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Phon clambered out of the tent after Drim got settled. She then proceeded to putz around for roughly the next half-hour. She ate some of the leftover food and watched a few videos on her phone, just trying to kill time any way she could. Once enough time had passed that she assumed Drim was asleep, she stealthily crawled back into the tent, and hovered over him on all fours. For a brief moment she enjoyed the irony that this was the complete opposite position they had been in earlier that day. She moved her face close to his, to double check that there was no movement, then moved her head down his body.

She stopped at his chest, and inched her face to his heart. “I know you can hear me, you old biddy,” Phon whispered sternly, but as quiet as she could manage. “You just woke up, so I’m guessing you can’t move Drim yet. So you’ll just have to sit there and listen. Now, I honestly don’t give a damn that you hate me, or uncle, or Xard and Kada. I’m not even mad that you’d try to kill us. What I can’t stand is that you tried to use Drim’s body to do it!”

“You lectured me about how you had to sit there and watch as Drim almost died for all those years, but did you even consider how he would feel if he had to sit and watch you kill the people he cared about. The guilt of watching them die at his own hands while he couldn’t stop it would drive him mad. You wanna know what he’d do? He’d kill himself without a second thought. He’d do whatever it would take to make sure you could never hurt anyone ever again.”

“So let me give you a warning, dearest mother. If you ever, ever do anything to hurt Drim like that again, I will scour all of Rathe to find the ungodly being that put you in there. I will force it to teach me how to rip your soul out of Drim with my bare hands. Then I will drag you to the highest peak of hell myself where you rightfully belong.”

Phon was just about to start crawling her way back out of the tent when she noticed Drim’s arm start to fidget. It kept twitching around on the ground for a while until it started to raise. It seemed it was headed for her neck. Assuming it was going to be used to try and choke her, she prepared to dodge. However, it was placed gently on her shoulder instead. Phon immediately shook it off and used all her energy to keep her voice down. “Don’t you dare touch me with his hand…! I don’t know what you’ve been plotting these past twelve years, but know that I’ll be here to put a stop to it.” With those final words, Phon left the tent.

It felt good now that she’d finally gotten that out. She had been waiting over a month to say it. Now she could finally calm down and use the rest of her watch productively. Up until recently, Phon had never really done any form of special training. All of her skills had been self taught, picking them up as she needed them during her years as a bounty hunter. This had worked out fine, since in terms of power, she had vastly overshadowed anyone she considered her prey.

However, events since the start of the year had shown her just how weak she really was. A simple race had managed to completely wind her and made her feel the suffering of Drim’s disappointment. Also, a cosdamned Lesser had managed to catch her off guard and severely wound her, putting her and the others in a life-threatening situation. Of the two, the disappointment was definitely much higher on the scale of what she’d want to avoid repeating.

Phon now spent every morning training before the others woke up. She’d start off by jogging. With each day, she’d add another lap around the compound. To others, that would seem like a vastly excessive routine, but she got faster and her endurance increased just about every day, so she would always end around the same time. Today she had to run 29 laps, since she hadn’t started immediately when they got there, and missed a few days due to various circumstances.

She was exhausted by the time she was done, and it had eaten up most of her morning alone-time since she procrastinated starting it. Admittedly, even though she was tired, she felt great and was beginning to enjoy the runner's high that came afterwards. Phon undid the ribbon around her hat and tied it around her eyes, dreading what came next; the literal painful part of her training. She pulled out a pocket knife and stabbed her arm.

Purple blood poured out of the wound, traveling down her arm, and dripping onto the dirt. The small stain on the ground was all that was left after she teleported away. During the confrontation with Tusmon, Phon had become unable to use her curse due to the pain she was in. This training was focused on pushing past that, to make sure she could always use it, no matter the situation. She’d be damned if she’d ever leave Drim in trouble somewhere because she was too hurt to be able to move him somewhere safe.

For the first part of her training, after she’d stab herself, she’d teleport along a gauntlet around the compound and surrounding mountains. Lately, she had taken to moving her piece onto very hard to place, precarious spots to increase her mobility. Every few teleports she would stab herself again in a different spot on her body. It had become her routine to only wear a sports-bra and short-shorts for her personal training, so she would have more exposed skin to stab and would be less likely to get blood on anything.

