Chapter 7[]
Digging a grave is not as fun as it sounds. I stopped for a while and looked at the moon shining above our heads. I was baffled by the fact that the moon was so round and bright. It was as if it was giving us a signal about the corpse that we would find buried under all the dirt.
“Should we really do this?” Daniel asked as he paused and sat down beside me, leaving Demetra to be the only one digging. She was huffing and sweating as she pushes the shovel to scoop the soil and shove it to the other side. She didn’t even look at us while she was talking, “We decided to do this, there’s no turning back now. “
She was right. We might be disturbing the grave of a man named Robert Hohenheim, but it was something we decided to do in order to continue our quest. There’s no turning back now.
What lies inside was a big shock to the three of us. There was no sign of bones or ashes, only papers. I started picking up the papers and read them one by one. I highly doubt the either of them can read all the words probably because of their dyslexia, but Daniel surprised me when he read a newspaper article perfectly. “Robert Hohenheim, age 25 burned to ashes after turning into a monster. Apparently, this Hohenheim person was the only son of a rich couple, therefore, despite not having a body and being condemned by the church they still pushed through with a funeral. They said it was the only thing they could hold on to.”
Daniel handed the paper to Demetra but she only stared at the picture and then she passed it to me. While silently reading the papers, I noticed the date written on the upper side, 1983. “ These incidents have been happening since 1983, this means that what we’re experiencing right now is not something new, but something that has been happening for decades. Huh, your sister Audrey gave us pretty nice information.”
Demetra only nodded in response, she was very busy rummaging through the other papers inside the coffin. She wasn’t really giving the two of any form of attention. I sighed and read the other parts of the newspaper. I figured that despite Demi and I being close friends before I disappeared and lost all of my memories, the person she became friends with isn’t me, but rather a different person.
As I was feeling a little bit sorry for myself, a cold wind blew from the east and almost made me let go of the papers I was holding.
“You should have stayed inside your camp, half-bloods.” The three of us turned around to find the owner of the voice, but instead for finding him or her, we found half a dozen humans sleep walking towards our direction. “Those humans are creepy.” Demi commented as she took off her golden ring form her index finger. “Be careful girls, they might be those morphing humans.” Daniel said as he also prepared for battle.
What Daniel said turned out to be true. As they were only a meter away from us, all of them simultaneously turned into different forms of demons. I closed my eyes and got ready for combat. I focused on my shadow and willed them to form two vicious dog hounds. “Should we kill them?” I asked my companions. Demi took the lead and shook her head, “They are still humans, just wound them until they couldn’t move anymore.”
With those words in mind, I commanded my two shadow dogs to attack the ones to my right. Once again, I willed my shadows to form another type of offensive mechanism, a bow. Like picking an apple from a tree I slightly touch the ground and imagined an arrow forming. Since the monsters were still a good deal of distance away from us, Daniel and I managed to hit their feet and prevent them from reaching us. From the corner of my eye, I also see Demetra doing the same thing with her whip.
“Ughh..” Daniel said after a few minutes of firing arrows at the demons crawling towards us. “The plan to only hurt them a little bit and not kill them is not really working. They might not be using their feet, but they are crawling! It’s only a matter of seconds before they reach us! What do we do? What the freak do we do?”
“Shut up! Shut up! “ Demetra retaliated as she was also struggling with a monster who managed to grab hold of her right foot. Among the three of us, she was the one who was in most danger. The monster that lunged at her was slowly carrying itself up to reach her vital points. And just when it was about to reach into her stomach and stab her, it fell limp. There were holes on its back as it silently bleeds to death.
One by one, the monsters fell flat on their back and the constant sound of a bullet being fired echoed throughout the cemetery. When all of them were dead, we finally caught a glimpse of our saviors. Both of them were women in their late teens. I was partly sure that they were older than us by about 3 years or more.
The taller one was wearing something a normal teenager would wear, a tank top that only hid half of her skin and a pair of shorts as long as my hand when I stretch my pinky and thumb.. But despite the clothes that she was wearing, she doesn’t seem bothered by the cold wind lashing against her bare skin. The other girl by her side was the complete opposite of her. From head to toe, anyone could notice how conservative she is. Her top for instance consist of a long sleeves shirt decorated with floral and unlike her partner she was wearing a long skirt that in my opinion should only be worn by really old people with no sense of style. Oddly enough, their sense of fashion greatly contradicts their choice of weapon. In this kind of situation, the one who would usually be handling the gun would be the light dressed girl and the one using a sharp katana would be the other woman but this is not the case with the two of them.
“Should you three really just stand there and stare at us?” the woman asked while reloading her gun with bullets. Among the three of us, it was Demi who first reacted. “You killed them didn’t you?”
It took a moment for Demi’s words to sink in. The ones that we were fighting aren’t the usual monsters that would turn into ashes as soon as their essence are sent to Tartarus, these monsters were once humans and by killing them we have robbed them of their lives. “What were your plans? Let them eat you alive so they can continue existing? Girl in this world it’s either kill or be killed. I thought you’ll be mature enough to know that, I guess I was wrong.”