"I have to save the world," Daniel said. "There are entities that eat earth and vomit it back as lava, bad, evil things. And the angelic creatures that were supposed to help us, well, they are nowhere to be found."
"Wait a second, Daniel." Mariana raised a finger. "Are you saying that angels and demons used to work together?"
"How do you think this world has not fallen apart yet?" He chuckled. "We used to be a great team, us and them, before they disappeared. Now it's just us, and I have to keep shedding blood so that I don't lose my powers."
"If you were to live a peaceful life…?"
"I would simply grow old and die, just like anyone, and I would lose my abilities to keep them at bay." He stared at her so seriously that all amusement died in her chest like a crushed butterfly. "They are not something to mess with. I don't know what your personal witch has told you, but I do know that it is wrong to say that the beasts with too many limbs and too many of everything will end the world."
Mariana bit her lip in concentration.
"There can be too many of the beasts, though," she said, contemplating the demise of everything she knew. "If there are eleven…"
"Then the situation would be serious enough to warrant it. They are our weapons against something even worse. Mariana, I…"
And now, for the first time in her life, she heard him speak like he was fearing for his own life. Were demons, strictly speaking, ever dead or alive in the usual sense, anyway?
"I don't care to think about them. But believe me when I tell you that they are worse than anything you have ever seen. I am nothing compared to the evil that will ruin the entire universe if we let THEM through."
"Tell me more about them," she said, but she didn't have a chance to make him speak as he pulled her closer to him, grabbing her hair and planting a kiss onto her lips.
Hungry for affection, she returned the kiss, not even remembering what they had been talking about. He was all around her. He was on her lips, surrounding her, it was as if the world had stopped around them, time itself did not exist.
There were only two people in this world, the demonic and brilliant pirate king and his lady. She was so lucky to have him, to have someone who actually made her heart beat.
Distantly, she started to recall things that she didn't even remember doing; like how when the universe had been young. She had dwelled in the stuff that stars were made of, vacuous, nebulatic matter that was not yet quite real in the sense that real stars were, and then something went oh so wrong and she didn't become an alien sun, instead ripping apart and warping the very fabric of reality…
"Wow," she breathed as he pulled away. "You can do that with a…kiss?"
"My kisses are known to do many things. What they never do is leave the recipient the same as before. Were you scared?"
Mariana nodded enthusiastically. "It was unlike anything I've ever seen before. So, they are like the two-headed calves of the great universe."
"Aye, well…" Daniel slid back in his chair and groaned. "Everything that exists would have been so good without them."
"Well, I don't know about that. I could have been born as a woman a few inches taller," Mariana joked, trying to brighten up the atmosphere, but he didn't quite respond as positively as she would have hoped him to.
"It's been getting really bad. That is why I activated my evil pirate career. I get more strength when I sail and make excuses to, well, kill people." He seemed to ponder on this for a moment. "It isn't like I don't enjoy it, of course. It's just demon nature."
Mariana smiled. She wanted him to feel better. Reaching for his hand, she did not meet resistance anymore.
She took his hand and kissed each one of his fingertips.
"You work so hard," she muttered. "You work so hard, yet this world sees you as the devil. I wish I could take the pain from you and make it my own."
He leaned closer to her. She could feel his breath on her skin.
Logically, she knew that he had chosen to smell like cocoa beans and worn leather. Pirates were usually filthy, but the leather aroma made this clean scent believable enough that she could imagine it as something that naturally evaporated into the air from his perfect skin.
"I want to wear you like I would wear a warm coat," she said, on a whim, pretending to not notice just how unhinged she sounded.
"And that isn't demonic at all." He laughed.
She had obviously managed to cheer him up.
But soon his face got gloomy again and he started to scribble something down on a piece of paper.
"What are you doing, Daniel?" Mariana asked.
"I am trying to piece together a way to get the dice without harming anyone you care about."
A wild spark of joy shot upwards in her body. She knew Daniel was a good man - she had always known it. He merely did evil things because he had to, that was the case. Sure, he took more enjoyment in them than the average person, but that was merely because demons worked so differently from regular human beings. He had no choice in the matter. It was just like her own life. She had not chosen to be a table-stealing, monster-summoning vixen, things just happened to her and she had to react in a way that minimized the damage done by her actions.
Yes, that was the way things were. They were born to sail the seas and be formidable, piracy was their way of life, the air they breathed.
She looked at him, batting her lashes and hoping he would kiss her again.