After she’d run her pre-determined gauntlet for the day a few times, she would move on to what she called ‘overtime training.’ Phonscience would overlay a grid on the compound, then spawn an electric randomizer. Phon would then teleport to that spot on the grid and stab herself on a random part of her body. This repeated the number of times she had set for the day, and she aimed to get through it as fast as possible. Like with running laps, she increased the amount by five times per day. This meant she would be teleporting and stabbing herself 145 times.

When she finished, she collapsed to the ground, blood covering every inch of her body. Near the end, she had run out of new places to stab and had resorted to reusing wounds from the beginning of the trial. After she was able to move again, she pulled off her ribbon, then took a glance at her cuts and then at the sun. She hoped there would be enough time for them to all heal before Drim woke up. She didn’t want him to see her in such a state.

A few more minutes later, she finally worked up the energy to walk back slowly over to the campsite to find Xard already awake and working on a fire. Phon didn’t really mind if he or Kada saw her like this, and it wouldn’t be the first time they had. She sat down on one of the benches, grabbed a bottle of water, and began pouring it over herself. After the two newbies got to work on moving the mountain, she would go take a proper bath, but wanted to get the bulk of the blood off of her now.

When she was content, she turned to Xard and inquired, “Sorry if I woke you up with my training. Is the problem-child awake yet?” He shook his head in response then returned to tending the fire. Phon let out a sigh and headed behind the tents to the explosives-turned-housing. She poked her head in the doorway, under the sign that read ‘Kada’s Boom Shack’. As expected, she found Kada still asleep.

Phon sincerely wished that was all she found. Just once she would like to go and wake Kada up and find a normal girl sleeping in a normal manner. Yet again, today was not that day. Since she had moved into her own private quarters, Kada had returned to sleeping naked. There was a tarp on the ground at least so Phon was thankful she wasn’t literally rolling around in the dirt. Like usual, her blanket was almost completely off of her, and she had a derpy smile on her face with drool coming out. The kicker, and new addition for the day, was that she had her full body wrapped around the giant bomb she had acquired yesterday, spooning it as if it was her lover.

Phon got closer, and was about to shake her awake when Kada mumbled in her sleep. “Ahh, Drim… Don’t spread that… Honey doesn’t go on that…” Phon was unsure whether or not she should be infuriated, but decided to be safe and kicked Kada in the butt. Kada sat up in a panic, looked at Phon, clearly still not fully awake and yelled, “Holy zjik a zombie…! Oh, it’s just you Phon. You look like you should be dead.”

“Yeah, yeah… Hurry up and get dressed. I’m going to head to town to buy food for today. Is there anything in particular you want for breakfast?” Phon asked her.

Kada blinked herself awake a bit more and then said, “Hmm, something meaty. For some reason I’m really not in the mood for anything sweet.” Finished here, Phon headed back into her own tent to change into something that would cover up her shredded skin, not wanting to freak out the townsfolk. Afterwards, she asked Xard to start boiling a pot of water for her as she passed and headed into town.

Once breakfast was done, Phon was spacing out next to Kada on a bench while she rambled on about something or other. She really hoped that they’d hurry up and get to work soon so she could go take that bath. She did immediately tune in however when Kada suddenly turned to Xard and yelled, “Oh Cosmos, would you stop staring at our crotches?! Are you finally getting interested in this side of the field? You better have a good reason.”

Had he been staring at them? Phon had spent most of her life being stared at by strangers, so she didn’t really notice anymore. She also had never even really perceived someone staring at her in a sexual manner, and wouldn’t be able to immediately tell if someone was staring at her with mischievous intent. “Sorry, it’s nothing like that,” Xard tried to defend himself. “It’s, uhh… I, err, realized that we’ve been together for over a month now and you all have never seemed to… Ahh, mawhg it. Do you guys get you periods or not?”

“What kind of question is that to ask a lady?!” Kada was taken aback, and clearly appalled. “Of course we still get them and-” She stopped talking suddenly, clearly lost in thought for a moment. “Actually, now that I think about it, since I became a Fiend I don’t think I’ve gotten one. I guess it’s really not something you take notice of missing unless you’ve been sexually active or- Oh Cosmos, wait! Does this mean I can’t get pregnant?!”

“Quick, I need to pee on a pregnancy test! Wait, those are for finding out if you’re pregnant, not if you can become pregnant! What are those other things? Ovulation sticks? Wait, that probably wouldn’t work either! What should I do? I need to know because… Reasons!” Kada then resorted to her usual panicked stack of clutching her hair and curling up into a ball.

