Faustite didn't hear the cries and calls of the youma he summoned, either. He didn't feel their auras on the air, though he didn't feel the White Moon auras, either.
He saw carpet. He saw the edge of a familiar desk. He heard his heartbeat pounding in his ears, but no signs or sounds of the city. It had been a while since he'd been summoned like this; he'd forgotten the dissonance between one place and the next when he wasn't the person enacting the decision to go. But those were distant, scattered thoughts — brief, distracted attempts to make sense of the new space in which he resided.
He tried to speak, but the words were a clot of blood.
He knew where he was, of course. It wasn't the change of venue that bothered him. But by virtue of having to be summoned, of being pulled back when the fight was at its most grim, Faustite found reason to be deeply upset with himself. It wasn't that he was soaking Axinite's rug in black blood that was a devil to get out of the threads.
It was that he failed. Completely and utterly. Now he had to live through it.
the space cauldron
Follows the soul murder of the culpable!
