Eventually slapping Cass got her to wake up, and she immediately asked me why her face hurt so much, being put on the spot so suddenly I responded in the only way I thought I could.
"Now that your body is calming down, you're probably finally feeling the pain." I said to her while smiling with my crimson red eyes.
"What pain!" She said, jumping back from me and falling back to the floor, while pulling up the left side of her lip in disgust and pulling her right hand in front of her for protection.
I slightly chuckled and smiled deeply, the blood rushing from every indent in my expression, "Someone like you, is lucky there are no mirrors here." I said, obvious venom dripping from my words.
Her face paled beyond what I thought possible as she quickly asked, "Arthur, is my face fine!"
Arthur turned to her while squinting as if he was trying to determine the slightest thing off with it, "It seems fine." He said, returning to his usual smile.
"Quite chivalrous as always, Arthur of the round table." I said to them with a smirk, the blood slightly seeping.
Cassandra turned to me as if she just realized that Arthur wouldn't say something about her face even if maggots were crawling out of her eye sockets.
Her hands started to shake, the vibration seemingly matching the vibration of the blood red dust. She slowly lifted her hands to her face and stopped right before touching them, as if she was scared of what she'd feel.
My smile went deeper.
The hands were centimeters before her face and finally after some long apprehension finally touched her face, and when it did, the fingers squirmed like millipedes, caterpillars, spiders, worms, and maggots.
Desperately searching every square inch of her face, trying to discern out any abnormalities, her face then began to vibrate as her hands once did.
Now I was alarmed, my joke may have gone to far.
There was something seriously wrong with her.
"Caelus! What's happening to her." I yelled out to my demon who was making castles out of the blood-red dust.
Although I asked him, I already knew what this was.
It was some kind of curse or disease agitated by her emotions.
It might be similar to the bloodletting of my face.
My demon ran over and whispered to me, "Try your best to not annoy her, wild humans will become what they think they are here. It is said it is because of the degeneration of all virtue."
My crimson eyes turned to look at her sitting empty in the barren blood sand ridden wasteland, as my sight focusing to see what face laid behind her hands, my eyes shook.
My jaw locked itself in its position.
I too, began to shake.
"What are you guys looking at?" A voice echoed from behind me, I dashed in its direction.
Swaying Arthur gently in a swift arm around his neck I moved him the opposite direction, "We need to leave, now."
I then immediately sent a mental note to my demon, "Devour her soul."
He immediately responded, "It's only a change in form, more despair can still be farmed."
"Bringing a monster along will erode people's belief in us, if they don't believe in us how will we betray them?" I responded through the contract link.
"Okay." He said, sounding kind of disappointed, this mental connection is very abstract dealing with the most basic symbols of thought, schemas if you will. That meant that Caelus wanted me to know that he was disappointed with this and wished to obtain more from her.
I began to run with Arthur, the sand turning into a blur by our feet, Arthur tried to look back,
"Don't!"
I screamed, hoping to sway him from actually understanding the situation.
"You can't look at it, you'll die too!" I elaborated by screaming in his face.
"What do you mean too!" He screamed back at me while still running further, the wind speeding and continuously getting...
Hotter?
I coughed at the arid wind scorching my throat and lungs, entering the alveoli in my lungs and denaturing them disrupting the flow of oxygen...
...Shit....
My feet and hands pained of small needles and beads, lack of blood flow. No, lack of oxygen in blood flow.
This doesn't make any sense, this isn't how air works.
We're not far enough to justify stopping, can I justify slowing down?
It wasn't just painful, it was getting physically impossible to keep up pace, come one Jeane, just a little more.
Then the destined moment arrived, Arthur fell over.
Which since I was holding on to him, took me down too.
I took a deep breath of actual air, unlike what we were breathing before.
My chest heaving I looked at Arthur with a smile, the usual amount of blood seeping.
Arthur's body may be a bit bigger than mine, his throat is still relatively small, he needs more oxygen than I do, lasting longer wasn't about strength, pain resistance or endurance it was about who needed less oxygen to function.
I looked back towards how my demon was faring against whatever Cass became.
She was much taller than him, towering over his stature in the horizon I couldn't tell from the distance, but I suspected her to be at least 30 feet tall.
I couldn't discern what she was compromised out of. All I could tell was that it was black and warping slightly, like her mass was constantly changing.
As for my demon, he was running.
Facking hell.
You have wings goddamnit!
Wait, does the air here not allow flying?
I established the mental link and spoke to him once again, "Caelus, what's happening?" I said
"She burning her own lifeforce!" He screamed at me through the connection, making sure his anger was felt.
"Won't that make it impossible to take her soul if she burns it all away then?" I asked him in response, actually worried about his answer.
"Well yeah, it's a shame but I can't fight her in this state." He said
"You said that this monster form is just a form, she's not actually a non-thinking monster right?" I asked him, close to proposing my idea.
"Yeah?" He signaled back to me, questioningly.
"So just calm her down and rip her heart out." I proposed to him.
"Yeah, I think it's too late for that now." He instantly responded in a panic.
Just as a reminder, you have to manually input emotions into our connection if you want them to be felt, it's like typing *breathes heavily* or *clenches fist repeatedly* in private text chats.
"Why is it too late exactly?" I asked.
"Well, I kind of already took her arm off, that kind of made her lash out at me." He responded
So you underestimated your opponent, attacked her and then realized you couldn't take her?
That's some facking fraudelent activity.
"Well, don't lead her over here. I ran with Arthur so that he wouldn't see it and wouldn't transform himself or whatever." I said
"I don't really know why you humans care so much about the form. Fear only exists when there's something to love and all, sin only exists when there's virtue to fall, I suppose." He said to me before closing the connection.
My demon turned direction and the black mess that was Cassandra followed suit, leaving us alone.
I got up and made sure no blood-red dust was touching Arthur's fallen body. He was going to wake up soon.
I placed my jacket down on the sand, I wanted to see if they would eat through this too, they got through their socks, yet their socks also had weaves and holes in them, my jacket as torn as it was was made of leather.
In my stupidity and realization, I forgot that this sand burrowed through their skin and leather is an organic material and as such I found signs of wear and tear of the sand biting into it.
But it was relatively slow, probably due to leather's thickness versus human skin, the jacket would most likely last the night.
Plus it was already ruined, so I wasn't going to keep wearing it.
Arthur eventually opened his blue eyes to the world, the crimson world.
Howls echoed from the hills in the distance and beside him was an albino girl looking off somewhere in the distance.
Almost seeming angry.
"Who wouldn't be angry." he thought
Memories started to come back to him of before he blacked out, memories of running, memories of classmates.
Cassandra!
"Jeane! What happened to Cass!" He shouted at her.
Fahrenheit responded, looking back at him with a gentle smile, sitting on her jacket wearing a black tee-shirt and jeans, "I don't know but it's best to presume dead, there was a monster."