Chapter Text
Lady held the firm opinion that the residents of Lavia were a bunch of weirdos. They stared and gaped as the van rolled in late one night and the trio jumped out. Many reached out to touch Credo’s uniform, eyes wide and filled with awe. None of them had heard of the Order of the Sword, so they treated him like a celebrity. Lady didn’t care—in truth, that wasn’t very different from the reception elsewhere—until an older man asked, eyebrows wiggling suggestively, if the two young ladies flanking him were escorts. Credo turned beet red and snapped back “Have some respect. We are demon hunters.” It earned him a snicker and a “I bet they chase away all your demons all right.”
After that, Lady was ready to hop back into the van and drive right out of town, and only the call of a single night in a soft bed kept her from enforcing that decision on the team.
Prolonged contact with the quaint little town taught them neither internet nor radio easily made it this deep in the mountains, and what little they’d had had vanished “a few years ago”. The residents expressed concerns about the rest of the world, but not much worry for themselves, and when Credo asked them if they’d seen any demons, they’d laughed and asked if he meant the siren, and was that what they had come for? The innkeeper (if one could call the two-rooms-for-rent an inn) laughed when he insisted about the hordes unleashed by Mundus, appearing nearly at random and ravaging the world, then told them she knew they were a backwater little town, but even they knew that was a hoax.
“Siren’s real, though!” she added, her mirth dampening. “If ya pull out those ear plugs or turn off the music, I’m not responsible for the disappearance. Been a lot of those recently, even among people who should know better.”
Lucia, Credo, and Lady shared a silent stare. Whether or not they believed it, the veil between the human and demon worlds had been thinning, and it was impacting this village. They thanked her for the lodgings, and as soon as the door to their rooms closed behind them, Lady spoke up.
“These people’s happy little bubble is two seconds away from bursting in their faces.”
“A hoax .” Credo’s flat tone betrayed how angry that made him.
“If that gets you up in your jimmies, don’t tell ‘em about your lord and saviour, the Legendary Dark Knight Sparda. Even I didn’t believe that one until the truth of it was rubbed right in my face.”
By Sparda’s son, no less. She had never told Credo about Dante, and as neither he nor anyone in the Order had ever mentioned Sparda had children, she had opted to keep it to herself. Agnus’s overenthusiastic reaction to Lucia had only comforted that decision. The Order would have endless questions for her, none of which she had any interest in answering—that, or they’d brand her some sort of heretic and stop giving her contracts. Either way, mentioning Dante would be bad news. He was her secret, a personal parcel of the world’s incongruous madness, bright laugher and easy smiles hiding a pain so many now shared.
“The Saviour blesses even those who do not turn to him,” Credo replied. “It’s not their lack of faith that offends me, it’s how they can dismiss something that has taken so many lives.”
“Isolation changes how you perceive the world,” Lucia said. “There is much that never reached Dumary Island, and I am sure Fortuna is like that, too. If demons do not come here, then it is good for them. But that siren… I do not believe locals simply became imprudent.”
“Nah. Thing’s getting more powerful,” Lady concurred. She found the music player and fiddled with it until it released quick-paced classical melodies. “No French music for you, Lucia.”
“It is their loss, then.”
“Indeed.”
Their conversation died there. Weeks of van-or-tent sleeping had left them exhausted, and Lady felt the call of the soft mattress far deeper than any demonic siren’s song. She stripped out of her travel clothes and slipped under the heavy blankets with a happy sigh. Credo excused himself to the other room, and soon music drifted out of a player, seeping through the wall. Lucia turned their volume up a little, shoved ear plugs in Lady’s hands, and prepared to sleep too. It was strange to rest with those in, the ambient music muffled by plastic, but the bed was soft, the room warm, and Lady went out like a light.
She was awoken at the ass-crack of dawn by Lucia, shaking her shoulders and whispering her name urgently. Her companion had her pants half on and her cloak thrown over her shoulders, and her hair hung in a loose mess around her, its bright red catching the rare sunlight glow from outside.
“He’s gone.”
“Who’s gone?” Lady half-mumbled, her brain struggling to catch up with the brutal awakening. It did not help that the earbuds muffled Lucia’s voice almost completely.
“Credo.” Lucia looked at the wall, towards his room. Alarm began eroding Lady’s sleepiness. “He took his sword, but nothing else. Nothing . ”
That washed the rest of her grogginess away. Credo never went unprepared into anything if he could help it. He planned, then replanned for contingencies, then planned a third time if the situation allowed, or perhaps only to reassure himself. She didn’t need to know the extent of ‘nothing’ he’d taken for a pit of dread to form in her stomach.
Lady rolled out of bed, grabbing the pile of clothes she’d dumped on the ground the previous night. She was dressed in an instant, strapping guns and ammunition to herself as she shoved first their door, then Credo’s open. His bed was empty, but the room didn’t seem in disarray—no signs of fighting, nothing out of the ordinary if not for how he’d left behind his small carrier bag taken out of the van, all of his clothes, and even his boots by the door. Everything except Durandal and the Aegis shield, truly.
“He wouldn't be so careless as to pull out his earplugs,” she said.
Had the song pierced through? Had it been an accident? Her heart hammered as she considered the options, palms growing sweaty. How long had he been gone?
“We need to catch up to him.” Lucia had already dressed up for the expedition, and her fingers were running fast through her hair, splitting it into strands before braiding it.
Lady frowned. Of course they did. The man had walked out barefoot, with potentially nothing but his underwear, in a village reputed for having people disappear in the middle of the night. At least he’d grabbed his weapons. She wasn’t a tracker, though, and they had no idea where Credo had gone to.
