Let it be known that Ash was a coward. Ten years of his life being the idolized and feared by all of The Five Arcana, and he was a coward still. That cowardness was what drove him into such desperation that allowed him to live through a war. That desperation was what pushed him through, the fear was what allowed him to survive against the whole world. It didn't matter how much stronger the angels, demons and insidians he had fought, it hardly mattered at all the grueling methods of which he had used to defeat and kill those who tried to kill him, his fight or flight mode would sooner be activated than he could draw any weapon he had on standby. So it didn't matter if he'd killed a shit ton of this type of low-level insidian in his first life, the mere sight of them was enough to draw a full body shudder out of him.
And when Astaroth waved a hand in the air, a giant scythe materializing out of thin air in a whiff of dark smoke, all Ash did was step aside and allow the demon to do his job. In this case, it was to kill the thing for him. Do not get him wrong, he knew there was a form of racism when it concerned the differences between the Arcana, and for Ash who was a human passively fighting racism among his own kin, should have disliked the stereotype and hatred among the different Arcana. It was a shame that nearly all of them had tried to have him killed at least once. He'd been robbed before, but nothing as serious as being given a poison, shot at the knee, stabbed in the belly and so on and so forth. He'd be damn generous to say that he tolerated their existence instead of simply despising them as he rightfully should. And seeing Astaroth, the same demon that had broken into his house, swinging his scythe faster than the human eyes could see, and with one fell swoop, decapitated the insidian's head, the same insidian who had shattered all of his glass and possibly his eardrums, there was nothing but complete support in his heart.
How could he not, when the little maw of terror was seconds away from having its next meal, him? How could he not, when the very saliva of the thing that dropped onto the floor, had sizzled and burned through his carpet? How could he not, when even after death, the creature shrieked and struggled and shattered more of his furniture, spewing its acidic saliva all around the room and blood the colour of purple sprayed to all over the walls, ruining the sigil formations?
He'd rather have it dead more than anything.
There was no hero complex here. In the end, he was just a normal human they'd kidnapped and claimed to be mentioned in the prophecy, a human who had been a normal student living his life watching movies and eating chips on his couch on Saturday nights.
Fuck the prophecy and all that it brought.
Now came the more disturbing issue. The insidian was very much dead, that was something great. Cool. Amazing. Absolutely wonderful. And then the corpse was still very much there, laying on his carpet, his currently sizzling to destruction carpet, oozing purple blood that was too acidic to touch, drooling black saliva that was poisonous, and making the entire living room look like it came out of a stimulation game.
"You....You're not going to leave it here, are you?" Ash dared himself to glance at the demon Astaroth, who was busy wiping his scythe with what looked to be his clothes. Obviously made out of special material, with how it wasn't yet burned off from all the blood on it. The demon hummed in question as he twirled around to face him, surprise and confusion coloring his face. Like he didn't think that Ash would still be there. Like he forgot he was there in the first place. When the realization looked to be sinking in, he immediately look flustered.
What a demon, to be flustered this way.
"No no! Of course not! Raguel would have my head! But more than that, I have to bring it as proof, you know. That I caught it. People get paranoid at times, they'd want to see the body before confirming that it's dead. The nobles are very protective of you humans after all." Astaroth took out a pouch from his....somewhere....and waved it over the insidian. A space item, Ash concluded. A common enough item they sell around the Other Side, used for travelling. This one looked high-quality too, from the intricate runes sewn on the fabric. And when a space item is high-quality enough, it would usually be enough to store large amounts of objects.
Like this insidian, for example.
A wave of dark smoke flew over the insidian, and just like that, the thing disappeared, leaving only a hole in his carpet the size of his stove, and a dent in his floorboard that looked like lightning had just struck it. With the absence of the monster, the chaotic mess of the room suddenly became vibrant for anyone to see. His furniture were all pushed to the wall, some toppling over and the rest completely shattered to the ground. There were no more hopes for his light bulbs either, with all of them now pieces of debris hidden in the carpet, waiting to be stepped on. And not to mention his glass wall, oh Gods. That insidian, that fucker, that devil incarnate, was too blind to use a door, he'd pushed his way through fucking glass! Now he had an open-walled house, and a damaged living room to make up for it.
Just....
Just his luck.
In his first life, he's been kidnapped.
Now in his second one, his house was broken into.
He couldn't decide which was better.
"And umm, cough cough..." Ash watched attentively as Astaroth cleared his throat, internally taking great pleasure in his obvious guilt. "I'd pay for the damage, but I don't actively make money, so umm. Oh, no no no, don't panic, absolutely do not panic. I've got it under control, I'll file this to Raguel and he'll probably do something about it. Scratch that, he'll definitely do something about it. But for now, uhhh….cough cough, as I was saying. The damage is under control. You can....right, it's night. It'll be dangerous. And—"
"Stop." Ash took in a deep breath, counted to ten, then opening them again. Astaroth was no rubbing his chin, face carefully smiling but with no trace of the previous amusement. The demon looked guilty alright, and he looked so lost that it physically pained Ash to look. With a heavy sigh, he propped a hand on his hip, gesturing to the hallway, one leading to the rest of the house.
