V-1: Flame and Frost

An aimless tune escaped Irene's nose as she gestured towards a dish containing the beginnings of a chicken pasta bake that she had been putting together over the past few minutes, focusing a fraction of her magical energy towards it in order to heat it up. With her hair tied up into a simpler ponytail than the thick braids she usually had it done up in, and an apron fastened around her straining slightly against her impressive bust, Irene continued to hum as she heated up the pan, as well as the food inside. It didn't take very long for the dish and food to heat up, barely a few minutes compared to the twenty-or-so minutes it would have taken had she done it the mundane way.

She loved magic sometimes.

As she finished counting down the last few seconds of the last minute, Irene magically lifted the dish up into the air, brought it through the door into the living room and set it down on a table just on the other side, one that was pushed up against the wall with a chair on either side. Snapping her fingers to summon a couple of plates and sets of cutlery, which she arranged on either side of the table, the scarlet-haired Magician looked up as she heard the sound of energy charging up just outside the house, in a remote area on the Turkish countryside. A couple of seconds passed before the energy-charge completed and discharged with what sounded like a sizzling noise followed quickly by an explosion of sorts.

Taking a breath, Irene moved towards the door, pulled it open. Narrowing her eyes against the Turkish sunlight and allowing the Eurasian heat to wash over her as she stepped outside, moved towards where she heard a similar energy-charging sound coming from. Up a short incline just outside the front door, she narrowed her eyes slightly against the sun's light as she ascended to the top of the incline, where a small collection of trees was located. A couple of meters away, on the same level, was Raylix.

One arm- his right- was raised up slightly, and Irene noticed a gathering of demonic power around Raylix's hand and wrist, with that energy seeming to have been condensed into a crimson-coloured lightning around his palm and fingertips, which were pointed out into the distance, over the horizon. The other arm- his left- was also raised up, with the hand and fingers pointed towards the trees. Since he didn't seem to have heard her coming up behind him, Irene opened her mouth to call out to her Pact Devil, to tell him that dinner was ready and that he should come in to have it: but she stayed her verbal hand for a moment, wanting to see where… whatever Raylix was doing, was going.

After a couple of seconds of Raylix continuing to charge the energy in his right arm, which Irene could practically feel in the air as it became more and more intense, before Raylix suddenly focused some energy into his left hand, pulling a branch off of one of the trees he was standing quite close to with a loud snap, and launching it across the top of the hill. As soon as the branch left the tree and began its journey through the air, Raylix shifted into action: he span around in a full circle, a motion that took no longer than half a second. When Raylix had gone all the way around, he lifted his right hand and let the lightning that he'd been charging up fly, with the same sizzling sound as before meeting Irene's ears quickly followed by a similar explosion of sorts as the lightning struck the flying branch dead-on, blowing it up immediately.

Burning leaves and splinters flew from where the branch blew up at in every direction, before landing on the ground and mostly fizzling out. As the day was dry, Raylix was quick to generate water to douse any debris that didn't immediately stop burning upon touching the ground, taking a breath once he'd covered everything. Once done, he turned back towards the trees and extended a hand towards them. For a couple of seconds, nothing happened, but after those couple of seconds passed, Irene noticed that one of the trees- the closest one to Raylix- began to glow with a crimson-red aura that Irene recognised as magical energy.

Irene raised an eyebrow as she recognised what Raylix was doing, or at least trying to do. He hadn't fully completed it, whatever Enchantment he was trying to do, but she wanted to see where it went. Her other eyebrow went up- just as the first had done- as she saw the Enchanted tree began to slowly shake, and began to force itself out of the ground.

The next few seconds seemed to stretch themselves out as Raylix let out a breath, gritting his teeth as the tree he was focusing on continued to lift itself out of the ground, the roots beneath beginning to shift and twist around each other to form functional legs… and then it all fell apart. The roots that had twisted themselves together unravelled, and the lifted-up tree immediately dropped down onto the uneven ground that it had lifted itself out of. Without anything in the ground to support it, the no-longer-sentient tree immediately began to topple over, falling towards Raylix.

Irene immediately began to move forward, concerned for her Pact Devil's health as he was right in the path of where the tree was falling and he didn't seem to be moving out of the way, but before she could do anything to stop it Raylix immediately lifted up a hand and caught the tree in his palm, stopping it in its tracks with absolutely zero visible effort. The display of strength stopped Irene in her tracks, with it being clear that Raylix was never in any actual danger.

"Right." She muttered. "Yeah. Devil. Forgot you guys are insanely strong."

Laying the tree down on a more even patch of ground at the top of the hill, Raylix turned around.

"Oh, Irene." He remarked. "Hey, didn't notice you coming. Was focused on-"

"Lightning magic and Enchantments." Irene replied. "At least, that's what I saw from you just now. I just finished dinner, it's inside on the table. Best when it's hot."

"Alright." Raylix replied. "Yeah, I'll come now."

Irene nodded, turned on her heel and began heading back down the incline, which she supposed was now a DEcline, and heard Raylix following behind her at a moderate pace. It didn't take the pair long to get back to where she'd placed her house, head inside and make their way over to the table. After quickly dividing the chicken pasta bake between the pair of them, dinner began in relative silence.

While devouring a mouthful of the lovely-tasting meal she'd made, Irene stole a glance at Raylix. His hair had grown a bit since they'd reunited a couple of weeks ago, it was now closer to chin-length than the medium style that he'd had it in when they'd met. In the times over the centuries that they'd met to renew their Pact with one-another, she'd never really taken his appearance in: the chestnut-coloured hair (uncommon for a descendant of a Pillar Devil who was famous for his crimson hair) that flopped down and framed his heart-shaped face, the sapphire-blue that looked out at the world from behind his bangs, and though she couldn't see everything under the loose shirt and pants he was wearing, she knew well enough that his musculature- particularly around his arms and chest- was INCREDIBLY well-defined. If he'd just walked up to any random person and claimed he was an athlete, one would have a hard time NOT believing him. Overall, it added up to someone that- aesthetically- Irene... didn't dislike. Not in the slightest.

As well as that, though he hadn't been a noble Devil for a few years now, she noticed Raylix's table-manners as the kind that wouldn't look out of place in the dining room of Buckingham Palace... centuries of noble etiquette training were hard to unlearn, Irene supposed.

"So you finally got around to trying out Enchantments for yourself, huh?" the scarlet-haired Platinum-ranked mage asked, after swallowing her mouthful. "Only took you, what, half a millennium?"

"Near enough, yeah, I guess." Raylix replied, after finishing and swallowing his present mouthful. "I'd actually started giving them a go, around the time the Great War started winding down."

"Uh-huh?" Irene nodded, putting together a mouthful's worth of food in her fork and transferring it to her mouth, making a gesture with her free hand for Raylix to continue talking.

"But I never got the hang of them, not enough that they'd be a valid tactic in a battle." Raylix continued. "And as more and more battles kept happening, and as I got better and better with other techniques and methods of combat, I guess Enchantments just got lost along the way until I forgot about them entirely."

"Reuniting with the person who got you interested in them in the first place jogged your memory, I take it?" Irene replird, after swallowing her mouthful.

"Yeah, pretty much." Raylix replied. "I might have never been great with them in the first place, but being out of practice on top of that's just made it worse."