“How?” She gestured at the room. “If he didn’t take the time to put his boots on, he sure didn’t leave us a map to follow.”
Lucia’s lips parted for an answer, but no words came. She frowned, her gaze sliding away from Lady and towards the window. Lady stared at her, her impatience mounting with every second. Lucia could be secretive, or try to, but she often wore her emotions on her sleeves, so even without words… Whatever she was working through now, she looked guilty about. Credo didn’t have time for them to cleanly work through their feelings.
“Out with it,” she said.
“I just… know .” She breathed a long sigh. “This place… it is faint, but it has… something of Dumary’s. Something like its power.”
Lady forced her natural incredulous and suspicious inclinations to quiet down and filed this under ‘more demonic bullshit’. More detailed or understandable explanations could wait until they had Credo safe and dressed with them.
“I think I can find the siren temple,” Lucia volunteered, “and if we are lucky, its ambient power will not overwhelm Credo’s aura.”
Lady had been halfway to the door at the mention of an aura. What was that about now? Lucia couldn’t sense humans like that, not unless she’d been lying.
“You sense Credo too?”
“Faintly.” Her brow creased and she tilted her chin up, defiance slipping into her stance. “Your friend is a demon.”
“He’s not my friend,” Lady snapped back. They were colleagues, nothing else. Okay, they had gotten along a lot better since that dinner at his house, but Credo still deplored her mercenary decisions, and she still hated his moralistic bullshit.
Lucia regarded her in silence, eyebrows raised, and Lady belatedly realized she might have protested the wrong part of that statement. The possibility of Credo being a demon put her ill at ease, less-so for the demonic part itself than because of the web of lies needed to uphold that. She gritted her teeth. No time to unravel that, or her feelings. They had an uptight captain to save.
“Good enough,” she declared. “Let’s move out.”
###
Power throbbed through Lucia, rippling over her skin and pounding through her skin. What had been a low buzz, more instinct than anything physical, had grown with every step out of Lavia. It pulled at her, the call of the land beneath her feet, inexorable. Was this what Matier had felt, the stormy night Lucia had been sick and she had found the Devil’s Heart? Or was the siren demon tricking her, feeding her mind what it wanted in order to lure her in? It shouldn’t matter—this was the path to Credo, she was sure of it—but Lucia yearned for this feeling to be real. There was a presence in it, ancient and incomprehensible, and it felt both completely alien and so much like home. Dumary Island had held this unspeakable quality too; it had a mind of its own, and deep within its confines resided an unique, near-sentient core of power, the human world’s will made manifest.
Lucia had not expected to feel this anywhere on the continent, but this valley nestled deep in a jagged mountain range and isolated from most demons… it had a soul of its own. It was more slippery than Dumary’s yet smashed into her harder, pressing down on her physical body in a way home never had. Lucia could only think of a river’s powerful current trying to engulf her, its strength weighing against her muscles, her mind struggling to stay afloat. She followed its will, one step after another, the current carrying her through a thick forest, down steep inclines, and to a jagged opening like a thin blade of space between two impossible cliffs.
The walls of stone pressed down on each side of them as they ventured down the narrow path, and Lucia kept her fingers wrapped around the stilettos’ grips. Lady had her right thumb under the Kalina Ann’s strap on her shoulder, and her second hand at her hip, on her pistol. Neither of them had said a word in almost two hours, advancing at a brisk pace, worry mounting in conjunction with the area’s oppressive energy. Above them, the two cliffs touched, transforming their paths into a high, pointed tunnel. What little light filtered that far below vanished quickly, but Lucia did not slow. She did not need light to know her way, not with the mountain’s bones pulling at her, a hook in her navel hurrying her forward. She barely noticed the beam of light from Lady’s torch, her vision growing as narrow as their tunnel, the pounding in her mind leaving room for nothing but this singular urge to reach their goal, whatever it was.
The tunnel widened brutally, opening into a humongous cavern, its walls slick with water glowing a faint blue. Six arches extended out of the walls like fingers of ice, thick at their base and narrowing as they reached towards the center, curving back down. They linked together into a small bowl-like platform in the middle of the massive cavern, a dozen feet above ground. Everywhere around, waterfalls poured down from various-sized holes in the ceiling, their crystalline water sliding around the stone fingers or splashing directly on the ground to form shallow pools across the floor. All glittered, but none so much as the largest, situated perfectly above the bowl platform, its flow broken by the massive gelatinous body of the demon inhabiting the temple.
The “Siren” had more in common with jellyfishes than merfolks, its central body a translucent bell-shaped membrane floating midair, pulsing as if through water currents. It had countless tendrils, some thin and dark points, others flat and equally translucent, bigger, like long arms extending lazily out of the main bell. A handful had wrapped around the cavern’s stone fingers, anchoring the Siren, while others held long-dessicated bodies and far more recent victims. One such arm had slunk towards the ground, some twenty feet away from the platform, and curled around Credo’s chest. It felt gentle, as if the creature was hugging him, and Credo in turn leaned into it, his shoulders slumped in relief. His sword and shield lay discarded halfway there. Lucia tried to call to him, but the world had turned into molasses, raw power filling the cavern until it weighed her every muscle and clogged her mind.
Lady, thankfully, seemed to have no such issue. She dashed forward, her torchlight bobbing with every stride as she brought her rocket launcher forward.
“Credo!”
The first projectile followed her scream, speeding through the room as the captain startled out of his reverie and the siren emitted a long, high-pitched wail.