Akir Man Yamut Malak Al-Mut (SSoDI-N)

[ParamountKeymaster]

The air was stiff and silent in the Shifty Desert. The dunes stretched in all directions with nary a breeze to stir up their sands, covering the land in an unusual stillness. Morning had come, yet it seemed as if nothing had awakened yet, if there even was anything alive in this barren land untouched by the civilizations in the east. Despite the dry, unwelcoming appearance of this desert landscape, all seemed significantly calmer here than in the bustling city, the wild rainforests, or the treacherous mountains.

Eventually, though, there was a sign of life. If only barely.

Wings spread wide in a graceful glide, Kelsey dropped from the sky as slowly as a leaf falling from a tree, descending upon the desert. Her feet touched down on the dusty earth, then she immediately lost her balance and collapsed in the sand, tucking her wings away so she could roll onto her back. There, lying still, physically and mentally exhausted, she into the clouds wide-eyed with shock as she struggled to catch her breath.

She weakly lifted her left arm, inspecting the bloody stump on the end of her wrist.

"Whew doggie...!" Kelsey turned her head to see Tri sprawled out beside her, lounging like he was sunbathing despite the overcast sky. "Now that's one way to kick off the day!"

Kelsey's only response was a stiff sigh. She wasn't in the mood to complain about her master's opinion on her morning routines. As she continued to take in deep breath after deep breath, she rested her arm on her stomach, not especially bothered by the blood; her pajamas were already thoroughly stained with the stuff anyway.

If there was one thing she was going to complain about, it was the heat beating down on her sweaty, dehydrated body. "This is your idea of a place to cool down?"

"Hellllll yeah..." Tri crooned as he calmly inhaled through his nose. "Just listen to that enveloping silence. Feel the dust dancing beneath your skin. Breathe in that bittersweet cinnamon air."

The more her breathing leveled out, the more Kelsey started to notice that last bit of stimuli. Rather than relaxing, she just found it odd. "Why does a desert smell like cinnamon?"

"It's that spice of life, my dear. This place is full of it, even if you can't see it."

"Whatever." Having already heard enough of Tri's cryptic vocabulary for one day, Kelsey limply sat up and took a good, deadpan look around. No one around for miles, it seemed. That was probably a good thing. Until she calmed back down from that horrific, enraging endeavor, she knew she was likely to snap at anyone who tried to look at her arm, let alone the rest of her.

With that in mind, she checked her arm again, wiping as much blood as she could off the disfigured stump with her crimson-stained shirt. She was just now starting to notice that the pain had dulled significantly; rather than a sharp, burning agony, all she felt was a dull ache. On closer inspection, she could see that the wound had not only sealed itself shut already, but... something was starting to grow out of it. A tiny, rigid lump atop her wrist, itself slowly sprouting four little OH GOD WERE THOSE FINGERS?

"GYAH...! EW! EW! EW!" Kelsey clutched her mutilated arm to her chest and rocked back and forth, thoroughly disgusted by the grotesque healing process her body was going through, too unhinged to look at it anymore. Ever since entering her pact, she had recovered from a number of wounds that any other human would've bled out from, but her accelerated healing had never been used to regrow a limb, and she was quickly making a mental note to never let it happen again.

Tri sat up and offered her a crooked grin and a pat on the back. "First one's always the hardest.

Somehow, Kelsey had the feeling she wasn't going to get her wish. With a hollow, shuddering tone, she warily asked, "How many more times will I have to do that?

"Given what I know so far about this particular chain of events, definitely at least once."

"Hrk...! Wonderful." Few things made Kelsey nauseous anymore. This was admittedly doing the trick.

"Now, jumping back to the present, we may wanna get moving again," Tri suggested. "Find a safer place to lay low until that hand of yours plows through puberty."

Kelsey whined, curled inward tighter and rested her head on her knees. "Why? What's coming for me now?! You told me I could relax!"

"Oh, you can." Tri's eyes were trained on something far off in the distance. "Once you've put some distance between yourself and the Great Makers."

"The great... what?" Kelsey glanced out at the horizon, trying to find what Tri was looking at. A couple miles or so out, in one little pocket between the dunes, she could see clouds of sand stirring about. This didn't strike her as particularly unusual, but the fact that the air seemed too stagnant to create a sandstorm did at least raise an eyebrow.

Within that dirt cloud, she could make out a spark of white light from the buildup of static in the dry air.

"Yeah, maybe we should find another place to recover..." Regardless of whatever phenomenon was taking place off in the distance, Kelsey was at least willing to get out of this stuffy desert. Thus, with her regenerating left arm tucked under her intact right, she stood up and started walking in a random direction, waiting for Tri to correct her course. "I don't know what you're seeing, but I'd like to get out of here anyway."

