Chapter 10: The Wedlock Slaughterers

It was a tragic end for Persephone Kore, Spade 4 of Edinburgh, but it was probably peaceful for her. From the story that she told me, it seemed like she suffered greatly for a long time. It was a shame I never got to hear her father’s name, but if I ever found him, I’d be sure to end him personally. He couldn’t be allowed to live.

I looked down and prepared to close Persephone’s eyes, but before my hands could reach her, her body and blood alike began to wither away, turning into ash. It took no time at all for the ash to be blown away by the wind.

I watched as the ash danced in the wind off into the distance, and before long, it was completely gone.

Rest now. 

When she died, she said a seed would be left behind. Did she know that she was going to turn into ash? Looking down at where her body was, I noticed a small red seed. This must be what she meant.

I bent down and picked it up, observing it. For all appearances, it seemed to be a pomegranate seed.

“Why was this left behind?”

I had no idea why this would be left behind. What was the purpose of it? Did she have it on her person? She was gone, so she couldn’t answer my questions. But at the very least, I could respect her last wish.

As I stuffed the seed into my Pocket Dimension, a strange pair of voices started speaking behind me.

“Oh, Miss Persephone is dead, is she?”

“Oh, it’s so tragic, honey!”

“A surprising turn of events this is!”

“Oh so true! Should we fight him ourselves?”

“It would be fun! It really would!”

“!” Hearing a pair of strange voices, I immediately proceeded to jump.

They nearly caught me off guard, so I almost failed to dodge an attack. I jumped pretty far away from the speakers and turned to look at them.

“Who the hell are you?”

The two in front of me were a man and woman in red military uniforms. Though the man seemed quite free spirited, the woman seemed rather… loose. But the expressions on their faces seemed to be that of ecstasy.

The man had a beautiful katana in his right hand and wind and fire wheels on his waist. The woman was hanging off the man with what looked like a black war fan and a blood splatter design in her left hand, covering her mouth.

He had long red hair tied up in a bizarre manner. Meanwhile, she had short black hair, her bangs uneven and much longer than the rest. If anything else stood out, it was perhaps the large bust the woman had, rubbing up against the man.

“Oh, you dodged that?”

“You nicked his ear honey!”

“How amazing. It looked like you’d be harder to hurt than that after watching that battle, but you’re more cautious than I expected.”

“Ooooohhhhh! Please, can we cut and slice you up! You look like so much fun to slaughter!”

“So he does, sweetie. So he does.”

They nicked my ear? I took a step backward and began preparing myself to escape, charging my Ether for my Dimension Shift. I lost a large portion of my Ether during that fight. I was probably at 30% now. Having abused both spatial and gravity conjurings the way I did, it came as no surprise. If it were anyone else, they would have long since run out of Ether.

These two were clearly strong, but to what level, I couldn’t tell. Not knowing how powerful these two were with such a low amount in the tank was risky. It would be better to escape.

Thinking back, these two were the voices I heard that told Persephone where I was.

How did they survive Persephone’s curse? They were in range if they saw me and yelled to her.

“Well, we may as well introduce ourselves. My name is Kane Caedes, and this is my wife, Clovis Caedes.”

“We’re the Heart Aces of the Edinburgh Kingdom, sweetheart!” To accentuate that, the woman pulled back the clothes directly atop her breasts, showing the red tattoos of an A and a heart on each nipple.

…What a location, I thought. Still, my eyes narrowed. After all, I knew their names.

“The infamous Wedlock Slaughterers.” Heart Aces they said? Is this like what Darius said before about that infamous Elly Bathory joining their ranks? What is the idea of adding these lunatics to the fold?

“Oh, you’ve heard of us?” Clovis asked, sloppily and provocatively stuffing her chest back into her clothes.

“Of course. You’re the Wedlock Slaughterers, responsible for the downfall of several towns in the past in the name of fun and love. I want to take care of you here and now, but it’s too risky when my Ether reserves are low. For now, I’ll take my leave.”

I holstered my gun and took another step back.

“Oh, well that’s too bad. I thought you’d be fun.”

“I’d prefer to fight you at full strength.”

…That was certainly a surprise to me. They were still the enemy, and they were rumored to be rather crazy individuals. I imagined that they’d attempt to stop me, but I guess they still had some semblance of reason.

Still, I figured it would be better to ask. My spell was already prepared, so I could leave at any time. “You have no intention of stopping me?”

“We have no orders to do so. That was Persephone’s job, to kill anyone who came into this town. We were merely here to… point her in the right direction you could say.”

“And besides, after seeing you fight Persephone like that, it would be far more entertaining to have a wonderful fight on the brink of death while at full power! We wouldn’t want it to be so easy! Where’s the fun and love in that! Hehe!”

Clovis winked at me which made me uneasy, but that at least gave me an answer. They have no sanity.

Still, now it was time to return home. As much as it frustrated me to leave these two to their own devices, I didn’t have a choice.

“Dimensional Shift: Home.”

As the green light shone beneath me, I could see the two… love birds waving at me and bidding me farewell as if I was a friend.

“We’ll meet again!”

“Bye bye, sweetie pie!”

And then, I was home.

I’m fully aware that this chapter is rather short in comparison to the last few, but I was originally going to add more onto this. The main problem was that I couldn’t think of any reason to.

In fact, this chapter and the previous one were originally all a part of the chapter called Acedia. All of it was stuffed into one chapter, and all of it was from Riley’s POV.

Similarly, part of what I was going to add was going to be taken from the next chapter, but considering the timing, pacing, and the direction the next chapter will go, doing so just isn’t reasonable, so…

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the new characters. I definitely have some big plans for the Heart Ace of Edinburgh. And I hope you enjoyed this final part of Persephone’s battle. It was a fun chapter for me to write, but this fight was only the tip of the iceberg compared to what I have planned. And I have a LOT planned.

Next chapter will be Saturday, April 13th.