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In another time
Many things happen in someone's life, which lead to the space they occupy. The direction of a fork in the road. A meal shared, a book read, all these things fractionally change the means in which people live their lives.
Senken's life was mostly the same, in this tale. Still born in a light winter, still a savant of magical talent, not one thing changed that made him stand where he is now.
Perhaps an extra hug from his mother. An extra meal shared with his family.
Where Senken had chosen to go north in our story, instead he went south. He chose to leave earlier as well, walking this path at sixteen years old.
His path wound south, traipsing through settlements where he visited and helped where he was needed, but upon reaching the domain of Graf Granam, that great walled city, he saw his first ever barrier. Witnessing the masterwork, it was a wonderful thing. He had vowed to look upon it in detail later that night.
He had learned within the town of Aura the Guillotine, the demon who had been accosting these lands, and her chosen envoys sent to negotiate peace.
With the only experience with demons being his own as a child, in defense of his sister, Senken had chosen to let them do as they needed.
That night, however, as he inspected the barrier, he was visited by them, these envoys of peace.
A man, a boy, and a girl, all dressed in finery and looking the part of diplomats, only given away by the horns on their heads.
When they met, there was only thirty feet between the trio and himself, Senken's back to the wall of the barrier.
The tallest, a man dressed in ostentatious silk, spoke first.
"Forgive us for disturbing you." He said, giving a slight bow at the waist, merely a formality. "We were hoping to speak with you."
Senken looked past them. His senses expanded. Only three demons, himself, and the nearby population, asleep in the night.
"About?" He asked.
"The city." The demon answered.
Senken took a breath in through his nose. In the wind, he smelled rot. "You have names?"
"I am Lügner." The demon answered, sweeping his hands outward, first to the left to the girl, and then to the right to the boy. "This is Linie, and this is Draht." Neither demon spoke, they didn't even acknowledge the introduction, simply staring at Senken.
Senken gave a nod. "Senken."
"Just that?"
"Do you need more?"
Lügner laughed softly, a fake wheeze of a thing. "No, I suppose not. Humans tend to give themselves titles, however."
He gestured to Senken. As he had decided to go south, the furs he had gotten from hunting were used to make a proper bedroll for his form. Worse case, it could be used as a blanket if it were cold, and he wasn't able to make a fire for whatever reason.
"You are a soldier?"
"No."
"Of course not, you are unarmed. A merchant?"
"No."
"Again, obvious, you lack any meaningful wares."
A pause.
"Mage?"
"Sometimes."
The woman, Linie, shifted her head to the side a fraction. Lügner let his smile widen a little bit, as if enthused.
"Sometimes?"
"I don't particularly enjoy labels."
"How inconvenient."
Senken narrowed his eyes. "Is that a problem?"
"Not at all." Lügner lifted both hands, as if to placate what anger Senken may have felt. "We are only trying to understand who we are talking to. As diplomats do."
"Diplomats for what, even?" Senken asked.
Lügner's voice was cordial, as if over dinner. "This city is going to fall."
"And you are here, talking to me, to what end?"
'We want you to leave."
Senken's gaze drifted between the three. "If I don't?"
"Then our conversation becomes considerably less pleasant."
Senken could see Linie and Draht shift at those words, subtly, to them, getting into position to move.
Linie spoke, softly. "He's looking at my feet."
Lügner gave Senken a practiced, exasperated look. "You have no loyalty to Graf Granat. Why die for him?"
"Who said anything about dying?"
"Aura the Guillotine has deemed this city hers. All who submit will be allowed to live. Those who do not will be disposed of."
Senken could tell that Lügner felt invoking that name and title was meant to mean something. However, he cared more about the idea being invoked in the statement.
Someone strong deciding how the weak should live, if they should live. Just as he did, the latter half of his time in the Heian Era sufficed with festivals in his honor, all so he would not kill them.
"We've wasted enough time." Draht finally spoke, taking a step forward. The emotion on Lügner's face seemed to bleed back into whatever vessel within his body he held it in, stoic and deadpan now.
"Yes, you have." Senken agreed. Draht and Linie rushed, both bringing magic to the fore. Draht was faster on the draw, his magic a thin string that fired out, swiping through the air. Senken sent a dismantle to the thread, and instead of cutting it, it had simply been knocked far off course, scoring the wall as it scratched into the stone like a blade.
