"The Half-Blood Arc: Ashes of War - Volume 1"

Part 22

It hangs in the oven there. Its wingspan was about as massive as a condor's. In Matthias's mind, he wondered if it was going to torment him slowly or swiftly kill him. Did the creature have better things to do? The possibility of how it might end his life kept flashing through his mind. However, his pondering was abruptly halted when he heard it spoken.

The creature's voice changed to a parody of someone he recognized. The creature mocking him sounded like “bonjour”. The gargoyle moved toward the tree, and the light revealed facial features reminiscent of a man Matthias briefly knew. "Lena," the word slipped out of Matthias's mouth."

“C'est une belle soirée, dommage que le monde se termine. As-tu déjà eu la chance de prendre des cours de français?"

Translation:

"It's a fine evening, too bad the world's ending. Did you ever get the chance to take French classes?" Lena said 

"Matthias  understood some of what he said and responded to the only sentence he knew in French: "Je suis désolé, je ne parle pas beaucoup le français."

Translation:

"I'm sorry, I don't speak much French."

Lena glided down like a butterfly, landing gracefully next to Matthias. Matthias noticed more details about her facial features; they resembled the classic ghouls and goblins found in fairy tales, just a bit more hideous than he imagined. Like a vampire bat, wings wrapped around him. Matthias also noticed that he was wearing some kind of red robe.

Lena, although he never truly had a German accent, it was possible enough. Even though his monstrous voice sounded different, it seemed to have a lot more of a French accent than he remembered.

One thing that Matthias noticed about Lena's eyes is that they glowed like the others'. There was a universal glow from the creatures' eyes that Matthias observed; although some had different colors, most of them shared the same illumination in the dark.

Matthias broke the silence between them. "I thought you blew up with a handful of other monsters. I thought you were dead." There was a slight chuckle from Lena as he replied, "Well monsieur, there was an explosion, and it did kill some of the monsters at the gate. 

There was a pause in Lena's speech as if he were in a daydream. Anxiously, Matthias urged him on, "Well?"

"Another gargoyle captured me," Lena admitted.

 “By the time that thing went off, I was 500 feet in the air." There was a brief thousand-yard stare on Lena's face as he continued with his story. "Either I join them or I get tortured to death... slowly. They needed some manpower after my little stunt." He laughed as he realized he said "manpower." "That's something about my human language I'm going to have to change real quick."

“Matthias looked him in the eyes and realized there was more to what he was trying to say. Matthias began to probe him and said, 'There's more to the stories, isn't there?'"

"A smile appeared on Lena's face. 'I only said I'm doing it under one condition,' he stated, 'and that was you converting my wife. I never realized how much I truly loved him until then. Sure, we were married, but it felt more out of convenience than true love. I guess after telling the world, I really couldn't live without him.'" 

"Matthias then laughed and said, 'One more thing, why do you have a girl's name?' Lena replied, 'Kid, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe my mother was just playing a practical joke on me, one that I've never quite understood.'"

"Matthias felt a little bit at ease as he asked, 'So what happens now?' Lena answered, 'Well, Mr. Matthias, I'm going to complain about how incredibly hard it was to find you. Matter of fact, we had to stop our advance in Paris because of you. Focusing some of our forces just to find you. And I mean really look.' The surprise came on Lena's face, then he continued, 'You wouldn't believe how hard it was to find a dying, smiley, mid-twenties, unshaven man covered in dirt, hobbling around with a rifle near the place we started our massacre.' Matthias' eyes widened. 'All that just for me?!' Lena, seizing the moment, looked into his eyes. 'Somebody wants to speak to you, Matthias.' Matthias questioned, 'Who?' Lena answered, 'Our mother.'"