"Uh-huh..." Irene replied, again. "From where I was standing, it just looked like you had trouble focusing on exactly what you wanted out of that tree you were attempting to Enchant. I'm guessing you were trying to do a Personality Enchantment?"

"Is that's what it's called?" Raylix asked. "The one where you give something human-like attributes? Yeah, that one." He remarked, when Irene nodded. "Was just trying to make the roots work as legs and feet, you know?"

"Yeah, I figured." Irene replied. "And honestly, that's a pretty decent way to do it. Making use of what's around you rather than just conjuring what you need out of thin air, that's a good way to conserve your energy. However, though, you still need to make sure that what you give human attributes- like legs and feet- to is actually able to function with what you give it, rather than immediately collapsing the second you let go. That's the big tripping-up point I see with a lot of people that try that Enchantment in particular."

"Right, right." Raylix nodded. "I'm sure I'll get it eventually, but thanks for the explanation. Was pretty… pretty eye-opening."

"Anytime." Irene replied, picking up another forkful of food and transferring it to her mouth, which Raylix emulated. Apart from the mixed sounds of the pair of them chewing, and the scrapes of cutlery against plates, silence reigned in the room once again.

The next few minutes passed in that same silence as Raylix and Irene polished off their meals, with the used plates and cutlery sent off back to the kitchen with a wave of Irene's hand, to be cleaned up later.

"Thanks for that." Raylix remarked, the first words spoken between them since the conversation about Enchantments. "Always wanted to try cooking myself, just never... eh."

"Well, if you ever wanted to give it a go, the kitchen's open." Irene replied. "If you can ever find it in you to drag your ass away from training some new technique or practicing an old one."

"Yeah, maybe." Raylix nodded, casting his eyes out the nearest window and up the incline that he'd been at the top of before Irene came up there. "Might get back to that in a bit." His eyes drifted over to Irene's bookshelves, flicking over the spines and titles he could make out from where he was sat. "You mind if I-?"

"Go ahead." Irene replied, before Raylix could even finish the question. She waved an almost-dismissive hand as she got to her feet and stretched. "I think I'll wash up now, if you're gonna be reading for a bit before getting back to your training."

"Mmhmm." Raylix hummed, already at his feet and walking over to the bookshelves. Without even looking as he remembered where he'd put it the night before, he reached out and grabbed the 19th-century guide to Sacred Gears, tucking it under his arm before turning around. "You gonna get the 20th-century version when it comes out? I mean, if it does."

"I don't see a reason why it wouldn't." Irene replied. "And yeah, I think I will. Not that I think there'd be much in the way of updates for the Gear you're interested in, Raylix."

Raylix let out a non-committal hum by way of reply, as he strode past Irene and made his way upstairs, book in hand.

----- ----- -----

"Uh-huh… that's fine with me, yeah… uh-huh… uh-huh… okay. Bye."

Raylix, dressed in a short-sleeved t-shirt adorned with the McLaren MP4/6 on its front and a pair of shorts, as the Parisian day was hot, raised an eyebrow as he looked over at Irene, who lowered her hand from her ear as the comms-circle around it disappeared.

"Important?" he asked, obviously referring to the call that his Pact Mage had just finished taking, earning a nod in return. Said mage, more used to the heat of the human world than her demonic associate, wore a pair of blue jeans that accentuated her waist, hips and legs, a plain white t-shirt that stretched over her chest, and a red jacket that she left open, and left her hair braided up as normal. It wasn't any wonder that Irene was the subject of most of the looks thrown her and Raylix's way, and Raylix the subject of a few jealous comments from those that assumed he and Irene to be in a relationship.

"Dates and place of the next conference of the Platinums." She replied. "Month from now, give or take, will take place over about half a week." She looked over at Raylix and smirked. "Think you can cope without me for that long? Not blow up the house?"

"Yeah, I'd say so." Raylix replied, allowing himself half a smirk back in return. "I mean, I could do fine without the house, but having to pull a mind trick on some poor receptionist at Le Bristol, or wherever I decided to go, would be such a hassle."

"Yeah, hassle. Sure." Irene replied, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at Raylix's verbal display of sloth. "I'm sure it'd be so hard for you, to brainwash a human for a moment at most."

"Incredibly." Raylix nodded, either not recognising or choosing to ignore the sarcasm laced in Irene's words. "But hey, you're not gonna be taking the house with you, so I don't have to worry about that."

Irene shrugged, not offering any verbal reply to Raylix's remark, and the side-by-side walk that they shared through the streets of Paris continued in silence.

The pair's mission for the Sephiroth Graal had continued in earnest, and taken the pair of them to the capital of France, Europe's tenth-largest city. Though Raylix himself hadn't set foot in the city for nearly two centuries, not since that sect of Humans that called themselves the French had decided that an absolute monarchy wasn't for them anymore, and executed their king.

What was his name again? Lucius? Ludwig? ...Eh. the point was, he hadn't been in Paris since that had gone on, it was one of the most famous cities in the human world, it was a nice day, and neither Raylix or Irene had anything to do... why not take a few hours to wander around?

As the pair were about to turn off of the quieter road that they'd been walking down, onto one of the busier roads that they'd been on throughout the day, Irene suddenly stopped in place as a magic-circle that Raylix didn't recognise appeared on her right hand. A second later, a sheet of paper materialised in the same hand that the magic-circle appeared in, with the circle in question disappearing a second later and leaving the paper lying in Irene's palm.

Irene and Raylix shared a look, a shrug, as Irene turned over the paper in her hand, and scanned it with her eyes.

"Important?" Raylix asked, quickly glancing over his shoulder to make sure that there weren't any nosey Humans taking a peek down the street. There weren't any, as he'd suspected: humans were always so preoccupied, never all that interested in anything that didn't directly concern them... but one could never be too careful.

"Hm." Irene hummed, continuing to shift her eyes down the page. "Ahh. Stray Magician."

"Stray-?" Raylix looked back. "Oh yeah, you guys have your own system."

"Yeah." Irene replied. "Criminals, those who've abandoned their training before completion, those who try to expose the supernatural world to humanity, insurrectionists..." she trailed off, a blank look on her face for a fraction of a second, before looking back at Raylix. "Anything that'd get a Devil classified as a Stray Devil, or a mage's equivalent of, would probably get a Magician classified as a Stray Magician. At least kill-orders aren't handed out as often."

"Hmm." Raylix hummed, taking a couple of steps back down the street back towards Irene. "To be fair, your average Stray Devil is a good bit more dangerous than your average Stray Magician. Way more savage, too."

Irene shrugged, continuing to scan over the paper in her hand.

"This one is on the less dangerous side of things." She remarked, flipping the paper over so Raylix could get a look at the picture of the person in question. "Just a kid."

Raylix took the sheet from Irene, to get a closer look at the person pictured on it. If he had to guess, she (it was definitely a female he was looking at) didn't look any older than sixteen, in human-world terms. She had ashen-black hair that was tied up in a bun at the back of her head, and amber eyes. Her attire wasn't all that complex, only really consisting of a white shirt with gray laces, as well as grey pants and shoes. It might have just been the picture of her rather than anything to do with her specifically, but Raylix couldn't help but pick up on a couple of marks, situated on the girl's neck.

"Last known location: Versailles?" Raylix repeated, tearing his eyes away from the picture of the girl and looking further down, at information about them."

