Separation (Final)

    When I left the cafe, it was already dark out. Walking along the street, the streetlamps blink, as if laughing after hearing a funny story. Sometimes I laugh too much at her remarks, and passers-by look at me strangely, but if I'm with Mari I'm not scared of anything. It was cold day and our faces turned pink, it felt like I would be a teenager forever. I noticed that I had arrived in front of my apartment. "We're here. Thanks for today, and take care on your way home Mari. Sorry I didn't notice that we came all the way to my home." Mari shakes her head "It's okay, I'll see you later." I disappeared into the dark as I ran.

    I never plan to see her, when I'm struggling and I wander about, she appears out of nowhere and helps clear my mind. Doing something with Mari is fun even if you're not doing anything. Every time I meet her I hesitate, the happiness I feel when I'm with her makes me hesitant to be with her. As I stared after her, I lost track of time, I heard rough breathing and heavy footsteps from behind me as I returned to reality. "You?" The fat cop spits at me. "What?" I said while wiping the spit off my face. His hands were sweaty and tight. "You've been reported as a nuisance." I wanted to run away. "Well," he said. The inside of my head started to spin, I feel dizzy. The uncomfortable cold makes my thoughts foggy. Why did he say that? "Your face looks like you don't understand why. There was a report from the nearby residents that there was a suspicious person who was laughing alone at night." I'll run like a bullet at full speed up to my apartment. "Hey!" As the voice followed me my fear rose. I ran out of breath as I ran to the second floor. "I got it! I understand! I understand!" I shoved my key into the door and opened it while the calls never stopped as I slammed the door. After a while the noise stopped, and I collapsed into the entrance. My tears overflowed. I want keep my happy time with Mari unstained by dirty language. Mari is real. She's a close friend who supports and acknowledges me.

    I threw my shoulder into the door, and walked through the open door. I went to the bathroom and opened the door. The basin was filled with dirty water mixed with blood running from the cut. The cutter fell to the tile and swirled into the drain. I close my eyes and taste the blood. When I opened my eyes, there I was in the mirror. Withered hair, and skin that looked to be coated with white power. The light-coloured, sharp eyes similar to birds of prey moved restlessly, the thin calf and thigh resembling a skeleton. Looking in the mirror is my favourite time. I'm so ugly that I want to hold on to it. "I'm sorry." I spit a curse while looking at myself.

    I hate all of myself. I take off the clothes that become heavy with moisture and dry off my body. I change clothes and as I walk to the kitchen, I notice that I was smiling. Take out a cup pour some water, take out the two pills of Etizolam and put them in my mouth. For a moment I taste bitterness, but it disappears with the water. Yes, I forgot. I broke my cup and I look at my left wrist while I lie on my bed. Since I bathed earlier I couldn't see the red, but it was still the same. I opened my camera and took a photo and called it Pasha. Put a mosiac on the private parts. and post it to Twitter. My cell starts buzzing soon. I feel pleased that I'm being sought after too. My work of art. After seeing the reaction I let go of my phone. I'm getting sleepy and I still have to take care of my skin. Take the Nivea blue can next to my  bed and apply the cream on my body. At the same time I took the pillow mist next to me and sprayed my pillow, the smell rose softly.

    When I finished, I feel like I did everything that I could, and I covered my self with a thin blanket and hid my breathing. My own secret base that no one of the monsters of the outside world could harm. The scent of Nivea and my own mixed and brought a sense of security, and gradually my breathing slows from comfort.

I hate myself.

I love Mari.

I fell into a deep sleep.

Table of Contents
Part Two

Separation (Part Two)

    Then I woke up. I looked at my phone, the clock waws around ten in the morning. I had slept for more than six hours. As I got up, I realized that I could hear faint breathing from the slide's side. Someone's there. It's strange to play hide-and-seek with someone who was sleeping on the slide. Speaking of which, is the coin case safe? I fumbled for the case, and then I felt it, relieved that no one had stolen it. If it was a weak-looking guy, I would get up and look down at him with a faint anger. The moment my eyes met the golden coloured irises staring back at me, I started to smile. She loosened her fists and smiled as well, "Did you finally wake up?", and lightly shook my shoulders.
Did I wake up? No.....what are you doing, Mari?

