A Tale of One Deviant (Book One)

Chapter 133: Kaya the Demon

I swung down. Her mini shield, the stupid-looking one that was just as much of a decoration as the rest of her, blocked my blow.

      "Tch."

     "I thought you were soon to show me your skills, peasant!"

     "Yeah," I yelled out. The sword was reverberating back to me in my hands. Some sort of spell that she'd cast on herself ahead of time was making my head fuzzy, so I couldn't see her directly. "And you have yet to show me your power, bit-"

     Her weapon was flung back over her shoulder and launched forward from a circle of a shockwave, momentum carrying it forward and somehow not ripping her arm off along with it. I spun the sword in my gauntlets, holding onto the handle on one end and bracing the lower end of the broad sword with the other, tilting it back. The spear glanced upwards from my deflection, and I slid back on the air platform holding me high up in the sky. It helped me keep a sort of mental stability, one that I wouldn't have been able to have with just flying in the air with dangling toes and flappy clothes like she was-

     "Wake up!"

     The spear came back. My body wasn't very injured till that point, but another notch was added to the belt when I failed to react to the second part of the attack. I always had a barrier on my body, skin-tight. My body itself, flesh and bone, was sturdy because of my race and Status. I could heal it very fast, but it could still burn like crazy when the spear could tear through my side at the speed of a bullet and before I my spells attended automatically to the wound.

     "Stupid...!"

     My feet were swept from under me. Being hit from behind on my waist made me fall on my back, cracking my head on the platform that was suddenly like cement. The taste of blood in my mouth, the thick stickiness of it, the way it spilled out in spurts when I coughed from the whiplash tugging on my lungs - it was all so intense, so real.

     The howling wind below the clouds that I'd ridden on was yelling for justice, yelling for blood. I deprived it of that, not even sparing a thought for healing magic. I had so many fail safes in place that it was almost not amazing anymore that I hadn't died till that point, or just failed.

     So fuzzy. So blurry. I couldn't see directly, properly. Something about her was such a haze-

     I got hit again. Why couldn't I focus?

     "Firea!"

     "I don't recall!" I yelled, feeling the platform beginning to dissipate as my metal fingers crunched on it. It shattered like glass when the pommel of my sword smacked down on it because I hadn't let go. "Letting you say my name!"

     That blurry woman summoned her spear back to her side, holding it in hand at a threatening angle. The gold interwoven with her bangs glinted in the sunlight. Her eyes were missing.

     "Wake up!"

     I smacked my hand down on the platform, palm flat, body twisting, feet gliding as I moved out of the way of her spear. It struck again and again, following me as I ran above the swirling clouds cooking up a storm down below. No matter how many spells I tried to dispel it with, they all failed. Adoray and the others were probably fine, but I couldn't help but feel that the storm would wash them all away. Heavy rain in an area like that meant eventual flooding, but a storm of that proportion meant the entire town could disappear. It was unnatural, just how hard the land was being bartered. I didn't think that Mother Nature had the power for something like that, no matter the hurricane or landslide.

     So of course I was anxious. The erosion of the landscape was being exacerbated by an outside factor. If I didn't stop it soon, I had the feeling bad things would happen that I couldn't reverse.