"Suddenly the sun doesn't feel so far away"-Sachiko
————————————————————————
As Kaida sprinted through the halls of hell, sweat raced down her face as she frantically searched every corner of the halls.
The white haired sachiko who Kaida had been carrying on her back, looked around with her weary eyes.
The sachiko had used what little bit of strength she had to ask the young general:
"Why are we leaving Aaliyah and Selene?"
Kaida gulped. There was a stutter in her speech when she replied in a hurried tone:
"Mister Benjiro asked me to take you and find mister Kojiro and Yaku… after that… I'm unsure."
After a few more moments of running through Hell's halls, Kaida found herself cautiously stepping down a short stack of stairs, and was then inside of a round room.
The room almost resembled that of a church. There were two sides of the room, each side had rows of long seats and at the front of the room was a stretched stone wall with paintings on it.
'What in the world?…'
Kaida cautiously approached the stone wall, and as she got closer her crimson eyes made out a broad shouldered man who was clad in robes and had prayer beads around his arms.
"Miss Masayoshi… it's alright. it's just me, Benjiro."
The priest spoke in a raspy voice. Feeling a sense of relief, Kaida let out a shaken breath and stood next to the priest.
In an instant, a sudden wave of worry made Kaida's breath catch in her throat as she saw the priest's shattered and bloodied hand.
"Oh my… what happened?!"
The priest gave Kaida a reassuring gesture with his opposite hand.
"Please do not worry about me, little dragon… right now we have even bigger problems."
The priest's eyes were focused on the painting right in front of him, and the text written in the old language inscribed on the bottom of the painting.
The painting illustrated scattered bloodied flowers which bloomed across the jagged grounds of Hell, and a devilish looking man standing among the flowers with more flowers sprouted from his own body.
After a moment of silence, the priest read aloud the old language:
"The time will come when the malediction blooms in hell."
Kaida's face grew mortified at the appearance of the man illustrated in the painting. The man had black scaleras and crimson irises, with black messy hair which reached down to his eyes.
There was also a long scar across his face, cursed markings on his body and chains on his wrists and ankles.
Kaida suddenly felt a sense of dread and unease in her chest as she looked to the priest and asked:
"What does all of this mean, mister Benjiro?"
The priest didn't answer. His silence made the young girl decide against questioning further, and suddenly the Sachiko weakly brought her beautiful white eyes up to the painting.
She took notice of the man's appearance and the flowers that bloomed around him. And for some reason, her mind conjured up an image of Aaliyah.
***
Kaida's eyebrows furrowed. A small pebble from the room's celling hit her head and rolled to the ground, caused by a sudden shockwave from outside.
'An earthquake?!'
The priest's eyes were half lidded, he looked down near Kaida's feet and saw that a red flower had suddenly began to blossom right below her.
Benjiro immediately gripped the girl's arm and pulled her to his side. Then the two watched as countless more flowers had began to bloom all around the room.
"What the hell?"
The priest remained silent, for a few seconds and then said to the young general:
"Hand that woman over to me. We need to hurry."
Kaida did not hesitate to carefully put Sachiko into the priest's arms as the two sprinted toward the steps at the entrance of the room.
'So this is what the one who bore the mark of pride meant about a malediction.'
***
Far out into the sky just outside of the cavern which contained Hell's unholy tree just near the heart of Hell, Cain flew like a streak of crimson light toward supreme generals Yaku and Kojiro.
The graceful Kojiro narrowed his eyes at the streak of crimson light, and immediately he could perceive the approaching demon with less effort.
Kojiro's eyes suddenly fell into an elegant grey color. Just before Cain could plant his fist into the general's abdomen, the world around seemed to drain of all color.
It only then took the blink of Cain's eyes to see that the graceful general was no longer in front of him.
Cain immediately looked over his shoulder and caught the general's fist.
"I've heard stories of you… and this power in particular. A simple yet annoying ability indeed."
The graceful general's expression remained indifferent, in the corner of his eye he noticed the dubious general Yaku stretch out his hand, and reach into a narrow crimson slit in space.
In the next moment, a deck of playing cards swirled around Hell's crimson Sky. A single card manifested in Yaku's hand.
The dubious general wasted no time to throw the card right toward the graceful general. And as the card clung to kojiro's shoulder a sudden surplus of spirit energy flowed through his body.