(Akane) "What are you doing?"

(Mari) "That's my line."


   Very funny, but I wonder what Mari is doing here. Mari has been my close friend for a while now. Even though I didn't want this kind of relationship, it was happening anyways. Even when I was about to die from my father's drunken beatings, she stayed with me.

    (Akane) "I was taking stroll, and decided to take a nap here."

    (Mari) "I tried pretty hard to wake you up." She looked towards the rising sun, as she made an annoying face.

    "It's kinda chilly out today isn't it? It's been a while since you've been at the coffee shop, you want to have a cup of tea?" Mari said while rubbing her arms through her thin clothes.

    "I guess, but it's fairly expensive isn't it? I only have five-hundred yen, and you're empty handed."

    "It'll be fine."

    "I'm worried about you, Akane."
I was shocked, my thoughts stopped for a moment. Mari awkwardly laughing at my face.

    I took a seat at the counter, which smelled of cigarette smoke, sipped a cup of coffee that was worth far more than four-hundred yen. I started to complain to Mari like usual. "I'm not going to stop." I don't want to show off, but I'm still doing it. What should I do? I want to stop my self. I was fascinated by my left wrist again,while talking in a fast and monotone voice. The wound is still a bright red colour. The nail polish that I bought because I liked the colour of, was peeling off of my nails. A Fall-Winter limited the colour of pomegranates. I had heard from other people that it's good. I don't know what to do. Mari didn't get upset and was quietly listening while staring at the wound with me.

    "I see." Her hand slipped into mine, though weak, it held my hand. Her was soft and surprisingly cold. "I think it's okay for you to calm down, but remember it's not all bad, there's a lot of good things out there, and it's all money." I felt Mari's words spinning gently in my mind as she spoke with a gentle voice, my tension gradually slipped away.

   "You're beautiful. You're fine as you are. I'll listen to anything you want to say, it's okay." If my friends keep telling me these things, I wonder if I will be able to sincerely face them if they keep doing this. The frozen ice of my mind melts, as Mari comforts me. I can't wait to go to bed.

    The girl sitting at the counter next to Mari was glancing at us, I wondered why she was, then I looked at Mari and came to an understanding. Mari never said it but she had a modest beauty like a flower blooming in the shade, she had a figure that walked straight with thin and flexible legs, that doesn't look back after she has passed. Mari didn't seem to notice it, but when I met the girl's eyes she looked away embarrassed. I felt a sense of deja vu, oh, it was the delivery girl who saw me when I was sleeping on the slide.

Why do they all react the same?

    When I sighed in melancholy, Mari murmured "Akane it's not funny," as if she had realized everything. I looked at her with surprise, Mari looked back at me and smiled thinly. How much does Mari know about me?, always smiling by my side. I've never loved anyone before, but I think I may love her. Mari smiles brilliantly. If only I could have been my parent. Speaking of which, I've heard a lot of stories, that she has a lover and lives with him, but I didn't know. Mari may have avoided it deliberately. It's fine, but I wanted to stay a bit longer. I looked her in the eyes "Thanks Mari." She just smiled sadly, "You can talk to me any time." It felt strange to see her sad expression that I had seen somewhere, but her hands touch was still there.

