Amber Sunlight

Grunty stepped confidently out of the portal she'd just created to this unfamiliar realm she'd come to once before. Last time she'd traveled here with her apprentice, she'd found herself tied up in an annoying local clan war. Now she stepped out again, determined not to get tied up in anything petty again as she'd look for a small village to subjugate. It wouldn't be hard. One blast, a small genocide should suffice. No doubt the villages maintained more adequate preparations against the machinations of spirits now than formerly, though. This whole "spirit invasion" thing wasn't new.

For that reason, she'd invited her apprentice through the portal. Her apprentice, who followed in the ways of the lytning as her boss had and learned to summon the lytflies. The blast power of the young vascubus woman rivaled Grunty's own. Their combined strength could bring any small, though well-prepared village to its knees.

So she turned, a smirk coming across her sleazy visage as she awaited the arrival of Kyouko.

The woman looked over at her apprentice before her green and amber eyes took a sweeping glance across the landscape. Heat and desolation first sprang to mind, followed by hot, abrasive winds and blinding sunshine. She held her hand up over her face. "Eh? Wasn't this a forest the last time we were here? The fuck happened?"

She frowned steadily at the hostile landscape, figuring the sudden transformation from forest to dustbowl must be owe to the recent demonic activity. Probably some fire bastard burned the whole area up and made it incapable of holding plant life beyond squatting cacti and crumbling tumbleweeds. She saw a perplexed desert vulture unaffected by the cutting, sandy air and studying them out of its soulless, obsidian eyes, as though disappointed two creatures nearer to death hadn't materialized.

She turned away from it, whirling on one heel and making her way over to the girl. "Hey, Kyouko! Notice anythin different?"

"Little shit..." she grumbled grouchily. "Probably already has his head hung up in a fucking mead hall by now."

She kicked a rock. It flew and banged against the cactus, sending the ominous bird flying up on a rising thermal with several flaps of its heavy wings. The demoness's eyes followed it. "It ain't gonna do us any good to stay here," she grumbled. "C'mon. I haven't seen ye in awhile." She began to walk and, provided her apprentice hadn't seen any reasonable cause to stay back in the sun-baked spot, would talk to her as they traversed the dunes and cracked rocks. Her eyes remained on the ground, scanning for a lizard or something. Grunty tended to eat as she went instead of eating before she showed up at these places. "Tell me, what's been going on with ye since I last saw ya. I'm a bit bored with everything on Yochi to be honest."

Her voice carried a distinct tone of despondency usually missing in her raspy banter.

"Eh?" she put a thumb and a finger on her chin, looking off into the shimmering blue of the horizon. "I just got here actually. Some dude knocked me out with somethin. I was supposed to be in a demon tournament or something like that. Missed all of it. Clean."

She paused to frown. "Guess it don't matter much, though. Bah."

She glanced up at the sun for a moment before returning her gaze to the sand. "Should be coming up on a village any minute, yea? I see some tracks." She sniffed the dry air, frowning. Dry air held little to no information for any length of time. "Some baking bread... flax maybe?"

Grunty wrinkled her nose. "I wouldn't worry too hard about it. We're gonna blow them to hell anyways, yea?"

She walked several dozen more yards and stopped. "You see it over there. Not a big encampment. A few wooden walls and all. We can blow it up from here and we'll be safe. Don't need to kill everyone, just-- uhh... ninety percent of the populace or something like that."

She squinted, taking a couple of steps forwards to bring the distant town on the horizon into better view. "We can send off a couple warning shots and get closer to see if it's safe. Ye can handle it?"

The sand sparkled in the sunlight suddenly, Grunty didn't turn her head to look at the black bats that her apprentice formed from the air in front of her. "Eh. That's normal. Ye's a girl incubus, right?" She didn't fully comprehend the concept of a succubus, believing sexiness to be a property of the male half of any given species. "All the incubuses I ever saws knew how to do... bat stuff."

The sparks on the sand began rising up and making a slow, steady march to meet the similar glitter in the air descending down from the sky above the village. "That's a good sign I guess--" she looked absently towards the distant town. She couldn't remember her apprentice being a vascubus, only a vaspire. Then again, her memory failed her often these days and the "cubus" half might prove useful eventually. Maybe all of those drugs were finally getting to the demon's brain. She frowned at the thought, dismissing them as unproductive. "I guess that means ye sleep around too. Growin up fast."

For some reason "killing people" registered as less adult to her than "sleeping around". The oddness of it only occurred to her after she'd spoken, but it was only an odd statement by human standards. Offspring were a big responsibility, after all, and heaven left Grunty unfamiliar with the concept of birth control. Dead people didn't require any maturity to look after.

"Join me?" she said, indicating the lytflies over the city with a brief motion of her head. "Ies gonna count to three."

Grunty didn't move her eyes from the point on the horizon that they originally rested on. "Kyouko, focus."

The idea of a witness didn't bother her much. It's not like they had to remain permanently in this realm. The worst he could do might be to run and get backup, but they'd be wholly too late to save the village.

The range of Grunty's lytflies stretched to a full one hundred feet. Perhaps a few stray flies might land around the area of the horse and the rider, but her attention remained elsewhere and the worst danger to him would be shrapnel from the blast.

"Alright. Get ready..."

The ball lightnings fattened, charged particles glowing every color of the visible spectrum and a few colors only discernible to animals. "One..." She paused for perhaps about five seconds, the flies descended among the buildings. "Too..." The buzzing became audible, even at their distance, like the wings of a thousand locusts. "Three!"

She released the spell, hoping her apprentice would simultaneously.

A resounding boom and a flash that dwarfed even the scowling sun replaced half of the village with a 40 meter wide crater, lined on the inside with glass and ashes.

The village remained eerily silent for several minute as the shock of the catastrophe seized the citizens. A wail broke out, a heartbreaking cry of grief as mothers cried for their children; As husbands for their wives. As orphans grieved near the glass. People ran along the short streets, searching desperately for friends, family, and clansmen.

The yokai only high-fived her partner. "Pretty badass, huh? Bet they didn't know what hit them. Ha ha ha!"

She put her hands in her pocket and made her way quickly to the village.

Once there, she'd hop up onto a building, shouting over the general din. "Yo, listen up you miserable... uhh... guys! Until I remember exactly why I blew up your village, y'all are gonna listen to me. Else I'll blow this shit up again, ya hear?"

Several of them stopped to look. Many continued grieving. One audacious child threw a rock. She leaned to the side easily, dodging the projectile and countering with a lightning bolt from the cloudless sky. "Anyone else?" she offered. The charred child lay curled up, quivering from the force of the electricity. Everyone around looked at the ground. "Thought so. First order, someone get me some food, yea? I like fruit and meat."

Having accomplished her speech, the woman looked around for her partner and, wherever she was, would move to meet her.