Random Story Piece + Word Count: 1315
Trigger Warnings: mentions of nudity, mentions of sacrifice and rituals, mentions of calamities
Written by: Del Rey Jean
Requested? Not Technically
Extra notes: This was written during my 100 prompts in 100 days challenge. It takes place sometimes after Edge tried to die on Gabe and then came back.
After nearly losing my only friend and learning the hard way that he can only die by failing to subdue his incredible Arch Demon juju, I thought it would be nice to pay him back. Especially considering I was the one who got him pseudo-killed in the first place.
I swear, doing a simple chore in his house was all I wanted to do!
The last thing I expected was to be staring at a beautiful, incredibly naked young woman in his attic with what used to be a glass ball now shattered at her feet.
Her first move wasn’t even anything I further anticipated either: rather than immediately shrieking and trying to cover up her important bits, she threw her hands up in a warning against me.
“Whatever you do, please don’t release anyone else,” her honey coated voice begged.
I still didn’t have total control over my jaw yet, so there certainly wasn’t any danger to her. . . comrades? Wait. Wouldn’t she want them released too then?
“HEY EDGE?” I called across the house, enhancing my voice with a psychic echo. “I have no clue what the hell I’ve done, but I broke one of your Christmas decorations and now there is a VERY nude woman up here!”
Somewhere on the other side of the mansion, I could hear Edge cursing me under his breath.
Find her some clothes and get your asses down here. Now.
The instruction floated in behind my eyes, gentler than I would have expected.
I gave the girl a lopsided smile, removing my shirt like a perfect gentleman and tossing it over to her.
Her eyes drifted across the stories written into my skin as she caught the piece of clothing. She met my gaze with a small, sympathetic smile, and it stabbed me in the chest.
I gulped down the pain and glanced away from her. I don’t need your pity, my scars aren’t yours to travel.
Clearing my throat, I drew up a hefty dose of sarcasm and gave her my best, maniacal grin.
“I’d give you my jeans too, but my legs are probably twice as long as yours,” I mused, motioning to her much shorter stature. “Edge has a guest room right below us, so I’ll find you something in there.”
I led her down a ladder, half expecting her to not know how to function one.
She remained silent since her warning, but she still seemed to understand speech, and was aware of where her limbs should go to climb down.
Okay, so definitely not someone who spent their entire life in that ball and certainly not brought here from another realm.
Edge had a glass of water waiting for the girl once they came to the living room. After instructing her to drink, which she did with no hesitation, he started to examine her like a doctor.
He tilted her head to each side, then up towards the ceiling, back down to the floor. Next, he pulled down slightly on her cheeks to check her eyes, then moved to pull open her lips with his thumbs.
Two tiny sets of fangs peaked from her otherwise normal mouth. Gabe made a mental note of this.
Edge examined each of her arms, both in appearance and feel. Then pressed on her abdomen in places that seemed rehearsed: just below the collarbone, between the beasts, two places on her sides; one on the rib cage, the other on her hips. The last prod was to her belly.
She sat down for him next so that he could check her legs the same way he had the arms.
It was clear that they were familiar with each other, the girl completely at ease in this increasingly bizarre situation.
“I’m going to safely assume this has happened before, and I’m not actually in trouble,” I stated, my voice completely startling the pair.
As if they’d forgotten that I was there.
Rude.
Edge’s lips came up into a smile and that was the moment that I knew something was horribly wrong.
“Oh, Gabe,” he began with a slow shake of his head. His voice, lethal and sarcastic at the same time. “Anybody else who found that box would already be dead. You’re only alive because you also happen to be my friend… And I still haven’t the slightest idea how to kill you.”
“Wow, what a relief,” I dead panned.
“Come, sit. I’ll explain,” he relented with a sigh, and reminded the girl one more time to drink while they waited.
I made sure to take up a seat in one of the chairs farthest from her, just to be safe. Edge clearly cared for his Christmas decorations very much, and I would hate to have to snap her neck over some sort of misunderstanding or open threat.
“This is a Cataclysm,” he announced slowly, as if I were a child. “You already know the gods this world worships are actually demons called Calamities. Well these are mutations of that race when they first started trying to have babies together – hence why no deity has a child fathered by another deity. There are fourteen of them locked away, and thankfully, they all hate their natures as much as the rest of us. They asked me a very long time ago to keep them imprisoned for the safety of this world.”
“So, what exactly is a Cataclysm,” I asked. I watched a spark of sarcasm light up in his eyes and beat him to it, “I mean, I know the technical definition of the word, but I was unaware that it also referred to living people. I think our dictionary needs an update.”
He flashed me a brilliant grin before he explained, “each of them has an ability to invoke incredible destruction that shows itself in a way unique to the individual.”
Every muscle in my body tensed as each word in that statement struck me hard with the accusation, you fucked up, you fucked up, you fu–
He should not have been this amused. He should have been pissed at me.
I was a hell of a lot more frightened by his lack of rage than anything coming out of his mouth.
“And in what way does this one destroy things, then?” I press.
“She exerts a poisonous protein into the air that subtly attaches to any surface – living or non-living – and then degrades it over a period of time that speeds up the longer the exposure–” just as I was about to lose a little bit of my cool, Edge added, “but it is only exerted when she sweats, so we’ll be okay for now.”
“Oh… yeah, only when she sweats,” I parotted, shaking my head while I gestured to the picture window next to us, “you do realize it’s summer, and we live in the fourth hottest place on the planet, right?”
Edge rolled his eyes and assured me, “calm down dude. We’re locking her back up, and she doesn’t have a regular human body anyways. It’ll take longer before she’s a threat.”
“Great, that sounds like fun,” I lied outright. “And what is this process going to look like to stick her back into a Christmas ball? Do we need babies? I know where to find some babies.”
My friend narrowed his eyes and hissed, “you are not kidnapping anymore kids.”
“Well, at least there won’t be any blood sacrifices for this one.”
“I didn’t say that,” Edge responded, smiling maliciously. “I just said no babies. You, on the other hand, will definitely need to bleed for me, just a little bit.”
Without skipping a beat, I replied with the heaviest sarcasm I could muster, “you know, when I woke up this morning, my first thought was how lovely it would be today if I could partake in a blood sacrifice.”
Edge grinned. “That’s the spirit!”