Chapter 37 - Little Dog

I stared at his face. I couldn’t move in time. Thankfully, the second fastest person did.

Ame shot forward with a sword of ice in his hand, pushing the man back from the leader.

The leader yelled back to Ame.

“Good job, my friend! We will push this imbecile back! No death shall fall upon us today!”

Ame grinned back at him before nodding. Before attacking any of us, the assailant stopped and bowed. His face was still straight. Not a smile. Not a frown. His reddish-orange hair and his sharp eyes sent a shiver down my spine. He had clothes similar to that of the royalty of Laptaan- as if he had copied it. It was a red and black royal mantle. He stood in front of me as Ame looked down at him. He was rather short, but his aura was still intimidating.

“Hello, all. My name is Ramollo Molai, leader of the Vatro breakaway state of Laptaan. I go by many monikers, with the most known two being ‘Dante’s Inferno’ and ‘The Lion of Laptaan’. It seems this child knows me from somewhere. I will give you a moment to explain your identity.”

Ame spoke to him as Kaya was frozen in place.

“You’re… really polite. Why?”

He responded, his face still frozen.

“I am stronger than you. It is only natural for me to show courtesy before killing you.”

Ame grit his teeth as Kaya got the courage to speak up.

“Y-You demons! You killed my parents! You and your other idiot!”

He tilted his head.

“I have done nothing of the sort, little dog. But, even if I did, what consequence could befall me? You bark at me for what purpose? And what reason do I have to listen to you?”

People came running up to him. It was the other person Kaya saw, along with one new person.

The unknown person ran after the group of Maylem warriors, as the right hand man of Ramollo dashed at me.

I had to split everybody up into groups. They knew this as well. Ame, Inda and I went into one group while Kaya, Sy and Dominic all went into the other. They had to stall against Ramollo until we had enough time to regroup.

I couldn’t pay attention to what was going on there.

But the guy I was fighting was irritating. His dark yellow hair was so messy that it looked like he hadn’t brushed it in a week. He was rather quiet, but held a sword that was the same size as me.

He kept slashing at me with his massive sword. I was confused on how he even carried it.

I yelled out to him.

“Why are you attacking us?!”

He stopped his assault for a moment.

“Because you go against our goals. We need to annex Jeti. The recognition we need won’t exist without that. So, please, let us through. I don’t want to have to kill anybody more than I have to.”

He came at me and attempted to cut me in half, but I blocked the sword. It pushed me back because of its strength, but I had enough time to speak to him again.

“More innocent people will die if you do that! You can gain recognition in so many other ways!”

He looked skeptical.

“What ways are there?! We’ve tried too many things- the terrorist attack on Laptaan. The death of the two people who killed Ramollo’s child. We’ve tried it all.”

There was something wrong. I hated it. Everything he mentioned involved death. It involved fear. He didn’t need to do that. I wanted to save him from this. Humans don’t deserve this. What sin could possibly be bad enough to cause him to lead a life like this?

I yelled out to him.

“We can help you! Join Eternal Flame! We’re strong enough to help you, and you should know that we won’t trick you! We’ll get your message out there! Kaya can help you too! You said you didn’t kill her parents! We’ll fix this misunderstanding!”

His eyes lit up. A tear ran down his face. It looked as if he was overwhelmed with emotion. I wouldn’t have trusted myself here, but he did. He was a bit naive.

“R-Really?!”

“Really!”

He began to sob.

“Thank you! Thank you s-”

An overpowering aura came from behind him.

A hand grasped his skull and cracked it.

He was dead.

Ramollo threw his body to the floor and spoke to it.

“The moment you joined me was the moment you threw away your fear of death. Weakness will not be tolerated. I’ll devour you and your bones will fertilize the soil of my dream. Your sin was one of weakness.”

He kicked the body off to the side and stared at me.

“Nell Moren. You need to learn. The weak will only harm your goals. Don’-”

Kaya shot forward and punched him in the jaw. He fell over as Kaya stood there, breathing heavily. Her hair was messed up. She looked as if she barely had any control over her body.

I peered into her internal world through her eyes.

I was right. She barely had any control over her body. Her internal world was shaking violently, with her internal world self and normal self being switched.

Her mind was relying only on the darkest parts of her consciousness. All of her philosophies, all of her ideals, were thrown in the trash and this part of herself took the wheel.

