Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers Side Story - The Love and Despair of Teguneu, Leader of the Evil Demons
A monster who has never known love. A boy who has lost everything to it.
For three hundred and twelve years, Teguneu has watched humanity from the shadows—cold, calculating, and utterly alone. Branded a heretic even among his own kind, the leader of the Evil Demons has long since abandoned any hope of warmth. Until the day his black lizard swarm carries him to a nameless village at the foot of the Jörmungandr Mountains, where he witnesses something that shatters his icy composure: a brother and
Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers Side Story - The Love and Despair of Teguneu, Leader of the Evil Demons - The Pitch-Black Observer — An Evil Demon Who Knows Not Love, Unleashing Flames
At the southern foot of the Jörmungandr Mountains, in a nameless cave erased entirely from human maps, Teguneu sat with his eyes closed. The hem of his jet-black longcoat stirred in the faint wind that threaded through the cavern. The fabric, woven with obsidian dust, drank in the light, merging his form into the darkness itself.
On his shoulder, a black lizard shifted. Teguneu traced a finger along the old scar that ran from his left cheek down to his neck, and the feel of dry scales lingered on his fingertips. Cold. His own body heat conjured the illusion of touching ice.
"Go."
His voice was low, swallowed by the rock walls and gone. At that single word, countless presences stirred at his feet. A swarm of black lizards—small fiends barely a foot long—streamed toward the cave mouth, their scales rasping against one another. The horde, over a hundred strong, descended the mountainside and dissolved into the darkness that led toward human territory.
Teguneu closed his eyes once more.
His consciousness was linked to the senses of the lizards he had sent out. Sight and hearing poured into him in hundreds of fragments—the sound of feet on grass, the scent of the night wind, the distant flow of a river. He sorted through them, plucking out only what he needed. An intelligence network honed over three hundred and twelve years of life, his and his alone.
Before long, the presence of humans drew near.
It was a small village—a nameless settlement half a day's walk south of the mountains. The black lizards scattered around its perimeter, observing from the shadows of bushes and the gaps in stone walls.
The bustle of a market reached his ears first. Though it was hardly more than a few stalls lined up in the village square. A fishwife's cry, old men bickering over the price of vegetables, a child's laughter as their mother led them by the hand. And then the blacksmith's hammer, ringing out in steady rhythm. The sound of striking iron beat like the heart of the village itself.
At the well, women drew water and chatted. Idle gossip. So-and-so's daughter had married, how would this year's wheat turn out, a young man from the neighboring village had built a house—fragments of trivial talk.
Teguneu simply listened in silence.
(This is how humans live.)
In the cold air of the cave, he exhaled slowly. His breath clouded white and vanished into the dark.
One of the black lizards slipped around to the back of a barn at the village edge. The smell of dry straw. Stacked firewood. From behind the pile, two children came into view.
A boy and a girl.
The boy's light brown hair had grown out carelessly, his bangs springing up around his eyes. He looked to be around ten, perhaps younger. The girl seemed a few years older. They were carrying firewood and laughing at something together.
"Agh—this is heavy!"
The boy nearly dropped his bundle of firewood as he cried out. The girl turned and giggled.
"Oh, you can't even manage that?"
Her hand reached out and gently smoothed the boy's springy bangs. There was no mistaking the affection in her fingertips. The boy squirmed, embarrassed, then threw his arms around her waist and hugged her tight.
"You could just help me, Shetra!"
"There, there. Fine, I'll carry half."
Their laughter dissolved into the twilight sky.
Teguneu watched the scene through the lizard's eyes.
—Something burned in his chest.
From within, something flared up. It was not anger, nor sorrow, but something far more primal. Jealousy. Yes—jealousy. That boy was a human child worth nothing. And yet he was loved as though it were the most natural thing in the world. His sister's hand touching his hair. The embrace. The shared laughter. All of it was something Teguneu had never once been given.
Three hundred and twelve years.
Jet-black scales that no one had ever touched. Days spent branded a heretic. Because he bore a form more monstrous than even the other fiends, even his own kind kept their distance. If he was unworthy of being loved, then he need only destroy those who were.
Teguneu's golden eyes deepened to crimson, seething with rage and obsession.
Before he knew it, he was raking the rock wall with his claws. The sharp tips gouged the obsidian surface, raising a grating screech. The black lizard on his shoulder leaped away in alarm.
"...Why?"
His voice trembled. A passion he could not control was threatening to shatter the mask of the cold strategist.
"Why does that child have love, and I do not?"
There was no answer. There could not be.
Teguneu decided to change his plan. Originally, he had intended to make use of that boy—Adlet Mayer—much later. To take his time, polish him into a finished piece, and then set him loose among the Braves of the Six Flowers. That should have been the most efficient course.
But the jealousy of this moment would not permit it.
He would burn this village. Take the sister. Forge that boy into a revenger against the fiends.
(That will make him a stronger piece.)
Teguneu told himself so. The thirst for vengeance born of losing a loved one becomes a power stronger than anything. Hate the fiends, live only for revenge, eliminate any obstacle in your path—plant that savage personality in him, and the boy would become a weapon to rival the Braves of the Six Flowers.