Linie had used her magic to summon a two handed axe, bringing it to bear against Senken as he pivoted to address her. Despite her speed, and the sharpness of her axe, Senken had both reach and weight.
As her axe came up with a swing, he caught the handle with one of his lower arms, blocking it before it could finish, though her strength buckled his arm. The other arm on that side fired a jab that caught her in the face, and as she stumbled back from the blow one of his legs shot out to catch her in the chest and knock her light frame away.
Addressing Lügner, he didn't see the demon, only a mass of blood, growing into branch-like appendages towards him. A flurry of dismantles trimmed the limbs back to their root, a bloody barrier that became scored like quarry marble as his dismantles knocked into it. Linie was back up, axe set into a high guard, as she rushed back in.
Having trained with and against Heben and his mother, Senken wasn't unable to keep up, but this was an intensity he wasn't prepared for, the strength behind blows meaning to kill him. He diverted, attempted to dismantle her, but Lügner was covering with more bloody appendages that split his attention in a flurry of violence and magic. All his defense was focused on making sure Linie didn't cut off a limb, and all his offense was intercepted by Lügner's magic.
A low swing from Linie forced him to jump, and he saw passing into where he was to land, a loop of that indestructible thread of mana. Draht had bid his time, and Senken had fallen for the trap. As he fell into it, it was pulled, and Senken channeled dismantles into his midsection to keep a barrier around the wire as it tried to cut him in half.
He was surrounded. Linie in his guard, preparing to push the assault again, Lügner making to cover her, all while Draht, out of view, pulled his attention in a third direction in making sure he couldn't let up on his technique. He had the mana to spare, but he didn't have the bandwidth. There was only so much one mage could do at a time.
His hand opened, a magic circle blooming from his palm, and Zoltraak fired into the ground beneath his feet, kicking up cobblestone and dirt in a smoke cloud.
For a moment, the demonic trio couldn't see anything. It was only the fact that Draht could feel his thread moving that he knew where Senken was, and called out.
"He's going left!" He yelled, Lügner reacted, rushing that direction but Linie was turning the opposite way, the why revealing itself to Draht.
Only Draht really saw, as the dust cleared in that same moment, that he had been wrong. Senken had not moved from his spot, only having turned and grabbed the thread with the same technique he was using to stop it cutting through his stomach. Linie, and her superior mana detection, had not been fooled as Draht had, but she had not seen he had manipulated the thread.
Draht couldn't call out in time as Senken let the thread go, and it twanged tight, straightening out.
Straight through Linie's neck, garrotting her head clean from her shoulders.
As her head sailed through the air, Draht felt the cord of mana around the mage give, a sensation he had never had with his curse before. So focused on Linie, he hadn't seen the horrible mutation of the mage. The fabric of his shirt had been cut, as had the sides slightly, but what he could see, grinning at him, was a second mouth in his abdomen. Which had seemingly bitten through the cord, an impossibility.
A force passed over Draht, and he began to fall backwards, vision doubling as he felt control leave him. He died, not knowing he had been cut in half from crown to crotch.
Senken pivoted, swinging a foot out and having the long limb smack heel first into one of the probing limbs of blood flowing from Lügner, a cleave blasting through the construct and shattering the hardened blood, leaving the demon alone, and shocked.
Following through, Senken waved a hand like it was a dance, and three dismantles ripped through the tallest of the trio, cutting through both arms and torso at the armpit, the elbow, and the wrists, Lügner's one outstretched hand being cut in half with the first attack along with the arm it was attached to. The demon collapsed into a pile of his own dismembered body parts, parting into that same black dust that all monsters were made of in the end.
Senken looked around the immediate area, surveying for any more demons he hadn't been aware of, but those three had been it. All that remained was the divot in the ground where his Zoltraak had landed, clumps of grass bound by roots peeled back from it like torn tressing upon a roast, stringy and desperate. A few grooves carved the ground as well,where his dismantles had dug deep from their trajectory.
Realizing the fight was over, he turned and left, making for the exit to the city.
There was still the matter of Aura the Guillotine.
Leaving the city was easy enough, as easy as entering at least, and his mana detection skills had been able to pick up the readings even from as far as they were. He moved in a direct line, his long legs carrying him through the wilderness to his quarry, mana held close to himself like a blanket.
The first thing he came across, however, were corpses. Headless, shambling corpses, dressed in the ruined heraldries of knights having fallen in battle, gripping chipped and dirtied blades. They stepped in stiff, stuttering steps, as if not fully able to control themselves, and Senken didn't let any get close enough to make their blades useful.