"That's not far from here." Irene remarked, immediately turning around and opening a transportation-circle with one hand, before stepping away from Raylix and towards it. "With the- well, either of us could have this dealt with in ten minutes."

"But with both of us, we could be done in five." Raylix replied, following Irene into the cast circle. "So, shall we?"

Irene let out a small snort as she closed her hand, activating the circle she'd cast, and taking both herself and Raylix to the outskirts of the most famous part of Versailles- namely its palace- in a flash of light. And as soon as the light cleared from Raylix and Irene's vision, it became immediately clear to them that things here... weren't quite right.

Namely because flame and smoke could be seen, in rather vast quantities, from the palace in question. There were also a large number of human authorities- particularly police and firefighters- gathered at a safe distance from the palace, not far away from where Raylix and Irene had appeared at.

"Think this could be it?" Raylix asked, looking over at Irene, who looked back with a shrug.

"Where else?" she replied, quickly summoning her staff and striding forward towards the palace, ignoring the looks from anyone not named Raylix- who quickly followed- threw her way. It didn't take long, then, before one of the policemen came up to her and spoke authoritatively. Presumably in French, but thanks to a bit of magic Raylix and Irene heard it in their native tongues.

"Ma'am, sir, I'm afraid you can't be here. There's been a situation, you're going to have to-"

"It's fine." Raylix replied, raising a hand. "This was an arson attack, nothing suspicious."

"It's... an arson attack." The French police officer repeated, his eyes suddenly glazing over as they shifted over to the Devil's hand. "Nothing suspicious."

"These aren't the droids you're looking for." Raylix remarked, his eyes narrowing slightly. Unseen by the policeman, or anyone else there, Irene rolled her eyes.

"These aren't the droids I'm looking for." The policeman replied, his voice rather flat and monotone.

"You're going to let us by, and forget that we were here." Raylix finished, calmly, before lowering his hand.

"I'm going to let you by..." the policeman repeated. "and forget that you were here."

"Thanks." Raylix replied, nodding as he strode away from the policeman, towards the burning palace. Irene followed, waving her staff to cast an illusory spell that concealed herself and Raylix from sight.

As well as that, she switched out her casual getup for her official Magician's garb, and dispelled the staff before looking over at Raylix.

"That looked like a real hassle." She remarked.

"Oh, shut up." Raylix replied, rolling his eyes and spreading his wings, taking off and heading towards the palace at speed, with Irene quickly speeding up in order to join him. The pair of them strode through the main entrance to the burning palace, with Irene blowing some flame that had spread too close to the pair of them away with a pulse of energy from her staff, and it became immediately clear that- apart from the fire raging around them- things weren't right. Namely due to Raylix almost stepping on a body that was lying face-down on the floor. The Devil let out an involuntary "Wuh!" as he almost fell over the body, but caught himself before he ate burning dirt on the ground.

Once Raylix had rebalanced himself, he looked down at the body (which, judging by its shape, he guessed to be a male) in question, and noticed a thin hole through the back, and a crimson-red patch around the hole.

"Stabbed." Irene surmised. "With a sword."

"Mmhmm." Raylix replied, turning over the corpse with his foot. Irene gasped, and he resisted the urge to recoil at the state of the person's face.

A hand-print had been burned onto the man's face, with the dark wound standing out visibly against his pale skin. Upon slightly closer inspection, it looked like the man's nose had been melted clean (or as clean as it could be) off, and there were bloody holes where his eyes should have been.

"Yikes." Irene whispered. "That is a shitty way to go."

"Oh, yeah." Raylix nodded, placing one hand up close to the man's face that matched the hand-print, enclosing his other hand into a fist and driving it towards a hole in his chest, which matched the one through his back. Evidently, whoever had stabbed this man HAD done so through the front, impaling him. "Horrible."

A loud shout, which both Devil and Magician divined as coming from a male, met Raylix and Irene's ears, coming from further inside the burning palace. Immediately summoning Gaeneron into his hand, Raylix dashed through the nearest door, using quick bursts of water-magic via his free hand to douse any flames in his and Irene's immediate path as she followed closely behind him. The sound of weapons hitting weapons cleanly rung through the building as Raylix and Irene quickly moved through, over the sound of the palace burning around them.

"Raylix!" Irene cried out from behind, as what looked like a burning wooden beam near the end of the hallway that they were moving down finally gave way and began to fall.

It was looking like it would fall exactly where Raylix would be in a couple of seconds time, and probably would have at least posed a minor inconvenience to the former Gremory Heir had he not bodily THROWN his sword at the falling beam, mid-stride. Gaeneron streaked through the air, more like a buzzsaw than a sword, cleaning slicing the burning beam in two when the two objects collided. With his right hand, Raylix aimed a pulse of wind-magic at the beam, now split into two pieces, sending both of them neatly away from his immediate path while snapping his fingers with his left hand, returning the flying Gaeneron to his hand in an instant. The door at the end of the hallway looked to be stuck, so as Raylix's right hand lowered from blowing the pieces of falling beam away from him and Irene, he aimed a bolt of destructive energy at the door and fired, reducing it to splinters and allowing him and Irene to dash through without slowing down.

A quick scanning of the room- which looked to be a lounge of some kind- told Raylix and Irene that whoever they were looking for was probably to their left, judging by the corpse that was close to a door situated to their left, and bloody footprints that went through said door. Wasting no time, Raylix and Irene continued through the door and down another hallway, where they could both see the footprints leading and steadily fading away. It also helped that the sound of more screams, and grunts of effort from someone else, followed by a dull thud of something- or someone- landing on the ground, could be heard coming from that direction. Through another door and into what looked like a dining room Raylix and Irene dashed, where they saw what was going on.

The girl from the sheet that Irene had received was standing to the left of the room, a bloody sword in one hand and a fireball condensed in the other, which quickly faded away. She didn't look all that different from the picture on the sheet, only that rather than the white shirt and grey pants, she wore what looked like a short, red sleeveless dress, held up by straps tied around her neck. She also wore dark-coloured, low-heeled shoes on her feet. She was standing over the body of a male with burning clothes and a deep wound in his neck. It looked like Raylix and Irene had been seconds too late to stop what had just happened.

Irene immediately stepped forward, with the sound of her own heeled shoes against the ground alerting the girl to their presence. Before she could even raise her hand and re-summon the fireball in question, Irene had summoned magical ropes out of her staff and sent them at the girl, directing them to tie her up. It was done in a second, with the girl dropping down to the ground and letting out a small "Oof!". She immediately began wriggling and struggling against the ropes that bound her, but they didn't budge as Irene stepped forward, magically lifting the bound girl off the ground with a scowl on her face.

"If you'd just lain low and not done anything after whatever you've done to earn the Stray moniker, I'd be more inclined to just bring you in and leave you to the judges." She remarked. "But murder? MULTIPLE murders? No-one would fault me for this!"

"Wait a minute, Irene!" Raylix called out, stepping further into the room and dispelling Gaeneron. Irene, who was pointing her staff at the girl and seemed to be charging it up with energy, turned towards Raylix.

"Raylix?" She replied, an unreadable look on her face. "I appreciate you wanting to help, but this is Magician business that I can handle just fine. I really don't need your help with this."

"It's not that." Raylix replied. "I don't think you should kill her."

