Editing Dantega:Volume 1 Chapter 7

Chapter 7: The map to the Gates


(PART 3)




“Hahaha up to me huh? Don’t get so cocky, from what I see, I am the one in control here.” The apple haired woman says to Napoleon as she holds Ubica hostage, she reveals a mocking smile and continues “Do you know who that is you’re holding?”

Napoleon shows interest in her statement, as far as he knows he is fighting demons from Hell.

“ His name is Strauphius, him and I are the most wanted thieves in all of Purgatory. We have been in this kind of situation countless times and not even a scratch has been laid on us!”

Napoleon finds this quite amusing; he is overcome with relief at the fact that the two are not demons, but simple humans. He also finds it funny that she should say that he needs to be weary of the man he has a death hold on, when little does she know that she is holding captive the Anti Christ, the human embodiment of evil incarnate.

‘Wait what?’

Napoleon suddenly thinks to himself, he recalls Rage explaining to him that the people of Purgatory have no recollection of their past lives on Earth and that as far as they know, Purgatory is their rightful birthplace and is named something completely different. The reason behind this is that the people who dwell in this land are the non believers of any type of religion; in other words they were once agnostics in the past, or innocent children that never had the chance to worship God properly. 

Much to the contrary of the bible, under God’s judgement, if you are considered a good person you will not be punished by being sent to Hell. These people are sent here to live out there lives in a respectable manner before they are reincarnated into another body on Earth. Of course, at the sign of a wavering soul, Hell has an indefinite grasp on the lives of the residents, so the majority of people in this land will easily succumb to wretched sin.

Only the sin filled non believers and the believers of a false religion are convicted to be damned for all eternity, so naturally, as it is rare to be accepted into heaven, it is even more rare to be reborn in Purgatory. In a simple form, this world is a second chance at being allowed to return to Earth, which would mean another chance at being accepted into the ultimate paradise of heaven.

“Wait a second you guys know tha-“ 

Before Napoleon could finish his sentence, he feels the sensation of seeing the ground and sky twirl before him rapidly. The next thing he can see is the blade protruding through the round armor surrounding the arm of the man called Strauphius, and it is pointing dangerously towards his forehead. 

‘Damn it, I was careless!’ Napoleon thinks to himself as he realizes that he put both himself and Ubica in a dire situation.

“I must admit, for a regular guy like him to able to put me on the ground like that is pretty amazing.” Says Strauphius with a sigh and a smile.

“Woah! Strauph check this out! This cute guys sword is made of pure diamond, its gotta be worth a fortune!” Aria is holding Ubica’s katana shaped red diamond sword carelessly as she sways it around over her head.

Napoleon looks around at his surroundings as if trying to find anything lying around that can help turn the tides of the frugal outlook of his near future, but nothing that can be advantageous is found. He realizes that the best, and likely the only chance at survival is to speak to them in an attempt to bite time in order for the rest of the group to catch up.

“You mentioned that you two are renowned as thieves in Purgatory correct?” 

This catches the attention of the two, the both of them bite at the bit for the chance to brag about their accomplishments.

“Oh? So you can now see why we are so infamous eh?” said Aria while wearing a wide grin.

Napoleon gives a smug smile as he replies, “ Not quite, I perhaps would believe you… If the rest of the world even knew that this place is called Purgatory.” Napoleon shuts his eyes as he hopes that they understood the hidden message in his words. 

The mere fact that they even know what Purgatory is has got to mean that they know of their deaths on Earth. The rest of the unaware people in this land might as well be robots that are completely oblivious as to why they were created, but this is not such a bad thing. Purgatory is a much more peaceful place than Earth is, the main reason for this is that there is no such thing as religion; all be it the contrary where throughout the history of Earth, the main reason of unnecessary death and war is of the direct result of religion.

“Wha?” The stunned Stauphius mutters out loud, Aria is wearing the same shocked face. Judging by their reactions Napoleon knows that he is getting somewhere with this. 

Aria sheathes her massive broadsword and steps away from Ubica, she has a serious look on her face when she asks “How do you know what this world is?”

Napoleon simply replies “I am from Aires… Or Earth, depending on which ever it is that you prefer it to be named.”

Aria’s eyebrows turn steep as she begins to shout “ What!? How is that even possible!? No one is supposed to know what this world is! Papa said… Papa said that we are special…”

Napoleon is taken by surprise at her sudden surge of emotion, 'Papa?' he thinks to himself, but shrugs it off and says to Aria, who has her head hung low “ Well maybe you are special, ever since I've been sent here, I have not seen one person who is ‘aware’.”

Stauphius’ eyes turn cold, he shoves his blade closer to Napoleons head when he asks “ What do you mean ‘sent’?”

Napoleon, who is not showing any signs of nervousness calmly replies “If you would lead my downed comrade and I to some place warm, I will tell you everything I know.”

Stauphius is staring straight into Napoleons eyes, so much so that it looks like the two are in an intense staring contest. Both don’t blink until they hear the voice of Aria “Let him go.. These two just might be our key to getting the hell out of this place.” S

trauphius thinks this over for a few seconds; he is weary of trusting a random man that wandered out of the tundra, he clicks his tongue and softly says “Fine then.”

Just when Stauphius is about to get up from atop Napoleon, a black cloud suddenly appears a couple feet behind Aria, and from that cloud appears Rage wielding his scythe.

“ARIA LOOK OUT!”

Rage swings his scythe right at the neck of Aria with tremendous speed, with the slash a black wind trail slices through the air, flashing over the head of Napoleon and directly into Strauphius.