Metal sheared and rotting flesh tore and pulped beneath his dismantles, reducing these adhoc forces to the corpses they were.
And as Senken grew closer, the more corpses there were, and more that needed to be laid low. Each one had a wisp of mana, like a tether, leading to where he was going. Aura the Guillotine was not difficult to find.
She stood amongst this macabre menagerie of corpses under her control, illuminated by the moon. Her hair was done just so, complicated braids casting down her shoulders. She wore a bodice, opera gloves, and thigh high boots. To Senken, she reminded him of the fashion that was popular in the modern day of jujutsu. Showing skin, wearing little and enticing others with what was hidden and what was visible.
"So," she spoke, voice high and mighty. "You're the one causing trouble."
Senken didn't bother responding, just pointedly looking at the myriad of undead behind and to the sides of her, before shifting his focus back. She had tilted her head, face in a contemplative pout, as if she were told to act like she was thinking really hard.
"Four arms, four eyes, two mouths, but no horns." She commented. "I suppose even humans can imitate their betters."
Senken raised an eyebrow at her words, and she took it as if she had provoked him, a confident smirk splitting her lips.
"I am Aura, the Guilloine." She said, with all the inflection of someone performing a curtsey and yet she did not. "I am sure you have heard of me."
"Not before tonight." He answered, and she grinned again, as if another victory had been won.
"Oh, he does speak!" She fawned. "I had worried your stature had made you mute and dumb."
She lifted the scales in her hand, and Senken went to attack, before she spoke her spell.
"[Auserlese]"
The mana he had brought to the fore whisped away as he felt something he hadn't experienced since Shinjuku. Someone was touching his soul. He watched the scales cradle two balls of mana. One, was light blue, and he felt it was his. The other, which was black, was probably Aura's.
The scale was tipped, totally in Aura's favor. She looked at the sale, then at him, and he felt a sort of static run across his skin.
"Kneel."
Senken, at seven feet tall, could not disobey. He knees bent, and he settled into the grass, his mind whirling with explanations. Her spell. It was the thing controlling the corpses. Aura began walking towards him, sword catching the moonlight.
Senken had been ready for an offensive spell, but this was different.
'Why does she take the heads?' he asked, racking his mind for answers. 'She has control, she shouldn't need to, unless…'
The control wasn't perfect.
She stood in front of him, blade rearing back. The lack of control over his body meant that Senken couldn't quicken his breathing to account for the panic in his mind. He had only one idea, and it would require him to get the timing perfect. Something he might not be able to do without being able to see the blow coming.
He waited. Expected some gloating line, but Aura never spoke. She didn't need to. To her, this was another victory.
What he received instead was a decapitating blow, Aura grinning in victory as the blade passed through Senken's neck. The bite of skin, meat, and bone, then more meat and more skin, passing from the back of his neck to in front of his adams apple.
And yet, Senken still had his head, a phenomenon that Aura saw and yet could not process it.
Senken had used cleave to, instead of destroy, to mend, and as the blade passed through his neck, it had healed behind it just as fast, not even a drop of blood showing signs of the blow received.
Aura could feel Auserlese straining as, against the order, Senken stood to his full height, and his mana flooded out of him. The difference in weight between her soul and his was so vast that the scales were ripped from her hand and sent into the mud at their feet.
So steep the canyon of mana between them, that the spell folded in on itself, and despite having already picked someone as the loser, it changed, and Aura felt her spell work against her.
Senken looked down at her, stoic as he decided what to do.
There was a side of him that, echoing in Yuji's voice, whispered of mercy. She was pitiable. Her spell, now, would make her his slave. He could force her to travel with him, to live as humanity does and learn that her being a demon was only a facet she could not control. She would be like Uraume, a confidant, albeit barely half a shadow of a poor imitation thereof. Someone there, so that neither of them could walk the world alone.
Then his gaze drifted to the corpses, all stood still, waiting with headless abandon.
That voice of mercy left his mind. In the Heian Era, this sort of jujutsu would have disgusted any who bore witness to it. In the modern day, that same sentiment would be held.
The fact that demons eat humans, it echoed the gut feeling he had.
She was wasting perfectly good meat.
Senken turned, and began walking the way he came, reaching up to rub at his neck where he had cheated death.
"Aura, kill yourself."