It was now just the kids and I standing alone in the clearing. The man the boy had killed acted as a division between us, his still-warm body a barrier in the dirt.
The boy was the first to have stopped crying, he rubbed his eyes off of his tears and looked at me. There was still an ember of ferocity behind his eyes, but they were far more wary now than before; he knew he had no chance of beating or escaping from me.
"W-What are you?." He asked me as he tried his best to not crack.
"Me? I'm..." I looked down at myself, at the thousands of scars and stitches that ran up all over myself.
"I'm not so sure myself." I plainly said, shrugging my shoulders at him.
"You're a Durga, how do you not know you're a Durga?" He scrunched his brows at me.
"Do you not see the power you had just shown? You erased that Human's head off... such is the power of the Durga." The boy shifted his eyes over to the windblown path that I had carved from my punch.
"Uhm, you keep repeating it as if I'd know. What the heck is a Durga?" I asked as I tried my best to wipe the blood off of my fist with the dirt below.
It was the girl's turn to speak up now as she wiped away her tears with the small bandana that hung around her neck.
"A-A Durga is an avengeful battle spirit." She softly said.
"A lost battle spirit? I've never been in a battle before, unless you count the bullying I had been through as a kid; but those for sure weren't battles, ha." I joked as I resurfaced some painful memories.
"The Durga inhabit the Sufolk," She motioned to me with her eyes to look around us, at the sunflowers.
"Sufolk? You mean sunflowers?" I asked.
"Sunflowers?" The boy cut in.
"I've never heard of such a thing called 'sunflowers', is that what you're calling the Sufolk?" The girl asked me.
"I suppose I am, huh." I walked over to one of the sunflowers, or as they call them, Sufolk, and studied it with my hand.
It didn't look any different than a regular sunflower.
"So these Durga, you said they inhabit the Sufolk, right? Why?" I asked them.
"Because the Sufolk only grow where Demons have died." They answered together.
"Wait what? Where Demons have died? So what you're saying is that..." I trailed off as my eyes strained at the sheer magnitude of Sufolk that ran forever off into the horizon.
I then looked directly down at my feet, I began to notice some odd details about the dirt. Hidden within the pebbles and mulch were broken white shards; they were bones.
I thought back then to that bone I had snapped by accident, alerting the kids.
"We're in a Demon graveyard." I blurt out over the grim realization.
I look back to where I had first woken up in the middle of the clearing. I noticed that next to it, was a rather odd-looking Sufolk.
It was taller than the other Sufolk, and had a tinge of violet at its petals. I felt a sense of melancholy wash over me as I studied it from afar.
"Do other Durga look like me?" I asked the kids, looking away from the single peculiar Sufolk.
But they only shrug their shoulders in response.
"We've never seen a Durga before, but our Papa would tell us stories about the Durga being protectors of the Sufolk fields." The girl replied.
"So you're only assuming I'm one of them, is what you're saying."
So, the chances of me being a Durga were up in the air-- whatever I truly was.
I sigh as I crouch down to the ground, weighing my options over what to do next. But as I do, I notice in the corner of my eye that the two kids begin to whisper to each other.
"Whatever it is you're both plotting, it won't work." I tell them as I wait for their reaction.
But they don't look surprised, rather, they look relieved.
"We're on our last legs," The boy begins to talk.
"We've been on the run for days, we had run into the Sufolk field as a last resort to escape the slave caravan; we were hoping the Humans wouldn't brave it."
"Before, we were sure we were going to die out here. The honor of joining a Sufolk would've made our deaths a little less bitter." He grimaced as he looked at the dead man next to him.
"But, thanks to you, we didn't." He unhanded his sister and got up from where he was.
He began to walk over to me and stopped about six feet away.
And without a word, he lowered his body down as far as he could and brought his hands up above his head; as if he was begging.
"Please, whether you're a Durga or not, please help us get home." He begged as his face was an inch away from the ground below.
"Woah, woah kid-- I thought that was a given?" I said as I grabbed his one good hand, briefly startling him.
I raised him back up from the ground.
"But, I had struck you." He looked at his broken hand.
"I would too if I had a sister to protect." I said, patting him on the shoulder.
"Besides, I don't know where else to go-- might as well go with you two, y'know?"
The boy looked like he wanted to cry some more, but with his one good hand, he slapped his face; he smiled.
"Thank you... uhm, what was your name, sorry?" He asked as he struggled to remember if I had or hadn't said it.
"You're welcome, and it's not your fault-- I don't know it either."
The problem of not remembering my name bugged me a lot. It was a weird feeling knowing everything else about back home on Earth but my own damn name.
"For now, uhm, just call me--" I looked around, trying to think of something that I could use as a placeholder for myself.
Then, as the twin suns shifted further down into the sky, the field of Sufolk shined a glowing scarlet over its surface; it was beautiful. I guess that was what made them different from regular sunflowers back on Earth.
"Call me, Ignis." I told the boy.
"Ignis? What does that mean?" He asked.
"From where I'm from, it means 'fire'."
"From where you're from?" He looked perplexed.
"Yeah, I'll tell you about it as we go." I said as the start of sunset meant that nightfall was bound to happen soon; we had to leave.
"What're your names?" I asked them both, as I walked over to where the girl was.
"I'm Rayji." The boy declared.
"I'm Tesera." The girl said shyly.
"Rayji and Tesera, it's nice meeting you two." I crouched down to where she was and offered a hand to her; she accepted it.
"Let's get going... oh yeah, where did you need to go?" I asked them as I began to walk towards the sunset.
"We're going to where our Big sis lives." Tesera said as she held my hand; she didn't look as afraid as before.
"Your Big Sis? Where does she live?" I asked as I took the first step into the Sufolk.
"She lives in the great Demon capital, Ars Goetia!" Rayji proudly proclaimed as he followed closely behind.
"That's nice... WAIT, WHAT DID YOU SAY!?!"