Month: September 2020

I The birth of the Scarlet Devil

Everyone said she was insane but moving to Istanbul was the best choice she had done, after turning not only the Turks wanted her dead but now her own people too. She gave up her state in exchange for a hefty amount of money she and her sister could expend if they left the town. It fixed both her issues.

Every night she came down to the tea shop, it opened all night long, she often sat there trying to think what to do next. It had been months since they moved there, though she didn’t know what would happen later. Maybe she would sell tea, yes that would be good for her, though she didn’t know who to sell it to, the market was already full.

She saw a worried man in front of her, he was richly dressed, usually at these times she was alone in the shop save for a few travelers who had just arrived, this man was there earlier than Remilia, this was her life now, reading books in a tea shop while her sister looked for something to eat in the streets, later she would go and retrieve her sister before the sun came out.

She approached the man, her eyes peering not into him but into his mind, he was desperate, a shipment of opium, he lost half of it at the border to Romania, he managed to escape with the other half but now he had lost everything, he could try to escape if someone bought the shipment from him. Remilia sat at his table and ordered a cup of tea, she then ordered sweetmeats to be brought.

The man quickly realized there was someone else with him, a little girl, maybe she would try to talk to him, though he had nothing to say to this child. He just wanted to be left alone.

“What is troubling you sir? That look is not of a well man” Remilia served him tea

“I won’t pay for that” he said, perhaps the child was trying to get a free meal

“Of course, you won’t, it’s on my tab”

“Go away kid”

“This is how you treat Lady Remilia Scarlet? Well I guess I no longer have a land to rule… But people still call me Lady” she laughed

The man turned to see her again, she was dressed in fine clothes, gold embroidery covered her neck, she had a pearl necklace. It was not unusual to see children her age doing their own business though usually they were begging in the streets.

“Want an explanation? My parents died, I moved here to seek a new life” She laughed

The man smiled, maybe he could get off his situation, he could for sure sell his shipment at full price to this girl, she had no one to help her understand the overprice, or so he thought. Soon they began to negotiate, he was surprised to see that the girl was very good at the negotiation, she knew the exact price for opium, for how much it would sell, and how someone selling this amount in a tea shop this late at night must be desperate.

In the end Remilia walked away, he was adamant about the price, though once he saw her at the door he sprang to meet her and agreed to the price she was putting, less than half of his lowest price, yet the amount was enough for him to get as far away as possible.

They arrived at his place, where Remilia paid a little extra for the boxes to be sent to her own home.

The man thought about running away with the money and the cargo, though when this dark thought crossed his mind, he felt a chill down his spine, Remilia’s eyes usually blue had turned red. She was glaring at him; he could hear her in his mind “Do not even dare” she said.

He decided to go with his instinct and simply dropped the boxes at Remilia’s home. He proceeded to flee as soon as he had fulfilled his contract. That was the last time Ahmed Al’Bashir stepped on Istanbul, it was already hard enough to walk freely given his species.

Cynocephali had been around for quite a long time, hiding their form as humans, not to be confused with the werewolves. Ahmed had smelled something odd in Remilia, a smell of blood and dead meat, not rotten but the way meat smells when no longer part of a living animal. He suspected what she was the moment she glared at him, he decided to just take her money and flee as soon as she had her goods.

Ahmed would flee to Japan, where a tengu city that admitted cynocephali was built. He bought a house and begun to live as a farmer, a far less fruitful life though a safer one. His name in Japan was changed to Inubashiri, it was the closest the tengu could have gotten to his former name.

Remilia now had a full shipment of opium, five boxes filled with paper packages full of opium gum. She decided to break her routine and go the next night to the port, there they did not want to do business with a muslim dog, maybe they would do them with a Catholic girl.

She managed to find an Italian ship soon enough and her religion allowed her to negotiate with them, she could have used hypnosis, but she couldn’t keep them hypnotized for an entire trip, and they would turn on her. With the Italians she could deal with with a lesser illusion. She made it think she sold candy, and that the crates were full of pumpkin seed paste she wanted to sell in Italy.

The next night she was in the boat with the Italians, this time she had to make them think she was sick, this she didn’t need acting. The first days she could withstand the sun, after all it does not kill a vampire on instant, it weakens them leaving them with a nasty sunburn. She attributed this to her weak condition, faking to have anemia. Flandre though was an entirely different issue, she could go with the same lie but nobody would believe her.

So she just allowed Flandre to roam free on the ship. It was madness, a vampire in open water in a smuggling ship no less. Pirates may as well throw them down the sea and they were done for, though Remilia was certain they would make it, it was in their fate. She didn’t know how but they would make it, that is how she and Flandre survived for so long when everyone else in their family was dead, even the maid who turned her to a vampire was dead. Remilia sold the opium to the first person who came to buy it, it didn’t matter if they were giving her a bad price, she wasn’t going to go further to sell more. She would much rather return to Turkey and buy it off from someone who had not yet found a ship, though she wouldn’t wait for it in the tea shop, this was time to move, maybe next time she would let Flandre stay at home, maybe hire a maid to keep her company, maybe even feed her, though word was getting out that no employee of Remilia lasted more than a week.

Surya, the Indra, ruler of the Deva.

The Deva are the race of the gods, those who shaped the world at will, descendants of Vaivasvata Manu, the Deva who gave the universes sentience so that after their destruction via thermodynamic death it would make sure to always gather itself back and be created anew.

