scared of this strange, black-scaled monster.
Ignoring their state of terror, Drakavar inches closer to them while whispering, "Well, you're probably just like me, then – made by Mora, then tossed aside on some random world and forgotten."
After making this wild assumption, the dragoness immediately feels immense pity well up in her heart for the children.
Tenderly, Drakavar reaches out her hand to the little Fox girl, and the child flinches at her touch. The girl then freezes stiff with fear, so she doesn't back away from the dragon.
The dragon slowly brushes aside the Fox girl's thick black hair with one hand and the Wolf boy's scruffy white hair with the other. She bends down and takes a good look at their faces.
Suddenly, Drakavar's face flushes red, and she squeals loudly, "C-C-CUUUUUUTE!"
Her tail starts thumping on the ground explosively in happiness, though from the children's perspective, they see the monster lady's tail attacking the ground threateningly – leaving deep scars in the ground. It's like the scary lady is saying, 'You see that ground? I could smash your skull in just as easily!'
Drakavar had seen countless beautiful things in her life – jewel-like stars, expensive treasures… Even the so-called "goddesses of beauty" that she's met all looked quite drab to her.
It's fair to say that never, in her life, has Drakavar ever seen something so enchantingly, hauntingly beautiful.
And… the children's beauty isn't from their looks either… There's a magical, untouchable purity in their eyes that immediately bespells Drakavar's heart.