Argentorum
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Non Serviam: Chapter 3
🕑 Added 2023-12-12 04:59:01 +0000 UTCThis is a chapter of this story that was not originally posted on patreon. I am backposting it and several others now so that the complete story can be viewed on this site. To read the complete story, check the collection link below.
Chapter 3: Without Form
"So," I said. "Are you stuck here too?"
In front of me was a door, painted lighter than the rest of the doors in the Gremory Mansion. On the other side of that door was another person, who, maybe, was just as stuck here as I was.
Unfortunately, that person didn't reply to my words. "Leaving me out here all alone?" I asked. Then I rapped out shave and a haircut again.
Tap taptaptap tap
A pause
Tap tap
"Your turn," I said.
There was the sound of fingers drumming against the wood, as if in thought, and I smiled. The person on the other side of the door felt shy, but at the same time I could tell they were craving companionship.
Of course they were, if they'd been here alone for all this time.
After a few seconds more, the other person responded.
Tap tap tap tap…taptap
I frowned, thinking. Was that…My Country Tis of Thee? That seemed like a pretty big jump in difficulty.
Still I replied in kind, humming along with the percussion.
Sweet land of liberty
And together we both finished.
Of thee I sing
I laughed. "That was a good one, I'm gonna pick a harder one too now, if that's okay." After a moment I added. "One knock for yes, two for no?"
Tap.
"Okay."
On one hand, I felt as though I was being childish. But for the first time since I'd woken up, I didn't feel entirely isolated in this new world. And if this new person was shy, or couldn't talk, or anything like that…well, at least they were there.
Maybe they were only humoring me as much as I was humoring them.
"My name is Taylor, by the way," I said, as I rapped out another rhythm. This one took my mystery friend a little longer to solve. "I'm…new here, have you been here a long time?"
One knock for yes.
"Do you like it?" I asked quietly.
Tap tap tap.
I raised an eyebrow. "You know, this would be easier if we could talk…"
"Ah, um," a soft, airy voice came from behind the door. "Sorry?"
"It's not a big deal," I said. "I probably surprised you when I came up and knocked, didn't I?"
There was a tiny meep of agreement. I held back a scoff. But she sounded like a kid, maybe thirteen at the oldest. It wouldn't cost much to cut her a bit of slack. "Uwaaa…you must think I'm so weird."
Make that a lot of slack.
"I don't think you're weird," I said. Then I let out a sigh, turning to lean against the door. "It must be hard, being stuck here."
"Mmm," she replied. "But big sis Rias visits a lot, and she's really nice. I like the mansion better than staying at the school. I moved here about a week ago."
"She…kept you at the school."
"Yeah!" the girl said. "Rias came to talk every day, but the room here is a lot smaller!"
"You like the smaller room?"
"It's safe, and I have enough room for my box, too!"
I rubbed my forehead as I tried to parse that little statement. On one hand, I really hadn't been expecting Rias to treat any of her other servants worse than she treated me, and given that I had a whole two floors of a mansion to run around in…
On the other hand, I wasn't expecting one of said servants to be a literal shut in. Even Alec hadn't been close to this bad, and he was on the run from Heartbreaker.
"Is it a nice box?" I managed after a second.
"Yep! I always keep the best ones." She sounded so proud of the fact. If it was anyone else, I'd suspect that they were mocking me, but this girl just sounded so guileless. Kind of, I noted, like everyone else I'd met in connection to Rias.
Except for Grayfia.
I bit the corner of my lip. "Rias gave me a very nice room too, along with most of the wing."
"…it's scary out there though…" I could hear the pout in her voice.
That got a weary smile from me. "It is, isn't it," I said. "But you can't stay locked away for your entire life."
"…I can't?"
"So, what do you think of Rias?" I asked.
"She's really nice," the girl replied immediately. "She saved my life."
I hummed. "She does seem to do that a lot," I said. "But why did she decide to lock you up here?"