But, despite all this, she was still weaker than Ramollo.

He got back up and punched her in the stomach. She was flung back into the floor. Dominic used his Maylem awakening and the golden aura encased him. He held his sword up to Ramollo.

A slash to the head. Ducked.

A slash to the knee. Pivoted.

Dominic couldn’t hit him. After Ramollo pivoted away from the slash, he lifted his leg up into the sky and kicked the underside of Dominic’s chin, sending him upwards for a moment before he crashed back into the ground.

Ame and I both ran at him at the same time. Ame created a sword of ice in one hand while creating an ice shotgun that he hid in his other. I put RME into my legs and held a blast of it in my hands.

Ame slashed him with the sword, but he easily blocked it. But Ame knew this would happen. As this happened, I blasted Ramollo in the skull with RME. He jumped in time to avoid death, but the blast still hit his torso. It launched him to the side. He was in the air, but if he tried he could bring himself back to the floor and avoid the shotgun blast.

Ame yelled out to Sy.

Less than a second later, a hand of wind flipped Ramollo over. The barrel of the shotgun was held up to his forehead as he was hung in the air upside down by Sy’s wind hand. It was the same one that Justin Beckwith had used against Kaya.

Ame looked at him in the eyes and spoke.

“We’re taking you in for questioning. One wrong move and this goes through your skull. So, come with us. Be a good boy for me, will you?~”

Ame was obviously messing with him, but his face didn’t budge. He spoke monotonously.

“I do not fear death. Shoot me if you will. That is the price of my strength. I will squash the bugs under me without a care, and in turn, I must not care when I get squashed. Thus is the rule of nature.”

He closed his eyes.

“But that does not mean I’ll go down without a fight.”

Before Ame could pull the trigger, flames shot at his stomach and the heat travelled through his body. Half of his organs were burnt as he was forced onto the ground. He coughed up blood and I immediately went to heal him.

Inda bolted towards Ramollo to capture him, but I saw one of the things I was most afraid of. He planted his feet into the floor as he gathered his magic all around him.

He was going to blow himself up.

I yelled out to Inda, but it was too late. Fire magic began to expand from him. We were all going to die.

I heard a yell from beside me.

“Only fools value others' death over the glory of victory. This win will not be yours to enjoy!”

The Maylem Army battalion leader dashed forward and tackled Ramollo. He wasn’t strong enough to survive this.

He looked back at us and yelled.

“Do not lose your path! Move forward, my comrades! Fight! For the glory of victory!”

The battlefield froze for a moment. And, everything went white.

Flames engulfed him as he was burnt to ash.

I didn’t fight for the ‘glory of victory’. I didn’t.

But it moved me.

This was what he lived for. And he died for it. He died for us. I had no time to dwell on it. I needed to use the chance he gave us.

Ramollo was still alive, but he was injured by his own attack.

Something was different about him.

His face wasn’t normal. He was smiling.

He laughed and yelled into the sky.

“Gods! I see! You’ve finally given me the recognition I deserve! I will not disappoint you! I will follow your rules, and as the strongest on this field, I will kill them all!”

He fell onto his knees as something began to pierce the skin on his back.

His back opened up and his ribs were broken one by one. From each lung grew a black wing. He stood back up, with blood dripping from his spine. He floated above us and yelled.

“Kaya Koinu! You know these wings all too well, don’t you! The wings you held in your hands back then! Come, fight me! Kill me, LITTLE DOG!”

The current Kaya who stood in front of him was a manifestation of her dark room. The part of Kaya that she hid from herself. In certain circumstances, the dark room self could remember things that the physical couldn’t.

She spoke to him.

“I’ll rip those wings off your back and pierce your lungs with them.”

He grinned and said something that made Kaya wake back up.

“Just like you did to your mother? That obsidian dagger looks familiar, doesn’t it? I remember now! It looks just like the sword you killed your father with.”

Her eyes widened. Her internal world self, with the memories of the dark room, and her normal self’s memories combined. They shook and attempted to escape her.

She remembered it all.

“My parents died a while ago. I forgot what happened to them. My dad taught me swordsmanship and my mom taught me magic. When I came back from school one day, they were dead. Two commanders of the Jeti Army were there, #5 and #1. They- They said there were assassins after my parents. I don’t remember that part entirely. I don’t know if it was the commanders who killed my parents, but it was likely. I agreed to join Ame so I could hunt them down in the name of justice.”