The universe divided itself into three, a creator personality, a preserver and a destroyer, the history of their creations and tussles are explained in different places all of them legends and all of them with different versions since records could not last so well the change of a universe, the Deva had to keep those stories alive by oral tradition.

At least they knew this, Vishnu, the protector, always reincarnated in the next ruler of the Deva, having the odd instance of seeing two people sharing the same soul but different personality when an Indra when their children were born. Their dreams are connected since the dream world does not care for personality but their soul itself, their power cannot and won’t be used against each other since they are the same, just two different vessels. Memories, personality traits and experiences were shared too though most of those were blocked by the subconscious of each vessel, to remember being born is a trauma even the toughest of Indra do not want to remember repeatedly.

Suryadev the current Indra had been told by every oracle he encountered that his child would be the strongest Indra in the entire lifetime of Brahma, that is to say that said child would be the strongest Indra to ever live until the end of time itself and the need to restart it again. He felt great pride upon hearing the news, in the myriad of kings and reincarnations he would be remembered as the father of the strongest therefore the best king.

Coya the capital planet for the Deva, all covered in metallic buildings, the air cleaned by humming towers that fed on nuclear energy. Indra loved his planet; it was his to rule and his to keep. He waited for the birth of his child with both hope and fear, for when he was born his glow was such that only powerful Deva could stand his presence without being harmed. When he was married, he had to have his glow trimmed with a magical blade so that his wife could stand him in intimacy, with that glow Krishna’s sword was forged as well as Rudra’s spear.

Lord Rudra the first one and thus leader of the Mahavidyas, the ten avatars of destruction was a Deva and close friend to Surya, the trident, the most powerful weapon bound itself to Rudra due to his own friendship with Surya whose glow made the weapon he now held. Krishna got the sword from the scraps of the making of the trident, still a great weapon but more than anything a gift to keep Krishna in good terms. Krishna even though was an avatar of Vishnu and it was said he was the wisest among them all was not someone Surya liked, he had the habit of telling others what to do, though he never followed any of his advice.

He advised Surya not to drink though Krishna drank like no Deva, he advised Surya on the way he should rule even though Krishna just frolicked on Coya or a pocket dimension he liked to call Lotus. Krishna advised Surya on how he should treat his servitude with humbleness but ignored how his past servants rose up in arms until they were given a planet of their own. Krishna told Surya how war would bring nothing good to his kingdom but never put any attention to the violent action the Ashura took against his own planets. It was true that Ashura were of the same species as the Deva, though why didn’t he give that advise to the Ashura too?

The Indra, Surya, gave the sword of scraps to Krishna as a gift solely to keep appearances, to make it seem that he would be more mindful of his word, after all no sword  would compare to this, even though it was made from trimmings. The night he gave the sword to Krishna he also had a party in his honor, a party where they together drank so much that Surya forgot what happened later in the night.

Next day he heard dreadful news, the Fairies, the very servants who demanded a planet as if it was their right and caused terror in the planets of Coya and Teya, the very servants who treated their Indra with no respect, those who did not bow their head before him and even referred to him by his name instead of his title. They had been given a planet in the verge of Ashura territory so that they would be in the front lines of the war. Those insects now had developed technology that cleaned their air, that produced food and purified water, their technology even though rough needed little maintenance and fuel. He had heard those news before but did not pay much attention to it, after all their swamp planet was a barren wasteland with little metal, mostly water.

Their machines worked with water and starlight, crude contraptions that took up a lot of space for little payoff, though now it was becoming a problem. Fairy machines produced far superior food and drink than their own, so much so that the demand for fairy produced food and alcohol was lowering the prices of their own and fairy food, being mostly kept for themselves was a rare delicacy with a price higher than any precious substance in the universes. The fairies now were stacking gold to the point that the Indra’s own vaults were being drained.

He himself had noticed the improvement of drink, now not only having the bite and burn of alcohol but the addition of sugars and perfumes, acids and flavors that he did not think possible, though he ignored that each drop of said drink was far more expensive than the throne he sat on. Fairies had noticed how coveted their goods were and were making up crazy prices to see how far the Deva would go to lay their hands on their food.

He as the Indra made it so that the fairies had to pay their taxes in species and not gold, as they had done before now gold was something they could spare easily. He was appalled at the idea because he would have an excuse to dispose of them like the plague fairies were if they failed to pay their gold tax, he had sent them to a planet with little gold so that they would deplete it in little time and come back begging to be his servants again or die under his army’s wrath.

Fairies had found a way to circumvent this, to the point where their actions were depleting resources Deva wanted to use for war. Wine, chocolate, fruit, flowers, perfumes all of those things were now made in the fairy planet, and they had made sure that even if their machines got stolen, they would wither and die, literally die when used somewhere else. A perfume bottle could pay the salary of a thousand soldiers, a wine glass could arm those soldiers with the best weaponry too.

By making fairies paying in species he got rid of one problem, now fairies would remain in their planet for as long as they pleased, though gold would not get drained any more, the market for those goods now would be kept by the government itself so he could control that economy. Though he ignored the full extent of fairy technology and how smart they had become with it. Indra continued with his life as usual from then on, pleased to see the increase of good food and drink, he had grown fond of peaches and figs that now he had access as much of it as he wanted.