#lightning day

Chapter 1: The Cursed Castle

The banging upon the gate is like a heartbeat. It’s so consistent, the battering ram colliding with the wood and steel, the precision almost inhuman. It would make Bianchi laugh, if the fear didn’t close up her throat. She reaches down, taking Chrome’s hand, not taking her eyes off the courtyard before them. ‘’They won’t take you.’’ She says it with desperation colouring her words. ‘’They won’t take you, I won’t let them!’’

She promises it with all that she has in her. It has been so long since she’s felt actual happiness. Now she has it, she won’t let go of it so easily. She’ll fight to the death to defend it, to defend Chrome, if she must.

Chrome laughs and it startles Bianchi. She’s so much older in soul, and yet her body seemingly younger than Bianchi’s. Her gothic dress swishes around her feet, showing her pale, naked feet as she lets go of Bianchi’s hand and begins to circle her, as if taking her in.

Bianchi feels naked. She hasn’t worn her armour in almost a year now. It hadn’t exactly been meant for anything more than hunter raids, far too stiff for the necessities of daily life. It had to be, in order to be strong enough to defend against the monsters of the night. The dresses that Chrome had stored in the castle weren’t exactly the kind that could be worn to battle, but they’d been good enough for a quiet life here. Good enough for spars with Chrome and writing letters to her brother.

God, Hayato. What is she going to tell him if she dies here tonight? He won’t understand. He never did.

Or, perhaps, he is the only one who can understand. Nobody loves monsters as much as her brother, after all, and even if it landed her here, in this moment, she can’t resent him for it. She loves him. She loves him, just as she loves Chrome. Tears well up in her eyes. She hates herself a little for that. This is no time to cry. This is the time to fight.

~~

As all stories must start somewhere, Bianchi’s start the night her mother gets killed. Now you must know, her mother loved her very much. Bianchi loved her mother less, but perhaps that had more to do with how often she had to fish her little brother (her father’s bastard) out of the well after her mother tried to drown him again.

Funnily enough, her mother doesn’t get killed by the beast tearing it’s way through their village directly. There are no bite marks on her body, no slashes through her throat. There is no sign of the were-creature anywhere on her body. No, her mother tried to get away and fell into the very well she tried to drown Hayato in so often.

Bianchi wonders if karma is real, as she stares down at the corpse floating in the water.

It hurts, a little, to see her. But there are many bodies to bury, and her mother is just one amongst the many. She sends Hayato back inside and calls Renato over. ‘’Help me get her out.’’

‘’For the funeral pyres?’’ Renato asks, as he rolls up his sleeves.

‘’No, before she poisons the well or something. We’ve got to drink that water. This is just plain unsanitary.’’

He cocks his head, looks at her, considering, and then says: ‘’Hey, how do you feel about joining the resistance? We’ve always got room for people like you.’’

People like you, Bianchi thinks now, after years, and the resistance. Renato might’ve meant it as a compliment, but it really, really wasn’t.

~~

She joins the resistance with her little brother clinging to her skirts. She’s fifteen, already tired of the world, and doesn’t flinch when they hand her a knife, hand her a bow, hand her a sword and tell her to figure it out before throwing her onto the battlefield. She figures it out in time. She survives.

They give her armour after that, as if now she’s properly blooded, didn’t die at the first raid, she’s worth investing in. She likes how heavy it is on her shoulders. It feels like responsibility. Like a shield. Like she’s protecting people.

‘’Why do you kill them?’’ Hayato asks one night as she tucks him into bed.

Bianchi sighs. ‘’Because they eat people, Hayato. Because vampires drink and werewolves bite and all that bumps in the night is evil. Because they’re monsters.’’

And Hayato, only seven, looks up at her with trembling lips and says: ‘’Must monsters always be killed for being what they are?’’

Bianchi’s heart clenches. Survived again, that little monster? She hears her mother’s voice echo in her head. ‘’No, Hayato, of course not. We only- We only kill monsters that do unforgivable things, okay. Only unforgivable things.’’

His eyes are filled with fear and she can only say: ‘’It doesn’t matter anyway, because you’re not a monster, you hear me?’’

‘’But what if I am?’’ His eyes are brimming with tears and she folds herself around him, hugging him tight.

‘’Then I’ll forgive you everything. Everything you can think of. Anything, any crime you’ll ever commit. I’ll forgive you.’’

‘’You promise?’’ he asks.

‘’I promise, with the force of the moon and the sun and the stars, and the very sky above us.’’

He sleeps soundly that night.

~~

That very promise comes back to haunt her in the spring of Hayato’s fourteenth year of life. He’s nearly at his majority. Fifteen will make him capable of apprenticing properly, whether that is with the hunters or anywhere else, so Bianchi’s let him wander. He’s old enough now, and she knows his heart doesn’t lie within her own profession, the killing of monsters, and she’s hoping that he’ll find something he likes enough to make his living out of it.

