Chapter 60. Fallen Paradise. RE-WRITTEN
Camula glanced at his life points, and laughed at his foolishness. “What good is it to prohibit my summoning by losing the Duel?” She asked mockingly while walking over to him to collect his soul in a doll, a later offering for the Sacred Beasts for her to revive her people. However, when the boy fell over, a card dropped out of his Duel Disk, one that any Duelist worth their salt would immediately recognize.
Mirror Force. She stared at the card, and the weakened boy huffing on the ground. ‘He lost on purpose…?’ It was the only possible answer that made sense. The boy had Mirror Force to destroy all her attacking cards if he allowed her to walk into that trap. She would have. Camula herself knew that. She also knew this boy was a fairly good Duelist, not that she would admit that to anyone. However she understood why Nightshade might lose to this boy.
But what she couldn’t understand was his last move. “Why did you do this?” She asked the boy, laying face first on the ground, his lazy eyes barely able to reach up to her knees. Camula frowned as she knelt down for him to see the card in her hand. “Why did you lose?” She asked again, more agitated this time. The boy let out a sigh as his eyes lowered away from her gaze. “What does it matter to you…?”
Camula, pissed off, grabbed the boy’s chin, and forced him to look at her eyes. “I own your soul, now tell me why you lost on purpose!” She tried to charm him into spilling his secrets, but even while owning his soul, she still faltered. ‘Such devout resistance!’ However with enough time, he finally started to speak, his eyes gazing far away into the past as he spoke.
“I… I didn’t want you… To die…” He uttered with a sad expression. Camula raised a brow at his random comment. “If you’d have won, you would own my soul, not destroy it.” She answered back, her stomach sinking, her heightened instincts predicting something over the horizon. The boy gulped and twitched as he fought her control and charm, but his resistance was faltering. “No… That card… Needs payment…” He sighed while his eyes lowered themselves to her hand.
Camula knew of the power in her hand, she had known it would be dangerous to use, but there were no instructions for using such power. However this boy knew. “Explain it to me.” She pressured while forcing him to look further in her eyes. “It… Needs a soul if played… Only the weak will be devoured.” Camula felt her hand lossen in shock, almost dropping the card she held, the beasts she was trying to gain help and favor from, almost becoming her ultimate demise.
“How do you know this?” She asked, having to know what more secrets laid buried, that could be unearthed in mere moments. The boy sputtered, and Camula felt her grip over him loosen as he tried breaking free from her grasp. However she wouldn’t let that happen. “Tell me. I order you.” The boy’s psyche continued to dig in, refusing to give her the answers she desired. Camula frowned in thought. ‘Perhaps it is too soon… In more time I shall gain more dominance over him.’
With that feeling of reassurance, Camula decided to ask another question that was nagging her about this. One thing that made no sense in her mind. “Why let me live?” She asked. The different question, hopefully able to be answered. To Camula, this question was just as important as how he understood the Sacred Beasts. To Camula, humans had hated, feared, killed, maimed her people. Her family, her friends. Having one sacrifice themselves for a vampire was unheard of. She had to know what possessed this boy to give his life to her.
The boy frowned as he continued to stare deep into her eyes, speaking as his mind was transported somewhere else. “I… I remember… My mom’s face.” He responded, his eyes beginning to drown in fear of what he was seeing. “After my dad died… Lung Cancer… My mom couldn’t handle living… Without the idea of him around.” Camula, confused about what this had to do with her, kept enchanting her eyes to keep him talking.
His eyes swirled and started to sway from side to side, the fear of what he was seeing changed his voice, making it unsteady and warbled as he spoke. “I didn’t hear from her… So I went to check up on her… Her car was in the driveway… But when I went inside, she wasn’t anywhere… I looked through a few rooms before heading upstairs to hers and dads…” At this point his breathing became sharp and unstable. “I opened the door… The smell… Oh the smell…” He started becoming more erratic as he continued. “I just watched her sway back and forth… like the pendulum of the grandfather clock she had in the room.”
Camula, flabbergasted at the story this boy was telling, couldn’t say a word as he continued to stare into her hypnotic eyes. “Her face… She was staring right at me… She was waiting… Waiting for me to come save her…” Tears welled in his eyes and he groaned in depression. “But I ran from dad’s death, and her grief for too long… I… I wasn’t there when she needed me most…”
He lowered his gaze as a few drops of tears and snot hit the ground. “I didn’t… Deserve to be anywhere after that… After she was taken away, I found dad’s old revolver…” He then let out a sad scoff before speaking. “I figured that if I deserved to die, then just let it happen as soon as I could… I took a single round, and spun it in the cylinder… Before placing it on my temple and pulling the trigger.” Camula’s eyes widened from how the story continued to grow darker as he continued. “But I lived…” He then began to laugh hysterically. “I lived! Somehow, despite how I didn’t deserve to live, I continued to do so!”
He then sighed, the laughter dying down along with his erratic behavior. “I kept trying… Everyday… Wondering which time I would take my rightful leave… Until I finally understood… I didn’t deserve to let it end quickly… My mom didn’t get to die instantly either, so why would I get to?”
He sighed before continuing on. “So I gave up on trying to end my suffering early… Understanding that I would just have to let the world kill me itself… I spent years with that knowledge, slowly gaining some semblance of peace…” He then gained a small saddening smirk as he spoke. “Then I somehow ended up here… Getting so much happiness, I didn’t deserve… Then I threw it all away from instinct…” He scoffed like a man on his deathbed.
Camula frowned, he still avoided answering her question exactly, although she felt she understood his overall answer. “Why did you lose on purpose?” The boy closed his eyes with one last sigh, his expression turning sour. “I… I didn’t want to live like that again…” He then opened his eyes to stare back into hers again. “But…” He paused while slowly bringing his hand up to her temple, keeping her head still as he studied her. “Your eyes…” He mumbled just as he lost strength in his arm and fell face first on the ground.
Camula’s heart thumped in angst and backed away from him slightly in fear of what just happened. She felt the animalistic beast inside her stir in response to his last half awake comment, and sudden intimacy he created. Her mouth felt parched as she watched his haggard breathing. She then slowly moved closer to him, turning over his body so it would face the sky instead. She watched his eyes move from the starry sky, back to her eyes, and continued to stare at her, the feeling of resistance he had, weaning.
Camula gulped, a question inside her, leapt out before she could think whether she wanted to know the answer. “How do you-” She was about to ask, but a sudden intruder broke her focus from the boy. She snapped her head at the noise, and saw a raggedy girl in a red jacket. She had twigs and leaves in her long black hair from rushing through these woods in the dead of night. However despite her amusing looks, her large eyes were filled with nothing but malice. “Give… my Rakki… back…”