Part One
Table of Contents   
Final

Separation (Part One)

Separation

Author: Nen

          When I woke up, my eyes were open and I couldn't fall back asleep for a long time. When I’m lying in bed, my body aches and I can’t fall asleep to pass the time. The face of the clock showed three thirty-three AM. Outside of the window it’s dark and quiet. Just a night of sinking. The smell of Nivea and the sweet and sour smell of the pillow mist is all I have now. I wear a flimsy blanket to drown out the pain, so I won’t lose my sense of being. No matter where you are, whatever you do. I took off my blanket and got up, swirled the sour left in the refrigerator from the bottle, and played the melody of the CD that I used to listen to in the old days with a speaker on a whim. The nostalgic intro flows at a slow pace. When I used to enjoy playing with friends and having unrequited love the lyrics touched me, but now they seems so foreign. My daily routine was to sleep at night and listen to ballads while I fell asleep, but I almost spouted a ballad that appealed to me, but I pulled out the plug and was stuck. Cold silence in a boring room. I’m helpless and dumb. I want to die suddenly, the tips of my cold limbs start to hurt. Tears dampened my pillow, even if the sight was pathetic no one will comfort me. If you wipe it with your finger, you’ll scratch the inside of your eye. The wound was red as the bleeding hadn’t stopped, the area where the blood was exposed was blueish-purple and in some places, it could even be beautiful. If I play with the wounds I put there three days ago, it hurts more than before, but it satisfies me. I don't want anyone to see me. When it becomes unbearable, I cut impulsively. When I cut my wrists, it feels like I’m free from my worries and anxiety. If I had to choose something I love , it would be my wounds. I have nothing. No hobby I enjoy, no ability to tout, even my head isn't right. I lived surrounded by kind parents, bad brothers, bloody conversations, and inferior items that were seen on TV. Since I was born to a mother who didn’t even know my face, and lived being beaten by my dingy father, I lack the sense of self-affirmation that everyone should have. For me, filling up my lonely time is synonymous with the pain of being alone with myself. At night when no one is anxious. The thought that started to fill my mind was that I wanted to be freed from the stifling tightness of my head. I let go of the plug that I held, and put on the jumper that hung on the rack.

          I was relieved by the feeling and presence that filled my hand. This daily routine, which is like sleepwalking, shows no sign of ending. I threw my key and cell phone onto my desk, and put my hand on the doorknob and opened the door. The smell of the night covers me with a sweet fragrance, so as to cover the scent of my room. The smell of the air is cold. The newscaster mentioned that it would be chilly. The thin pajamas, jumper, and sandals don’t stop the cold, but I can’t be bothered to change.


          I turn the key, and walk down the apartment stairs. I can hear the neighbour speaking, faintly and happily, I’m surprised that someone else is awake now. I want my sentimental nights, to be undisturbed by loud and messy noises. A group of foolish moths flock to a lamp, buzzing around it.

          For what purpose are we born for? In the end we’ll all be ashes. The number of people that can leave a brilliant achievement behind as their legacy are limited. The rest are desperately trying to be seen and recognized before they die. How valuable is life, when compared to all of human history? Walking through the street, passing through the apartment’s entrance. There was nowhere left to go. I laughed at my self. I caught a glimpse of the park slide illuminated by the street lamps, and unconsciously approach. When I was living with my parents, there was a park about twenty minutes away by foot

          In this park there is only a slide, sandbox, and a basic three-piece set swing, it seems that there is no jungle gym, or rideable panda. As I put my hand on the handrail of the slide, I feel the rough feeling of rust. When I was in elementary school, I made a pitfall at the end of the slide. It doesn’t change the fact that I hate the innocent children from that time. I walked up the stairs in a wobbly gait, but I was sleepy and as I squatted at the top of the stairs I remembered that I was drinking. As soon as I realized I was over come by an intense thirst. If I was attacked by a thug or a robber I would be unable to resist, like a newborn rabbit.

          It’s not like I wanted to be born. As I thought of this I became sad, and sobbed while feeling the cold metal of the slide. I cried while lying on the slide in the middle of the night, and thought perhaps I wasn’t a weak person, just a suspicious drunk. My crys echoed in my ears. Who am I? Twenty-three, crying in a park, is this my true self? “I’ll keep going.” The words I have heard somewhere before make my lips tremble. It was like a spell, I liked the sound of it. It means “I think,therefore I am.” My mind will reject my worthless body that my father abused, and I damaged. This is the first time I’ve seen my body like this. First of all, does what I’m even thinking about even exist? The soul of my uncle that left this world centuries before. If I cried for a while, my tears would dry up, and I would use them for for useless things.