Deep inside her heart, she knows he is best suited to be a scholar, smarter than her by leagues, but being a scholar requires proper schooling beyond just an apprenticeship. As much as she wants to give him the world, they don’t have the money for that kind of thing.

He says his goodbyes to her when he leaves to see the great market, to find out if being a merchant could possibly satisfy him. She laughs and ruffles his hair and calls him her ‘almost-adult’. He bears it scowling and all, but the next morning his horse returns without him, and Bianchi’s heart is in her throat.

She goes to the forest.

~~

Now here is the thing: Bianchi doesn’t find the castle until she is thoroughly lost, after she’s killed wolves that attacked her, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, until the rain has soaked her through. She is, thus, allowed to be excused for the fact she didn’t immediately cotton on to it’s aura from a mile away, even though she really should have.

The gargoyles on the roof are ugly and snarling, the grand, French baroque build of the thing in disrepair, as the gate stands tall. It emanates the feeling of magic and it smells like a curse. Bianchi’s never really been able to describe magic in terms other than that. It is a feeling, as well a smell, and curses smell like thorns and rotten, withering roses. The castle reeks of it.

She should have known a place like this would have attracted her brother. She stalks towards the open gate and kicks a side door until it opens up, not trusting the main entrance. The castle is huge, sprawling even, and Bianchi listens for a second, but she hears no sound beyond the rustling of the wind. There are spider webs on the ceiling, and dust flurries around with every sigh of the wind through the broken windows, but Bianchi ignores it as she lights a torch and gets it off the wall. She makes straight for where- logically, seeing the lay-out of the castle- the dungeons must be.

She finds him there, shivering slightly in the corner of his cell. She feels the urge to kick the bars to get his attention, but that would make a large amount of noise, and she isn’t willing to risk that in enemy territory.

Laying into him, now, that she is willing to do in enemy territory. ‘’Hayato,’’ she snarls, trying to keep her volume down, ‘’What in the great blazes where you thinking, going here?!’’

Hayato startles, bumping his head against the wall. ‘’Shit! Woman, couldn’t you not scare the daylight out of me?!’’

She narrows her eyes and glares him into submission. He throws his hands up. ‘’Fine! I was going to the market, honestly. I just… Came across this castle and wanted to talk to its owner? How was I supposed to know she would imprison me?!’’

‘’Maybe,’’ Bianchi hisses through gritted teeth, ‘’Because this place smells like it belongs to a witch or a vampire, and both would like your very human blood? God, Hayato, I thought you were over this!’’

Now he’s looking hurt. ‘’Just because you refuse to see not all creatures of the night are bad doesn’t mean the rest of us have to! And okay, maybe vampires are a little bitey, but most witches don’t hurt a fly!’’

Bianchi’s breath catches in her throat, all her anger draining out of her, making place for a deep, deep fear. ‘’Hayato, how do you know that?’’

‘’Well, maybe I know a couple of witches here and there…’’ he trials off when her head thunks against the bars.

‘’One of these days, I’m going to say goodbye to you and you’re never coming back, are you? Because you can’t see danger when it’s coming straight at you. How many times, Hayato?’’

He doesn’t answer.

‘’HOW MANY TIMES?’’ Her breath turns ragged as the scream leaves her throat. ‘’Did you make deals with them? Hayato, please tell me you didn’t sell your soul.’’

He fidgets. ‘’No… But I did give them a little hair.’’ He sneaks a glance up at her, before getting defensive: ‘’Only a little bit! God, don’t get so worked up about it! Yamamoto might be a basket case but I know he won’t use it for evil!’’

Bianchi wants to scream, but the shadows around them are starting to get darker. Darker, and inkier, running more and more like ink blotting on paper. The owner of the castle is getting closer, and Bianchi needs to know what she’s going to fight. ‘’Who put you here?’’

Her brother opens her mouth, but she knows that look so she cuts him off. ‘’No, what put you here?’’

That’s when she feels icy fingers on the back of her neck. Bianchi freezes.

‘’Wouldn’t you like to know?’’ a voice as sleek and smooth as silk murmers in her ear.

A shiver works it’s way down her spine.

She whirls around and is faced by- a vampire? A witch? It’s hard to make out, with how strong the curse emanates from her. It’s a woman, in any case, skin as pale as that of a corpse, purple bags underneath purple eyes, and hair long and violet, in an half updo underneath her little black top hat. Her dress is black and it blends in with the inky shadows, melding until it seems like she’s wearing nothing but the darkness itself.

‘’Release my brother and I might refrain from killing you,’’ Bianchi hisses, because Hayato is her first priority, now and forever.