Tri quickly straightened up, floated after her and pointed to her feet. "Uh, yeah, maybe don't do that."

"Do what?"

"You ever seen that Fatboy Slim music video? You know, the one where Christopher Walken dances in a hotel?"

Kelsey scowled back at him. "Tri, what did I just say about your cagey bullsh-?!"

RUMBLE...

PAFF

Directly behind them, separated by a plain the size of a football field, the desert floor burst open in a cloud of sand, alight with static ripples and teeming with that strong cinnamon scent. As the dust settled, Kelsey found herself staring into a deep, cavernous maw revealed by three open, dense yet fleshy flaps. The roof of this cave stretched several dozen kilometers above the earth, its interior studded with a circular array of hundreds and hundreds of curved, crystalline daggers. An ear-splitting roar rang across the wasteland as this open, seemingly infinite chasm drew ever closer to the young woman standing slack-jawed in the sand.

While Kelsey stood by in rigid, heart-stopping terror, Tri hastily shot for the sky. "C'MON, UPSA-DAISY!"

"YEAH, OKAY!!!" Upon finally breaking out of her stupor, Kelsey extended her wings again and took off after Tri. She quickly carried herself above the cavern's reach, and when she looked down, she saw what could only be described as a gargantuan, earth-brown annelid slithering across the ground, partially buried in the sand as it swept over the open space where she once stood. After crossing this stretch of land, scooping great mounds of sand into its toothy maw, the creature slowly closed its mouth, the three flaps sealing together to form a dull point. Then it pointed itself downward and started to burrow itself back underground. Its enormous body was so unfathomably long that Kelsey didn't even see the tail before she looked away from the great beast.

Once again struggling for air, Kelsey followed Tri as they flew above the desert, the sandy dunes looking like wrinkles in a pale brown blanket as they passed by below the duo. She was too stymied to speak, and so their flight was made in silence until something finally came into view up ahead. As they drew closer to this little patchwork of brown, Kelsey realized that it was a town. A tiny, dusty, run-down town of dilapidated wooden buildings, like the abandoned set of a western shootout scene.

Tri swooped into this town and landed atop one of the buildings. Kelsey followed suit, once again collapsing onto her back the moment she had a solid foothold.

"WHEW!" Tri wiped the imaginary sweat off his brow. "Big fella showed up before I could even make a Star Wars joke! Shame. Damn shame."

Kelsey's first question after she caught her breath was the obvious one. "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT THING?!"

"Well, judging by the terrain and the local fauna, I'd say we've landed on either Arrakis or Saturn."

Sitting up slightly, Kelsey stared up at Tri like she had just heard the dumbest thing ever spoken by human or demon. "Saturn?"

"Oh, come on, you've never seen Beetlejuice?"

"What is with you and the pop culture references today? Beetlejuice, 127 Hours, Star Wars AND I'M PRETTY SURE THAT WAS A DEADPOOL JOKE YOU JUST MADE ABOUT MY HAND!"

"Guilty." Tri folded his arms and smirked at the desert horizon they had just escaped from. "No, but seriously, this is probably the safest place we can hang for now if you wanna take on the angels with both hands. Those sandworms generally don't come around this way."

Kelsey let out a deep, miserable sigh and ran her single hand through her hair. "First the cannon, then these giant f***ing worms... How many things are gonna try to kill me today?"

"Well, hopefully not this little rogue."

"...Huh?"

"OY!!!"

Kelsey jumped and went rigid for a moment. Then she warily inched over to the edge of the roof and looked down at the street below.

Someone was looking up at her. Judging by their voice and apparent size, Kelsey's first assumption was that they were female, probably somewhere within her own age group. Intricate robes covered her body; from up here, it almost looked like she was wearing a grey-brown jumpsuit with a sand-colored hood. Behind that hood, Kelsey could just barely make out a lightly tanned face and stray locks of black hair.

Soon after Kelsey revealed herself, the young woman continued to call out to her, "Your presence here disturbs the worms!"

"Uh... Sorry!" What else was Kelsey supposed to say to that? "I won't stay too long, I promise! I just need to lay low for a while!"

"Well, a roof is not an ideal place to lay low!" the woman retorted. "Come down here so I can see you!"

Through gritted teeth, Kelsey lowly asked the astral projection next to her, "Tri, you're sure this one's not gonna kill me?"

"On the contrary!" Tri gleefully responded. "You have so many new friends to make here!"