There had been a few sparse times in her life where Phon just couldn’t follow a conversation. This was likely due to her lack of proper schooling. She normally could figure things out from context clues, but when it came to anything of a physical nature, she was usually quite oblivious and would have to look things up later. It had been a few good years after she had gone through puberty before she fully understood what it was. This was definitely one of those times. Seeing how strangely Kada reacted, she felt she needed to get to the bottom of it and chimed in, “So… what’s a period?”

Kada immediately stopped panicking and both her and Xard turned to her, their mouths fully agape. “Welp, I’d say that answers my question definitively!” Xard blurted.

Kada grabbed the back of Phon’s head and pulled it into her chest while hugging her, and said softly, “Oh you sweet, sadistic, crazy child.” This just raised even more questions for Phon, meaning she’d have to look into it later, since it seemed she wasn’t going to get a proper answer from these two. For now, however, she was not going to put up with this abrupt physical contact. Fortunately, this was already obstructing her eyes, so she moved Kada over to the other bench next to Xard.

“Oh yeah, speaking of people getting pregnant, did your mother awaken in Drim overnight?” Xard asked, with a more serious tone than before.

It was Phon’s turn to be taken aback. “She did. What made you think so?” she questioned him.

“Her presence,” Xard responded, seeming a little unnerved. “After last time… it’s not something you forget. It’s much weaker than before, but I could still feel it, like a small twinge in the back of my neck.”

“Oh, is that what that was?!” Kada proclaimed. “Thank you! It’s been bothering me all morning. Does this mean we’re finally asking about her? I’ve been curious this whole damn time, but it always seemed like too awkward of a time to bring it up. So anyways, I have tons of questions--”

Before Kada could ask any of them, Phon had hurriedly put her hands to her eyes and teleported all of them away to the north side of the compound. They all fell on their butts, except Phon who had been expecting it. She sat down to join them and said, “The first thing you should know is that she can be awake even when Drim isn’t, so you never know when she’s listening. I’m not sure even Drim knows that little tidbit.”

“I can guess what you want to ask. Firstly, no it doesn’t seem to happen to any other Fiend besides Drim. The encounters he has described to me with our mother have never happened to me with our father. It has also never happened to any other Fiend that either of us have met, unless you two have been holding out on us.” Both of them shook their heads back at her. “Figured as much. That old Draz is just too damn stubborn to die permanently like she was supposed to.”

“Secondly, it seems she has gotten stronger over time. I was told it took her about two years before she ever gained enough energy to talk to Drim. He thought he was going mad at first. Reading those letters was really hard, since there wasn’t much I could do for him. They’d start out as just brief whispers every so often. He’d try to talk back to her, but it wasn’t until a few months later that he finally got a real response. Apparently, they’ve been talking on occasion ever since.”

“A few years after that, he wrote that she suddenly stopped talking to him for a while, only to suddenly come back one day. This happened a couple more times, but he could never explain it. After the incident last month, I asked if she had ever taken him over like that before, which he confirmed that she hadn’t. I know for a fact, however, that this isn’t the case. Now this is something I have never told Drim, and if you go and run your mouths, so help me, I will teleport you somewhere you’ll never return from.”

Phon pulled out her phone and opened up the picture gallery. She then proceeded to scroll all the way back to the beginning, to a folder that hadn’t been updated in years. She tapped on the icon and was required to enter a password she had set. It took her a moment to remember it since it had been so long, but did so successfully. There were three pictures in this folder, and were the main reason she made sure to transfer her data whenever she got a new device. Well, that and photographed copies of all the letters Drim ever wrote her, and copies of any articles mentioning him back when he was only known as ‘The Slayer’.

She handed her phone over to the other two to look at while she explained. “From what I’ve deduced, it seems that my mother took control over Drim’s body and wrote those three letters, roughly a year apart each. They’re definitely her handwriting, I’d never mistake it. Hand Guy must have delivered them for her, the unloyal bastard.” On the first letter was just the word ‘Watching’. The first few characters were more defined than the latter ones, as if the writer was falling asleep as they wrote it. The next two were ‘Drim will conquer’ and ‘Don’t stand in his way’.