"I…wanted to be," the voice says softly. "I can't control my sacred gear. I can hurt people and it wasn't very nice, so Rias gave me a nice cozy room to stay in."
"That sounds nice." Sacred gear? I filed the thought away for later.
"Yep! She even gives me lots of books to read and things like that too."
I nodded to myself. I'd seen the books Rias had on the shelves of various rooms. Almost all of them were comic books, but in Japanese style. I remembered them gaining a lot of popularity right after Leviathan sank Kyushu, before slowly fading back into obscurity as the industry died alongside the country that had birthed it.
The genre was not, in a word, my cup of tea.
But all the same I was here, trapped in the mansion girl whose idea of quality literature involved pictures, and talking to a random individual through a locked door.
"Are you still there?" the girl asked after a second.
I sighed. "Yeah, sorry, I'm not bothering you, am I? I guess I should probably go." And do anything actually productive with my time, instead of being stuck here, thinking in circles for another hour.
Instead of playing pattycake with a door.
But before I could take a step, "Wait! You don't have to go." I paused at the girl's voice. "You…weren't bothering me, please don't leave."
I sighed again. "I'm sorry," I said. "That was very rude of me. I'm just not at my best, right now."
"…Want to talk about it?" she asked. "Valerie always said 'a problem shared is a problem halved…' or something like that?"
I allowed myself a chuckle. "I wouldn't want to crush you under the weight of my concerns," I said, dryly.
The girl laughed awkwardly in response. After a beat, I added. "Thank you for offering, though. It means something."
"Okay," her voice was soft, "Um…where are you from, Taylor."
I clicked my tongue. "A different world," I said. There wasn't any point in hiding it, Rias already knew after all. "I was shot and dumped here for Rias to resurrect, or something to that effect."
There was a moment of silence. "I died too," she said, "before Rias saved me." She let out a sharp breath. "It was really scary…"
I huffed. "Was it?" I said softly. "I'm sorry, I'm sure it was very frightening."
"Wasn't it the same for you?"
"Can you keep a secret?" I asked. "I don't really want to share this around, not even to Rias, about the way I died."
She made a noise of assent.
I shook my head. "I was ready at the end," I said. "Not happy, but…I accepted my end, and I waited for it to come to me." I allowed myself a small smirk. "Clearly, I wasn't expecting to get swept up by a devil."
The girl laughed, but it was a fragile thing. This entire conversation left me feeling raw, scrapped clean like a hide ready to be tanned. I hadn't expected to find such a deep connection, especially not with some random girl on the other side of a locked door.
But dying was the greatest equalizer.
"I…was killed by Vampire hunters," she confided.
I blinked. I'd thought that everyone here would be a devil, but then, if I was going to tentatively accept their existence, it only made sense that there might be other things that go bump in the night. "I'm sorry," I said. "You sound like a very nice vampire."
"I'm a dhampir…" she murmured. Half vampires existed too?
"It sounds like they went after the wrong person to me," I said. "You seem very sweet. And as a dhampir, do you even need to drink human blood?"
"I haven't ever. Uwaaa it sounds scary," she said.
"So that would be a no then," I said, holding back a chuckle. "Still, I'm glad we got to meet, either way."
"Me too…" she murmured. "Um…Taylor?"
I hummed.
"…can you stay, for a little bit?"
I smiled at that. "It's not like I have anywhere to go," I said. "I'm stuck here just as much as you are." Maybe more, considering that this dhampir girl seemed to like Rias a fair bit more than I did.
She didn't say anything at first, but then. "If you could, would you leave?"
I blinked slowly. The idea that this could be some elaborate trap came back to me. But, on the other hand, what did it matter if I told Rias I wanted to leave? I'd already made my intentions more than clear to her directly.
And I was tired of lying to people most of all.
"Yeah," I said after a moment. "You don't have to worry about that though; this place is locked down tighter than Fort Knox."
I was better at breaking and entering than I really should be, considering how many times I'd found my way into and out of protectorate bases without permission. But the staff at the Gremory mansion were on a whole different level.
