Storms 1

When did this misery start? Was it when Loki framed me for murder and everyone thought I was a killer? Was it when I killed my father? Or earlier, when I cheated on Serafina? Was I even happy before then? I don’t remember…

No… I was happy then. I enjoyed our times together. I slept well at night. I looked forward to when I could next see you.

Hard to believe now.

Serafina stared him down, standing too close with arms folded. Teruchi stared straight ahead, or slightly upwards as they were nearly the same height, and Teruchi didn’t feel like looking her in the eyes. Not because he was particularly ashamed, but because he didn’t want to even bother acknowledge the chastisement he was about to get.

“You disappear for three months, and now you just waltz on in here with no announcement!? Kaze was worried sick! She was afraid you were dead!”

That made sense. He hadn’t answered his texts or calls. He wasn’t sure he was ever going to come back anyway, why pretend like having a life was something he was planning on completing?

“Are you even listening?”

Teruchi met her eyes. Yes. I don’t care. You shouldn’t either.

Serafina stared him down wordlessly, eyes furious with him. Teruchi just took it and stared back. He’d stand here all day if he had to.

Finally, Serafina dropped her hands into balled fists at her side and turned her back to him. She kept her shoulders tense as she walked back over to the other side of the room, to where Dante and another man were sitting. Teruchi hadn’t seen the other man before. He seemed to be affiliated with the Magmarnian guard, based on his light armor. Did the siblings need a guard with them now?

Serafina took a seat next to him, close enough that their legs were touching. She smiled as he turned his head to look at her. It was a smirk, not for him but Teruchi. Well excuse you.

“Oh, you two know each other?” the older of the two inter-dimensional sisters asked.

“She used to be a girlfriend,” Teruchi answered.

“I bet that relationship didn’t last very long,” Canopy added. Teruchi didn’t have the will to fight back.

The three of them toured the section of the castle, with Teruchi pointing out anyone who knew Space magic. He didn’t personally introduce Canopy and Ryuno, no reason to get more involved. He found a chair in a separate room away from the crowd to sit down on.

Was it really only three months since he left? It felt longer than that… It was four months since he blew off Angel’s arm and eye, and inadvertently got his sister hooked up because of it. Well… silver lining, he supposed. It was even longer since he actually felt like he was a part of the save the universe club. But… he was only a part of it for a few days anyway. Guess he never actually fit in. The only friend he made in the past year was… Zora.

Funny that. How was she doing anyway? If anyone would understand why he disappeared for the last three months, it would be her. Maybe not understand completely, but she was a good listener. When she first visited him in his cellar, she did most of the talking, and Teruchi didn’t treat her with any of the respect a Goddess should be addressed. Apparently that’s why she liked talking to him. He wasn’t even trying to be her friend, but she kept coming back to talk, and he did enjoy having a visitor who wasn’t there to judge him.

Guess he may as well say hi while he was in town.

Okay, bucket list item. Say hi to Zora. Now his bucket list was actually a list. Seemed pretty sad if he had a bucket list with only one item on it. Hell, two items was still pretty sad, but it was still a start. Something to work on while he worked to remember other things to put on it.

Well, I technically have a third, he thought.

No, best not put anything too difficult to achieve on the bucket list. Wouldn’t want it to be disappointing if it didn’t work out.

Teruchi turned his right hand over and looked at the mark on his wrist. Three black scratch marks with a fourth slashing through the middle, end dripping with a black blood. Shelly’s own personal signature. At first glance the mark looked like some sort of scar, until you looked at it more closely to see that it was a little too perfectly shaped to just be knife marks. Teruchi just called it a tattoo for anyone who noticed it, but that meant he had to make up a story behind it. He liked to change it every time.

He called it his dead hand. It was the one that got caught in the explosion that nearly killed Angel. That entire day was a complete haze to him. He remembered bits and pieces: wandering away from the castle, Kaze yelling at him, getting beat to a pulp. He remembered that one a little too clearly. He remembered Shelly. How in the world did Shelly find him? Why did she find him? Shit, did he die in the aftermath of that explosion and Shelly came to collect his soul? Well, he was still alive so something must have happened. When he had come to his senses again, he noticed that his burnt, disfigured hand was in fact actually healed. But it was completely glossed over in some black magic. It wasn’t until the light after the battle at The Lost Society Fortress that his hand was back to normal, save the mark on his wrist. He wouldn’t be free from Shelly that easily.

The mark was the first bucket list item, added by pure curiosity and kept from being completed by fear. Was this mark his proof of him using death magic?

Teruchi was only successful in using death magic twice. The first was when he killed his father. At the time, it didn’t seem like anything strange. He studied, he experimented, and just like learning any new magic, it eventually came to him. He filled a crystal shell with the magic and used it to kill his father. He didn’t touch the magic for weeks after that, afraid of it like it was cursed. But curiosity eventually got the better of him and he tried again. And failed.

He tried again during the incident with Loki and Luna. He was desperate to escape, and Daniel had easily overpowered him. He searched whatever magic stores he had within himself and came up blank.

He finally was able to do it again when Shelly gave him his dead hand. Suddenly it was easy, like he could have done it his whole life. Shelly had mentioned once that his death magic drew from her power. It sounded like channeling, but Shelly didn’t have any channelers. But the dead hand would give him a direct link to Shelly, theoretically, so maybe he was channeling, albeit indirectly.

That’s what he wanted to test. Even though his hand was mostly healed, the mark still remained. Was it just a benign mark, or did it still give him a link to the Goddess?

Of course, it was rather difficult to test such things without potentially alerting the Goddess and having her drag his soul off to hell as punishment for playing with things he shouldn’t. Thus, still incomplete on the bucket list.

“Oh, there you are,” Canopy walked into the room. “Your sister said we can’t leave you alone, remember?”

Teruchi sighed. “You talk to Nintendria?”

“Sounds like we won’t be able to get back for a while,” Canopy said. “Ryuno and I will be sticking around here to stay with the others from our universe. Which means so will you.”

“What? No!” But he knew there was no point in arguing. This girl and her sister were weird, and probably had more than enough power to keep him here through some arcane magic never seen in this world before.

“Whatever, just…” He tried not to sound so antagonistic about it. “…These people and I don’t really get along, alright?”

Canopy leaned in as if he was going to say more, but Teruchi turned his head and left it at that. She eventually shrugged it off and walked back into the other room.