Slowly but surely, the sun began to sink beyond the distance. The rays of afternoon light gradually becoming the rays of dusk, casting the skies into an orange tint.
What was it, like - 5pm right now? Vampire hunting sounded like a colossal task you had to prepare for. I an, our lives hung in the balance here.
We should have been preparing, discussing tactics and whatnot. Making contingencies within our contingencies. We should have been… and yet we aren't. Why?
Because the succubus got hungry.
Fast forward to present ti, there I was in the passenger seat of her car again, while she ordered up so burgers at the take-away driveway.
"16.50, please," said the cashier by the drive-through window.
"Oh, gim a sec," Irene said.
Bored out of my mind I was, I failed to notice Irene's hand stretching out at , not until I heard her fake a cough to attract my attention. Once I did though, I was quite taken aback.
"I'm paying?"
For an answer, she stretched her hand out even more, her eyes growing sterner with each second her palm was left cashless and empty.
"Fine…"
Before I could even have ti to offer her the 20 I fished out from my wallet, she already had plucked it from my fingers faster than you can say 'your welco'.
As thanks she flashed a not-so-sweet-sweet smile at , briefly though, her priorities right then were to pay the cashier and get the food, to which she did both at a record pace.
Pulled over by the parking lot, it didn't take long for her to start wolfing them down like so kind of animal. Big bites, little chews and a lick of her lips.
Begs the question though…
"Where's mine?"
Irene paused mid-way through licking ketchup from her fingertips to turn over at , a look of bewildernt on her face.
"You didn't ask," she said.
"My money."
"My car," she retorted, delving a hand into the paper bag. "You're welco to the fries, though."
Guess I can settle for that.
For a mont, there was this sense of normalcy as she handed the carton of fries, only for a mont though, before the utter bizarreness of the situation - eating food with a succubus when we should have been preparing for a vampire attack - had snapping back to the task at hand.
"What are we doing here?" I asked.
Irene took a big mouthful. "Eating," she said through bulged cheeks.
"Wow, you must be a detective or sothing."
Irene rolled her eyes and nudged her head at the windshield. "Look there, don't say anything and keep a close eye at it."
"Wha - "
"Do it," she urged while chomping down another mouthful.
So there I sat, eating so fries in silence, watching people and cars go about their day from the passenger seat. It was obvious we were staking sothing out, but whatever it was, Irene wasn't telling. Not like she could either, every ti I turned to look at her, her cheeks were always bulging with either fries or a burger, maybe even a mixture of both.
I complied for about thirty minutes, before that sinking feeling of guilt started acting up again. Clearly it'll never go away until I choose to confront it, so I did, turning my eyes to a recently stuffed and drowsy Irene with her arms wrapped around her knees.
"I really was trying to get so info, you know. I wasn't just ssing around in the ga. It's just… y'know how gas are, they take ti."
"I know," she said, yawning. "You're fine. I'm not upset."
"Seriously, the prologue took longer than anything else. If it wasn't for that I'd probably would have gotten more info. But no, instead I had to learn all about 'Leonardo the Hero' and 'Terestra the Vile'... really, there's gotta be a better way of introducing - "
"Say that again."
I stopped, paused, and blinked. "What?"
"Leonardo and Terestra. The ga really has them?"
Irene was wide awake now, sitting upright, eager as all hell to hear what I have to say. She was so close to , in fact, I had to roll down a window just to not spoil the mood with my own 'mood'.
Still, I was unknowingly sitting on info this whole ti that peaked her interest, I wasn't letting a little arousal stop from explaining to her.
"You play as Leonardo and follow his story as he attempts to kill the demon queen Terestra. Along the way you et up with party mbers and fight the six servants of Terestra, one of which is apparently Ash herself."
She was soaking up all this info like a wet sponge, constantly reiterating everything I said in mutters under her breath, stopping only after she had comprehend everything.
By the end of it, she was looking quite troubled. I took a guess over what it was.
