Kaoru wakes up in bed. She opens the bedside light and see the other side of the bed empty. Through the window shows the night. Kouga must be hunting.
She looks at the room. How has she reached here? But, she was in ...
She remembers everything. Her torture by the bright beings. When she came to take Kouga off. Her merger to Meshia. Her flight from home. Her pregnancy ...
Her hands fly to her empty belly. Her child had been perverted and killed! She turns in bed until her face sinks into the pillow, and cries. About the child that she has not cried before. About they had she to become evil and she had accepted. About she had left to kill her love to Kouga. About she feels so small, now that Meshia had left her.
* * *
“Certainly I didn’t see your dad doing it” the new Zaruba says to its owner “but I doubt that hurling energy with the edge of your sword may involve to streep some leaves off some trees. This way you only get it to bounce to as many obstacles as find and to get back to you”.
Kouga feels tempted to send an outburst to it, but he remains silent and gets ready to try it again. Refocuses an invisible ball at the tip of his sword.
“Hello!” a lively voice greets. Kaoru is back, and he responds with a hint of a smile.
Gonza gets out with the tea, and reachers the table in the garden about the same time as her. Kouga finishes his training and go with them: he is more interested to hear the news by his wife than the protests by the speaking ring.
“How was your day?” he says as sitting.
Kaoru looks at him with that enigmatic smile that she uses since she got rid of her
extra charge, which he begins to interpret as “I know something you do not know”. He can not blame her. This is a question that he never would have asked her if it had not happened what happened.
“No, now nothing rare has happened. Sorry”.
But she is not sorry. She hates to worry him, he knows it well. It was difficult she could tell him what was wrong when he saw her so upset coming home the first day she went to work, five days earlier.
She said throughout the day she had passed with three horrors - what, three?, he alarmed - one among them a Bariri - how d’you know that? Kouga asked himself again. - The three among them approached her .
“What happened?” he hurried, as she doubted.
He had to embrace her before she decided to speak. She needed his support at that moment. She told her fingers grew some long bone extension, like thorns, when each of the “normal” disguised horrors stopped in front of her, and she nailed those appendages into their bodies. Both of them remained very quiet. Only when her mind calmed enough she could will to end with that, the appendages were reabsorbed by her body, and the horrors left peacefully. With the Bariri one, it was different. A lump grew about the height of its stomach, which appealed something from herself. At this time she could also decide when to end it. In all three cases, she felt tired after ending.
After finishing the story Kougha came to embrace her again, stronger, as if to prevent Meshia snatch her back.
As Kaoru has been telling, as the perserved memories of Meshia she shared with him, and what Meshia herself said to him, Kouga has begun to see the real situation.
Meshia had been, literally, goddess of a whole world and mother of all its inhabitants. Her disappearance would leave this world in a critical position. The three horrors Kaoru had contacted that day were fed instinctively by her. As they were three and not only one, and the increasingly frequent calls Makai Knights from sanctuaries, clearly shows that the horrors begin to invade the human world, and this fact will create more gateways. Even if Kaoru says that there are remains of Meshia enough to keep the horror world for several years, its inhabitants know they have to make changes in order to survive. The purification of humanhood for all their wickedness is rapidly approaching, and it will not be slight.
Hearing his deep sigh, Kaoru's voice brings his mind back.
“Perhaps I might consider how to feed them without getting tired, and so ...”
“No way!” And, he feels somewhat confused by the increasing ease by her to guess his thoughts when both of them are close to each other.
“But” she tries to make Kouga see sense “horrors that I’ve fed have spent a whole day without eating any human being”.
“You don’t know it”.
“Yes, I know! Although you didn’t want to believe it. Although ... we didn’t want to believe it.
He puts his cup of tea back on the table.
“Meshia’s left you a lot as an inheritance”.
“So much d’you care?”
“It wasn’t left much of you when you both shared a body”.
“That's not accurate. Imagine yourself considering the pros and cons of a decision you must do. It was the same. For example, a part of me knew I wanted to get back to you, but another part deemed if it was acceptable, how, when and why. Which reasoning could I wield against someone as old and with so much knowledge? She overwhelmed me, and took advantage of my feelings, memories and thoughts to lay her plans. I couldn’t help but understand why she did what she did”.