“Verwa and Justin?”

She looked down.

That’s what I thought. I couldn’t remember their faces. But in the fight against both Verwa and Justin, I felt no familiarity. I was confused until today.”

She gripped the newspaper as she read it out loud to me.

“Two Laaptani terrorists were found guilty of the attack from 4 years ago. Both have escaped custody. Information needed.”

The gaps in her memories were filled.

Ramollo spoke.

“I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t kill your parents. It was all you. On the night of the attack, I invaded your house. I needed the government of Vatro to see the weakness of their own city. Your mother was the only person in hundreds of years to achieve the Vatro transformation, so she was the best target. But, I couldn’t just kill them. I needed them to feel the things that bring about separatism. Weakness. Regret. So, we pretended to be members of the Jeti Army. We snuck into your house and told you that there were assassins planning to kill your parents. We handed you your fathers sword and led you to him. It was dark, so you couldn’t tell who it was.”

…

“Then you stabbed him in the heart. What did you feel during that? Your strength had killed somebody. Wasn’t it an amazing feeling!? Your mother was next. I yelled to you- ‘Oh no! The assassins have stolen your mothers energy for the Vatro transformation!’ and you believed it! With your own hand, she watched as you ripped out her wings and pierced her lungs with them. I bet you don’t remember what she said to you, so I’ll remind you.”

He smiled.

“Her words were ‘Kaya Koinu. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. You believe strongly in justice, so I must have done something horrible. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry baby. I only wish that you don’t lose sight of yourself. Keep your strength, but don’t let it consume you.’ You heard it all. There was a hint of confusion on her face, due to her own child murdering her in cold blood for seemingly no reason. But she still tried to help you in your final moments. Because she believed in your sanity. She didn’t blame you, even after all the evil you did. Because she didn’t want to hurt you. She thought it was her own fault. She tried to explain everything to you, but you didn’t listen. You couldn’t listen. And not once did she attempt to fight back, because you were her sweet little baby. She was dead before you could say anything back. Your final words to her were from the moment you ripped her wings out. I don’t need to recite them. Go, say them. Tell me.”

Kaya frozen. She wasn’t sobbing. She was broken. It was as if her mind was in a different time as she spoke.

“I called her a worm.”

After she said this, she came back to herself. She fell on her knees and began to grab her hair.

I was too stunned to speak. And so was everybody else. It pained me to see Kaya like this. I was… I didn’t know. I didn’t understand these feelings. I didn’t understand her feelings.

Ramollo kept speaking.

“A worm is at the bottom of the food chain. The weakest creature in nature. So, when you called her a worm, did you feel that she was weaker than you? If so, you did nothing wrong. You are meant to kill those weaker than you to survive. That is the morality that God assigned to us when this world was created. You are meant to follow it. Your feelings have no purpose when the matter is of strength. As the little dog, you killed the worm. And as a lion, I will annihilate those weaker than me. So, Kaya Koinu- don’t bark as I kill this beetle.”

Ramollo dived through the sky towards Sy. His wings made him faster than all of us.

He gripped Sy’s neck, black blood coursing through the veins on his wrist.

He raised his other hand. It shifted into an obsidian sword.

And he stabbed it through Sy’s heart.

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Nell's Notebook: Chapter 54

Today, I left to intercept the Laptaan army. As I write this, I am walking through the snow with everybody. I wasn’t going to open my notebook today, but when I saw Sy eating the snow, I wanted to write down some observations.

The first thing I saw was Ame practicing creating his water tools. Sometimes, they would fall apart if he wasn’t paying attention. His internal world was strong, so I knew he could do it. The only issue to him was the speed at which he produced them, but it already looked fast to me.

Kaya was being rather quiet this time. I didn’t know why. I don’t have any observations about her other than that.

Inda was rather focused, but when the snow started coming down, she was a little less focused. I didn’t blame her, because I was too.

Dominic smelled really nice. That’s all I noticed about him.

Sy, like I said, was eating the snow. But that wasn’t the only thing he was doing. He was talking a lot more than usual during the trip. Every time Kaya spoke, he tried to extend the conversation. I don’t think anybody other than me noticed, so I was really proud that I could see it. But Sy is an interesting person. He is one of the kindest people in the group.

Also, I learned that I could draw things using symbols commonly used for writing.

This one looks like a cat :3

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