A Long Sky

[fate_guardiandevil]

Angel wasn't a devil of many words, but he was a sponge.

If he had decided to just passively absorb the bad -- the ripe fear, the simmering dread -- he could feast easily. That wasn't in short supply in this bizarre world.

He hadn't decided to do that, though. But he hadn't decided not to, either.

He was doing just a little more than just going with the flow, he thought. Maybe thinking about whether to do something or not do something wasn't much, but it was more than he'd done before in his life of forced servitude to the state.

Angel's shaggy hair fluttered and he was jolted out of his rumination as the scent of the sea hit him. The airship had descended far enough that he could smell it from where he stood on one of the exterior platforms. The spire he had scouted was approaching -- it was a hub of refugees, and Millerna had identified it as positively Asturian. An outpost. A fragmented one, but recognizable. That had pleased her greatly. She and the man (hers? maybe?) had been searching for signs of their own civilization for far longer than Angel had become part of their operation. That much he knew.

He had done something good for them by scouting it out. He felt...well. He felt a sort of balance in that. Not happiness, exactly, but it felt right.

He couldn't take all the credit, though. After all, he had somehow found himself part of a buddy duo. Again.

But this human wasn't like his last partner. Actually, she was almost nothing like him.

"Don't lean too much over the edge," he said to her, avoiding her purple braid as it nearly whipped his face due to the wind. "If you fall from here, I'm not catching you. The wind is against me."

And if she splattered, that would be a pain to explain.

Comments

[purplewillow]

"Oh, are you worried about me, Angel-baby?" Nuriko grinned as she took hold of her whipping braid, then gently brushed the end of it against Angel's cheek. Sure, she couldn't physically touch him without wearing gloves, but this was safe enough. Safe enough that Nuriko did it often when she was teasing Angel. "You don't have to worry about me."

[fate_guardiandevil]

Angel’s nose twitched when a few hair strands flittered across it. Then, he sneezed hard enough his wings ruffled. He pulled out a handkerchief without thinking to dab at his face - it hadn’t been his, originally, but he’d held onto it. It had belonged to…well.

It had its uses now, still.

“You’re the last person on this ship I’m worried about. Honestly, if you fell from here, the ground would probably suffer first…”

[purplewillow]

"You've got that right!" Nuriko flexed her arm, her bracelet dangling loosely on her wrist.

"But what brings you out here?" Nuriko's hands settle on her waist. "Or did you just want a chat with yours truly?"

[fate_guardiandevil]

Angel’s eyes followed the glint of her bracelet as she gesticulated before returning to her face - then the ground approaching below. He stepped forward to join her, leaning his forearms against the railing, just a few feet to her side.

“I just wanted some air. Millerna and her man are all abuzz. It was difficult to keep up with.” Even as he said it, though, his sluggish tone wasn’t disparaging.

Still, he thought he earned a little room to decompress. He had been more productive in the past few weeks than he’d been in all the years he’d worked for the government before.

Ever since he’d been picked up by the crew, it had been a nonstop effort of travel, mapping, triage, and aid. Millerna had a protocol for how they dealt with the civilization patches they came across - the sick and injured populations received immediate aid. The stable and mobile ones traded help for intel. Their efforts had been rewarded — there were pop up trading posts spanning the breadth of their travel route. For his part, he and Nuriko were the scouts, but they were a little bit of everything, too. Reconnaissance, retrieval, and muscle when needed.

Their latest mission had seen them developing coded cache locations of buried goods in cairns. Angel’s role was mostly dodging the boulders she slung and ‘looking pretty’ (his wings had become a sort of icon for their convoy) and he was still tired out.

Humans were bottomless wells of energy.

‘Well. They’re at least doing more than dying, splitting bureaucratic hairs, and scheming,’ he thought.

So, he was tired. But he didn’t hate it.

“Hey. You’re a warrior, right?”

[purplewillow]

"Of course! That's why I go on all those scouting missions with you. No way I could let Millerna and 'her man'," she said, using the term Angel used for Dryden, "go out there and get themselves hurt."

She turned to look at Angel. "Why do you ask?" That seemed like something strange to just ask right out of the blue.

[fate_guardiandevil]

"You're a warrior because of your god's favor..." Angel trailed off, as if meditating on how exactly to ask what he wanted to. "You haven't lost any strength since ending up in this world, have you?"

[purplewillow]

"Nope, just as strong as I was when I first got here. How about you?"

[fate_guardiandevil]

“Not much different. But my power is drawn from fear.” He supposed that everyone in this world had plenty to fear about the afterlife and divine judgement as back home. “I guess that means your god is still looking out for you…”

He sounded almost wistful.

“…Humans in my world make contracts with devils like me to get power. I’m wondering if any humans from my world who have ended up here still have their contracts intact.”

