An encounter

I open my eyes and the first thing I see are brown, wooden floorboards.

"Ugh." I make a sound without meaning to, as I'm confused. What happened? Where am I? I scramble on the ground and lift my head to look around.

I'm in a room, that looks quite high class for a medival society. While looking around I spot a maid with green hair, pouring tea into a cup. I frown. I'm pretty sure maid demons aren't common. Why am I running into another one here?

I stand up, staring at the maid in the room. She seems to ignore me, while she completes her task.

I look down at the state of myself, as I remember getting bisected.

Everything has regenerated as it's supposed to be. My upper body is covered in dirt and blood and stuff, while my lower body is clean. I'm also naked and a good chunk of my hair has burned off.

Looks like this maid and whoever she's working with, simply took me and carelessly left me on the floor.

"Why am I here?" I finally open my mouth to ask.

The greenhaired maid turns towards me with a blank face. "You are awake?" She seemingly just discovers this fact. I blankly stare at her and nod as conformation.

"Please wait for a moment. My master wishes to speak with you." She says and leaves the room.

When I'm alone in the room, my thoughts start running around. From thinking of the potential danger, to assessing my condition, to cursing my lack of clothes.

Within a minute the door opens again and the maid walks in again. Behind her is a man, with puffy, red hair. Which looks ridiculous.

I turn towards them. This time most of my body is covered in black scales.

"So you're awake." The red haired man lazily speaks, as if just for the sake of hearing his own voice.

"Sit down." He says and does so himself. I decide to go along with him and sit across from him. Once I sit down, his eyes doesn't leave me and he continues to stare in silence. I patiently wait for him to speak, while we sit in complete silence.

After an impressive 5 minutes, he finally opens his mouth. "First of all let's introduce ourselves. My name is Guy Crimson."

He points to the green haired maid. "That maid is named Mizery and the maid you killed is named Rain. They are both my subordinates." He finishes his introduction. Then he points at me.

"My name is Artoria." I simply state, with a blank expression.

"Artoria, since you killed my maid, I am now one short. How are you going to compensate me for this?" He speaks, matter of factly.

"Compensate? For her?" I ask in suprise. Then a smile creeps up on my face as I start explaining.

"Mr. Guy, me and this maid, Rain, were having a mutual bout on even grounds. As it is costumary, the winner takes the prize. Seeing as she is now dead and cannot pay me, as her superiour, here is my question to you... How are YOU going to compensate ME?" I explain all of that with a smile, enounciating every word clearly.

He smirks. "Compensate you? Why would I do that, when it would make much more sense to kill you for revenge." He says in a relaxed tone.

"That would simply be undermining your maid and yourself. You should atleast have some demonic pride. There is nothing in this world that I hate more than losers, weaklings and dwarves." I say, with a bit of distain.

"Haha. You know who we are, but you still speak so rudely." He chuckles and responds.

My expression goes cold. "Whatever you think you are, it is nothing to me. It's only a matter of time before I regain my place as the strongest. This time not even the creator will be able to challange me." I speak with conviction. Guy still looks at me with a slight smile, like he isn't offended at all.

He finally sighs. "I'll tell you what. If you survive this, I'll let you go." He says, then I feel a massive impact hit me and I fly away. I didn't register anything even move, when I got hit.

Some kinds of two thick sticks are in front of me and I'm holding onto them as I fly in the air. The pain is just starting to register now and It's coming from my stomach area.

I land in some forest and crash through dozens of trees.

When I open my eyes, I see someones crotch right in front of my face. It's covered in black scales. Oh wait, that's mine...

I push it off me, causing great pain to myself and then check my condition. My stomach is missing, literally. He punched through my stomach and created a big hole in me. My bottom half is only attached to me through the 2 strips of skin on the sides. Even my spine has been blown out.

I simply lay on the ground and think about things, while waiting my regeneration to take care of it. It takes about an hour to rebuild my stomach and attach my upper and lower body.

Then I stand up and move around, to check if everything works as it should. I sigh when I'm done. I'm tired and hungry.

I teleport to our hotel room and proceed to take a bath. While I do this, I call Nadia through thought communication.

'Where are you?'

After a few seconds, she responds. 'ME?! Where are YOU?!' She screams at me through the mental channel.

'I'm in our room, taking a bath' I simply state. After this she doesn't respond.

I proceed to carefully wash myself. It takes a bit of time, since there are bunch of things, that I don't even know, on me.

"I should cut my hair." I remember the defeat I suffered from the red haired demon. If I couldn't even react to him, then it's the same as a defeat.

I extend one of my nails and grab my hair, cutting through it in a horisontal, straight line. Now I have short, neck length hair.

Looking at myself in the mirror, I have to say, short hair suits me. Though I guess I am so pretty that anything suits me and it doesn't really matter.

After thoroughly washing myself I dry myself off and trudge myself into the bedroom. When I get in the bed, I fall asleep almost instantly.

.....

.....

Nadia rushes back to the hotel and reaches their room. She searches for Artoria, barging into her room, where she finally finds her.

Artoria is in a weird position, where she literally looks like she just fell into bed and passed out. Her body lies facedown, straight as an arrow.

Subconcously Nadia let's out a sigh of relief when she sees Artoria in one piece. She was seriously worried when Artoria went missing for over a day, without informing her. After all, the woman has a habit of picking fights.

Nadia walks over to Artoria and notices that her hair is cut short. She reaches out to touch her hair instinctively, wondering about what happened.

Then she lifts Artoria and places her in a better sleeping position and after shedding her clothes, gets in the bed as well. Nadia nuzzles close to Artoria and places her head on Artoria's shoulder, while hugging her body.

When she feels Artoria's warm body pressed against her only then does she truly relax. Her hands start caressing Artoria, like she's her most precious treasure. Unwittingly Nadias mind starts to wander and an unpleasant thought enter. She thinks what she would do without Artoria, if she were to lose her. A deep sense of pain stings her heart.

Nadia has a secret that has yet to be revealed. She's deeply in love with Artoria. This violent woman, who's always calm and collected, but has an evil, malicious side to her, that used to scare her.

Nadia remembers the early days, where she used to follow Artoria around like a child. She remembers her amused gaze, or the brutality and cruelty that shined in her eyes often.

But somewhere along the line Artoria's attitude towards her changed. She saw gentleness in her eyes when Artoria looked at her.

By that time Nadia's apprehension towards her had already turned into respect and admiration. So when Artoria started expressing care towards her, that was when the heart of the little elf started to flutter.

That's when Nadia learned something new. Something that no one else in this world, or any other world, has ever known. The woman named Artoria is extremely awkward when opening up about her feelings. It took Artoria tens of years just to admit that she cares about Nadia.

Nadia chuckles quietly, when she remembers the face Artoria had when she admitted it. It caused Nadia such happiness, that she will never forget that moment.

Who knows what the future will bring to the pair, however to Nadia this is ultimately irrelevant. She is fairly certain she cannot live without her Artoria anymore. So even if Artoria will never love her, or even is she has to sacrifice her life for her. She will never leave Artoria.