"Yeah, because that's what I needed. More people to worry about," Kelsey grumbled as she once again unfurled her wings, glided down to where the woman in robes stood, and let them slink back into her skin the moment she touched down, heedless of how she might respond to this sight.

To at least a little bit of relief, the woman didn't look especially shocked by her wings. A bit surprised, maybe, as was to be expected, but she seemed to take that transformation in stride. If anything, she was more taken aback by the copious burgundy stains that covered Kelsey's face, arms and pajamas. "This blood... is it yours?"

"Yeah," Kelsey mumbled, not sounding too broken up about it anymore. "I'm okay, though..."

"You've shed precious water. I would hardly call that 'okay.'" As opposed to her suspicious tone from before, the woman in robes sounded genuinely concerned now. Her deep brown eyes landed on Kelsey's arm, which she still had tucked under her right. "Your hand...?"

"Yeah, that's gone. Please, you don't have to worry about me. I'll recover and be out of your hair soon. I'd hate to get you entangled in my troubles."

The woman frowned anxiously. She nodded a bit, perhaps to show appreciation for Kelsey's wariness and reluctance to lead any dangers out this way, but she still couldn't help but show a pang of sympathy. "You don't have to tell me what happened if you so wish, especially if you see it best that I do not involve myself in such matters. Still... if you need time to recover, it would be remiss of me not to show you some form of hospitality. Tell me... what's your name?"

With averted eyes and a slumped, disquieted pose, she softly responded, "Kelsey."

"Kelsey. I am El-Sayal, the Sayyadina of this sietch." She turned as if prepared to walk away, gesturing for Kelsey to follow. "Please, come with me. I know someone who can clean those wounds for you."

[Pink Moon Wolf]

Inside one of the rickety old houses was a single refurbished bedroom. Though the dust had been cleaned out, the woodwork had been repaired, and a navy blue rug had been neatly laid out on the floor, it was still notably messy. Various knick-knacks were scattered about in piles along the walls, with little rhyme or reason for their collection. Books, umbrellas, spoons, novelty chess sets, a telescope, a broken keyboard, shoes of varying sizes, rubber ducks, antique radios, a weird ergonomic chair... Who knew what else was buried in there? One corner of the room seemed to be specifically dedicated to a collection of medical equipment, neatly organized and thoroughly cleaned. Everything else was a free-for-all.

The only other noteworthy item in the room was the bed. Lying atop that bed was a tall fellow with green skin and hair, still sound asleep in defiance of the light seeping between the window curtains. He lay there motionless on his back, sheets covering him only from the waist down, head propped up on two pillows, one arm and one green wing flopped over the side of the bed, the latter so enormous that the feathers were touching the floor.

He cringed in his sleep when the all-consuming silence was broken by a knock on his door, leading him to slowly, reluctantly open his eyes with the same amount of strenuous effort that went into prying open a rusty safe. His dim sapphire eyes cast a dour glare at the ceiling, then he lethargically turned his head to stare at the door, taking a slow, deep, silent breath all the while.

That woman usually knew better than to wake him up. Or generally bother him for any reason. What was her malfunction all of a sudden?

Gradually, his mind still not fully awake, his joints as stiff and his movements as slow as an old man with arthritis, the angel sat up in bed and touched his feet down on the floor. He spent a good ten or twenty seconds just sitting there, glowering at the door. Then he forced himself to stand and start shuffling across the room...

[ParamountKeymaster]

"Please, this really isn't necessary," Kelsey awkwardly insisted to the young woman standing outside the bedroom door with her. "My accelerated healing will take care of it. Given my line of work, it's not like this is the first time I've been covered in my own blood."

"If you're going to stay here during your recovery, I want to ensure not only my security, but yours," El-Sayal replied as she knocked on the door. "I insist. It's no trouble."

Kelsey sighed, opting to concede if it would put El's mind at ease. "Yeah, alright, fine..."

"Mino, come on!" El-Sayal shouted, banging on the door again. "I need your help!"

[Pink Moon Wolf]

"Alright, alright, I'm coming," Mino grumbled, picking up the pace only slightly, footsteps thudding as he approached the door. Once he reached it, he yanked it open partway, keeping his hand rested on the knob, casting a tired glare at the woman in robes standing on the other side.

Even in his slouched position, with his wings dragging on the floor, the green angel easily towered over the human girls. His long hair was a mess, loose locks from his bangs dangling over his baggy eyes, and his clothes weren't any neater, particularly his wrinkled, long-sleeve blue shirt with the neck hole stretched. His empty gaze flicked between his two visitors, not looking the least bit shocked by the young woman covered in blood.