“Wow, that’s crazy,” Kada said as she handed the phone back to Phon. “If the world found out that Eleen Drazah was alive in any form at all, there would be mass panic. Drim’s life would definitely be in danger… well a bit more than it is already, I guess…”

“And that’s why you two better not tell anyone if you don’t want to end up teleported into a volcano,” Phon threatened the two of them. “Now that you both know, I’m enlisting your help. If you see Drim’s body acting strangely, or he’s acting in a way that seems abnormal, you’d better tell me right away. I swear to Cosmos if that piece of zjik, or anyone else for that matter, hurts a single hair on Drim’s head I’ll-” Phon stopped talking, and instead started strangling the air.

“Of course we’ll look out for him,” Xard said sincerely. “We care about him too, but there’s something I want to know, well have wanted to know for a while. Your obsession with Drim… It goes well past normal. I get that you’re family and all, but it definitely seems to transcend a sibling bond. I really can’t tell if you’re just overbearing or if you’re actually in love with him.”

Phon let out a big sigh. “I’ve said time and time again that my love is purely platonic, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t obsessed. He’s the center of my whole world. I can tell you why, but that’s kind of a long story.”

“Oh noooooooo, I guess that just means we’ll have to delay moving the mountain to listen to you, how awful...” Kada spouted, unable to add more sarcasm if she tried.

“You’re not doing a good job of making me want to tell you,” Phon chided her. “But fine. To properly illustrate my reason, I need to explain something else first. As you both witnessed first-hand, Fiends are not the first supernatural occurrence in our world. Our mother’s persuasion ability is probably the first that most people know about, and most of them likely don’t think it to be a supernatural thing to begin with. I don’t exactly have proof of it either, but it seems likely since our family has two other supernatural phenomenons, that as far as I know, are exclusive to us.”

“The second weird thing that seems to be tied to our family is what our doctor described as ‘Premature Cognition’. This happened to our mother, myself, and Drim. Basically, we suddenly become fully functioning mentally, on par with that of a fully grown adult, and get all sense of awareness that comes with it that a child just doesn’t have. As far as I can tell, it’s induced by witnessing a traumatic incident, or that was the case for Drim and I anyways.”

“For Drim, it happened when he was six, when he witnessed our parent’s soldiers massacre a good portion of this town’s population. For me, it was just before I turned two years old, when my mother was still pregnant with Drim. Believe it or not, I used to be a regular innocent happy child. After I could walk, my parents decided to get me a puppy to play with and to keep me company since they were busy all the time. I just called it Doggy since my vocabulary was quite limited.”

“I remember I would have fun chasing it all around the house, and would get scolded by the servants often for it. They wanted me to keep it secluded to either my room or the playroom, but I never listened. One day, our parents had a few diplomats over to talk politics or whatever. I was chasing the puppy around like usual, and it ran out into the foyer as the guests were arriving. Apparently, one of them had a strong hatred of dogs, calling it a ‘damned mongrel’ and decided to stomp it to death right as I was running up to it.”

“My parents had him immediately taken away and killed of course, but I can still recall the warmth of the blood as it covered my face. That feeling was what triggered my premature cognition. As for my mother, I never did get the full details, but my uncle explained it a bit to me after I went through it, probably thinking it would help me cope or something. I don’t know the exact age it happened to her, but he said it was when she was still a child too. I don’t know if it can count as trauma, but apparently all she would say about it after it had happened was, ‘I heard her voice.’ Seriously creepy right?”

“Anyways, after it happened to me, everything seemed to become more dull. My toys became less fun to play with. Food started to lose its taste. The days seemed to become longer and drag on. After witnessing how fleeting life could be, it seemed to lack all sense of purpose for me, and I began to wonder if it was really worth living at all. The only thing that ever gave me comfort during this time was a yo-yo one of the servants bought for me. The way it spun around endlessly, how simple it was, it spoke to me I guess.”

“The next few weeks, I kept getting worse: more closed off emotionally, barely eating, and wouldn’t respond to anyone. This was until Drim was born. At first, it didn’t really have an effect on me. I would just sit somewhere and spin my yo-yo as the whole household ran around me in a frenzy. After a while, someone came and got me and brought me to where my mother was. There was this brand new life in my mother’s arms, but I still felt nothing.”

