Angel Monarch

Sera's head was pounding and in severe pain. Her eyes slowly opened and focused on the bright blue sky. It was already started become purple which meant the Sun was about to set.

With a large groan of pain she sat up and tried to look around. Her vision swam and it couldn't focus on a single thing. It was very disorienting and it caused a lot of nausea to build up.

After a minute she couldn't hold it in any longer and she vomited on the ground to her right.

She spent the next few minutes on the ground puking up her guts, which were really empty.

It took her another few minutes after that for her vision to clear enough. Her eyes instantly focused on her team of three. They were staring at Sera.

Percy seemed to be a bit concerned, but mostly unbothered. Hector pretended to not be satisfied by the sight of Sera suffering. Kathy was the only one who seemed to actually care about Sera's wellbeing.

She walked to Sera and knelt down in front of her. Her mouth moved, but strangely enough no sound came out... or at least Sera heard nothing.

After a few seconds she realized that her hearing was gone, same with her smell and taste. She could only see, feel and talk.

With a lot of effort she read Kathy's lips. 'Are you okay?' She asked.

Sera just slowly nodded, which she instantly regretted since in that moment the migraine doubled in pain. She closed her eyes and slowly laid back on the grassy ground.

The headache and pain slowly decreased and she had eventually fallen asleep.

...

Kathy watched her leader groan in pain, then after being awake for only a few minutes, pass out yet again.

Her expression turned a bit grim. Behind her a boisterous laughter shook her bones.

She didn't even know what was happening, in one moment she was kneeling next to the passed out Sera, in the next she had already changed into a giant ghost leopard.

Without thinking she jumped on Hector's chest and held one of her front paws, with its gigantic claws, to his throat. The sound emanating from it got silenced instantly.

Kathy's maw full of multiple rows of razor sharp teeth came awfully close to his face. While growling angrily saliva dripped down right onto his face and into his eyes.

Hector's eyes got consumed in pure dread, but soon his idiocy came out victorious. His vision got absorbed in pure rage and with one swift move he threw Kathy right into a tree.

She didn't stop there since the three broke under her weight and by the power she was travelling with. In the next moment she hit the ground hard and even bounced a bit.

Her very bones groaned in pain, but luckily Hector was quite slow for his strength. Before he could close the distance she was already moving away.

After a minute of running she climbed onto a tree with extreme precision. Slowly the white leopard's color scheme changed. Her fur now had brown lines with a lots of green all over it. The camo made her nearly invisible if someone looked from the ground.

Kathy stayed there unmoving for another few minutes before she heard something large running in her direction. Hector looked fully enraged, his every breath sounded like a boiler that was about to explode from the pressure.

He slowed down just below her tree and when he least expected it, Kathy jumped from the branch where she was stalking Hector. The claws on her paws sank deep into his back muscles and her giant mouth clamped right on his right clavicle.

He went down instantly in a bleeding pile of screams. With his reflexes he reached back. His hand closed around Kathy's neck and with a very strong squeeze he broke her neck.

Her whole body went limp, except her head which was still clinging onto him. They were slowly closing in and after a few more seconds of struggling, a loud snap could be heard.

Hector screamed in torment as every bone in his right shoulder broke to pieces.

Kathy's neck mended it self in a couple of seconds. In reality she just moved the wound to a different bone structure in her body, one that wouldn't impede on her movement much.

With blood dripping from her maw, she slinked away back to their makeshift camp.

Percy looked very surprised and even more terrified seeing the ghost leopard approach their leader then lay down next to her. She even closed her eyes pretending to be asleep, but he knew that wasn't the case.

At every small sound her ears twitched a tiny bit. She was paying a lot of attention to her surroundings, and would probably kill anybody who tried to get close.

He stared a her for a few more seconds, then with a sigh moved away from the camp. While leaving he mumbled something about 'Getting dinner...'

Kathy just stayed lying there. It looked very peaceful from the outside, but in reality she was in full disarray. What happened, how she attacked Hector with no regard for his or her own life... it was a mistake.

She had no idea why she had even done it. Yeah, he laughed at Sera passing out again, but Kathy didn't feel even a little bit defensive about her.

'Then why are you lying next to her, protecting her unconscious body?' Asked the voice inside her head. It was a strange voice that talked to her quite often. It mimicked how she sounded like, but Kathy knew it wasn't originating from her.

Weirdly enough the voice started to speak to her on the same day she met Sera.

'I don't know! You tell me! You are the one who always asks questions about Lady Seraphine!' He shouted inside her head. The answer was only silence.

She puffed out her chest and sighed loudly. The deep rumble originating from her chest shook the ground below her. Next to her Sera felt it as well and she stirred a bit, but a moment later she was back in her deep sleep.

'I'm glad you brought this up. How is she like? Does she conspire or anything?' Her voice sounded strangely gleeful, like it was experiencing deep satisfaction.

Kathy didn't quite understand why the voice always asked her if Sera was conspiring or not. On one hand Kathy had no idea, on the other she didn't really want to tell anything important to this outsider.

'I have no clue. Can't you go and bother someone else?' She made her voice sound annoyed, and her emotions starting to reflect that as well.

The voice, her own voice, laughed inside her head. It was an uncanny feeling. The laughter was sadistic and evil.

'Oh, little Kathy. This connection takes so little to keep up and it is always nice to converse with you... Now I ask you again and you probably shouldn't dodge the question this time... What is she doing!'

The voice sounded friendly at first, but it soon became cruel and mad. Her body shuddered a bit from what was about to happen next.

Slowly pain started to appear all over her body. It wasn't from any injury or anything like that. It was a mental attack made by the voice inside her head. Chapter Experience:

Every time the voice asked her something it wanted to know badly and she didn't want to answer, the pain would come over her. It kept increasing until she eventually couldn't bear it any longer. In that moment she would tell everything to the voice.

Kathy tried to fight it every time, not because of her loyalty towards Sera. In reality she didn't care much about her. The resistance was more of a principle in her mind, she didn't want to bow down in front of this parasite in her mind.

Somehow she knew that on the day she stopped fighting it would be her last day as herself.

The pain gradually increased, her body trembled from it. Slowly her breathing pattern became erratic and quick, same as her heartbeat.

She seemed to hold out longer than usual, but after five minutes of pure excruciating pain, Kathy finally gave in.

'Nothing... She doesn't plan anything... She just wants to use the siege at New Constantinople to fully saturate her soul... It's because of that bastard Harold... She needs to do it by the end of the month...' She said a few more mundane things, but nothing new.

The pain had already stopped when she started speaking, but her body still shivered.

The voice laughed again, this time less cruelly and more in satisfaction.

'Bastard eh? He is quite an asshole if I do say so myself, I should probably take him out at some point...' The voice laughed even more hysterically, which made Kathy feel really uncomfortable since she was hearing her own voice.

'Anyway, it is good that she takes her task seriously. I hope the little angel will grow up fast!' After saying the last sentence the voice disappeared.

Kathy felt it leave, it always made her feel liberating. It was like when your boss watches you work, it always feels great when they just leave you to it!

She took a deep breath of the nice cool air and eventually fallen into a slumber of her own.