Tales of Death´s Daughter

It was … quiet. Really quiet. It was as if my ears didn’t work at all which was rare for me. But laying on Aska’s chest, I couldn’t hear anything. Not the giggling of the twins who were so desperate to join us, nor anyones breath. It was as if we had all agreed on making as little noise as possible. Part of that could be attributed to the sun, another part was because Aska and I were kind of glad that the twins finally stopped making fun of us as ‘the old ones’.

“Are you really sure you want to leave without me?”  Well, I had planned to murder every human in the castle and then venture out on the pretext of finding meals for me and the twins, but that wasn’t necessary as he was strangely accepting of my desire to distance myself a little from him.

“Yeah … I don’t think the others would take your presence kindly. But I’ll be back … in a month or so.” I explained and snuggled up to him one last time. Sighing a little quietly, I grabbed the twins by their shirts and woke them up from their slumber.

“Pack your stuff. We’ll get going at dawn.” I told them, only to be greeted by two very disappointed gazes.

“That’s so early!” Clara complained, all while I dragged them out of the room.

“Better than being late to the party.” The demon king wouldn’t wait too long for us, that much was obvious. I was already kind of surprised he would wait for nightfall, but that was probably Aska’s doing. He definitely wanted someone to keep watch over me.

“And why did you need to wake us up?” Clarice muttered quietly and rubbed her eyes sheepishly.

“Have you forgotten?” I dragged them into the next room I could find and sat both of them on the bed.

Standing in front of them, I placed my hands on my hips and stared at them sternly until they realised.

“Not again! Please, we’ll do everything!” I had no doubt they would do so. But no matter what they offered, I wouldn’t accept.

“What is the behavioural difference between humans and elves?” I was teaching them … or at least I tried to. Their memory was worse than a sieve sometimes.

“Generalising is racist!” Clara pointed out loudly.

“…” I had no words. That they claimed I was racist was … well, humans were my favourite species, but other than that I was kind of neutral to any race.

“Elves are more connected to nature.” Clarice said quietly after I stared at them for a long time. “Therefore their magical affinity are mostly wind and water. They also have no problems with height whatsoever.”

“But they are less innovative and stuck in the past.” Clara told me. They were remembering stuff, that was for sure. And sadly, that was all I needed to double down on my efforts.

“Nine plus four?” I asked Right away. So far, maths seemed to be their weak point and they weren’t improving at all.

“Twelve!” Clara told me with the full support of her sister.

“Nope.” Just like usual, Clara counted to nine with her fingers and Clarice added four using her own hands.

“Thirteen?” At last they had managed to find the correct answer.

“Correct. What is the elven word for ‘home’?” I asked, switching topics left and right in the process.

“Uhm …” None of them could answer that question and neither did I expect them to. I was there to teach them after all and I had a whole day of doing so. They were less than pleased though. The sun was already out, making them tired and moody without fault. They just wanted to sleep.

But I didn’t let them.

At least they stopped complaining when we packed backpacks for they way back into human lands. Sadly, I had no contact lenses left as the twins lost the ones I had somewhere while they were playing around with them, but we wouldn’t need them anyways.

Armed to the teeth, we met an equally prepared Hannah and the bored demon king at the gates and greeted them friendly.

“You can teleport us now.” I told him already in the process of grabbing Hannah’s hand as I noticed his confused stare.

“Teleporting myself alone is had enough as it is. Can’t you just stay here?” He asked indignantly to which I only had one answer. No.

“Can’t do. All the humans in this castle have perished surprisingly.” I gave him a rather sweet, innocent smile which definitely didn’t hid what I had done at all.

“… you killed all? There were at least a hundred of them!” Yeah … and they were all dead pretty quickly. Sadly for them, I couldn’t find another excuse to join the demon king except that there wasn’t any delicious food around.

“Yeah? We were thirsty.” I told him with a smugly smile.

“Your race was made to be thirsty!” I was always thirsty for more, but that may be linked to my personality as well. I was craving death after all.

“Jup.” I told him and made the first step of many towards our destination. The twins kept the mood rather high on our first day, while the demon king probably thought about how he would get rid of us and Hannah … well, she kept an eye on him the whole time.

But I was worried about something else. Luna’s soul was within mine, secured but also alive. And that didn’t mix well together. My soul around her was constantly being damaged, which shouldn’t be possible, but it happened.

I had already stopped resurrecting others to counter that effect, but still worried me a lot. Especially as I had just noticed that phenomenon. I couldn’t tell if it was because I wasn’t around the single most source of death anymore, or because her soul was more alive than ever, but something had certainly changed.

So much so that Hannah seemed to have noticed the brooding atmosphere around me and took me away from the others a bit.

“What’s up?” She asked concerned.

“Luna’s soul within me … is damaging mine. And I fear the other way around is true as well.” I couldn’t say for sure, but it certainly did look like that.

“A pregnancy is never easy.”

“Irminsul did it more than a thousand times already.”

“But she is the goddess of life, you on the other hand are the exact opposite. Your race was never meant to give birth and considering what your soul consist of, I don’t think it’s going to be a walk in the park.” She told me quietly, wary about the demon king listening in.

“You still think it was a bad idea?” I asked back and leaned onto a nearby tree while placing my hand above my heart.

“Objectively it is.” I knew that much. Giving Aska access to my soul could be the worst mistake of my whole life. But if I got Luna back for that, the risk was definitely worth it.

“But I want to know what you think.” I said, exactly as Luna’s soul acted up a little and the effects swapped over into the material world. My heart clenched a little, far from enough to hurt me at all, but still noticeable.

“… I don’t want to see you in pain, that’s all. It wouldn’t do anyone good. Not for you. Not for me. And certainly not for the future we were planning to have together.” Hannah told me, leaning against one of these trees herself.

“I stand by my words. Your place is by my side.” I told her determined to keep it that way. She was always with me, competent and honestly the only one I listened to if she had advice, no matter how harsh she worded it.

“… can you make sure this doesn’t end in a catastrophe?” She asked unsure, voicing exactly the same worries I had.

“I … I don’t know what the future holds for me and Luna. The path I set out on had been destroyed since she died … and since then I have attempted to occupy myself because I don’t want to think about anything.” I told her truthfully. All the mayhem we caused in the castle wasn’t just for reducing the humans to zero, but also because I wanted to drown in my darkest desires. Thinking about the future was just too … worrying? Not exactly terrifying as I was on the path to fulfil my dreams of a real family, but still far too uncertain to be naively optimistic.

“But you didn’t succeed, did you?” She knew exactly how I worked which was why I was so glad to have her by my side.

“No … I should have taken drugs for that. And before you ask, I know what we need to do. But I can’t tell you right now.” The cameras were watching after all and I wanted to use that month that I had until Aska would inevitably notice to the fullest. And that sadly included hiding much from Hannah, at least until my own actions made my plan obvious for anyone else which wouldn’t be that far of. But until then she had to be patient. “Let’s go back for now before the twins hit each other to death.”

Clara and Clarice were a weird duo. Sometimes they got along insanely well, and sometimes they bashed their heads against each other over mundane things. And currently, they were fighting about who could stab the demon king in his sleep. They seriously hated him, even after all this time of playing nice with him. And now that he had lost all control over them, I was the only one holding them back which they took offence in.

Grabbing them by their shirts, I dragged them away from the smug demon king until they calmed down somewhat. They always thought of me being evil whenever I did so, but the truth was that I wanted to see him dead as well.

Badly.