" School you say? What's that?"

Pietro would have never imagined it possible to hear anyone utter such questions with a straight face, but he was quickly coming to realize that this would be a common occurrence with his new companion and comrade. Asura did not especially appear to be dimwitted or slow, yet he had an air of simplicity. He simply did not care to learn about the world and all it contained. All that mattered to him were his short-term goals and his desires. 

"It's...I'd say it's a place to learn about the world." Pietro offered the simplest answer he could muster at the moment. He knew he would quickly lose Asura's interest if the explanation was too long or too complicated. And as much as he hated it, he needed to get the fiendish child on board with the idea of going to school. Firstly Asura was his ticket to actually visit Hell, as he had never been allowed to go out on his own before and the monks so rarely left their temple. Secondly, while the monks tasked him with taking Asura out of the temple, they offered him no guarantees that he would follow, and that was simply because they knew that they could not make any promises. 

Asura would move if Asura decided to do so. That was the plain truth. 

The monster Pietro could hardly look at in the face squinted at the human child and seemed to be deep in thought. He lifted a hand and brought it to Pietro's right wrist. 

"You have pearls too...And the clothes. Are you a Monk?" Asura asked, entirely too close to Pietro's own face, but then again not one soul in this temple believed Asura knew what personal space was. 

Pietro looked at his black and red robe and the pearls attached to one another by flimsy little bracelets, and he had to admit that he did look like one of the monks. He hadn't been told to wear the pearls on his wrists and ankles as the monks did, but he had desired to fit in, as any child would no matter where they found themselves. They were quite pretty too, the pearls, prettier than anything Pietro had ever owned, that was certain.

"No, not really. I just follow them around and live with them. Just like you." He tried to force a smile on his face while Asura continued to observe him and tug on his clothes as though he was fascinated by them. 

Asura clicked his tongue, which got him a small and barely noticeable flinch from Pietro, and stopped his attempts at figuring out what the human was. 

" Too bad. Felt like fighting one of them." And just like that, Asura went back to the center of the room and sat back down, grabbing a wooden sword in frankly terrible condition and swinging it around. 

"They don't want to fight anymore. I don't get them. It's like they find fun, not funny!" Asura exclaimed, but he did so without turning around. It appeared that Pietro had already ceased to be entertaining. 

There was something terrifying to this situation for Pietro, as he felt like Asura saw him as nothing more than a toy. He wasn't worth looking at or even standing in front of. He was just a background noise that Asura deigned to talk to. In a corner of his mind, Pietro wondered if the fiend regularly talked to walls or the pieces of furniture around him. He didn't seem to really care for the difference between a living being and the items he was surrounded by.

"W-Well, I'd say that it's because you're too strong for them! Monks aren't really fighters, as far as I know, but....What about other demons? You ever fought other demons?" Pietro asked while slowly approaching Asura. It was as though he was making his way towards a wild beast, or perhaps Death itself. Yes, surely that was a better comparison. A wild beast might let him down if he played dead. Asura would not. 

The fiend stopped swinging the sword and ever so slightly angled his head towards Pietro. His eyes could not be seen as they were hidden by his long hair, and Pietro wondered for a second how he could even live with such annoying hair. Contrarily to the demon, Pietro usually slicked his hair backward and made sure that they were wet constantly. He could not be bothered to deal with them getting in his vision all the time. But perhaps Demons simply had other things on their minds. They did not have similar bodies, despite the fact that they shared a common form. Pietro had never expected creatures that resembled humans so much to have such wild hair and eye colors, so maybe he was wrong to even think that they would have the same concern as Humans did when they were so wildly different. But Pietro liked his brown hair and green eyes very much.

He did not want to look like a freak, that was certain!

"No, can't say I have....I don't like that. I don't like it at all." Asura growled out, a vein popping on his forehead. Pietro would have been horrified if only this wasn't a common thing for Asura to do. 

"Well you know, if you went to school you would get to fight other demons your age! The monks told me so. Oh, and you could visit the city around the school too. Maybe you'd find things that could interest you. Weapons, people to fight....Innocent people to maim and torture for fun...Whatever you like really." 

He couldn't help himself, he truly could not. Pietro did not have a very shining opinion of Asura. And in a corner of his mind, he thought that even beyond his prejudices it might just be true that Asura liked to torture other demons. He certainly looked like he appreciated the idea if his deceptively innocent smile was of any indication.

"...Huh, it does sound nice. Where is this school thing you speak of?" Now, he finally deigned to look at Pietro again and give his full attention. 

Pietro pointed a finger towards the doors of the tower and smiled, a bit more confidently this time.

"Far, far from here. Beyond the lands around this temple. The monks told me I could go to a city called Dramora with you. It is in a land of ash and bones, with rivers of toxic liquid and forests full of lethal plants!" The human child declared with perhaps far too much enthusiasm. And Asura dared to look nonplussed at this. 

Oh, the gall this junior of his had. But then again he could snap his spine in two before Pietro could blink. 

