Fairy Tail - Twilight Empire

Chapter 97 - Hisui vs Kyoka

A maroon haze clung to the ruins of the Cube. Tartaros's once proud and secret base lay in nothing more than rubble across the already obliterated Magnolia. A broken piece of the Empire atop a broken piece of a kingdom. Demons and malevolent soldiers were strewn about all over what'd once been a corridor.

Through the haze were but three standing figures, two of which trembled at the sight of the third and most imposing of the group. The lattermost stood tall with her shoulders rolled back and naught more than haughty confidence about her. One had a blade that once glowed but was dimmed by the blood of her enemies, and the other had hands raised with the dark magic capable of slaying Gods, now used for healing. Both were in rags.

The demoness, master of slavery and subjugation, stepped forward, her heavy feet falling and breaking on the cracked stone. She stepped over corpses, bodies of those who served her cause, as if they were little more than set dressing. The two humans inched back at her approach.

Kyoka reveled in this.

Jade shifted the blade so it was held in a more offense-oriented stance. Kyoka shook her head.

"Maybe you've retained some strength to fight me, but in the end, you wouldn't be able to muster any amount of courage to land a strike on me, Your Highness," Kyoka said.

Sherria refused to run, to leave her friend's side.

Jade's wounds were healed. She had no blemishes on her at all. Some slight fatigue had settled in thanks to fighting off the waves of soldiers, but that was easy work.

"Get back to your room," Kyoka said. "And I promise I will finish the work we started years ago."

"No," Jade said. "I'm going to protect Sherria."

"That is an impossible task, little girl," Kyoka said. "I'll gut you and show her your insides before she can even think to get away. You don't seem to understand the situation you're in. Everything that happens from this moment on is according to my permission. I am in full control of you, both of you. Try to run and you'll meet torment, stay and you'll meet the same fate. You are my subjects and playthings, and I don't allow my toys to go missing."

Kyoka finally stopped. Jade and Sherria did the same. Kyoka flashed them a tiny smile.

"Your friends have done a good job of making a mess and will be dealt with similarly," Kyoka said. "Even if they can score their minor victories here and there, we have three aces on our side that have ensured our victory."

Jade grimaced. "You seem to be ignoring the Celestial Spirit King."

"Yes, and he fights with Lord Mard Geer," Kyoka said. "A battle, I assure you, that Fairy Tail will lose. However, even if Lord Mard Geer were to falter, we have STAR, the ultimate weapon. Its prototype is enough to wipe all of you out, just wait until it is completed."

"That's two," Jade muttered. "The third?"

Kyoka shrugged. "You'll have to wait and see. But it'll be here shortly."

Jade swallowed the lump in her throat. She quickly wiped the sweat from her brow.

There was no more time for running, nor any for allowing Kyoka to go through with her machinations. If Sherria could get away, she'd lend a helpful hand to the others. If they were injured, she'd get them back in the fight against the other demons. They'd have the strength to fight Kyoka.

Perhaps...perhaps once this fight would have gone differently.

But the tonnage of torture, the weight of the darkness that Kyoka knew how to sew into people, eradicated the shell of a warrior His—Jade—may have once been.