Irene didn't reply immediately, but Raylix didn't give her the chance to, immediately addressing the tied-up Stray Magician that was still levitated before them. Said tied-up Stray Magician looked over at Raylix with mixed hope and mild interest plain on her face, as anyone in the human Magician community would when confronted with someone who could command the attention of one of the Platinums like that.

"You, Stray Magician. What do you go by?"

The young female opened her mouth for a second, initially not sure whether to reply or not to Raylix's question. However, as Irene still didn't look like she was going to blow her head off at a second's notice, she elected to speak.

"C-Cinder." She replied, her eyes flicking between Raylix and Irene as she did so.

"Right." Raylix replied, looking around at the room that continued to burn. "Fitting, I guess. Mind telling us what exactly happened here, Cinder?"

"I was attacked!" Cinder replied, immediately. "I think one of the guys that attacked me was going on about how I'd be good company, or something?"

Irene looked back at the guy that Cinder had just killed, eyes narrowed slightly, and then back at Cinder herself. There were a few ways that- if what she was saying was true- could be taken, and none of them were good. That was, again, if what she was saying was true...

"Mmhmm." Raylix nodded, making a gesture with one hand that invited Cinder to keep talking, which she did as Raylix began to magically douse the flames in the room.

"The guy who said that tried to touch me. Around, well, you know..." Cinder looked down at her bound body, unable to use her hands to gesture to exactly where she said she was almost touched, which was all Irene needed to hear before a dark expression came over her face.

"Uh-huh..." she replied. "Then what?"

"I grabbed a sword from a suit of armour and stabbed him." Cinder replied. "And I burned his face, then he died."

"So we saw." Raylix remarked. "I'm guessing there were others with him?"

"Two." Cinder replied, immediately. "They both chased me out of that room into the one through there." She gestured to the door that Raylix and Irene had just come through. "They both ganged up on me, and I was able to kill one of them before coming through here. That other guy followed me- he had a knife- and we fought for a bit."

"A knife?" Irene repeated, her eyes narrowing again. "Bit of a specific detail, that."

"And one that's true." Raylix replied, bending down and picking a knife up from the ground, that had lain a few feet away from where the dead man lay. "Guessing you were able to disarm him before you finished the job?"

Cinder nodded, and Raylix let out a breath before tossing the knife aside, where it clattered on the floor. With the dining room now flame-free, he moved back towards Cinder.

"You know who we are?"

"That's Irene, one of the Platinums." Cinder replied, jerking her head towards Irene. "And... I don't know who you are, s-sorry."

"It's fine." Raylix replied. "I'm Irene's Pact Devil, you can call me Raylix. We're working together on something... want to come with us?"

Both Cinder and Irene's eyes widened slightly at what Raylix had said, with Irene being the first to verbally react.

"Raylix, you can't be-!"

"Why not, Irene?" Raylix asked. "With what we're doing, an extra pair of hands can't hurt. And I could be wrong, but," he looked over at Cinder. "I've got a feeling having a roof over your head would be better than whatever you might be going through right now."

Her eyes shifting quickly from Raylix to Irene and back again, Cinder rapidly nodded her head. Anything that DIDN'T result in her either sitting in chains or with her head loped clean off her body was a-okay by her.

"See?" Raylix replied, shifting his gaze back to Irene. "And besides, I think we, either alone or together, can handle a single Stray Magician, if it comes down to that."

"I suppose..." Irene replied, momentarily scowling but then sighing and relenting. She lowered her staff, and the magical ropes binding Cinder fell apart, releasing her and allowing her to clumsily drop to the ground. "Fine, you can come. But one toe out of line..." she glared down at Cinder as she got to her feet, rubbing as much feeling as she could back into her body. Cinder glared back at Irene for a second or two, before turning away and moving over towards Raylix, who flicked his hand and cast a transportation-circle.

"Let's be out of here." He remarked, stepping into the circle, with Cinder following. "Would rather not have to mind-trick a bunch of cops and firefighters."

"Yeah, yeah." Irene nodded, bringing up the rear as she stepped into the transportation-circle, which Raylix activated a second or so later, sending the three of them away in a flash of light without any evidence that they'd ever been there.

----- ----- -----

"So… do the Old Satan Faction know that you're working with a couple of humans?" Cinder asked, as she and Raylix flew over the Scandes, a mountain range that ran across Scandinavia. Even with the high winds buffeting both Devil and Stray Magician, Raylix was able to easily cruise through the air on his ten Devil wings, but Cinder- without wings of her own- had to make do with another of sustained flight: namely focusing flaming magical energy through her feet and palms to act as thrusters of sorts. Far less elegant, to be sure, and far louder than Raylix being able to fly on his wings, but as long as it worked…

She was also focusing energy throughout and over her body, to keep herself heated up in the cold air.

"They know about Irene." Raylix replied, looking back at Cinder. "Haven't had time to tell them about you yet."

Cinder didn't reply, only nodding as acknowledgement of Raylix's answer and adjusting her position in the air to accommodate how the wind changed in that moment.

It had been about a month since Raylix and Irene had recruited Cinder, back in Versailles. The teenage Magician had taken to living with Raylix and Irene well, helping out whenever she was willing in order to earn her keep with the Platinum-ranked Mage and the younger brother of THE Satan Lucifer. She'd taken to the Devil rather easily, going as far in the first couple of weeks as to follow him around whenever he left the house for whatever reason: whether it was for as long a period of time as a few hours- as Raylix went out to train, or to scout out a potential base for the Old Satan Faction- or as short as a few minutes, as he warped to a nearby town to buy food for the three of them, or to scare away animals (and sometimes humans) that had wandered too close to whereever Irene had plopped her house down at.

She didn't do it as much anymore, having warmed up a little to Irene and become more willing to be alone with her, but she still came out with Raylix from time to time. And though Raylix didn't NEED her help- he could handle whatever task he took on by himself just fine- but that didn't mean he didn't appreciate her company… as long as she didn't get in his way.

This was a slightly different situation, though. Irene was gone, on that conference of the Platinums she'd mentioned to Raylix way back when, and true to her word, had left the house in Raylix's care after teaching him the spell needed to seal it into something (a sheet of paper that was presently folded up and zipped into one of the pockets in his jacket, in Raylix's case), so it was just Raylix and Cinder on their own. The day after Irene had left, Raylix had decided to go searching for more potential base-locations for the Old Satan Faction, and naturally, brought Cinder along for the ride rather than leave her in Irene's sealed-away house.

He couldn't exactly leave Cinder sealed in the house, after all. He didn't know what that would actually do to her.

"Do you actually plan on telling them, whenever you next go back to-" Cinder began, before a snowflake flew into her mouth and throat at speed, causing her to almost buckle over in mid-air, coughing and spluttering. Her focus on keeping herself airborne via makeshift magical thrusters disappeared, and she immediately dropped. Her coughs ascended to a shriek of surprise and fright before she landed in Raylix's arms, as he dived to catch her. "Th-thanks."

"No worries." Raylix replied, floating in mid-air as Cinder began focusing her energy again the same way she had done before, and began flying again just as before. "And I don't know." He answered, as he caught up to Cinder within a couple of seconds. "Might do, might not. Haven't decided. Why the question?"