In the next moment, Cain grunted as he was bombarded by the two generals who combined their strikes which knocked Cain back.
Yaku asked Kojiro:
"You good?"
The graceful general simply scoffed. And kept his attention toward the monster in front of them.
Cain took a moment to collect himself before he stood on the air and glared at the two generals in growing disdain.
"You should be smart enough to realize that all you two are doing is merely prolonging your deaths…"
The dubious general chuckled, and replied in a raspy voice:
"That's what they all say."
Cain inhaled deeply. He couldn't deny the growing intrigue he felt toward the dubious general.
"Do you believe in fate?"
Yaku was caught off guard by the sudden question. He glanced over to Kojiro, and rubbed his chin as he closed his eyes to think.
And then, he finally answered:
"You serious? Fate is a load of bullshit… if something like fate existed, we'd all have been long dead by now."
Cain smirked. As he got ready to give his reply, his eyes flared a crimson color for a split second before they reverted back to their usual pitch black color.
"And on what do you base that assumption?"
…
"Life is just one big gamble… everybody takes the biggest risk of going outside not knowing that any moment could be their last moment alive. Ya just gotta play your cards right if you wanna survive."
"Then how about I draw a card from your deck, and we'll let a gamble decide the outcome of this?"
The dubious general looked at Kojiro, who simply rolled his eyes.
"Have at it."
After he took some time watching the cards swirl around the crimson sky, Cain caught one between his two fingers.
In a moment of silence, his eyes flared crimson once more as a slight smirk appeared on his face.
"I guess Lady Luck has cast her divine light down toward me…"
In an instant, Cain disappeared. And before they could react, Yaku and Kojiro both felt Cain's hands grip them by the throat.
Their eyes shook. Suddenly, tiny flowers began sprouting from Cain's exposed ribcage and from his opened mouth.
***
The planet continued to shake violently as if on the verge of erupting. Inside the room that laid just below the pulsing heart of Hell, Tengu stood atop a beat up tree, the roots of the tree continued to bind him to his unconscious six siblings while Aria's divine energy shot up through the sky, and toward Hell's heart.
Tengu grunted, as though his lungs were being crushed he said:
"One…more… push!"
Flowers began sprouting everywhere, even on the prideful demons own body. He felt as though his head was about to crack right open.
He looked up at the heart of Hell which pulsated more violently, and after a few moments a small crack in the heart formed.
Aria's unconscious body inside of the tree began to shake. Blood trickled down her nose as she let out a piercing scream which reverberated through the entire universe.
The marks of the Queen's divine blessing had spread more rapidly on her body. Each second that passed, the small crack on Hell's heart began to crawl up the pulsating thing.
***
Benjiro and Kaida had reached the second of Hell's halls which contained the crimson prison pods where everyone was held captive.
Now the pods had begun rapidly draining the chaos energy from Aaliyah, Asura, Kai and Jason. Which made them all look sick in the face as their skin paled.
The priest gave a solemn look and said:
"We're too late."
Kaida's body tensed up. She grabbed onto the destroyed walls of Hell's halls and looked up at the heart of Hell, which was now suddenly completely cracked open.
"Oh hell…"
A sudden silence befell the area. Kaida looked out at Hell's jagged black grounds which were now suddenly covered in countless dead flowers.
Each flower was stained with a red color which looked almost like blood.
***
In the silent stillness of Hell, a tall ghostly pale woman with black lipstick and black eye shadow stood still among the blossomed flowers.
Her scarlet eyes were dark and empty as she crouched down on her heels to hold out her hand and feel the rough, dead flowers petals.
"It's one thousand years too late… but the feel of these flowers is a truly wonderful thing, wouldn't you say…"
She turned to look over her shoulder, and from the corner of her eye she saw a man who wore black and red tattered robes, sitting on the cold ground.
His skin was dirty and rough, and the scaleras of his eyes were black while his irises were crimson. His dirty and messy hair went down to his eyes, and chains wrapped his wrists and ankles.
The man used the ground for support as he slowly stood up. His body made an unpleasant noise as every bone in his body seemed to crack all at once.
In a low and indifferent voice, the woman said a name which made the flowers react by wilting even more.
"Kahal."
————————————————————————
Continue in chapter 100: Malediction
————————————————————————