[purplewillow]

"Well, it's my destiny to protect the Priestess of Suzaku. So it only makes sense that I would still have my powers now. That's not much different from a binding agreement. So... if I were to guess, those people probably still have their powers too."

For better or worse.

"You worried about someone with one of those contracts? Don't worry, I'll take care of them!"

Nuriko cracked her fingers, as if readied to get into action at the slightest provocation.

[fate_guardiandevil]

Nuriko's phrasing made Angel's lips quirk. Before he could reply, the body of the convoy braced as they touched down on solid ground. Angel wanted to pause and take it all in, but he was aware of his own duty, and he stepped away from the railing.

"Let's go."

Their role as scouts had ended for now -- they were the entourage, now.

[purplewillow]

Nuriko quickened her pace behind him. "You excited?" she asked, knowing that Angel was never excited about anything. "Maybe there will be good food for you to try here!"

[fate_guardiandevil]

At the mention of food, Angel pulled out a fruit from his pocket and inspected it. It was a dried one from the reserves. Dryden told him the name, but he forgot it. It was weird-looking and fleshy, but it had a sort of sour bite to it that didn't decrease even after a lot of chewing. He took a bite and made a sort of lazy hum.

"Something cold and creamy would be nice...or maybe a monster of some kind. Something fresh. The bladder sac on that eel-looking demon from last week was pretty good." Not like the golem in the canyon. It was just mud and rock and Angel didn't even try to take a bite out of it.

He took another bite of the fruit. "What about you?"

[purplewillow]

"You know me, I can eat just about anything." A beat, as she thinks back to that demon. "Well, /almost anything/. I can't believe you eat that stuff!" It looked absolutely disgusting.

[fate_guardiandevil]

“For devils, humans and weaker devils make pretty fine dining. The eel-thing resembled some of my kind, actually…” Angel dug around in his pocket a bit more, hopeful he had some other snack stashed in there. This talk was making him hungry. He produced another sour fruit, turned it around in his grip, and offered it.

“Want one?”

[purplewillow]

Nuriko eyed the offering suspiciously. "This isn't some weird demon-thing, is it?"

[fate_guardiandevil]

Nuriko's question echoed through the interior observation deck where Dryden and Millerna stood, taking in the landscape. Angel looked at the fruit, then at Nuriko, then just shrugged. "Maybe. I forgot."

[fate_merchantofhope]

"Ironblister tree resin, actually." Dryden supplied as the pair approached. "Top of the line for patching hulls, priming traps, and in ritual fire-lighting despite its bizarre appearance. The way it's harvested is rather satisfying. I learned how to slice the bark blisters just so from a canid tribe during my travels...though, I can't say I've seen them used as a snack before."

His tone was lightly bemused, but bemused nonetheless.

[fate_guardiandevil]

"Oh, is that what they are?" Angel took another bite, undeterred, though it was clear he was half-listening.

[purplewillow]

"You're actually going to keep eating that?" Nuriko said, incredulous. "It's not like we're hard up for food or anything!"

[fate_guardiandevil]

"It's chewy. You should try it," Angel said, digging yet another out of his pocket.

[purplewillow]

"No, no," Nuriko said, moving her arms frantically from side-to-side. "I think you should save it for yourself. You'll enjoy it more, after all!"

[fate_merchantofhope]

“Well, we’re all rather lively for first contact,” Dryden said. That was a good thing. The Asturian settlement didn’t seem to be in dire straits, but it was an island - cut off among slabs of badlands that had inserted themselves into the spaces where the well-traveled routes once were.

It still had the sea to its south, though. That was good. A landlocked settlement in these conditions would have spelled doom.

“Are you ready to disembark?” He asked Millerna.

[millerna]

"Of course," she said. "It'll be great to get off this ship and stretch my legs! ...not that your ship is too small or anything." It was definitely much larger than the Crusade, the ship she had been traveling on before they'd been spirited away here.

[fate_merchantofhope]

"Stay aboard any airship long enough and the air gets stale," Dryden agreed, walking side-by-side with her to the ramp, flanked by Angel and Nuriko.

His adviser had fretted over entrusting his safety to the two at first, but even he had quieted by this point. The pair were reliable -- more than reliable. And both were nigh-impossible to intimidate. From what he knew of their pasts, he'd hazard they'd seen worse.

More importantly, they seemed to get along. It wasn't that he could afford to be picky about recruits, but even the most vetted and storied types usually came with ego.

All these thoughts passed through his mind as Angel offered his resin chew to Nuriko one last time, to no avail.

"I'm sure the residents will find your presence, alive and well, extremely heartening," he said to Millerna as the door lowered and the scent of the sea hit them.

[millerna]

"I'm sure, but... what if they decide they want me to stay there?" Millerna asked. "There's so many parts of Asturia that it doesn't feel fair to stay in just one place."