"I was… curious." Cinder replied, looking away from Raylix for a second before refocusing on the sky in front of her. This didn't last long, however, as her eyes trailed downwards, towards the mountains in question. Looking over, Raylix noticed where she was looking, and before he could ask what had caught her attention, his eyes followed her gaze and he noticed what looked like a small, flickering blot of light on a ledge on one of the mountains.

A campfire, was Raylix's first thought, but who in the frozen ninth circle of Hell would be up on these mountains in this weather, let alone long enough to put a Lilith-damn campfire together?

"Want to check it out?" Cinder turned around and asked, keeping herself in mid-air as she looked over at Raylix, who came to a halt and turned.

"Sure." He replied. "Stay alert, though, we could be heading into a fight."

Cinder nodded, and followed Raylix as he flew down, towards where he saw the flickering light coming from. As he came closer and closer, it became clearer and clearer to him that what Cinder had spotted in the relative darkness was, in fact, a campfire of some description. Along with that, he noticed more signs of life nearby: a tent, a bag that looked decently full, a large sheet attached to some posts to catch wind coming in from one direction… whoever was here seemed like they were pretty well-prepared, Raylix thought.

The faint sound of snow crunching under boots met Raylix and Cinder's ears, prompting both to immediately turn to where they heard the sound coming from as it came closer to them, slowly getting more and more pronounced against the sound of the wind in their ears. Eventually, over the crest of a small incline forward and to the two's right, someone- a woman, came into view, dragging what looked like the corpse of a Troll with her with not much visible effort. Raylix estimated the creature to be about eleven feet in height, just about double the height of the woman who had presumably killed it. From where he was, he noticed a trail of blood originating from the troll back the way that it had been dragged.

Raylix's eyes shifted down to the woman in question. From where he was, he pegged the woman's height to be above-average, within a few inches of his own. She possessed hair of a striking light-blue that descended all the way to her knees, matching eyes, and pale, porcelain-white skin. As far as attire went, she wore a blue- slightly darker than her hair- jacket with long sleeves and a white fur trim around the top. Along with a white scarf, she wore a thick-looking sweatshirt zipped up all the way, a pair of long pants with white fur at the bottom and lace-up boots, all white. Her only accessories were a black belt around her pants, from which a sheath that looked like it housed a rapier (Raylix could tell by the protective hilt) hung, and a black headband atop her head.

The woman continued dragging the troll-corpse closer and closer to the tent, until she was only a few feet away from it. Letting the troll (which she had been dragging by its open mouth) drop down to the ground, the woman casually swung her hand, engulfing the creature in a block of clear ice. She then looked up, and upon clapping eyes on Raylix and Cinder hovering overhead, didn't give much by way of an external reaction. Maybe she'd somehow noticed their presence before and Raylix hadn't seen her initial reaction, or she hadn't noticed before and was just doing a good job of hiding whatever internal reaction she was having.

Whatever the reason, upon dropping and freezing the troll, she kept her eyes steadily on Raylix and Cinder, and shifted one of her hands to the handle of her rapier, but didn't unsheathe her weapon just yet. That gesture was more than enough for Cinder, however, to summon a sword into one of her hands. The sword, which Cinder (with Raylix's assistance) had made for herself, was similar to a scimitar or a long seax with a broad, curved blade and a short extension down over the back of Cinder's fingers.

"Hang on." Raylix called out, before either Cinder or the blue-haired woman could escalate the situation, quickly descending to the ground himself. "We're not here for a fight."

Raylix normally would have dispelled his wings here, but elected not to in case he needed to quickly take to the air again. Given how the woman clearly wasn't welcoming them with open arms, he judged the chances of it coming to that to be… above zero.

"Then what are you doing here?" the woman replied, her grip on the handle of her rapier visibly tightening, and her eyes flicking from Raylix to Cinder before settling back on Raylix. "And who are you?"

"My associate and I" Raylix replied, raising a hand before Cinder could interject, as a quick glance backwards told him she was on the cusp of doing so "Caught sight of your campfire, and were curious as to who'd be camping in a place like this." He cast his eyes past the woman momentarily, scanning over the troll's frozen corpse before looking back at the woman. "I guess a Devil camping up here makes more sense than a Human."

The woman's eyes narrowed, and though she adjusted her stance slightly, she didn't make any move to draw her blade.

"How did you know?" she asked.

"The fact that I saw you just dragging a Troll here with your bare hands, and you don't even look to be all that tired from it." Raylix replied, immediately. He noted the woman's eyes flicking back towards the troll in question, before they flicked back and refocused on him as he added. "That was kind of a giveaway. Also," he jerked a thumb behind himself, at his un-dispelled wings. "I think I'd know by now if you were of a holier persuasion."

"Mmhmm…" the woman hummed, nodding and loosening her grip on her blade, but not removing her hand from its handle. "I guess that isn't untrue, though I'm half-Devil. But you haven't told me who you are, yet."

"I'm Raylix." Raylix replied immediately, inclining his head to the bluenette. "And my Magician associate, goes by Cinder."

The bluenette hummed again, her eyes flicking over to Cinder and looking her up and down, before she finally took her hand off of the handle of her rapier.

"You can put that away." She remarked, her eyes flicking towards the sword that Cinder held. "I don't plan on attacking first."

Cinder looked over at Raylix, who nodded at her upon their eyes meeting, and dispelled her blade without comment.

"If you want to stay for a bit, I won't stop you." The woman remarked, turning around. "I suppose I could use a bit of help getting all the meat off of my catch." She looked up at the troll, before walking towards it without looking back at Raylix or Cinder. Devil and Magician looked at each other for a moment, before Raylix shrugged and moved forward, quickly catching up to the woman and falling into step with her.

"I didn't know people ate Troll." He remarked, looking up at the downed, frozen beast before looking back at the bluenette.

"I don't suppose a noble really had to." She replied, before spreading eight Devil wings and ascending to the top of the ice-block she'd created earlier. Landing on it and walking to the part of it that covered the troll's main body, she knelt down, placed a hand down on the part of the block that engulfed its head, before looking down at Raylix. "How many other Devils named Raylix can you name?" she asked, as the bit of the block she had placed her hand down upon shattered, freeing the troll's head. "And cut it's head for me, will you?"

"Yeah, yeah." Raylix replied, not even bothering to summon Gaeneron for such a task. Instead, he raised a hand to the sky before swiftly bringing it down, aiming a thin wave of the Power of Destruction at the troll's neck, cutting cleanly through it. Blood slowly oozed out of the wound immediately, with the bluenette nodding from above at his quick work.

"We'll start with that, the arms and legs once we've cut them." The bluenette remarked, walking closer to the edge of the ice-block and bending down again, over the part that covered the troll's arm, and shattering it in the same way that she'd done with the head earlier. Raylix cut the arm, in the same way that he'd done with the head earlier, without comment, and the two walked down to the other end of the block to do the legs.

The next minute or so passed in silence as Raylix and the bluenette severed the troll's legs and remaining arm from its body, gathering them into a pile. Just one arm on its own was nearly as long as Raylix was tall, with a single leg being even bigger, and it was one of the legs that Raylix first approached to shear the meat off, summoning Gaeneron into his hand as he did so. The appearance of the Gremory Clan's famed sword prompted a snort from the bluenette from above.

"The Gremory Clan's most famed and prized possession, being used to cut meat."

