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* Imagine Dragons - Believer *

***

"Ahem! Um, Kid, would you please introduce your friends?" Jaime said, looking at the red haired boy and the young man in the weird garment.

"Hey don\'t you dare ignor-" the boy on the ground tried to yell but was quickly silenced with a head squeeze from Keith that made him yelp like an injured puppy.

"Yes Raven, please introduce us," Camilla said with a grin, "for as long as I can remember, you disliked being treated as a princess and have always told Joey to not treat you as such, yet now those two call you \'mistress\'... are you forming a secret cult or something?"

Raven turned red at that, "well, it\'s that I don\'t want Joey to treat me like that, it\'s just that he changes his behaviour around me and I don\'t like it.

"He\'s always energetic and funny, like he was in the soccer match. But around me, he\'s always so formal..." Raven was only telling the truth, she didn\'t want her friends to treat her formally as it would make her feel weird and guilty.

Hearing that, Joey realised where he was mistaken and felt bad about it. "I\'m glad.." he muttered looking up in the sky. "I\'ve always thought you hated me or didn\'t trust me because I reminded you of your past, but to think that it\'s because you didn\'t want me to change..." it didn\'t sound like a sensitive subject for the others, yet it made Joey tear up.

"You know... Araxel, that\'s so like you." Joey said with a charming smile that made his chestnut brown eyes sparkle under the sun. "You\'ve always insisted, back when we were still children, that we were like brothers and calling you with any sort of formality feels like an insult to you..."

Hearing that, Raven smiled warmly and sincerely. She didn\'t remember her past, but she knew it was something she\'d say.

"Get a room-" again, the boy was silenced. But this time it wasn\'t just a squeeze. His head hit the ground hard enough to break it.

Keith didn\'t like babysitting, but he couldn\'t just simply kill the boy in front of his mistress if she hadn\'t ordered it.

*cough*

Camilla coughed to break the awkward atmosphere. "So anyway, who are these two gentlemen?"

"Um, so this here is Keith." Raven said pointing at the black and white haired demon holding the boy. Keith bowed his head slightly in respect as Raven called out his name.

"And that\'s Calcer," she pointed at Calcer who waved back. "Hi, nice to meet you! It\'d be great if we became friends when my mistress summons us for real!" he had such a cheerful smile that made everyone feel off.

"What do you mean by summons for real?" Maria asked in confusion.

"Um well, you see, they\'re both demons that I\'ve summoned-"

"They\'re WHAT??" Jaime yelled subconsciously as he\'d never heard someone mentioning demon summoning so casually.

"My mistress," Keith looked at Raven and asked, "Will it, and I shall teach him respect." he said in a collected manner while looking Jaime in the eyes. The boy in his grasp seemed to twitch in pain for some reason.

"No don\'t worry about it," Raven replied with an awkward smile, before looking back at Jaime.

"How many?" he said in a low voice.

"How many what?"

"How many have you killed to summon such powerful demons?" Jaime wasn\'t naive and he knew these two demons weren\'t just some easy targets. Keith was at least A+ ranked if not A++ and Calcer was at least C++.

Normally Summoning demons required a sacrifice, and to think that the girl Camilla respected so much would have killed people or used the deaths in the city to her advantage for demon summoning made him almost puke.

"Why would I kill?" Raven was genuinely surprised and confused. "I only formed a contract with them, I didn\'t kill anyone."

"Are you telling me you summoned them without a sacrifice?"

"Yea-"

"BULLSH*T!" Jaime yelled, startling the group while flaring his mana. Naturally Keith wasn\'t happy about it.

"Calcer, hold the boy," he ordered as he was a higher rank. Handing the boy to the red haired demon, he stood by the still confused Raven\'s side. "My mistress, I was taught to be respectful in front of my masters\' guests, however, I\'m feeling that his rage is directed towards you. Would you like me to interfere?"

Blinking twice, Raven shook her head. "Yo, Jaime boy, I don\'t know what your problem is, but if you don\'t want to believe me then you don\'t have to."

"Jaime, Raven won\'t lie to you..." Camilla said with a hint of disappointment and anger.

"Yeah, I can\'t believe you\'re such an idiot," Maya followed, "don\'t you think she would have not mentioned the part about... you know, them being demons, if she wanted to hide the truth anyway?"

*sigh* Jaime felt that the little girl was making sense, yet he wasn\'t satisfied. "Keith, was it?" he said with an uneasy tone. It was never a wise decision to underestimate a named demon.