The woman starts to laugh, and ah, yes, there they are. Fangs, elongated in her mouth. ‘’You, threaten me within my own walls? Darling, your brother went through the main entrance, and all who pass there are bound to me. No mere human could kill me in my homestead.’’

A trident appears at her side, as if summoned from deep within the castle. Bianchi’s eyes widen. ‘’K- Kuromu Dokuro?’’

The woman smiles, sweet and yet insidious. ‘’It’s pronounced ‘Chrome’, but yes. That would be me.’’

It can’t be. Kuromu Dokuro is an old tale, perhaps preceding even the existence of the hunters. To think the woman in the tale- the monster she became- is here, in front of her? Bianchi shudders to think of it.

Still, she has no choice. Her grip tightens on the knife in her hand, but before she can start to make her move, Kuromu- Chrome?- raises her hand, shaking her head. ‘’No need to fight your way out, darling, if you want to buy your brother’s freedom. All you need to do is take the geas on in his place.’’

That was fine- that was good, in fact. It’d get Hayato out of the way, and while getting a geas on you while not knowing what it was was never good idea, it was better than having an unknown geas on him. ‘’Fine,’’ she barked, ‘’But you get him back to the village safely!’’

‘’Ane-san, no! You don’t like monsters, you won’t like it here at all!’’

She sent him a scathing look. ‘’You’re in a cell, Hayato, I’m taking that geas from you whether you want it or not.’’

She doesn’t look at him as the shadows drag him out of his cell and into the cold, hopefully back towards the village. Chrome darts forwards as the shadows come back, bringing her something that looks like a fallen star. She snatches it out of their grasp, before putting it on Bianchi’s tongue and forcing her to swallow.

It tastes like defeat, and the geas feels heavy upon her heart.

~~

The geas, as she later finds out, imposes a list of requirements that steadily get more curious as they come along: the first she discovers is that she cannot attack Chrome, a reasonable geas to place upon one’s own castle if one is powerful enough to cast one in the first place. The second requires Bianchi to have dinner with her each night. The third, to her surprise, is that the longer she spends time with Chrome, the more the shadows listen to her.

It’s very convenient when she wants a glass of water in the middle of the night. Still a little creepy though, with the way the shadows reach for her at every corner now. But Bianchi doesn’t think she minds.

Spending time with Chrome is, surprisingly, no real hardship. The vampire likes fine red wine just as well as Bianchi does, and she makes a mean pasta. Or the shadows do- Bianchi’s not entirely clear about who exactly mans the kitchen here. She’s never seen a single soul besides her, Chrome and the shadows.

Sometimes she thinks she can hear the shadows cry, a thousand voices crying out for their freedom, but surely that’s just her sleep deprivation acting up again.

Bianchi doesn’t mind the castle, but her sleep is troubled anyway. She’s not used to being away from Hayato for this long, despite her many usual hunting trips.

It is thus, one night, that she decides to get her glass of water herself, instead of asking the shadows to fetch it for her. They push and pull at her, as if trying to prevent her from going towards the west wing, but Bianchi likes the motion of it. Likes how it makes her work to move forward. She’s strong- they can’t hold her back properly, inky and weak to light as they are.

Instead of the kitchens, she ends up in a room she’s never seen before. There’s a portrait, above the hearth, of a man and a woman and a little girl. The girl is looking up to her parents, but her face is stricken off the canvas.

Bianchi knows who she’s looking at anyway. The tale of the princess Kuromu Dokuro leaves no question about it.

‘’What are you doing here?’’ Chrome’s own voice sounds behind her, tired and dead.

Bianchi frowns, turning around to face her. The bags underneath Chrome’s eyes are even deeper than normal, and her violet eyes have turned a deep, wine-dark purple. ‘’I can’t sleep,’’ she says, ‘’Want to throw knives at the chandelier in the main hall and see who can bring it down?’’

Property destruction is one of their favourite games these days.

Chrome shakes her head. ‘’Not unless you want me to slip and drink from you.’’

Bianchi cocks her head. ‘’I thought that’d be part of the geas. The right to drink from me, I mean.’’

Chrome laughs, deep and without humour, a sound at odds with her strangely delicate appearance. She’s so much smaller than Bianchi, and yet, without a doubt, far more powerful. ‘’You know very well that the geas is a rule of three. The three commandments I asked of you are the ones you’ve already discovered. I wouldn’t ask more of you.’’

‘’You’re Kuromu Dokuro, though.’’ Says Bianchi, without thinking.

She pays for it when Chrome flinches back, looking genuinely hurt before her mask slides back on again. ‘’I thought you’d know me better than that, by now.’’

Chrome turns decisively, her skirt flaring out, and leaves her own quarters at a sedate pace. It doesn’t change what it is, though. She’s fleeing.

She’s fleeing Bianchi, and Bianchi doesn’t know what to do, because Kuromu Dokuro is a monster, but perhaps, Chrome Dokuro is not.