Raylix snorted in return as he turned the thigh over with one of his feet, bent down and drove Gaeneron's edge into the troll's leg, just below the spot behind the knee, until sword met hard bone. Twisting the sword and applying some of his strength to it, Raylix moved forward, driving the sword through the flesh and carving a good chunk out of it before his sword met the troll's heel-bone, at which point he angled the sword in such a way that he was able to remove it from inside its leg, carving out a respectable chunk of calf-meat and tossing it aside with one hand. The bluenette jumped down from her spot atop the ice-block, and froze the chunk that Raylix had just carved out in a smaller block of ice.

"It's not exactly the Gremory Clan's sword anymore." Raylix remarked, waving the sword in question in the air a couple of times before standing up and moving back to the middle of the troll's leg, bending down again and beginning work on carving apart the troll's thigh. "Just mine."

The blunette nodded, grabbing one of the troll's arms before slinging it down to the ground and beginning work on it with an ice-conjured dagger, displaying much more skill and precision with such a task than Raylix.

"You never told us your name." Cinder, a safe distance away from the pair of them, and the stench of the troll (which seemed to be affecting her far more than Raylix and the blunette), called. She'd melted out a spot close to the fire, and had perched next to it, electing to watch Raylix and the bluenette work.

"Esdeath!" the blunette called back, not elaborating or even looking up as she worked out a strip from the troll's arm, tossed it aside and froze it before flipping the arm over and continuing. Between them, it took several minutes of silent work for the head, both bones and both arms to be stripped of their meat to a standard that Esdeath deemed satisfactory, with Raylix destroying the remaining bone and cartilage with a few quick bolts of his Power of Destruction.

The strips that Raylix and Esdeath had cut out together were frozen up and taken to a nearby cave, where they were then stored. When the work was done, Esdeath let out a breath, looking over at Raylix.

"I suppose thanks are in order for the help." She remarked, as she and Raylix made their way back to the tent. "Although, there's something that's been bugging me since you arrived: you never told me what you and Cinder were doing here either, Raylix."

"Oh, that." Raylix replied, taking a breath as he melted and dried out a portion of land to sit down upon, before doing so. "I've just been looking for…" he paused for a second. "Locations for potential bases. For the Old Satan Faction."

"I see…" Esdeath remarked, sitting down by the fire and letting out a breath. "So, you left your noble family to fight for the Old Satan Faction. Bit of an ideological leap, there."

"My reasons are my own." Raylix replied, doing his best to keep his voice even as Esdeath looked over at him, shrugging.

"Hey, I'm not judging." She remarked. "I left Hell behind a while ago myself. Don't really care what goes on down there, one way or the other."

"Fair enough." Raylix nodded, adjusting his position on the ground slightly and taking a breath as he looked into the fire. "I'm not sure if I really do, either."

Esdeath and Cinder's eyes were both on Raylix now, almost expectant that he would elaborate on what he'd said, but he didn't, just continued to stare into the flame in silence for several seconds, before a loud rumbling sound met all three pairs of ears from a ways off. Esdeath was the first on her feet, rapier drawn, with Raylix only a fraction of a second behind, summoning Gaeneron back to his side. Cinder was on her feet too, summoning her sword to her side and looking off in the direction that they'd all heard the rumbling coming from.

Raylix glanced over at Esdeath.

"That troll you killed wouldn't so happen to have been part of a tribe, was it?"

"Could have been." Esdeath replied, spreading her wings. "It was alone when I found it. Might have wandered off."

Cinder blasted off into the air to get a better view of things, letting out a breath as she did so.

"Well, there are more coming this way!" she called. "Eight, ten, twelve- thirteen! I count thirteen!"

"How lucky." Esdeath dryly remarked, taking off into the air herself, a small smile playing about her face as she ascended.

Raylix was last to take to the air, the last to cop a look at the trolls for himself. Just as Cinder had said, there were thirteen of them, all of which much bigger than the troll that Esdeath had killed and she and Raylix had just carved up. The smallest among the thirteen that were baring down on the three of them had to be at least fifteen feet in terms of height: and they weren't exactly thin, either.

Esdeath was the first to attack, landing on the ground and raising both her hands, palms-up. As she did so, many large spikes of ice appeared on the ground and extended upwards, piercing the feet of the front few trolls that charged towards the camp where their carved-up comrade lay. The trolls stopped, letting out bellows of pain that became shouts of surprise and anger as their comrades behind them ran into the back of them, sending them all down in a heap.

"That's it…!" Esdeath chuckled, a grin on her face and an almost manic look in her eye. "Idiotic animals! Writhe in pain, pathetic weaklings!"

She moved at speed towards the trolls, who were just figuring out how to get to their feet, the ones who had broken icicles in their feet bellowing in pain from such, while the ones that weren't bellowed in anger at running into the ones in front of them. The sight of Esdeath, sword in hand, rushing towards them managed to attract their attention, and they began lumbering towards her. Some of the trolls possessed stone-carved clubs, while some went weaponless.

One of the trolls with a club aimed at Esdeath before bringing it down, but the bluenette neatly dodged and continued running, aiming a stab from her rapier at the wrist of the troll who had attacked her and making her mark perfectly. The bellow of pain that the troll let out at being stabbed in the wrist would have deafened any ordinary human who might have heard it, as it let go of its club and flung its hand up into the air, bringing Esdeath up with it. She let go of her rapier- still embedded in the troll's wrist- as she reached its eye-level and was sent flying up into the sky. Just as she felt her ascension slowing down, Esdeath snapped her fingers to summon an enormous pillar of ice, that looked more like a gigantic piece of hail than anything else. With little more than a thought, and as she spread her Devil wings to keep herself in mid-air, she sent the ice down at the group of trolls. The hail made its mark, crushing at least two of the trolls of the group that she was aiming at.

She also almost crushed Raylix, who had spread his Devil wings and, Gaeneron in hand, flew at speed towards them. As the two trolls that Esdeath's hail crushed fell to the ground, he had to quickly weave between them and bring out Gaeneron to chop off one of the legs of the trolls nearer the back, at just above the knee. Coming to a stop, he fired a blast of his Power of Destruction at the spot behind the knee of the now-one-legged troll, destroying it and bringing it down with an almighty crash that shook the surrounding area. The force that it hit the ground with was enough to end the troll's life, not that it would have survived much longer without a legs anyway.

Dispelling her wings, Esdeath dropped, unable to contain her glee as she dropped, swinging her hands downward to create several more large icicles around her, which she sent at speed towards the ground, either trapping the trolls in place or impaling a couple more through the brain, killing them where they stood. At just the right height, she spread her wings to slow her descent just enough that she'd lost nearly all of her downward momentum by the time she hit the ground, allowing her to gracefully transfer from diving to walking without breaking stride. She grabbed her sword from the wrist of one of the fallen trolls, and as she noticed one of the eight that were still alive swinging its club at her, she span around and infused some of her demonic power into her sword as she swung it to meet the club.

