Non Serviam: Chapter 22

Chapter 22: Judgement Day

In truth, I grew complacent.

“È un piascè conoscerti,” Mittelt said. A pleasure to meet you.

I furrowed my brow and gave the response I’d been taught my best try: “Ey un pyasher conoshertee, ahn—anche. Mio nom ey Taylor”

“Ah, no!” Mittelt threw up her hands. “Sembra ghe di sia ingoiata la lingua!”

It turned out that Devils could also ‘forget’ how to speak every language. Just another trick you could manage with a bit of focus. After learning that, Asia had been all too eager to ‘teach’ me Italian, and Mittelt played along because she enjoyed how bad I was at it.

“Devi dire,” Mittelt said. “‘anche per me, mi chiamo Taylor.’”

“Anche per may, me keeamo Taylor,” I said.

“Chiamo.”

I clenched my jaw. “Chiamo.”

Mittelt nodded. “Allora, praticalo con Asia”

I blinked. Those words had not been on my vocabulary worksheet. “…Huh?”

Mittelt sighed. “Practice with Asia, darling,” she said in English.

Asia bounced in her train seat as I turned towards her. “È un piacere conoscerti!” she chirped.

I took a breath. “Anche per may, me…chiamo Taylor.”

Asia clapped her hands. “Molto bene!”

I sighed. At least I understood that one. I relaxed my will, letting the soothing embrace of Alltongue translate the rest of the world for me.

“You really are doing great, Taylor,” Asia continued. “I’m proud of you.”

Mittelt snickered. “Proud of the devil for working for something like the rest of us have to, instead of just getting it for free.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever you say.”

I had focused on this for Asia’s enjoyment. Perhaps it was trivial, but it had also broken the ice between my two blondes. Every time Asia giggled at my horrible pronunciation, or chided Mittelt for being too hard on me, I felt more sure this was the right decision.

Asia was surrounded every day by new friends, ensconced in the safety of Kuoh Academy, and Diodora hadn’t even looked in her direction. He’d seemed to genuinely enjoy his time in the ‘human world’, and had even visited Kyoto to pay respects to the Yokai that ran most of Japan.

With the weekend of his visit to the rating game school fast approaching, and Asia still a bit averse to staying in Hell, we’d planned a trip out of town ourselves. Asia was overjoyed that we would be taking her to Good Friday Mass, a ‘holy day of obligation’ apparently. She’d even wheedled Mittelt into accompanying her to the service itself. I’d offered, but Asia would never consent to another person’s suffering.

We were forty-eight hours away from safety.

Then our train stuttered to a stop, and the metal wall peeled away in a shrieking tear.

A hulking, misshapen hand pushed into the car with six fingers, all thumbs, grasping after the stunned and shrieking passengers. They closed around a young man. His glasses clattered to the floor.

Then an arc of steel cut the air. Letticia landed on the far side of the cabin, and the arm split at the wrist, cut in two by a stroke of her spear. The man fell to the ground, stunned but very much alive.

Outside, the thing roared in pain.

“Stray devils.” Letticia blocked the hole in the train with her body. “Go. I will call for reinforcements to handle this.”

I stood, taking Asia by the shoulder. “This way.”

Mittelt cut open the far doors with a flash of light, and we jumped out onto the tracks. Right now, we were on an overpass. The stray devil had climbed the concrete pylons to get to the moving train. A story below, cars continued to drive by unaware that the supernatural had come to visit.

A tension coiled in my gut. “We’re too exposed. We need to get out of here.”

“I’ll say.” Mittelt had yet to dismiss her spear. “Carjacking time?”

“We can’t just steal a car!” Asia said.

“Are cars safe?” I asked.

Mittelt pulled a face. “Getting crushed might be unpleasant.”

“We could wait for Letty.” It sounded like she was making short work of the stray devil.

Mittelt pointed.

I followed her finger. On the far end of the bridge, three more strays shaped like chimeras from wicked imaginings had climbed the bridge. Letticia landed lightly on top of the train, glancing towards us.

She flicked the blood from her spear and waved for us to run in one motion.

“We go.” I scooped up Asia. “Call Rias, see if we can’t get a teleport.”