“And yet”, Kouga says, “I swear there were a few occasions in which I saw of felt you”.
“I think Meshia dropped her guard occasionally. As you mention it ...” She pauses thoughtfully for a minute... “Yes, that is so, I did’nt remember”. Another of her enigmatic smiles. He should get used to it. “D’you know what really conquered her?”
“Luminous beings’ involvement”.
“Yes, but you didn’t realize that there was a real spiritual battle, did you?”
“Indeed, a divine force against an devil force”.
“Not exactly. A divine force with another divine force”.
The confusion on his face is clear. She explains herself.
“Luminous beings’ nature made them invulnerable by her, and she realized what she had could be and couldn’t because she blew her chance. Her own divine self, isolated and forgotten for eons woke up, only for a moment, but enough to Meshia to feel the need of ... how did she make? ... come home”
Kouga thinks about it. It is too esoteric to understand by his feelings, but his mind can. But, just like that?
“So, she’s come home?”
Kaoru denied with her head.
“She just had set out. She’s got a lot to purify”.
This reassures the valiant fighter that Kouga is, and puts things straight.
“I meant”, she goes on, “when it became clear to her that you left her to the luminous beings, Meshia began to withdraw and stopped repressing my own nature and, for once, I could take advantage of her own knowledge. Stand up”.
He looks surprised, but he does. She leads him away from the table and asks him to put his armor on.
“Why?”
“Trust me”.
Kouga has to remember this is Kaoru, and can trust her. A mental exercise that he had to do several times in recent days. A brief nod, he grabs his sword and open the interdimensional gate. The wolf golder armor is almost dazzling under the last rays of sun. Kaoru comes directly to it, she won’t ...
“Don’t touch...!”
Too late. The girl put her hand directly on the seal on his waist, but does not seem to burn her. The belt turns a hundred and eighty degrees, surprising Kouga. He experiences a shock. Kaoru smiles.
She points to his shadow, elongated on the ground by the sunset. Wings. The armor has got two big wings. He remembers a paintning that only became true within the magic world, but they gave him some balance with Meshia, and so he achieved to defeat her. Kouga is so impressed that he remains still and silent.
“At the beginning”, she explains “you’ll have to enable or disable them turning the seal, but eventually they’ll obey you will”.
He checks the retraction of the wings as she said, and he succeeds. Then, the metal is released. The face uncovered under it reflects a new and deep respect for the heritage got by his beloved one since, between Kaoru’s hands, it could do much good.
“Not Meshia but you manipulated the armor before you both splitted”. It was not aquestion, but the statement of a fact. “So, it's true that she invented them for the Makai Knights”.
“She created the first one, Kiva’s, to test his worth as an ally. At that time Makai Knights didn’t exist yet, but Kiva’s knowledge about horrors, Meshia and parallel worlds, and the notes he left about his armor, remained here and helped to create and define those ones later which would belong to Makai Knights. He also had a disciple who wouldn’t follow him to the dark path, but contributed a lot to it”.
“Could you manipulate again this armor or another?”
Kaoru sighs.
“It takes a big concentration of energy to make this possible, and yet I'm not sure to remember everything”.
“At that time Meshia wasn’t in position to make such a waste”. He reminds the continuous energetic drain by the luminous beings.
“You don’t know how much energy is needed to maintain and control your whole own world and her fate as she did! As she realized that she was lost and submitted to it, I stopped being influenced by her views. I found all that excess energy and I could give you a gift. Although I didn’t know if I‘d have a chance to show it to you”.
Now, it is Kouga's turn to smile enigmatically. His armor falls on again, this time invoked by his mind. He spread his new wings by turning the seal. His arms grabs Kaoru's waist and the wings begin to flap. When she feels her feet do not touch ground, she protests.
“Hey! You haven’t practiced landing. Wait! They can see us... Planes ... The radar im the airport!”
She stops complaining as the groud is left behind and Gonza, who comes running with a red envelope on a small tray watches, smiling, as the shade of the couple is still rising under the evening sky.
THE END
