Dancing with the Devil

The Freedom

Evelyn raised her hand and addressed her friends in the bar. "The Count of Vladimir died because of the change of power, and we can't intervene. She kills only demonized monsters, and the gods will not punish her. But neither will she be protected by the Holy See."

She turned to Kalista. "Now you should go."

Kalista made a clean exit from the bistro.

She discovered a wig accessory shop and sold her long hair before searching for a hotel room. The shop owner, delighted by the well-maintained blonde hair, readily offered a high price and provided her with relatively neutral clothing.

After changing, Kalista took a look in the mirror. Her hair had been cut to the length of half a finger, and with the fight bruises on her cheeks, her loose shirt, and old overalls, she appeared almost boyish. She pinned the dagger to her waist and said goodbye to the shop owner.

There were homeless people sitting outside the shop. Kalista glanced over and missed the lone figure with the crystal ball and the cape. She looked around without further pause, but her mind kept returning to the prophecy.

"Can it reverse life and death, cross time and space..." Kalista murmured to herself.

"One day the golden-haired knight will break through the mists and return to his homeland wielding the sword of time and space that will slay all evil." The sword bearer carries a time sword that reverses life and death and transcends time and space."

So said a traveler to the devil many years ago.

At that time, he believed the words of the travelers and waited for the prophesied Golden Knight to come to this land. But hundreds of years passed, and he moved from one prison to another, but the rumored knight never appeared.

The Count of Vladimir, the owner of the castle, was greedy and hypocritical. The Count bought him from the smugglers, promising him his freedom on the condition that he returned to the castle regularly and gave a little of his liver to help the Count stay young forever. He agreed to a covenant and promised never to harm the count or his attendants.

But the Count had played a trick on the contract, and the small area of the dungeon had become his complete prison. He was cursed and bound by the covenant, and even if he ever found a secret way outside the castle, he would only be torn apart by the pain in his heart for stepping outside the castle's boundaries, and then dragged by the covenant, like a walking corpse, back into the dungeon.

His liver regenerated quickly, and the Count continued to eat his liver and became an immortal monster. This contractual relationship never ends.

He neither saw the skylight nor calculated the passage of time in the dungeon. He could only rely on the frequency of the master's visits to the dungeon to vaguely estimate time. The Count usually came with men in knight's armor to dig up his liver, and there were blond men among them. Sometimes he could not resist grabbing them to ask about the prophecy of the Sword of Time and Space, but the inquiry was always met with a spit and a wild laugh.

He had no need to eat or drink, no hunger, and no one would visit the dark dungeon except to take his liver. No one listened to him. Gradually, he deliberately blocked out the pain.

The prophesied Golden Knight was not coming. If a knight should come to the world, it would never come to him.

It didn't matter, this was his long, endless, cursed life. He thought so, and emptied his mind, that in the long years he had forgotten his own name.

Until one day, a blonde girl in a lady-in-waiting costume pressed a stone block and appeared in the dungeon. She came with a knife and plate to take his liver, but dropped them casually on the floor, caressing his face with soft fingers.

She called him Lancelot.

The devil awoke from the cold, wet stone floor and stumbled outside the castle boundaries. A ray of morning light shone into his eyes, and for the first time in centuries, he could see the rising sun, its warmth stinging his skin. He gazed at the sparkling water, and it took him a long time to realize that he was free at last. It was the blonde girl who had set him free.

The devil stood up on the uneven ground, and the strange touch of his fingertips made him gaze at the brick lines beneath his palms. He swept away a layer of slippery moss, and several crooked nicks were revealed. The claw ran across the score in varying shades, stopping at the end of the last letter. He pronounced the two-syllable name silently. The tip of his tongue pressed against the upper row of teeth, and the air flowed through his lips and tongue, which seemed to contain endless afterwords.

-- Kalista.

The nicks in the brick matched the handwriting on her room door. All the "miracles" that had happened to her had been answered. Without thinking, she could press the secret mechanism that opened the dungeon, knew the route of the underground palace, and even the tunnel out of the city, because she had walked freely through the tunnel as a child, engraving her name on the stones and bricks along the way as if she had sworn sovereignty.

She is someone from the past.

She has crossed time and space and returned to her native land, and will wield the sword to kill all evil and reverse life and death.

The devil laughed silently. For so long, he had been confined to a narrow cage, in an era when only men could be knighted, and it had never occurred to him that the knight of prophecy might be a girl.

He wanted to hold on to her, to the lock of blonde hair, to the only hope he had had for centuries. He expected her to break his curse. Well, first, he had to give her a present.

The devil glanced at the rising sun at the end of the river and turned and walked into the dark corridor. Different sounds came to his ears, and the castle was in disarray. He made his way through the tunnels and soon arrived at the dungeon he knew best.

Outside the heavy iron gate, someone was pounding on the wall.

The devil pressed the mechanism that opened the door, and the knights and magicians outside froze and fainted in his hands before they could utter a syllable. Armor and heavy weights lay lifeless at the base of the wall like a pile of scrap metal. Without stopping, the devil evaded the other knights on patrol and headed straight for the third floor of the castle.

There were people inside and outside the Count's room. Knights with swords stood guard at the door, and magicians in black cloaks gathered in the room. The devil quickly and quietly disposed of the knights and entered the house.

He knew that magicians were rare, and there were six of them in the room, surrounding the Count's shrunken and shriveled corpse, having just finished drawing the Battle of the Seance.

Seeing the horns on the devil's head, the people were frightened. One after another, the holy prayer was reversed, the strange curse came like a chain, and the black smoke immediately entangled the devil's hands and feet.

"The Count of Vladimir died so suddenly that the countess must not have been ready, and only called in the dark sorcerer to revive the count's body, forgetting that only the apostle of the gods can hold me down," the devil chuckled, and shook off the dark chains as if to dispel the smoke. "Gentlemen, our powers are of the same origin, and you cannot hold me."

He flew over the sides of the black magicians and gave each one a sharp and accurate hand knife. He casually peeled off a man's cloak, put it on his body, kicked the Dharma, and then stepped on the body in the center of the room that was no longer visible.

When the Count of Vladimir was killed by the Kalista, the Countess never wanted him back, but intended to use dark magic to turn him into a figurehead to renew her pact with the devil. As long as the countess could manipulate the Count, she could indirectly manipulate the devil.