How Terim Met Zellas
Part 1: The Meeting
Zelas Metallium smiled to herself as she surveyed the town she was going to give the honor of being the first to be destroyed by her, the first act of utter evil and destruction since the Kouma War. The only thing that was keeping her back was deciding exactly how she was going to go about this.
Now she could cause a fire, innocent enough, and then whip it up into an inferno that didn't even leave bones behind. Or maybe animating the well water into Lesser Demons and have them drain all the liquid from the worthless human bodies. Send in the clowns...no she'll save that for later, maybe Saillune. Crucify everyone for twelve days and nights, pouring salt into their wounds, slowly tearing them apart limb by limb. Let a plague fall on the town, a contagious disease that would cause them to bleed from every pore. Dropping the fragile bodies onto sharp pikes.
"Excuse me, but can you tell me how to get to Hartelun?"
Zelas blinked.
"I should just have stayed on the main travel road but the shortcut through the swamp would have saved me an hour and I was already running late. Since you were just standing here, I thought maybe you knew the area."
Zelas looked at the man who dared to speak to her. In her battle form, he stood only up to her shoulder guard. If she had been in her usual form, he would have topped her by several inches. He stood there, short light violet hair and a disarming smile set in a handsome face. His violet eyes sparkled cheerfully as he waited for her answer.
Zelas shook her shaggy wolf head. Just WHAT was she thinking about? This insignificant nant DARED to interrupt her while she was planning her first all out bloodfest since the Kouma War. And how did he sneak up on her? Her, the Greater Beast Zelas Metallium, one of the Generals of Ruby Eye Shaburadingo, the Demon Lord.
Zelas growled, pulling out one of her two swords and dispatching the annoyance faster than a human could breath.
Her blade only passed through air.
Zelas's jaw of canine teeth dropped.
The man straightened up from picking up a flower.
"Isn't this a lovely flower?" the man smiled. "Such a bright shade of blue. Just like your beautiful eyes."
Zelas's mind froze. The emergency system re-routed primary motor control to the back-up mind.
"Here."
The man held out the flower to her.
Zelas looked dumbly at him. Here she was, towering over him by over a head, dressed head to toe in her battle armor, in her battle form which had a wolf's head, a cat's tail, clawed hands, and large feathered white wings, and he thought her EYES were beautiful?!?
Actually that was kind of nice-
Wait a minute, she shouldn't be thinking about that!
"So anyway about that town? Is it over to the east, or the west, over the next mountain range? Or maybe I even passed it?" the man mused aloud. "It's terribly hard to keep directions straight in a swamp. Perhaps I made a wrong turn in there."
Damn. How dare he treat a Mazoku Lord like here like some...some...some normal person?!?! Zelas would not stand for such insults! She howled as she whipped toward him, her two swords primed to slice this insolent mite into two. And with neither fear or worry, the man flipped backwards over her attack, landing non-plussed several yards away.
"Maybe the map might help," he said, pulling a folded piece of paper from his travel sack. "Damn it must have been Sealius who made up the directions this time. How exactly am I supposed to triangulate the location of the meeting place using the astrological field lines, normalizing by the chaos vectors, and taking into account the trade winds? And tapping into the satellite to determine my global position? Sheesh, it's better when Ashford writes these up, even if he does do it all in recipes."
Zelas was steaming and seeing red. Red like blood. Red like the blood of this...this...HUMAN that wasn't even afraid of her! By Ruby Eye she had been stuck too long maintaining that Mazoku Barrier that humans didn't even fear her anymore! Her lupine grin promised a long painful death to this particular man.
"You will die," Zelas hissed.
"Hmm?" the man looked up from studying the piece of paper covered with esoteric figures and images just as a very sharp pointy sword came rushing toward his face. The map fell from his hands as he side-stepped the attack, grabbed the arm following the sword, and used the forward momentum to throw Zelas over his shoulder. Before she had even hit the ground, he caught the falling map and was studying it again.
Zelas blinked as she hit dirt. What just happened? Was she thrown by a mere human?!? Her tail swished angrily as she got back up. No more nice Mazoku, Zelas promised grimly, summoning hundreds of black cones as long as her arm into existence. There was no way he dodge all of these.
The shower of death flew at her command to turn the human into swiss cheese.
The man looked up from the map. He blinked.
Then there was a deafening explosion.
Zelas hummed happily to herself now that the annoyance was gone. Turning back to looking at the village, she thought that maybe flooding it would be fun. Especially since there wasn't a large body of water anywhere for several days travel.
"Hey is that a village over there?"
Zelas nearly bit off her tongue. No. No she didn't believe. Didn't want to believe. She didn't want to look. This wasn't happening. It wasn't possible.
If Zelas had hair in her battleform, she would have been pulling it right then. HOW by Ruby Eye was a HUMAN able to dodge her all of her attacks?!?!
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Somewhere in the Sea of Chaos, L-sama is laughing.
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But since Zelas couldn't pull her hair, she began to do the next thing that happens when one is extremely stressed. She began to molt. White feathers and patches of gray fur fell off of her battleform. The light breeze carried some of the fallen feathers to brush against the man's cheek.
Sympathetically, he looked at the furious Zelas. "I'm sorry. Is there something wrong? Losing feathers like this simply can't be good for you."
Zelas was taken aback by the man's concern, real sincere concern.
"Oh hey, I think that's Hartelun over there," he pointed at the town Zelas had chosen for her first victim. "Well silly me. Thank you for your time and trouble. I hope you'll feel better." He winked at her and lightly kissed the white feather in his hand before tucking it away into his tunic. He began walking toward the town.
Zelas's mind was unresponsive.
"By the way, if you ever want to find me," he added, turning his head to look back at Zelas over his shoulder. "My name is Terim. Terim Graywords."
Zelas still stood there.
Terim continued on his way to Hartelun. He was already late for the meeting with his friends.
It wasn't until Terim had reached the town that Zelas finally broke through her numbness.
"Why that..."
If he thought he could just waltz up to a Mazoku Lord, make an utter fool of said Lord, and just walk away then he was going to get a very rude, very bloody and painful wake-up call.
"I swear I'll kill you for this Terim Graywords!!!" Zelas roared, her anger bursting into a massive inferno around her.
In Hartelun, Terim looked up to see a large pillar of fire erupt from the fields outside of town.
"Hmmm, quite a few brushfires this year," he commented.
His poker buddies nodded.