It all happened so fast that Napoleon could barely grasp what had just occurred. After the black wind subsided, there is no trace of the two thieves; one can’t help but think that the two were completely obliterated from the strike. The other half of Rages body exits the black cloud in which he appeared from, he looks at Ubica for a second and then diverts his attention to Napoleon, who is still on the ground.

“You look okay, we spotted an explosion in your direction so I got here as quick as possible. Were those people from Hell?”

Napoleon regains his composure and as he rises back to his feet he replies “No actually, they were just regular citizens. Except the fact that they were ‘aware’.”

Rage sighs as if disappointed, “ Oh well, we didn’t have time to waste on them anyways. First things first, we need get Ubica to a village quickly.” Rage turns to Ubica and takes a step, and with it a ‘click’ sound is heard under his feet “Hmm?”

‘BOOOOOOOOM!!!'

An explosion engulfs Rage with fire and smoke.

“RAGE!!” Shouts Napoleon, this blast seems familiar to him ‘It can’t be. They are still…’ He thinks to himself, his thoughts are cut off by the laughter of a man and a woman.

“Hahaha! Bullseye! What did you think of that one Strauph?”

“ Very good Aria! Ten out of Ten!”

Napleon looks about twenty feet to his right and sees the same thieves alive and well; he grabs his sword and begins to charge them but is halted by the words of Aria. “Don’t even bother, unless you have some sort of power there is no way you can beat us.”

“ Powers?” Naploleon asks as he looks confused.

Stauphius replies “Of course, isn’t it obvious? How else could we have survived that freaks attack?” He continues “Aria can turn anything natural into an explosive and I can slow things down so when I move I will leave an after image behind.”

“How is it possible that you normal citizens of this world can hold these abilities?” Asks Napoleon as he is frozen stiff with shock.

“It’s simple, anyone who is ‘aware’ has power hidden inside their souls. It is just a matter of being able to awaken them or not.” This voice doesn’t come from the two thieves, but from the flaming plum of smoke where Rage once stood. 

As if it was reacting to these words, the smoke and flame begin to suck violently inwards, so much so that a metal object is seen vacuuming the fire and smoke into nothing. The metal object is none other than the scythe in which an unscathed Rage is holding upwards. He looks at the two thieves and points his scythe in their direction. Instantly

‘BOOOOOOOOOM!!!'

The same type of explosion that hit Rage and Napoleon land directly in between Aria and Stauphius, knocking both of them a fifteen meters in opposite directions.

“Greeahhh!!” yells an in pained Stauphius. 

After sliding across the ground, he regains his composure and looks up to see if Aria is alright; she’s quite far away now and she is moving rather sketchy. 

“Hang on Aria! I’m coming!” Strauphius says as he is slow to get to his feet, appearing in front of him and blocking his view of his downed comrade is Rage.

“Stupid little runt.” Says Rage with an angered look on his face.

Straupius is frightened at this sight and replies “Get the fuck away from me! I’ll kill you!”

“You will kill me? How? With that power of yours that you can only use once every few minutes?”

Strauphius is shocked and speechless, Rage continues “You didn’t think I’d notice?” Rage takes another step closer to him.

“I said get away!!” Strauphius shouts.

Merciless, Rage reaches out his hand to swipe away the soul that occupies Strauphius’ body

“Wait!” 

Shouts Napoleon right as Rage’s hand is just a view inches from Straupius’ face. Napoleon, holding a large piece of paper is leaning next to a downed but conscious Aria, he has properly removed her weapon and tossed it aside. 

“She says this is a map.” Napoleon says with wide eyes as he opens it and points it toward Rage. The map has an overhead view of a land that one would assume is Purgatory, the words are written in a completely unknown language and has numerous lines that dissect the paper that represent latitude and longitude.

Aria sits up and struggles to say “T-This map tells us how to get to the Gate…. But only Stauph and I can read it.” 

Rage looks a Strauphius, who is now showing a different kind of expression than that of a frightened young lad and then back at Napoleon, the two are glancing at each other as if they are trying to find an answer as to what do.

Aria continues “Since you guys are ‘aware’, you want to get out of this place as well don’t you? We can help if you let us go.” 

Napoleon looks directly into Aria’s eyes. Napoleon has always been able to tell if people are lying or not by looking into the eyes of the person in question, he inherited this talent through the good amount of interrogations that he ran during war time. Though it’s not guaranteed, he feels that his intuitions are usually correct.

“She’s telling the truth Rage… We should let them go.”

Rage pauses for a few seconds and removes his hand away Strauphius’ face and begins to walk to where Aria and Napoleon are. Rage leans on one knee and with and angered face moves only a few inches from Aria and says “Listen child, If I find out you are lying to me in any way, I’ll make both of your deaths as slow as possible.”

Aria is frozen in fear by him and shakes when she replies “I-I’m not lying.”

“Hmph… This seems to be a lucky day for both of us.” Says Rage in a sarcastic tone, he continues “But first things first, we need to get Ubica out of this cold. Lead us to your village.”

Strauphius is now standing; he wipes the dirt off of his purple coat and smugly says “ You’ll need us as much as we’ll need you.. This doesn’t mean that we have to take orders from you.”

Rage’s eyebrows drop in anger “ I hope you understand this one thing boy. I own you now. We don’t need that map, but it is convenient, you two are expendable. So until I know I can trust you, you both will do everything I say.”

Strauphius clicks his tongue and thinks to himself ‘Why am I so afraid of this man?’. With a sigh and a smile, he shrugs his shoulders and begins to run towards the town in which they live.

“Fine fine whatever you say boss! Follow me!”

The map to the Gates (END)









<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Back to [[Dantega:Volume 1 Chapter 6|Chapter 6]]
| Return to [[Dantega|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Dantega:Volume 1 Chapter 8|Chapter 8]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>