The Riches of Power

Giddy Angels

POV Ryder

Anxiously we watched Asmodel. She was still a tattered frantic mess. She had frizzy hair strands flying out of her previously clean, straight, mouse brown hair. Her worried green eyes closed for a prolong period of time like you would when you heard something you wish you hadn't, her frame had sunk for those few moments too as she inhaled deeply and exhaled as her emerald eyes once more. "You sure you only counted twenty two?" She said her gaze piercing begging us to giver her a different answer.

I frowned "This is the third time you've asked us, and I'm not going recount" a tinge of irritation coated my words. Another pause as she looked down at the ground in her own personal moment of despair as we waited for her next string of words.

"Then that means one of them escaped," She said her response equally nettled, as if we had watched the traipse bolt back over the wall and cower back into the forest. "Which means, that they have gone back to the rebels, and will give them as much information as they can."

"How do you know that they were from the rebels?" Pieper asked.

"Traipses can communicate?" Karen asked surprised, and confusion edged her features. That was a curious Idea, who knew screeching and squawking could actually translate to anything intelligent.

"The rebels brand their traipses on their right palm" Taryn answered Piepers inquiry. My eyes flash momentarily to the corpse that lay not to far away with its limbs separated from its encounter with a scythe, I did see a hint of a red emblem on the palm. I'm surprised I hadn't caught that earlier. Karen nodded along with Pieper, accepting the answer but a hint of distrust replaced the confusion on her face for a moment at Taryn's extensive knowledge of the rebelling demons.

"There are demons who have perfected the coercion and and translating skills necessary to calm a traipse and obtain any information they have to offer." Asmodel says simply.

"So kinda like a traipse whisperer" Trinity momentarily giggles. I snicker, but Asmodel doesn't seem to be in a playful mood of any sort and her face remains rigid.

"I guess that's one way to look at it." She sighs.

" It doesn't help that they are in constant pain" Elaina whispers softly, but we are all so quietly that we can hear her. I turn to face her and as what she meant. "Traipses are damned souls its one of the methods that Satan likes to implore on the sinful souls that didn't find salvation. He makes them distorted demonic dogs of sorts. Their bone structure makes them able to move, but the poor creatures live with agony with every movement." I looked around at some of the corpses that haven't been cleaned up yet, and swallow. They were all human once.

"What happens when-" I pause.

"When you kill them?" Taryn asks bluntly. " Their souls get recycled to another traipse body in a never ending cycle for eternity." She says unsympathetically. I nod, thats unfortunate.

"So whats going to happen?" Calvin asks

"They are going to attack again?" I say, deducing. Probably with larger numbers, I note

" They aren't just going to just attack, not if it's anything like what they had done at our japan sanctuary." She said horror streaking her voice as a pained look crosses her features.

"What happened to the Japan sanctuary?" Pieper asks.

With sorrow laid out across he features she looks up and around the sanctuary, it was a mess blood stains were along the stones the walls. Most of the small houses had their roofs caved in because of the traipses jumping off of the walls and onto the buildings. Others had been completely turned to chunks of cemented black stone and splintered wood for when the traipses bumbled into them. The fountain in the middle was of course destroyed, and water mixed with black blood across the square. Silver metal pieces lay scattered as well. The wall remained intact, but with a few cracks in the thicker stone. Their feet patterns left marks on the stone paths as well, as the sanctuary had fought back taking every a layer of skin with every touch from the thin skinned boned creatures.