After a prolonged, awkward silence, Mino turned to El-Sayal. "What is this?"

[ParamountKeymaster]

"!!!" Kelsey scrambled back a few steps the moment the door opened. The recognizable sight of the lumbering green angel instantly triggered her fight-or-flight instinct, twisting her face into an assertive scowl, teeth gritted, ice blue eyes alight, trying not to look weak in spite of her injury.

Noticing this, El-Sayal turned to Kelsey with a confused, wary look. "It's alright. Mino's mostly harmless."

Kelsey remained tense, though her expression softened into mere apprehension as she glanced between the angel and the young woman. She hesitated to summon any fire or shadows so long as Mino wasn't displaying any aggression, but she wasn't about to let her guard down around one of these bloodthirsty freaks. Part of her wondered why an angel was all the way out here in the desert with what she could only presume was a human, but the rest of her didn't care; as far as she was concerned, these angels were her enemies.

El-Sayal remained oblivious to Kelsey's observations as she turned back to Mino and anxiously continued, "I'm terribly sorry to bother you, Mino, but... this is Kelsey. She landed in the sietch just a few minutes ago. If you could, I would greatly appreciate it if you inspected her wounds."

[Pink Moon Wolf]

Mino stared at Kelsey with profound disinterest, regarding her bloodstains and the arm she was conspicuously hiding like they were a nonissue. He turned back to El-Sayal, staring at her with the same lack of emotion. A decent number of people had wandered into this town before and she had simply sent them on her way. This girl didn't even seem all that bothered by her injuries. Why did El feel the need to have him verify anything?

Whatever the case, he got the distinct impression that saying no was not an option, much to his dismay. Thus, with a beleaguered sigh, Mino opened his door all the way and retreated back inside, pointing the the ergonomic chair nestled between his piles of hoarded knick-knacks. "Have a seat."

While the girls situated themselves, Mino stepped over to his collection of medical instruments, snapping on a pair of gloves before gathering several tools at random.

[ParamountKeymaster]

El-Sayal stepped into the room without hesitation, gesturing for her guest to do the same. Kelsey was considerably more hesitant, standing in the doorway and looking around like she was inspecting the room for traps or weapons. Even after that, she shuffled inside very slowly and stiffly, remaining on high alert as she watched the green angel gathered what looked from her position to be medical equipment. "Don't try anything funny, you hear me?"

"Mino doesn't have much of a sense of humor," El-Sayal sighed as she sat down on the unmade bed.

"I mean it!" Kelsey snapped, brushing several chess pieces off the chair and checking its stability before shakily taking a seat. "Don't let the blood loss fool you. I will rip those wings from their sockets if you so much as blink wrong."

[Pink Moon Wolf]

"Yeah, sure," Mino mumbled with a shrug, reacting about as strongly to Kelsey's threats as he would've if she had tried to intimidate him with a spoon. After gathering his equipment, Mino walked over to Kelsey, grabbed one of her chair's arms, and dragged it closer to his bed before sitting down next to El-Sayal. "Now show me the arm."

[ParamountKeymaster]

Kelsey remained stiff as Mino forcibly wheeled her chair over to the bed, keeping her narrow eyes on the angel. Everything about this situation felt wrong. First of all, wasn't the patient supposed to sit on the bed and the doctor in the weird ergonomic chair? More importantly, though, she was being treated by an angel. The same kind of creature that had been trying to kill her for the past two days now. Call her crazy for her reservations. She didn't think it far-fetched to assume he had ulterior motives for studying her.

Granted, in spite of his apparent apathy, Mino didn't... seem hostile. It hardly even seemed like he recognized her, even based on secondhand description. Kelsey still wasn't comfortable letting her guard down about these avian freaks, but it wasn't like every angel she had encountered had it out for her. Lobo and Loba clearly wanted no part in Paradiso's conquest, and the only reason that Starling chick had used her magic was because Kelsey had attacked first.

How... How long had this angel been out here in the desert?

Slowly, scowl ever prominent, Kelsey lowered her left arm and held it out for Mino to see, clearly displaying the bloody stump where her hand should've been.

"It's not as bad as it looks," she stated lowly and bluntly. "I have an accelerated healing factor. The skin's already closed up. The hand will grow back in... uh..."

'Bout an hour and a half.

"...about an hour and a half."

"Goodness." El-Sayal stared mortified and slightly disgusted at Kelsey's arm. "H-How did this happen? Is it painful?"

[Pink Moon Wolf]

"How indeed," Mino grunted as he gently took Kelsey's arm and examined the stump. He immediately noticed the lump rising out of it, showing clear signs of the development of fingers. As he tenderly massaged this lump, he could detect just the slightest sensation of swelling as, just as Kelsey said, the cells rapidly regenerated and multiplied, reshaping the appendage at a steady pace.