We were over an hour out of Kuoh by train, so our only extraction was going to be by devil magic. There was a chance that taking a car was the safest option, but I doubted it.

Mittelt pulled out her phone after we jumped from the bridge before hissing in annoyance. “No signal.”

The tension in my gut released as the pieces clicked into place. “Diodora,” I said. Mittelt nodded.

I glanced at Asia, who looked up at me from the cradle of my arms.

“We have to get back to Kuoh.” I unfurled my wings. “Stay below the roof line.”

“Hoh? Aren’t you worried about the masquerade?”

“Weren’t you the one who told me?” I crouched, two circles of magic spinning into existence beneath my feet. “That’s what glamour is for.”

I leapt into the sky.

My first spell gave me a burst of speed; despite that, Mittelt quickly caught up with me. “Should have worked on your flying more!”

I grunted, focusing on my second spell. Making Imp’s power work with devil magic was difficult and costly. I didn’t have the power or the processing to scrub myself from short term memory in real time, so instead, I’d focused on the same trick I used to keep people from noticing my hair. Just a light suggestion that nothing was interesting here, you’re probably just seeing things. I’d lifted the basic spell work from the same blog as my transformation spell.

If the glamour got us through this attack, I’d have to write a thank-you letter.

A figure in blue and white dropped from the roof.

“Look out!”

He threw a pair of nets; Mittelt cut hers, but I had my hands full. With a grunt, I spun. The net snagged a wing even as I dropped from the sky, but I kept Asia free.

I landed a beat after the attacker and set Asia down behind me. Overhead, Mittelt swerved back around, light spear at the ready.

With another burst of magic, a sword dropped into my waiting hand.

Across the street, Freed Sellzen laughed.

“Stay behind me, Asia.”

I charged, cutting the distance between us away. The fake priest’s eyes widened comically, and he tilted back.

Somehow, a dodge transitioned into backwards roll. I caught a kick on my arm, then he opened distance yet again. I blocked a light bullet with my blade, letting the holy energy steam off into the air.

“Woah, woah!” Freed spun the light pistol around his fingers. “Let’s not be too hasty here!”

I shifted my stance. “Mittelt.”

She landed behind Freed, leveling her spear at him. “I must admit, I’m looking forward to skewering you, Sellzen.”

He laughed louder. “Didn’t know I made such a good impression.” He flicked a glance over his shoulder. “But your time playing pretend is over. Kokabiel wants you back.”

Mittelt’s face flickered through several emotions.

“Yeah!” Freed grinned, turning back to me. “Didn’t expect that, did you, shitty devil?”

I shifted. “That changes nothing.”

“Doesn’t it?” Freed waved a hand. “Hey, Mitty, tell your shitty devil what that changes.”

Mittelt laughed. “Well, I guess that means we’re done playing house, huh, Boss.” Her voice was light and airy, but her face…

She looked at me dead on, spear still leveled at Freed’s back.

I sucked in a breath. “Get out of here, then.”

She nodded before pasting on a smug smile. “It was fun while it lasted. Now, if you’ll just excuse me.”  She launched up into the air, before sweeping down on Asia.

“No!” I lunged at her, only for Freed to follow a step behind. He forced me to defend, just in time for Mittelt to sweep up Asia and carry her away.

Hopefully to safety.

Hopefully she hadn’t just been playing me as well.

“Now, now.” Freed tutted. He had his off-brand lightsaber in his other hand. “Do you really think you have time for that?”

I took a deep breath. Even if Asia was still safe, Diodora wouldn’t trust his plan to a pair of heretics. That meant I had to deal with this quickly and catch up to whatever the next stage of this plan was.

“I don’t have—” I stepped, swinging my sword. Freed wasn’t caught off guard by such a simple trick, though. He parried my first strike easily, but I ignored his counterblow. A moment of invulnerability cost a prodigious amount of mana, but it let me bring my blade back around, twisting the space beneath his guard so that it went, point first, into his sterum.

Freed threw himself backwards. The tip of my blade came back red, but just the tip.

The priest patted his robe, a new tear showing the armorbed fibers within. I clicked my tongue.

