To Become Chaos…

The slender redhead stood in the center of a wide circle of destruction and flipped her hair away from her face with a satisfied smile. Only a few minutes before, she’d had Cephied’s own headache, and nothing cleared a headache like a good old-fashioned Dragon Slave.

She flopped back onto her sleeping pack and worked on what she’d do today. Hm… let’s see… go visit the Water Dragon King, learn a new spell, and fry some bandits along the way. Yup, that sounded about right. Just the kind of day that she found herself looking forwards to.

Kira Inverse, the youngest daughter of the Inverse family (in exile), smiled to herself as she reflected on her good fortune. Here she was, all of nineteen years old, and a regular visitor to the Water Dragon King.

Okay, so it wasn’t really the King himself… it was more of a representation of his memories. Milgasia, the Golden Dragon she had met on one visit, had told her the story of the Water Dragon King’s fight with Priest of Shabranigdo. The end result had been that the Priest was exiled for a certain period of time… but with her had gone the Jewel of Water. And with the Jewel gone… well… that left Auntie Aqua (as the Water Dragon King was now known) at quite a disadvantage.

Kira had immediately wanted to go get the Jewel from the Exiled Priest… but Milgasia had told her that she wouldn’t be alive when the Priest returned. It hadn’t stopped Kira from trying to learn every offensive spell in the book. And somewhere along the way, she started to create her own spells. She’d been most pleased with a few of them, but Milgasia had warned her against a strong alliance with the black arts. Thus warned, Kira learned all the Chaos Words she could put her fingers on, and built her own Chaos spells from those words.

Today, Auntie Aqua was to show her the one final Chaos spell. The spell that Kira could never cast, never use. Unless.

Unless the entirety of the Known World was at stake.

The Giga Slave.

Kira’s life had not always been this way. Indeed, it was only four years ago that she’d been content to crush grapes and spend her days making wine with her family and enjoying being a girl.

At least, that had been before the Mazoku had come to Zefeilia.

He’d come, seemingly innocently enough, a wandering priest with no fixed definition. He’d done several things here and there, as a helpful priest ought to, but Kira had a feeling that there was more to it. He didn’t /feel/ like a priest, and she was going to find out why.

There weren’t many secrets in the town of Zefielia. At least, not many that were kept successfully from Kira Inverse. She was good at finding out what she wanted to know, and it wasn’t too long before she caught the mysterious priest out in the vineyards in a hushed discussion with what could only be a Mazoku. It called the priest Master.

More importantly, it named him.

Xellos.

The fifteen-year old had run in terror back to the Elder’s house. Xellos. The evil Mazoku whose name was found written within the records of the Kouma War. The one responsible for the deaths of so many Dragons. She had to warn them!

The Elder hadn’t believed her. He’d told her that her imagination was being overactive again, and that perhaps she ought to be focusing on which boy she was going to marry.

That only pissed her off. Spinning on her heel, she headed back out to the center of town when she saw the false priest approaching a small child. Her temper was already running high, and knowing who and what he was, she planted both feet firmly on the ground and shouted.

“Xellos! Mazoku Destroyer of Dragons! Get away from her!” Kira’s voice was loud, clear, and caught the attentions of everyone on the street.

He spun, as if he’d been caught like a naughty child at play. Straightening, he opened his eyes and looked at her. “Young lady, you shouldn’t call people names.”

Undaunted, Kira stepped forwards. “I call you no names other than that which is truth. I demand that you leave this town at once.” Her skirt started to ripple in an unfelt breeze as powers that she wasn’t aware of began to awaken, brought forth by her anger and sheer desperation to rid her town of this evil thing.

He walked up to her and placed his hand on her shoulder, exerting his Mazoku strength, watching her wince under the increasing pressure. “Why, Kira, I do believe that you are ill. Let me guide you home…”

It happened before she knew it. A ball of something appeared in her hand, and she thrust it at the Mazoku. Two words came into her head, and while she didn’t say them, she thought them: Dragon Slave!

The resulting explosion was quite impressive.

The Mazoku laughed, dusting himself off and backing away, unharmed for all the magic. “Well, now… you did that far better than I would have. Congratulations, Kira Inverse. You’ve done my job for me.”

She didn’t know, didn’t understand that she’d leveled half the town until after he’d vanished and she’d looked around to see the destruction that her magical outburst had caused.

After that Kira had been on her own. She’d gotten tossed out of town and sent to the Guild in order to learn how to use the magic that had suddenly woken within her.

And the Inverse family motto was changed.

“Cast a spell, go to Hell.”

Four years later, a Guild Graduate, Kira still wanted to get her hands around that damned Mazoku’s throat.

She rolled up her pack and was preparing to head off to the Water Dragon King when a voice called her name. “Kira Inverse.”

Red hair flipped around as she turned to see a nondescript woman approaching. “Yeah, I’m Kira Inverse. What do you want?” She set her pack on her back and waited for an answer.

The woman smiled faintly, black eyes studying the redhead before her. “I do not want anything. However… She has a proposition for you.”

Crimson eyes narrowed. “She? Who is she?”

The woman raised a hand in answer, and the world around Kira swayed, then returned to some semblance of normality as she looked around.

The room was a vast expanse of black; the floor solid beneath her feet, but her eyes couldn’t discern its level plane. Only her feet told her that it was there. The ceiling was equally indiscernible, and it left Kira with an odd feeling in her stomach that some part of her brain idly identified as vertigo. As she looked around, she fought the unnerving sensations and focused on the only other person in the room: the woman.

“You didn’t answer my question. Who is she?”

“She,” corrected the woman, and Kira had a vague sense of Importance there.

A golden shimmer came from her left, and as Kira turned, the identity of the arrival sank in with amazing certainty.

“Me.”

As Kira Inverse stood before the Golden Lord of Nightmares, she had a vague feeling that she wasn’t going to be learning the Giga Slave after all.

She just might be learning a hell of a lot more.