"Has your mistress, as you call her, paid you with souls, and if so, how many?"

"Sure, answer honestly..." Raven nodded towards Keith who was looking at her for confirmation.

Raven didn\'t even know souls could be used to summon demons. Heck, she didn\'t even know how to acquire or preserve souls.

Part of her wanted Jaime to believe her, and the other wanted to plant his stupid head in the ground.

But considering her state and that Jaimie is basically a friend by now, and that he\'d saved her more than once, she had to go with the diplomatic approach.

Receiving the confirmation from Raven, Keith nodded quietly and answered honestly, "Yes."

"Eh?" Raven was taken aback by Keith\'s answer. "I\'m sorry Keith it sounded like you said \'yes\' but that can\'t be true?"

Jaime only clenched his fists hard enough for his nails to dig in in his palm and cause him to bleed.

"My mistress," Keith continued. "I understand that you might not know it yourself, but if I were to describe the summoning process, it\'d be as follows;

"First, offering the souls to attract the demons\' attention. Once that happens, the demons either solve it peacefully or fight among themselves to determine who would answer the summoning.

"When a winner is decided, they absorb the souls in order to strengthen their body enough to withstand the atmosphere in the human plane for a specific period of time.

"That, or they absorb massive amounts of souls that\'s enough to build their body anew, thus, removing the time restrictions.

"Demons are beings that are built from souls and mana after all. They can\'t exist without both of these two elements being present in sufficient amounts.

"After acquiring a good body, they use the mana from their new master to transfer themselves into the human world. It\'s very rare for a summoning or a contract to be permanent since the amounts of souls required is-"

"Keith, stop..." Raven said with an expressionless face, looking at the ground.

Only after hearing the truth from Keith did she realise what she\'s actually done. "Tell me, how did I give you souls if I didn\'t even know anything about them?"

Raven could feel herself lose control slowly. She didn\'t care about using souls for her summoning if that was going to help her save people that are still alive.

Heck, as an assassin, she\'s killed many people, even when she escaped from Lady Luck\'s place. But most people were in the brothel\'s close vicinity so she didn\'t care, not that she\'s planned it anyway.

What made her mind unsteady though, was that the demon she summoned, named, and trusted, was lying to her.

Trust was an issue she thought she had got ridden of along time ago, but maybe not.

Feeling Raven\'s mana and rage, Keith instantly kneeled and bowed his head down. "My mistress-"

"Did you just lie to me, Keith?" Raven said with a voice that was chilly enough to sent shivers down his spine, and a glare that was sharp enough to cut his heart apart.

She didn\'t have any mana left for a fight against the demons and she knew it, but Raven wasn\'t happy about someone misusing her trust.

"I didn\'t," Keith said honestly, which made Raven stand there clueless as to what he meant. She knew for a fact she hadn\'t actively included any souls for the contract.

Jaime who witnessed all of that didn\'t know how to react. Both of them seemed honest and sincere about their answers. Yet, it didn\'t make any sense.

"My mistress!" Calcer kneeled besides Keith while keeping the boy\'s head on the ground. "Keith isn\'t lying. Please, may I explain?"

"Uhm," Raven nodded as she didn\'t know what else to do.

"Thank you," Calcer thanked her and started his explanation, "what happened to me was that after I\'ve won the fight against the other demons that were interested in the contract, I was sent into another dimension of sorts.

"It\'s not the first time that I\'ve been summoned to the human world so I know that part wasn\'t supposed to happen. When I woke up there, all I could see was darkness and one soul sphere that was floating in the air.

"Even though the soul sphere looked like a purple apple, like it usually does, it had purple flames coming out of it. Lord Keith, I\'m assuming that\'s what happened to you too, right?"

\'Lord Keith?\' Jaime muttered in his mind.

"Yes," Keith replied, "when I woke up in that dimension, I found three soul spheres floating midair, illuminating the otherwise dark space. However, unlike normal soul spheres, each one was packed with at least a thousand souls.

"Also, they weren\'t only human souls, but many other races that I couldn\'t identify."

"Raven?" Maria asked as she tried to approach her, but she was stopped by Camilla.

"How did you get so many?" Camilla asked with a look of betrayal.

...

"I don\'t know..." Raven said after a long pause. She actually had no idea how or why.. At first she thought the two demons were playing tricks on her, but now she just didn\'t know.