—But that was only the justification.
The true motive was jealousy. He could not forgive a brother and sister who loved each other. That the boy possessed something Teguneu could never obtain was unbearable. So he would break it. Steal it. Warp the boy into something like himself—a creature that knew nothing of love.
Teguneu understood the emotions churning in the depths of his heart better than anyone.
"Set it ablaze."
The command passed through the swarm of black lizards.
As night wrapped around the village, the black lizards stirred once more. Avoiding human eyes, they crawled through the grass, along the stone walls, closing in on the barn stacked with dry straw.
The village was quiet. Those who had finished the day's labor ate their suppers in their homes and drifted toward sleep. One by one, the lights in the windows went out.
Teguneu watched it all from within the cave, motionless.
One of the black lizards pressed a burning fragment of torch against the bundle of dried straw piled against the barn wall.
At first, it was only a small spark.
Then it spread along the straw. The dry stalks caught in an instant, the flames licking up the walls and crawling onto the roof.
Fire began to stain the village's night sky red.
"Fire!"
The first scream came only after the flames had swallowed the barn's roof entirely. Villagers burst from their homes and rushed to the well. They drew water in buckets and hurled it at the fire. But a barn of dry straw and timber would not be stopped by a few splashes. The flames leaped to the next house, and the next, and the next.
Screams and shouts filled the air. Women cried out their children's names; old men fled, coughing.
And in the midst of it all, the boy Adlet stood before the blazing barn.
"Shetra! Shetra!"
His sister was trapped inside—that was what the villagers were shouting. Adlet tried to run for the burning door. But the villagers held him back.
"Let go! My sister's in there!"
"No, Adlet! It's too late!"
"Let me go! Let me go!"
The boy's screams rang out amid the roar of the flames. Then, from deep inside the barn, a faint voice came.
"Adlet..."
It was his sister's voice.
"Run... please..."
And then the voice stopped.
The flames brought the barn's roof crashing down. Timber snapped, and embers spiraled into the sky. The fire reflected in the boy's eyes dyed his amber irises red.
Teguneu stood on a hill overlooking the village.
At some point he had left the cave and come this far. The swarm of black lizards gathered at his feet. Not through their eyes now—through his own, he looked down at the burning village.
The fire devoured everything. The screams of the people carried all the way to where he stood.
(This is the power of love.)
Teguneu thought. The grief of losing a loved one makes a person strong. The thirst for revenge is the purest fuel. That boy had become stronger in this very moment. He had carved hatred for the fiends into every fiber of his being.
(I will raise you into the strongest piece.)
Then Teguneu felt something warm trailing down his cheek.
He touched it with his finger. Wet.
Tears.
(Why?)
He did not understand what the tears running down his cheek meant. Sorrow? No. Regret? Not that either. Then what was this?
Teguneu traced the scales that had begun to peel. The old scar on his left cheek. The scales around it were slightly lifted. The tears seeped into the gaps.
(What am I grieving?)
No answer came.
With the burning village at his back, Teguneu began the walk back to the cave.
The swarm of black lizards followed. The light of the burning village reflected in his jet-black longcoat, casting his obsidian scales in red.
As he walked, he was drawing a blueprint in his mind.
A blueprint for the personality he would implant in Adlet Mayer. A savage nature that hated the fiends, lived only for revenge, and eliminated anyone who stood in the way. With the memory of a destroyed village as its core, and the rage of a stolen loved one as its fuel, he would shape the boy into a finished avenger.
With the power to manipulate love, it was possible.
The strongest force in this world is love. Teguneu believed this. Love makes people strong—and sometimes drives them mad. He would give that power to the boy. False love, as a fuse to transform into true hatred.
(The quality will be high.)
Teguneu was satisfied with his blueprint.
And yet.
Why was he so fixated on that boy? The answer still eluded him.
Back in the cave, Teguneu sat with his back against the far rock wall. The black lizard on his shoulder nestled against his neck. Its small body heat was just barely warm.
In the distance, the heartbeat of the Demon God's resurrection grew faintly louder.
Teguneu closed his eyes.
"In two months, I'll go to meet that boy."
The monologue, spoken to no one, was swallowed by the darkness of the cave.
At that moment, one of the black lizards, from the bushes at the village edge, caught sight of the boy standing motionless before the burning barn. The boy was no longer crying. He simply stared at the blazing flames, expressionless.
Teguneu saw that face.
(That's a good look.)
His lips moved, just slightly.
(I'll carve that face deeper still.)
Outside the cave, dawn was approaching. The mountain ridge was beginning to pale. The smoke of the burning village rose into the morning sky.
Teguneu gazed fixedly at where the smoke drifted.
The swarm of black lizards scattered, dissolving into the darkness of the cave. Their task was not yet done. Watch the boy. Keep reporting. Until the day Teguneu came to fetch him.
The wind made a sound at the cave's entrance.
It was a dry sound, like the echo of a memory from a distant day.
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