Her demonically-powered sword cut through the club as if it were paper, causing the part of it that would have hit her to drop harmlessly beside her as the troll continued to swing the rest of it, unaware that his weapon had just been broken until several seconds after the fact, at which point all it could do was just look stupidly at it, until a fireball cast by Cinder struck it in the back of the head. The sudden and intense temperature increase around that area prompted another loud bellow of pain from the troll, as it turned around and tried to swing at Cinder. But she was too far away- at least twenty feet- for the club that it had swung to come even close to damaging her. While it was distracted, Esdeath picked up the bit of stone that had served as the end of the troll's club with her free hand and tossed it, with the speed of a bullet, at the back of the troll's head, which now had a nasty-looking burn mark where Cinder's fireball had struck it. The bit of club hit its mark perfectly, and brought the troll back around again. Now thoroughly confused and enraged at the fact it was now being attacked from multiple angles, it began wildly swinging its club (or what was left of it, anyway) at its fellow troll-kin, sparking a little bit of a tribal civil war between the ones that were left alive.

"Stupid creatures!" Esdeath let out a sadistic cackle as she spread her wings and took to the air again, observing the carnage that she'd caused with wide-eyed joy. It gave her such a rush to see anyone- particularly those weaker than her- in pain. Especially pain that she'd caused, having that kind of power over something, someone… there was nothing like it. "Tear yourselves apart, and die in agony!"

The troll whose club she'd cut apart swung what remained of its club at the nearest troll to it, crushing its face and killing it instantly, sending blood out everywhere. The troll's roar of victory was interrupted when a different troll- one of the ones that had gone into the battle without a weapon- grabbed it by the face and began to crush it. Esdeath got a perfect view from below of the troll's nose beginning to bleed, it dropping its club and beginning to wave its arms in what she figured was a futile attempt to attack back, one of its eyes slowly popping out of its socket before flying out entirely with its own spurt of blood to accompany it, before its head was crushed entirely, sending blood, crushed bone and bits of brain in every direction… including down at where Esdeath was standing.

With how fast the blood came out of the troll's head, and where Esdeath was in relation to it, she had no time to conjure up any kind of barrier, or raise any part of her body to block her eyes from getting a fresh dose of troll-blood landing dead-on in them. Letting out a squawk of surprise and pain (ANYTHING directly in the eyes would hurt like hell, but the fact that it was blood from a goddamn TROLL just made it worse), Esdeath reflexively raised her hands to her eyes to try and rub the blood away from them, just to make her able to see again. But so occupied was she with attempting to restore her vision, she had no way of noticing the giant foot of one of the trolls slamming into her side. But she definitely FELT it, felt the rush of her body flying away from the carnage, heard the troll's bellows get slightly quieter as she travelled further and further away, felt herself landing in the snow and rolling over a few times before coming to a stop, face-down in the cold.

Letting out a growl under her breath, Esdeath tried to pick herself up, but an incredibly sharp and potent pain around the area that she'd been kicked by the troll forced her back down. Subconsciously rolling herself onto her back, shifting into a more comfortable position on the ground, she raised a hand to her face and successfully managed to wipe the rest of the troll's blood away from her eyes, restoring her vision.

She seemed to have been kicked all the way back to where she'd set up camp for herself, with the small incline just over where she'd been obscuring the trolls from her direct view. She could hear their bellows of pain and anger, slices from Raylix's and Cinder's swords, the sound of magical attacks being charged up and fired at the trolls, the rumbles of the trolls' footsteps, the louder rumbles of troll-corpses hitting the ground… but she couldn't see them. And as she attempted to pick herself up again, but was forced back down by a sharp, stabbing pain around the area she'd been kicked, she knew she was in no condition to rejoin the fight either.

Not that it seemed like there was much of a fight left to be fought, as the bellows and rumbles from the trolls seemed to have stopped, and Esdeath noticed Raylix and Cinder coming back into view, descending, landing close to her.

"You know any healing, Cinder?" Raylix asked, sighing when Cinder shook her head. "Alright. I'm not great with healing either, but I'll-"

"Do what you can, right." Esdeath replied, nodding. "Right."

Raylix nodded in return, lowering both of his hands to the area that Esdeath had lowered her hand to as an indication of where it hurt most and beginning to focus healing energy onto the spot in question. Almost immediately, Esdeath began to feel the pain in her side beginning to slowly dull, and she shifted around slightly just to get a bit more feeling back into the rest of her body. Raylix scowled at her movements, but didn't comment and continued healing.

"I guess I should thank you…" Esdeath remarked, shifting herself into a slightly more comfortable sitting position. "Again."

"It's fine." Raylix replied, not looking back up at the bluenette as he continued his healing work for several more seconds, before eventually stopping and laying his hands down. "If you want to repay me for all this, I guess you could join me and Cinder."

"Join you?" Esdeath repeated, blinking as she lay back, the pain in her side still present, but far less than it had been before Raylix had did his healing work on her. "And why would I do that?"

"Roof over your head, better food than constant troll-meat, better bed than whatever you've got going on in that tent," Raylix remarked. "Allies to fight alongside if you ever get into a scrap, one of which is straight-up one of the Platinums, travelling…"

"Hmm." Esdeath hummed, resting a hand on the pained area and focusing cold energy into it, which helped a bit more to dull said pain and make it a good bit more bearable. "Assuming I say yes, what would a formerly noble Devil working with the Old Satan Faction, a member of the Magicians' Council, and a little brat with a name so befitting of her powerset she probably picked it herself be travelling around for?"

Cinder scowled.

----- ----- -----

"So, you think the Sephiroth Graal could be in a place like this… why again, Raylix?" Esdeath asked, raising her hand above her eyes to keep the sun's light out of them. It had been a couple of months since Raylix and Cinder had brought the blue-haired ice-wielder into their growing group, and as the day was warm, she was in an orange summer-dress that showed off a good bit more than the winter gear that Raylix and Cinder had met her in, up to and including an oddly-shaped tattoo on her upper chest. That, once Raylix had gotten a look at it for the first time, was the sign of her Sacred Gear, Esdeath had explained, which was the source of her impressive ice-wielding abilities that she'd displayed the first time they met.

Irene had taken to Esdeath pretty quickly, thanks to her ability to pull her own relative weight on her and Raylix's group's travels: as strong as Irene, even stronger on her day, a decent cook when Irene was either out doing something else or just wasn't in the mood to cook for what was now four people, and decent enough conversation when she wasn't enjoying the pain she inflicted on anything unlucky enough to land in her crosshairs a little TOO much.

Raylix, Cinder and Irene were also in more casual clothing than they'd usually be seen in, with Irene foregoing her jacket altogether.

"Well for one thing, Esdeath, we've kind of searched in all the obvious places that we could easily get to." Raylix replied. "Alexandretta, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Genoa, Glastonbury, Roslin, Valencia, anywhere you'd normally think of. There'd sometimes be clues we found that sounded at least semi-reasonable, but every time…"

"Nothing?" Cinder slowly interjected.

"Exactly. Nothing. Nada. Zilch." Raylix replied, stretching his arms as the four of them crossed a street and continued their walk. "No concrete evidence that the Holy Grail actually was, or had ever been, in any of the locations that we went to. If it's not there, it's got to be somewhere else, right?"

"Right." Esdeath nodded, as a man who'd been looking at her, Irene and Cinder for a little too long caught her attention. A hard enough glare in the man's direction was enough for him to noticeably avert his eyes, and move off in the opposite direction to where they were going as fast as his legs could carry him.

"And for another…" Raylix continued. "Well, it came to me recently, but we might have been going about this search for the Grail all wrong up until now."