"Just come here. I've got questions for you."
The right decision would be to shoo Astaroth away before further suspicion could be formed inside his little head, but the more concerning matter was that Astaroth was here, in the Metal Nations where he should not be, when he should not be, doing things he should not be doing, and it didn't seem to be illegal, with how he was speaking at all. If there was anything he knew about Astaroth was that the demon was basically one of Raguel's many 'adopted' sons from the Other Side, and that he was more noble than demon in everything. Sure, demons were mischievous, they were scandalous, they were naughty, the lot of them, and Astaroth may have that in common as well, save for the fact that he was their prince and by being that, he was much more reliable and dignified than his people. And that meant no breaching the Great Barrier, lest Raguel snap his neck off, metaphorically speaking.
But here he was. Ash may not be so interested in the workings of politics and whatever the hell was going on up there with the superiors, but it became his instinct now to sense when there was something wrong. He was sure that in his first life, no one but the angels were sent to the Metal Nations, not even Raguel came with them. The Heir wasn't present either, and every single angel in the Envoy had a clear cut goal in mind when they came, only to be drifted away the moment they saw him.
Ash never found out why.
But now, much more concerningly, Astaroth was here, most likely with permission, and if he had permission, that meant Raguel was involved, that Raguel knew something and saw it fit to send a demon, the crown prince no less, to the Metal Nations, to hunt for an Insidian, which should also not be here.
Some things had changed from his first life.
And it was not his doing.
Something was terribly wrong, and if there's one way he could find out what it was, it would be through Astaroth.
This demon who followed him with a surprised look on his face, but saying nothing more. Ash led him to the room at the end of the hallway, doors already ajar waiting for him. He walked in, mindful of the saw dust collected behind the furniture, and the small trinkets of metal, wood and plastic all loitering around with no proper order. There was a large desk in the center of the room, and another smaller one at the edge by the window. A chair sat behind it, looking worse for where.
The large desk was so full of things that the ones on the edges were short of a push to fall off it, a mixture of metal and wood, of all shapes and sizes. There was a high chair with wheels on the legs, so unsteady and flimsy that it had got to be at least a decade old. Behind it was a blackboard that was more grey than black, the chalk scribbles filling in every inch of space there was on it, and on the boarders, multiple brown pages were pinned, displaying a number of diagrams and notes written in several languages. The chalk box was empty, save for one chalk stick that was no longer than a knuckle.
This was his studio.
Astaroth kept looking more and more alarmed as he studied the contents of the room, his wings subconsciously folding closer to his body, wrapped tight into a bundle behind him. He gazed indignantly at the objects on the floor before stepping over them hesitantly, all the while looking around him in fear of knocking things off.
Ah, Ash really shouldn't have done this to him.
He'd feel guilty, and was about to suggest they use another room, when he realized that any other space in the house would not give him the comfort that his studio could bring. The safety he felt just by being in there, with all of his incomplete pieces laying about, useless and collecting dust. Demons were tall, as all the other Arcana were. Not tall enough to be called giants, but in their eyes, a fully grown man would've looked like a teenager. And their wings were absolutely, fascinatingly large to carry them in flight, but because of that, small spaces like this bring them unease. That was generally why their houses and palaces were so big they might as well not have floors.
"Excuse me." Astaroth mumbled as he glided deftly around the objects, very carefully not touching a single one of them, but failing at keeping the dust to stay still, and cause a puff of them to create a small fog around him. He sneezed, in the hilarious way a six and a half foot tall man would sneeze, causing the bundle of feathers behind him to jerk and bump into the table and.....
Bam!
The flinch shouldn't be funny to watch, neither should the alarmed face of Astaroth as he skipped away from the table when one of Ash's inventions fell off the table.
"That..."
"Shut up and sit here." Ash hid his laugh as he pulled the chair behind the desk over to a more open space, knocking away a few trash on the way. He wasn't going to let Astaroth, with all that weight, to sit on his wheeled stool. Some would see that the stool would be more practical to hold the demon's wings so that it wouldn't be squished behind them, but Astaroth would have to deal with that himself. Ash pulled over his stool so that they were sitting across from each other, and then heaved a sigh.
"So. A demon is in my home. Where he should not be."
"Yes." Astaroth chirped, looking pleased that he got to answer this one correctly.
"And so was an insidian, which you killed. Assuming that that thing was an insidian anyway."
"Correct."
"And you're taking the thing back as what? Proof that you killed it?"
"Yup!"
Ash rubbed his face as he sorted his thoughts out in order.
"Why are you here?" He asked, exasperated.
"Meira." The demon hummed as he gestured away to the direction of the living room. "I sensed the workings of meira while I was in the area. Thought it to be the insidian I was looking for. Didn't expect it to be...." Astaroth fixed him a look, he seemed to be thinking. "Well, a human is not something you wouldn't see here. We're in the Metal Nations after all."