“Looks like you’ve learned some new tricks,” he said.

I closed distance. “Looks like you haven’t.”

“Ah don’t be like that, twiggy!” He made distance, moving erratically even as my sword wove through the space between us in unblockable arcs. “I made some new friends instead.”

A stray devil crashed out of the nearest wall.

He’d baited me.

Green scales, snakes for arms. The towering thing that had once been a reincarnated devil lashed out at me. I rolled in, letting the snakes go over my head. Massive fangs as thick as my arm punched right into the asphalt.

My sword flashed out, and then there was a screaming, crying beast in front of me, writhing across the street.

Now, in the background, people started to run.

I pushed demonic energy into my blade, empowering the enchantment Kiba had placed on it. Snicker snack it went, and the stray devil collapsed to the ground, less a head.

I spun back just in time for Freed to score a long cut across my side. I gasped. It burned. My counterstroke cut another stripe from his armored robe.

“Fucking glad I’ve got this thing!” Freed grinned, fanning himself with his robes. I pressed a hand to the charred flesh of my side. “There’s more where that came from, you shitty devil! So maybe if you get down on your knees and suck my cock, I won’t have ‘em rip your arms off.”

“I’ve met people like you before,” I said. “The talkers, the cockroaches.”

“My cock, will—”

“Always so obsessed with how clever you are.” I shifted my sword.

“I do feel pretty clever right now,” Freed said. “I’ll feel more clever when I cut out your tongue, so you can’t interrupt me.”

“Did you ever consider the rest of us can be clever too?”

I exploded into black mist.

My copy of Grue’s power filled the street, building to building. It rushed over Freed so quickly that he didn’t even have time to dodge. Unfortunately, after my rating game with Sona’s peerage, I’d been working on more nonlethal tricks. This spell spread my mana thin, so thin that it was easy to use, but also thin enough that I couldn’t just sharpen it into spears and punch holes through my opponents.

It did, however, have another use.

“Eh?” Freed swung his sword wildly through the darkness, where holy light hissed and sputtered against the thin mist of my mana. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel his presence. Everything my darkness touched I could feel. It was a stolen trick from my butterfly spell.

It had knocked me out the first time I’d tried this, but now it was just a familiar ache against the back of my head. Almost an old friend.

I stood still and waited.

“Taking away my senses, shitty fucking devil.” Freed waited. I felt his eyes close as he spread his balance, sword wide, gun pointing randomly into the darkness.

He wasn’t panicking; that was fine. All I needed was for him to draw the right conclusion.

“Come out come out wherever you are.” He fired off shots at random. I tilted my head and let one burn past my ear. “Don’t you want a piece of this ass?”

I stayed still.

Freed was used to fighting devils, stray and noble devils alike. If there was one thing I knew about devils, it was that most of us had no patience.

“Fucking hell! Did that bitch really run?” Freed spat out another pair of curses before sprinting forward.

Right towards me.

I twisted space, swung my sword.

Freed, to his credit, felt my attack at the last second. That must have been what he was relying on. He jumped, and instead of cutting him in two, my sword found his leg.

This time, I put my back into it, and was rewarded with blood.

Freed hit the ground and rolled, before his leg went out from under him.

I pulled the darkness back to me. And turned.

“Right to the fucking bone. Fuuuuck!” Freed screamed. His gun came up, and he fired off half a dozen bullets with I let fly wide.

I walked towards him.

“They’re waiting for your little fuck nun!” He shouted. “You can still make it in time, but if you waste your chance dealing with me…”

I flipped my sword over, holding it along my forarm like a spear, like a javelin. “I can do both.”

I threw my blade. He threw his. The space between us twisted. I ducked to the side, damned holy magic of the blade taking apart my defensive weaving. It got my arm, deep, cauterized.

But on the other side of the street, Freed’s head snapped back as my blade sank into his face all the way to the silvered hilt.

He slumped over, strings cut, blood pooling on the asphalt.

I pressed a hand against my arm. “Shitty fucking priest.” I swept up the hilt of his light sword with my good arm and ignored the inscribed crosses burning against my flesh.

I’d need the right tools, to slay a peerage of devils.