There was silence among the three women for a moment or two, partly for the purposes of them taking in what Raylix had just said, and also partly because they were passing a small gaggle of young people. The perfect kind of people who one would rather not have eavesdropping on any conversation that might or might not be going on around them.

"How'd you come to that conclusion?" Irene asked, breaking the silence between the four as she moved to catch up with Raylix, having fallen behind him, Cinder and Esdeath by a couple of paces.

"Well, think about it." Raylix replied, as they came to another street crossing and paused to allow a nearby car to pass on the road, before they continued across it. "The Holy Grail is meant to be the cup that Jesus drank from during the last meal before he got the-" he quickly drew his hand across his neck while making a noise from his throat as he walked. "Right?"

"The Last Supper, yes." Irene nodded.

"And so, you'd expect something like that to be massively coveted by anyone who believed in it, namely Christians, right?" Raylix continued.

"Yeah, you'd think." Cinder replied. Esdeath and Irene remained silent, sharing a look between each other.

"If I wanted to hide something that a lot of people across the world wanted, I think I'd hide it in a place where there weren't many of those people, wouldn't you?" Raylix asked. "Like here in Nasu? Lower the chances of word getting out about it? Especially if that item happens to be one of the most coveted items in world history?"

"Yeah, I think I'd do that, too." Esdeath remarked, nodding. "Fair enough logic, there."

"You think it could be here?" Cinder asked.

"Maybe." Raylix replied. "Maybe not. "But somewhere LIKE here? It's quite possible."

Cinder hummed in acknowledgement of what Raylix had said, while Irene remained silent. Esdeath, who was closest to her, looked over and noticed the expression on her face.

"Irene?"

"I'm fine." Irene replied. "Was just… I think I remember something about this place."

"Well, if it'll help us with finding the Grail, then I'm all ears." Raylix remarked. "Or even if it isn't, I don't mind. Always cool to hear you come out with some random fact about whatever place we're in at the time."

Irene smiled, momentarily, before returning to her prior expression. Silence reigned for a few more seconds before Irene hummed.

"Oh, yeah, I remember it now." She remarked. "This place- or at least the area around it- is where the spirit of a really powerful Youkai is meant to reside: a kitsune by the name of Tamamo-no-Mae."

"Tamamo-no-Mae?" Cinder repeated. "Can't say I've heard that name."

"Not that surprising, considering she hasn't been around for… over eight hundred years, at this point." Irene replied. "Longer than any of us have been alive, in fact. I came across the story a while ago, but I'd be lying if I said I could remember all of it."

"Well, we're all ears, Irene." Raylix remarked. "If you're willing to share what you CAN remember."

"Sure." Irene shrugged. "Well, where my knowledge starts is with Tamamo coming to the Human World and, for reasons only known to herself I guess, beginning to blend in with humanity. After a while, she got involved with the court of Toba, who was the Emperor of Japan at the time."

"Uh-huh…" Raylix replied, his mind trailing to a picture of the only other kitsune he knew of off the top of his head that he'd seen back during his time with the Gremory Clan… she was a beauty if he'd ever seen one. "You think she seduced her way in?"

"I doubt she really needed to play that card." Irene replied. "Not consciously, at least. If I had to guess, I'd say factors outside her suspected beauty played more of a part in winning Toba's favour. Knowledge of the world, personality, that kind of thing. Her beauty might have just been a bonus on top of those things… or I could be completely wrong and she got in with Toba by flashing her tits at him, who knows?"

The scarlet-haired Platinum shrugged, before continuing.

"As the story goes, Tamamo and Toba had a good thing going with each other. She was his favourite lover, for pretty much the entire time that they were together."

"Probably not that hard for her to get that title." Esdeath remarked. "Unless Toba had any other lovers at the time, I doubt Tamamo had a hard time getting to the top of the proverbial ladder."

"Hmm." Irene nodded. "Whatever the circumstances surrounding how she got up there, Tamamo was up there for a long time… by regular human standards, of course. But even for the supernatural, good things don't last forever."

Irene cast a sideways look at Raylix, who was rather noticeably averting his eyes. She didn't comment on this, however, and continued.

"Sometime down the line, Toba became ill, and around that time, Tamamo's identity as a kitsune was exposed by an astrologer who'd been called to diagnose the cause of the Emperor's health problems at the time. Tamamo, as you might be able to guess, got the blame."

"Well, did she?" Cinder asked. "You know, do it?"

Irene shrugged.

"I don't think that's either here nor there." She remarked. "Happened ages ago, and there's no-one around from that time to confirm for sure. Whether she did it or didn't, Tamamo fled after being exposed, and was hunted across the nation for a while. If the stories are right, she took an army of eighty thousand men sent to kill her. Not far from here, in fact."

Raylix let out a low whistle. Even if they were only humans and she a Youkai, and a powerful one by the sounds of it, taking on eighty thousand of ANYTHING and coming out on top was impressive in one regard or another.

"She wasn't able to repeat that feat the next time an army was sent after her, though." Irene continued. "An army of one hundred thousand, the second time around, managed to bring her down and kill her, with her body being transformed into a rock known as the Killing Stone… which supposedly rests somewhere in this town, or at least close by."

Silence reigned among the group again, as the end of Irene's story hung in the air, before Irene continued.

"I'd love to know the full story. What's already known is interesting enough, but I can't help but imagine that what we DON'T know would be even more so."

"Couldn't there be a way to resurrect Tamamo?" Esdeath asked. "And get the full story from her?" she turned to look over at Raylix, continuing. "Like your- oh, yeah, you got rid of yours."

Raylix nodded, shrugging as he looked back at Irene, who had a thoughtful look on her face.

"I suppose so…" she remarked. "We'd need the soul, a body and a lifespan for a resurrected Tamamo-no-Mae to be able to function on her own, without anyone sending a constant stream of their own energy into her."

"Well, if it's as you said," Cinder remarked. "You know, the body becoming a stone and the soul being inside it, and the stone being in this area, than it probably wouldn't be too hard to find, right?"

"That is true." Irene replied, raising a hand to her chin. "It's just that the lifespan we'd need to keep her alive for a while would be… a bit harder to come by."

"if it isn't easy to achieve, it's probably worth it." Raylix remarked, stepping up. "And on top of being able to get everything from her, Tamamo sounds like a pretty strong potential ally to have."

"That… is also true." Irene replied. "I've known only a few mature kitsune over the centuries, and all of them have been… powerful, to say the least. Potentially on par with the Satans."

Raylix let out another low whistle, slipping his hands into his pockets.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" he asked, his eyes flicking between the three women. "Let's go find it."

There were hums and murmurs of ascent from Cinder, Esdeath and Irene, before Raylix led them off down a street, momentarily stretching his arms as he did so. However, unseen by any of the four of them, only a few yards away from where they had been standing and talking, a young-looking cat with white fur and black spots watched the four beings walking away with an intense expression… or at least, the most intense that a cat's facial expression could look.

If what the two Devils and two Magicians were talking about was true… then Nurarihyon had to hear of this. Those four beings couldn't be allowed to leave, if their intention was to revive Tamamo-no-Mae.

Resisting the urge to hiss openly, the cat- its seven tails waving slowly in the afternoon air, conjured a small transportation-circle and jumped through it, disappearing from the area.