"Yes, we are." The point is across. They were in the human part of the world, where the demon was supposed to not be.
"Ah, before you accuse me of anything, I came here not only with express permission, but under the direct command of the Noblesse Obligue, if you must know." Astaroth held his hands up in the air, "I am to hunt down a few insidians that has escaped through the barrier. Of course, I have my men with me for the mission, but as you can see, one escaped and managed to reach the human lands before we could catch up."
"Your men." Ash deadpanned, pretending to be surprised. "I fancy you to be someone in power, then."
"Well, powerful enough to lead them, yes." Astaroth grinned, "but nothing so fancy as to command them. I am not that high in ranking."
One would think demons as arrogant creatures.
Astaroth didn't seem to be right in the head.
"The insidians you mentioned, are all of them dead? How did they escape?" Let it be known that for thousands of years, the Great Barrier stood firm and unbreachable, put up by the Principality of Matter and Reality, Théoden. It held strong for all this time, and even during the Great Arcana War, the barrier remains indestructible that the reigning noble had to force Raguel's sword away from the ancestral chambers for the barrier to open a narrow slit. How was it that a few weak insidians were able to escape, and continue to escape all the way to the nearest human lands?
"Ah, you see that was a moment of carelessness for the most part." Astaroth rubbed the back of his neck, flustered, "Or at least that was what it looked like. You know of the envoy, yes? When they were crossing, some insidians took the chance to slip through the slit using the underground tunnels. The slit must have extended all the way to the Underworld, and to their realm there for them to be able to squeeze through."
That was correct at some point. When the barrier opened, the slit was small in comparison to the size of the barrier, but it was tall. Tall enough that you couldn't look at the end in the sky, and certainly wouldn't know the ending deep below, where the insidian's realm was. It shouldn't have been possible for them to be able to squeeze through, unless they had help. The slit was too narrow for a low-level insidian to pass, and the higher ranking ones couldn't escape without alarming the barrier's sensors.
"What do you think, then?"
"Me?" Astaroth looked surprised, but composed himself quickly enough. "I honestly think someone messed with the opening. Not that I'm blaming Raguel or anything! It's just that....some nobles have the power, you see, to hold Raguel's sword. He may have been holding the thing wherever he goes, but the guy sometimes let babies touch it to amuse them, not that that's a bad thing, but you get where I'm going with this, yes?"
"Mmnn." Internally, Ash cursed the Noblesse Obligue for his sunshine nature. What strongest creature in the world, what protector of the Universe, he was just everyone's godfather they never knew they needed. He was soft, he was kind, he was unsuspecting.
"You're awfully interested in this, aren't you?" Astaroth asked him then, with a small smile. "They say humans are ignorant about the conflict of the rest of the world, too cooped up in their own isolated ones to give a damn about meira and power. They say you don't even have a leader, and that the common people sit upon many thrones in different areas, discussing common lives. I didn't think one would be so concerned about....well, anything that had to do with the other Arcana."
Ahhh, stereotypes.
"Well, here we thought demons boast and tease and smirk all day long. We heard they pinch babies and hide everyone's left socks and buy the souls of humans in exchange for revenge. I didn't think one would be so flustered."
The laugh that broke out was the closest thing to a demon he'd ever heard so far coming out of his mouth, and that was how he confirmed that Astaroth wasn't an angel in disguise or anything of the sort. He was just like him, a creature that didn't follow the perception and ideology of his people. It was a wonder how the demons respected him enough to sit on the throne, what with all that he was peculiar. He once thought of the same thing too, about the Heir. The truest of angels there was, yet so different from the rest of them, that they wondered if he was the offspring of a noble instead.
"It seems we are alike in that area, doesn't it?" Astaroth wiped away a stray tear on the corner of his eyes, before fixing him a serious look, his small smile still fixed in place, "Now enough about me. What's with you?"
"Me?" Ash tilted his head, daring him to speculate.
"There's something about you." Astaroth chuckled, pointing at his forehead with a sharp black nail protruding from his finger, "Scratch that, there's a lot about you that didn't make sense. I may be no healer, but I can sense the meira in people, or lack thereof. You humans are empty shells of a creature, with empty blood flowing through you veins and not even an ounce of meira supporting your life. How it is that you survived for so long remains a mystery to me, but more than that, humans are generally weak. They have useless cores and defenseless bodies. But you? Look at that." The sharp nail poked him between his brows, light enough to not be felt, but it was there, and through the contact, a stream of meira rushed into his body, streaming in a burst of power in his veins and diving deep, deep, deep into his core.
By the time Ash pushed that finger away, he was left gasping, slumped on his stool. He almost fell, if not for the arm that held him in place. His breathing was heavy as he let his body slump forward against the demon's front.
"There's power in you." Astaroth murmured into his ears as he blinked his eyes in a daze. "Something ancient. Something big. Dare I assume to call it the Fortress of Time, I would. But that's not my place to say, little human. And that's why I'll be taking you."