"Why?" she blurted. "It's so scary out there! Rias keeps asking me to come with her to classes, but I don't wanna…"
I couldn't help but laugh at that. "Rias really found quite a pair, didn't she?" I asked. "She locked me up so that I couldn't run away, and she locked you up because you wouldn't."
The next time her voice came very quietly. "Actually…the locks are on the inside of my door…"
I rolled my eyes, an amused smile rolling across my face. "Okay," I said. "I can lock my door too, though I don't think it would make much of a difference if anyone in the mansion wanted to get inside."
"Meep!"
There was a flicker of something, as the door grew cold beneath my back. I stiffened, pulling away, but the effect only lasted for a handful of seconds, before it went back to normal.
"What was that about," I murmured.
"Sorry!"
I ran a hand through my hair. I hadn't expected the girl to hear, but it turned out her ears were a lot sharper than mine. I frowned. Was it because she was a dhampir, or because she was a devil? My eyes had been able to see in the dark after I'd been resurrected. Was there any reason the rest of my senses shouldn't have been affected?
"It's no problem," I said. "I just noticed that the door got cold for a second. Was that you?"
After a moment, she spoke again. "Yes…" she said. "It was my Sacred Gear. Like I said, I still can't really…control it."
I flexed my knuckles. "What is a Sacred Gear, by the way?" I asked, "I haven't heard of them before."
"Oh, uh…" I could almost hear the girl scrunching her features up cutely as she tried to think of an explanation. "I think Valerie said that they were shards of God's—ouch!"
I hissed as well as she said the word 'god.' A master effect?
"Ooohh, I keep forgetting," she mumbled. "Dummy, of course you can't say his name."
"Oh," I shook my head. "Right, we're devils now…" I suppose it made about as much sense as a master effect centered on…a random word, right? "Does it always hurt?"
"Rias said you get used to it…" she replied. "But Sacred Gears are part of his power, they grant powerful abilities to the people who are born with them. But…sometimes they can be difficult..."
My thoughts went back to my experiences as the Warlord of Brockton Bay. "I think I understand what you mean. Sometimes powers are just to big for the person who wields them." Leet and Panacea came to mind first and foremost. "But I guess that means it's different from normal devil power? I heard that our powers could mutate us into monsters, if we don't have our…master nearby to keep us stable."
And how that was going to work with Rias at her school and the two of us at her mansion, I hadn't asked. Mainly because I thought it would be an amusing way to go out, if turned into an insane giant bug and rampaged through her house.
"Mmm, it's really scary…" the dhampir replied. "It's not actually devil power though, I think…? It's actually because of the Evil Piece that Rias used to resurrect us as devils."
Something inside of me went cold.
"We're not used to so much devil mana…I still feel weird sometimes. Sometimes I'm scared, but I know Big Sis Rias is there to make sure I don't get too much mana or anything like that! So, I'm sure we'll be okay, right?"
I didn't say anything.
It was part of the resurrection process. Of course it was. That certainly made a lot more sense than our new powers overwhelming us. Rias had made it seem inevitable.
But then, that would be the case, if the source of power was external, constantly pumping energy into us until our forms warped and broke down around us, until our minds went all twisty and screwy on the inside, until nothing remained of us but monsters.
Shards could do much the same thing, after all.
I doubted Rias had designed such a system, she seemed in turns too kind and too laid back to think of such an insidious control method.
But I was still the one stuck holding the bag.
"…Taylor, are you still there?"
"Yes." I said.
There was an eep of surprise, and then a shuffle as the girl pulled back from the door.
I sighed. "I'm sorry," I said. At once I felt exhausted by the situation, and it didn't seem worth the effort of keeping it out of my voice. "I'm not mad at you. It's just…this entire situation. I was led to believe that losing control of myself was an inherent part of being a devil. Instead, it was designed."
There was no reply.
After a moment, I stood, brushing off my jeans. "I should—" I was about to say 'go' but there was a click, like a lock spinning in a latch, and the door pulled open behind me.