“Hours passed, and I just sat there in the corner like usual. The entire time since I arrived, Drim had cried. It wasn’t like a normal cry when a baby wants something, this was a death-cry of something terrified. Over those hours, I started to hate Drim. As he wailed, with each passing second, my disdain grew. I wanted to leave, but I knew it’d just cause more trouble if I did. The adults did everything they could to try to make him stop crying, but nothing worked. He did cry less when some people were near him like my uncle, but never stopped fully.”

“Finally, my mother called out to me to come see Drim. They put a stool next to the bed and put me on top of it. I hated it at first, since the loudness of his wails seemed to increase exponentially. I stared at this fleshy pink thing for a while, and eventually got fed up. I reached a hand out to him, planning to cover his mouth to try and stop the noise. That was when it got really quiet.”

“Drim had reached up and grabbed one of my fingers. He started staring at me intensely, his whole body quivering, but he had stopped crying and went completely silent. I was baffled and confused, why only then did he stop? I tried to pull away, but couldn’t. Drim was holding on to my finger with all the strength he could muster. You see, there is this weird quirk that Drim was born with. I imagine it must have come from the same source as the rest of the weirdness in our family.”

“This is something no one else but he and I know about. As far as I’m aware, our parents never came to fully understand it. Drim has the ability to tell a person's nature just by being near them. He can tell if someone is good or evil instantly. Essentially, he could know if someone would turn another into at least a Lesser Fiend. It’s why he had no hesitation in killing Vinlot, and why he trusted both of you right away. Drim never has to worry about someone hiding what kind of person they really are around him.”

“So, it’s only natural that when a baby, who did not know what was going on, was next to one of the most evil people in history, that he would panic endlessly from the bad feeling he was getting from her. When I saw this terrified little thing trying its damndest to be saved, something awoke in me. From then on I had a purpose in life: to protect my baby brother from anything that scared him, and give him someone to rely on when he was surrounded by those monsters. I hope that answers your question, why I’m so obsessed with him. I guess you could say he is quite literally my reason for living.”

Kada waited until it seemed that Phon was done speaking and then commented, “Wow so Drim really has three powers then? That seems kind of unfair!”

“You could probably say four if you count Hand Guy’s service, whatever his deal is,” Phon added. “Also, I don’t think having our mother’s persuasion came naturally. He didn’t show any signs of possessing it until after he became a Fiend. I believe that she is still its holder, but he taps into it since she’s inside of him. However, I will admit that it does appear that there is some odd significance to Drim. I guess this whole thing did start with him after all. But that’s okay, the whole world should revolve around him anyways.”

“I think I get it now,” Xard finally contributed. “I think I’m finally convinced that you’re not a sister in love with her brother.”

“Thank you, about time and--” Before Phon could finish, she was cut off.

“You’re his parent,” Xard said with confidence. “And an unhealthily, obsessive one at that. You’re a helicopter-mother who wants to be in every aspect of his life. That’s also why you get so upset when Kada and I show signs of liking him. You think anyone who would want to date him would need your approval, but I can guarantee your mentality is along the lines of, ‘none of you are good enough for my child.’”

“Yeah, and you never will be,” Phon smirked. “So go ahead and give up on that dream now. I will admit, I guess I do see Drim from a parental role every so often rather than as a sibling now and again, but I have to be. You’ve seen how our mother was, and I can tell you our father wasn’t much better. Drim never had a proper parental figure, so I will fill that role since no one else ever has for him… Oh, I guess we did have a maid at some point he may have viewed along those lines, but I doubt we’ll ever see her again.”

Fiends For Hire Text Conversation 6

Date: Trimayber 17th 2077

『Drim: So how’s it going with teaching Phon about… you know… things.』

『Kada: Dude, I swear it’s impossible. Any time I try to bring it up she either completely ignores me or stares at me like I’m making this zjik up. I don’t think I’ve gotten through to her at all.』

『Xard: Maybe it’s best to just leave it be. It’s kind of sweet knowing Phon has an innocent side like that. I’d never believe it otherwise.』

『Drim: You guys didn’t hear what she said. Seeing her be so oblivious it was just… painful.』

『Xard: Then maybe the simplest tactic would be to find her some ‘source material’ to read or watch and let her figure it out on her own.』

『Kada: And who would have something like that… What exactly are you looking at on your tablet all the time, Drim? HMMMMMMMM? 👀』

『Drim: It would seem it is time to drop the subject』

『Xard: 👀』

『Kada: 👀』

 

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