Sin-Eater: Chapter 56: Druther (Patreon)

[CANTA]

Class: Sin-Eater

Sub-class: None

Level: 32

—— PORTRAIT ——

HEALTH: ——

SOUL: 96/96 ↑↑

EXP: 0/125

OBOLS: 0

HUNGER: You are stuffed full

THIRST: You are desperately thirsty

STR: 26 ↑

DEX: 32 ↑

INT: 24 

WIS: 24 

LUK: 26 

LOV: 9

Canta wakes up, finding himself submerged beneath water. His eyes shoot open wide, his hands grasp at the arms holding him beneath the surface, as water fills his lungs that desperately gasp for air.

Alleluia pulls him out of the water and he drops to the side of the embankment, spluttering and flopping around like a dying fish.

“Are you okay?!” she asks, waiting a minute for him to stop spasming. “You looked all dried out, so I carried you away until we found some water,” explains Alleluia. “It took a while, so I wasn’t sure if you’d uh… ‘soak up’ again.”

Canta lays on his back, staring up towards the sky, his chest heaving.

“You were all dried out like a big piece of old wood,” she explains. “I was really worried.”

He rolls his head over, looking at her and immediately jumps up to his wobbly feet. Alleluia looks pretty rough. Some of her gears aren’t turning and her left arm hangs down at her side. Her hair is tattered and frayed. “Are you okay?!” he asks, grabbing her and spinning her around. Her crank is bent at an angle. “What the fuck happened?!”

She sits down on the ground, sighing in relief. Canta spares a moment to look around at their surroundings. They’re in a forest. It reminds him of the area far to the west of the cathedral, before the mountain. But that was weeks away from where they were when he was last awake.

“I got into a fight with a bear,” she explains, looking over her shoulder towards him. “I won.”

“It sure doesn’t look like it!” he says, pulling a twig out of her shoulder that was jamming some smaller gears.

“I was climbing a tree to look around the area,” explains Alleluia in her chiming voice. “She tried to eat you,” she says. “So I got jealous.”

“She?” asks Canta.

“She,” affirms Alleluia.

He ponders, assuming the obvious. “How do you know it was a she?”

“How do you think my arm broke, sleepy-pie?”

“Okay, never mind. Forget I asked,” says Canta, looking around for his tools. “How long was I out for?”

“I don’t know,” says Alleluia. “A week? Two?” she guesses. “You ate that big, floppy, sticky worm-thing, but then you were so dried out that you just didn’t wake up,” she explains. “So I carried you until I found water.”

“You could’ve just thrown me in the bear’s blood, I guess?” he wonders.

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” repeats Alleluia, trying and failing to cross her arms. Instead, she just holds her right arm in front of herself. “As your wife, I can’t allow you to bathe in another woman’s blood.”

“Uh… sure,” says Canta. “I don’t know if that’s how marriage works.”

“Have you been married before?” she asks, turning her head around with a suspicious gaze.

“No, you?”

“Rude!” she gasps. “And no, I’ll have you know that I wasn’t.”

“How is it rude?!” he barks back at her. “You asked me first!”

Alleluia lifts her nose. “As if a woman of my stature could ever give her heart to more than one person.”

Canta scratches his head with a screwdriver. “Please. You had your fist inside of a bear,” he notes, trying to fiddle with some bent gears.

“For you!”

“Thanks, honey,” he says, rolling his eyes and laughing. Noticing that his throat is still very dry, he takes a second and returns to the small creek, taking a long drink from it.

 Creek Water

700mL

Tainted

- Make Up -

Trace Minerals: 1%

Water: 95%

Other: 4%

Letting out a deeply refreshed breath, he pulls his head back out of the water, staring at his reflection for a moment before returning to Alleluia. As he works on her, his mind returns to the distorted that he had eaten a piece of during his last waking hours. Approaching the giant thing was easy enough. The two of them had essentially just walked right up to it. It didn’t offer any resistance, it didn’t even try to kill him while he ate some random face that was stuck on it.

Canta fiddles with the mechanisms in her arm, not sure if he’s going to be able to fix this. It’s pretty janked up. Bending down, he looks inside of it and carefully reaches into her, pulling out what he assumes is a piece of moldy bear insides.

His stomach growls.

There is a splash as the piece of old meat lands in the water behind him. It seems inappropriate to eat, considering the source. He wouldn’t want to cross any weird ethical boundaries.

Anyways, that distorted didn’t seem to have a soul left in it. Which is odd, of course. But if what the vision had showed him was true, then the man, Samael, had likely had his soul taken from him by… literal demons?

It makes sense, he supposes. If there’s a demon-king, there have to be demons too, right?

Apparently they were already in this world back when it was still ‘normal’, simply hiding amongst the people, corrupting the world piece by piece with their influence. Samael must have been living right during the time when things were starting to heat up and, because of either some innate natural ability or some talent born of some magical gift, he was able to perceive them for what they were and they didn’t take kindly to that at all.

“I think we’re really close to the cathedral city again,” says Alleluia.

“Yeah,” replies Canta. “I think so too,” he says, lifting her arm up and letting it flop back down to the ground.

“What should we do?” she asks. “Do we go back? Should we try to fight the demon-king?” Canta scrapes some gunk off of her shoulder with his fingernail. “Or do you want to see the rest of the world?”

“The world fucking sucks,” says Canta. “It doesn’t matter where we go, it’s all gonna suck as much as it has until now.”

“I liked Sister,” says Alleluia. “They were fun!” She thinks for a while longer. “And paw was nice! Until it turned out he was a worm-zombie.”

Canta shrugs. “Sure. Okay, but we’re not going back there,” he says. Alleluia nods, agreeing. Her arm twitches. “And paw is dead for good.”

“But then what?”

“We’re going to kill the demon-king and put an end to whatever the fuck this world has become,” says Canta. “We can’t live like this,” he explains. “We’re just running around like headless chickens.

“But where is he?” asks Alleluia. “If we go to the big city again, how are we going to find him?” she asks.

“Being the king,” says Canta. “He’s probably going to be in the throne-room. It’s probably some clearly-evil bullshit adorned with skulls. Hold still.” He presses his knee against her back, holding onto a small metal rod with both hands and pulls it back straight, as best as he can.

“How are we going to get through all of the guards and the walls and the traps and -”

“Breaking into a castle can’t be that hard,” guesses Canta. “We’ll just pretend we’re going through a reverse dungeon.”

“A dungeon full of people?” she asks.

“They’re probably all demons, honestly,” says Canta, tugging on her wrist. Something pops. She gasps and starts wiggling her fingers around.

“Thank you, honey!” she beams, lifting her arm again and flexing it. “I was really worried it was broken for good and so were you,” she says in relief. Canta does his best to wind her up after that.

“Once things quiet down and we finally have a place to live, I’ll fix your arm up better.”

“It’s already perfect,” she says, getting up and planting a kiss on his forehead. “I just need this finger,” states Alleluia, wiggling her ring-finger. “For that ring you still owe me and also to do that thing you like.”

Canta rolls his eyes. “We’re leaving, come on. We have a demon-king to eat,” he says, looking towards the giant, dead tree that he can see on the horizon, reaching up towards the sky.

He grabs her hand and the two of them make their way back towards the large city from the north, their journey having come full circle.

Though Canta still isn’t really sure what he learned on this adventure of theirs. Some bullshit about perseverance or motivation or whatever.

His stomach growls.