Before I could so much as blink, a small form had slammed into my back, wrapping slender arms around me in a hug.
The girl barely came up to my shoulder blades, but her grip was strong despite her size.
She was warm.
I'd expected a vampire devil to be cold, like the fairy tales, but this was the opposite. With a sign, I relaxed into her hug.
I didn't want to think about how long it had been.
Instead I patted her hands, rubbing my thumb against the back of her wrist. "I really wasn't mad at you," I said. "You didn't have to come outside for me."
She makes an inarticulate sound, burying her face into my back.
"Want to go back inside?" I asked.
A nod.
I huffed out a laugh.
Spinning in her embrace, I swept up the smaller girl and shuffled us both back into her room, kicking the door shut behind me. Ignoring the atomic blush or the meaningless sounds coming from my cargo, I set the girl down gently on one of the couches near the door, giving her a brief once over.
She was every bit as pretty as I'd expected, with porcelain skin and pale blonde hair. Really, if you ignored the crimson eyes, she looked more like an angel than any sort of vampire.
She was peeking up at me from behind her fingers too.
Holding back a sigh, I allowed myself a gentle smile. "It's nice to meet you," I said, "in person, that is."
Slowly, she reached out, shaking my hand. This time, her grip was a tender, delicate thing. It didn't mesh with the strength she'd showed earlier, and for a moment I wondered if it was a vampire thing.
I let go after a second, settling into the chair opposite as the girl tried to come up with something to say. Cleary, she hadn't thought of anything past getting back into the safety of her room.
Though, that didn't change the one thing that had been niggling at the back of my mind for a while now. "Are all devils as pretty as you?" I asked. "Because otherwise I'm gonna feel like an odd one out pretty quickly. Please tell me it's just a vampire thing."
She blushed at my compliment slash ice breaker, wiggling slightly in her seat. "Y-you're really pretty too, Taylor." A pause. "Fwaaa! I didn't—I just—!"
I blinked as she practically threw herself across the room into a small carboard box. It rocked back as she flew into it, flaps folding shut after her.
"Ah I can't believe I said that," she whined, box shuddering on the carpet. With an amused huff I went over patted the cardboard lid.
Really, not even Imp had been this high maintenance.
"Thanks for the compliment, but I know that's really not true," I said with a smile. "I'm pretty average, but Devils…it seems kinda unfair actually. If all the girls were as cute as you, I might start to feel a bit left behind."
There was a pause, then, her head popped up out of the box.
How the hell did she even fit into it though.
"Actually…it's all from our self-image?" she said. "Devils' change to match their desires, or well, if the desires are too strong they can go crazy…"
I blinked. To be completely honest, the more I heard about these powers of mine, the less sense they made.
"Also," she said, "I'm actually a boy…?"
I blinked. "Really?"
She—he nodded. "My name is Gaspar…"
I thought about it for a moment, but then, even if it was a surprise given his looks, it's not like I was part of the E88 or anything stupid like that.
Reaching out, I ruffled his hair. "You're a very cute boy."
"Meep," a shudder of something passed over me at his words, as if I blinked.
When my eyes opened again, he'd moved slightly, almost instantly, twisting his head as if he couldn't decide whether he wanted to pull away from my hand or push into it.
"Um…" he said, cheeks flushing.
Honestly, his voice was so soft that if he hadn't told me directly I never would have guessed his gender. I sighed, before giving him a smile and continuing to pat the cute little dhampir's hair.
After a moment, he melted, butting his head into my palm.
He really must have been starved for affection, but then, even with what little he'd told me about himself, it sounded like he'd lived a rather hard life. I wouldn't begrudge him a bit of kindness now, of all times.
Besides that, he'd given me plenty to think about. My hand slowed and my thoughts whirled as I went over the implications of everything Gaspar had told me.
"Mou, Taylooooor!" He whined, pouting at me.
I coughed, looking away from his swimming red eyes, and continued to pat.