"You're a human though, right? Sounds like a place that would kill you....Do you appreciate that?" Asura suddenly appeared in front of him. Pietro hadn't even seen him move, and yet there he was! Speed was one of Asura's greatest weapons, if not the best he had, yet that was still shocking for Pietro. He had seen many things ever since he had arrived in hell, but the Monks had been quite incapable to show him the wonders of Magic. 

Just at the thought of this wondrous existence, Pietro was getting more and more excited for the trip to come. He had dreamt of it all of his life. A power that could make the unimaginable,  possible. He could hardly wait, both for the journey to start and for Asura to get away from as soon as possible!

Pietro let out a small yelp of fear and moved away. But Asura captured his attention as he continued what he had meant to say "Do you feel more joy than fear at the idea of this land? You seemed quite happy just now...I wonder how it feels." 

Pietro furrowed his brows and turned his head to the side slightly. " I do feel more joy than fright, it sounds amazing! And I've died once already anyway. But...What was that last part about?" He wondered, Asura's eyes seemed to lose focus when he uttered the last words. He was obviously focused on something Pietro did not know of.

"If you are so excited at the idea of a land that could kill you, then I am excited at the idea of going there with you. When are we to depart?" 

Pietro blinked once, then twice, and then realized what Asura had just said. Yet, he quickly stopped himself. He shouldn't ask the fiend why he had so suddenly accepted the proposal. Just discussing it further might make him want to back down. He was so easily bored according to the monks. Only violence had seemed to make him content when he first discovered the possibility of it. 

"We should leave as soon as possible. I'll quickly go pack my things. Do you need time to do so....Too..." Pietro looked around the room and briefly asked himself where Asura's own affairs might be before he realized something. Asura did not care for anything. Only his basest of instincts mattered. He had no possessions. Or maybe he did and simply put them on the other floors of the tower. He couldn't be living in the first one after all, it had nothing resembling a bed. 

As he had nothing to add and really wanted to avoid saying anything that might ruin the answer he had gotten, Pietro quickly left after telling Asura to go to the entrance of the temple when he had finished whatever preparations he needed to be done. 

Pietro found himself at the entrance half an hour later. He didn't have many things to himself really, though that obviously was going to change once he made his living in a big city. Was Dramora even a big city? He hadn't really asked. But the monks had once told him that the demons outnumbered humans by several billion, so their cities had to be big. 

The entrance to the temple was a simple set of wooden gates guarded by two towering pillars that extended upwards so far, their tips were almost impossible to look at. The pillars looked far more ancient than the gates, and quite a bit older than the walls the gates were connected to. Pietro idly wondered why the temple even needed walls at its entrance, but it would soon cease to be of any importance to him. After all, he would finally get to explore the world. There was something he wanted to see with his own eyes more than anything else. Something that had truly confused him the first time he had heard of it.

Speaking of hearing, Pietro's perked up as the monks that had gathered to say goodbye to him all gasped and quickly ran away. 

At this point, he didn't even feel the need to turn around to see what had caused the commotion. But he did so anyway as he wanted to see what Asura had packed. Pietro did feel like he had gotten a bit carried away after he gazed at his baggage, or rather their sizes. So he couldn't help but wonder what a nutjob, pardon his language, like Asura would pack. 

He turned around and saw the same Asura he had left earlier. He had nothing on him. Not a single item, not even a weapon as Pietro had expected him to carry. This did confirm what he had previously thought. Asura owned nothing personal. More than that, Pietro really did not want to think of what this meant for the lack of a bed in the tower's bottom floor.

He had no desire to feel sorry for Asura. Deep inside, however, he certainly did.

With a strained smile on his face, Pietro spoke to Asura who was too busy gazing at the horizon upfront, to actually face the human. 

"Are you ready? It should take us a few days to reach the city with the breaks we'll take. It shall be quite an adventure I say." 

Asura looked at him with confusion written all over his face.

"Breaks? If you need to sleep I'll just carry....Matter of fact I will carry you for the whole trip. Can't wait to see what dangers the outside world has. It better have dangers, human." Asura looked at Pietro with a glare cold enough to freeze the entirety of the temple, but for once the human child felt no fear in his heart. He just hoped Asura wasn't serious when he had said...

"Hey OH, the hell are you DOING!?" He screamed after Asura lifted him and put him over his left shoulder. He felt a hand secure him in place on his back and his eyes widened. 

"Wait for a second! WAIIIIT!"

Alas, it was too late. Asura kicked quite a bit of dirt behind himself as he shot forward with enough force to crack the stone pavement and lift imprints on the dirt path. Before them was nothing more than the horizon and the skies. There was no real path to follow as the temple was, once again, located in the sky itself. 

Apparently, Asura had not been told that he should care about this. 

Pietro could only curse his luck as the awaited journey kicked off with a vision of the temple getting further into the sky after Asura had simply jumped off, uncaring of gravity or the distance between the sky island and the actual land. 

How was a human to survive while following the lead of such a deranged child!?