Mino looked Kelsey in the face, making a note of the blood splattered around her mouth, the stains the same color as those on her clothes and arm. "Am I to assume you bit it off yourself?"

[ParamountKeymaster]

"GAH-! OW! YEAH, IT HURTS! IT'S TENDER! EASY!" Kelsey protested as Mino squeezed the bulge where her hand was starting to grow back. When asked if she had cut it off herself, Kelsey glared defensively at Mino. "Maybe I did. What's it matter? It's gonna grow back."

El-Sayal warily stared up at Kelsey, lowering her hood for the first time since they'd met so she could clearly see her look of concern. "You? Why would you sever your own hand?"

"Because a bunch of homicidal f***wads tried to kill me with a DNA-locked laser," Kelsey bluntly responded, keeping her gaze firmly on Mino just to see how he would react to this information.

[Pink Moon Wolf]

At that, Mino simply raised an eyebrow, quite possibly the first deviation in his bored, tired expression the girls had seen out of him that morning. It didn't take considerably long for him to put two and two together. The weapon described most definitely sounded familiar, and this combined with the attitude Kelsey had been giving him and her obviously inhuman regenerative abilities led him to a pretty solid conclusion.

"I'm guessing the armies of Paradiso are here and want you dead?"

[ParamountKeymaster]

"Lucky guess, Prasino," Kelsey spat, her arm still in Mino's hand, her scowl still fixed on his deadpan face, fully bracing herself for just about any course of action the angel might take upon hearing this.

"Paradiso?" El-Sayal slowly turned to Mino, staring up at him with confusion and suspicion, noticing the clear tone of recognition in his voice. In the last several months since the two had agreed to share this sietch, she hadn't thought to question where Mino came from or why he was hiding in this ghost town. He seemed harmless enough so long as he was given his privacy, and he clearly wasn't keen to share any deeply personal information; El-Sayal had respectfully complied with this show of secrecy as she had a history she was hesitant to reveal as well. For the time being, both of them seemed content to live with each other in blissful ignorance.

But this Paradiso army... the subtle way in which Mino reacted to this news... the drastic measures Kelsey had gone to to evade this enemy... Based on the evidence, it was all too clear that El-Sayal couldn't ignore her neighbor's past anymore.

"Mino... what do you know about these people?"

[Pink Moon Wolf]

Mino let out a long, annoyed groan, frowning at the ceiling, his grip on Kelsey's wrist tightening ever so slightly. "I guess it was only a matter of time."

El-Sayal questioning his knowledge on the matter was a given. Sure, she had been willing to let him keep his secrets this long, but when a bloodstained young woman shows up on a person's doorstep shouting about a murderer on the loose, questions and defenses naturally started to rise. No sense in keeping it from her now, especially considering Mino had as much to lose because of it.

"Paradiso. The angel homerealm. My homerealm," Mino flatly explained. "They make a living conquering other planets and universes. I used to be an army doctor for them, but I left 'cause they're full of sh*t and I hate all of them. I guess if they've set their sights on the island, there's not much point in sticking around. Whether they win, lose, whatever, I refuse to get caught in the middle."

A rich green light ignited in Mino's hand, transferring into Kelsey's arm. The regrowth of her hand seemed to speed up exponentially, stopping and resuming its original slow pace once the fingers finished sprouting and the appendage reached the approximate size of a toddler's hand.

"There. You're fine. Your body will heal itself the rest of the way. Can't do much about your clothes." Mino then let go of Kelsey's hand, stopped over to his medical bag and started putting stuff away. "If it still hurts, take two aspirin and don't call me in the morning."

[ParamountKeymaster]

Kelsey was quick to wrench her arm free once Mino completed his spell. She took a moment to study herself, quite clearly disturbed by the ridiculous sight of a smooth, baby baby hand awkwardly situated on an adult-sized wrist. The fact that she had total movement in her tiny fingers back didn't make their appearance any less outlandish. Oh well. At least it was progress.

She turned her uncomfortable gaze on the green angel in the corner. The green angel who had just healed her...

"S-So wait..." El-Sayal shot to her feet and turned her attention on Mino as well. She didn't look particularly unnerved by the brief description of Paradiso she had been given. She didn't seem angered by Mino's reaction. If anything, she seemed... sad. "You're just going to leave?"

"Wouldn't be the first deserter angel I've seen try to escape this rock," Kelsey sighed as she slowly stood up. "Can't say I blame you."