"I'm thinking the Matriarch isn't the only thing Asteria and Kronocia have in common, am I right?"
A hand on her head and her lips in a frown. "Kronocia had a Terestra. She wasn't just a demon queen though, she was Kronocia's God. Everything moved according to her will. Nobody could stop her. Nobody except well… you guessed it, the great hero from the past, Leonardo himself."
"Too similar for it to be a coincidence," I said. "Sothing is definitely going on here."
"I don't rember this six servants thing though… she never had any, certainly no Elves either. They're downright despised in my world."
"Asteria hated Elves too, though. Ash ntioned it to ."
"As you said then," said Irene, stretching her arms and back. "This is way more than just coincidence."
"There's one other thing…"
"What's that?"
Sothing was bugging . Throughout all this ti, as we rambled and discussed on and on… that thought always stayed with . I simply had to know.
"Why do you talk about it as if you were there yourself?"
Whether she anticipated the question or not, she didn't show. Instead she closed her eyes, and let out a sigh.
"I was. From the summoning of the great hero to Leonardo's and Terestra's initial confrontation. I was there for it all. Why, I must have been around your age when it happened."
"How old are you now?"
She smiled faintly. "I stopped keeping track at a 146."
"So what happened? Did Leonardo manage to kill Terestra?"
That smile of hers faded away.
"He died. I didn't even think he stood a chance. That, I wasn't there for. By the ti the final battle ca, I had already changed worlds. But from what I've heard, the realm of Kronocia is no more. The people, the races, the culture, the history - Terestra had reduced it all to nothingness, along with Leonardo."
She finished, leaving in her wake, a profound silence that none of us dared break. Unknown to her though, there were pieces in my head that were starting to connect.
That dream I had in particular… a barren desolate world crumbling to ruins, two people standing across from each other. Leonardo and Terestra. Was that world I saw Kronocia? Or was it Asteria? More importantly though, why did I dream of it then, when I knew nothing of it at that ti?
From the way Asteria's story was going, could the ending really be that too? No matter what Leonardo did in the ga, Terestra would reign supre regardless. Was that it?
There was one thing I had to confirm now, given everything that had co to light.
I turned my eyes back to Irene. "So that ans… Terestra is dead as well, right? She destroyed the world after all."
"That's the thing…" The mont I saw her gulping, I felt my heart sink in my chest, confirming the one fear I had over all this. "I don't know."
"Oh no…"
She gave a tired sort of chuckle. "Oh no is right... going by her powers, I know full well she couldn't have died from such a thing, I also know she is also fully capable of changing worlds on her own, no external forces necessary."
"So you're saying she could be here? Right now? In this world? Just wandering around like so kind of ticking ti bomb?"
"Like I said… I don't know. But with all the recent happenings lately - an Elf from a video ga, a Matriarch appearing and abducting people - there's no denying that sothing is definitely happening here."
It's just one thing after another, isn't it? Half of felt like it was so much better before when all I had to deal with back then was money troubles and the mob.
No one said anything about any impending apocalypse during my mid-twenties period. Those bastards in school lied to .
Just when I thought things couldn't get weider, it did. I saw it. Down across the street at a sidewalk, almost hidden among the wandering crowds.
But there was no mistaking it. My pants, my jacket, draped over by long locks of ashen-colored hair. Ears, long and pointed. I choked on a fry just trying to utter her na.
So I pointed at the windshield and said to Irene in a strangled voice, "It's… Ash. She's… she's right there."
She instantly looked over to where I was pointing at, and froze upon catching sight of her.
To my surprise though, there was not a hint of shock on her expression. Irene looked… pleased with herself, smiling wide.
"I thought so!" She said, her eyes locked on Ash's position.
"Thought what?" I asked, also watching as Ash wandered into a shambled building at the end of the street.
"That building your Elf friend just entered," Irene started the car, the engine rumbling to life. "That's where we'll find the Matriarch."
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