          I don’t want to shed tears for myself, but for children. I am scum. The sky is getting lighter, the birds start to sing within the park’s thickets. The man in glasses who came to deliver the newspaper to the house opposite the park, looked at me and pretended to see nothing. You don’t want to see me, dirty, pathetic. When I look at the people who work, I feel lazy and close my eyes in a light haze of drunkenness. In my mind the man in glasses paints a scene on the backs of my eyelids, and fills it with a mosaic.

Table of Contents
Part Two

Another Day - Chapter Twenty-eight

    "This is the best breastplate in the whole town, maybe even the whole region! It rivals even the mythril armour that the nobles of the nine Great Families wear. I guarantee its absolute quality." boasts a tall, lank man with a thin mustache and voice that I swear I've heard before. His chest is so puffed up that it looks almost comical. The thick man with the huge beard beside him smiles widely, enjoying the praise with his chin held high. I would've called him a typical hardworking blacksmith which you can see in any decent town, but his face is too clean and his hands look like they have never touched a forge.

    While looking at both of them, I bend the breastplate with my bare hands and the busy merchant house falls silent. Looking at the bent excuse for a piece of armour I sigh deeply. After another deeper breath to calm myself down, I put the chest armour on the table and start walking out of the "best" place to buy armour, ignoring the cry of the owner and chatter of people inside.
Useless shit wherever you go.

    I gathered some funds during the boat trip by playing the local card game with the other co-travelers on the ship. Sadly, I was only able to participate in the game for a single day, after which everyone refused to join the game if I was playing. The Endless Empire soldiers, who were returning home, were especially angry as I gathered a small fortune from them. Though they didn't dare to do anything after learning what I did with the automatons.

    As usual, not everyone was so bright, and during one of the nights I had a visit from a few shadow guests. The quiet night was broken by screams of pain, which disappeared as quickly as they appeared. A few minutes later a huge crowd had gathered around my room entrance, and a pile of broken and bloody bodies near it. No one dared to pursue it further. The guards didn’t even question me about what happened.

    It's quite simple actually, no one does anything without approval from the guards themselves. And it's expected, as there are always people who will attempt to acquire things using easier methods, including stealing. The ship stopped at the harbour the next day, and everyone went on their own way. The very first thing I decided to do with the newly acquired funds was to buy a decent sword and set of armour. I fully understood that I won't be able to get any good equipment in this city, which isn't the capitol, but even "mediocre" at least shouldn't bend like it was made out of paper?

    After rethinking it for a short bit, I exit the upper-level market area and walk down to the lower-class area and I ask for directions to the closest blacksmith. Reaching the shabby looking street I was pointed to, I find it very noisy, but not with people, but rather work. A person sharpening knives is sitting just few meters away from a group of people skinning some kind of wildlife, and right across from them are several young boys who are running and orderly piling up bricks on top of a cart. And the whole street in a busy frenzy ignores each other, trying to do something. My eyes find a half-crumbled one storey stone building, with an anvil sign on it, and my body instantly starts walking in its direction.

    After a small explanation of why I can’t simply go and buy armor in a shop, and a few gold coins later, the blacksmith went into the backroom and returned with exactly what I wanted, a thick chain-mail set with a simple steel breastplate. The whole thing doesn't look very presentable, as it isn't polished to a near mirror-like state like in the shops, but I can tell that this thing is worth the money, or at least I think so. Thankfully, I was able to find a decent sword with fortification enchantments on it already, which was quite a hassle as the stupid seller kept insisting that his shop has many better swords with much better enchantments, specifically, those that cover the blade in fire and lightning. Those type of weapons look pretty but are absolutely useless in a real fight. Oh look, I have a shiny sword, which shines so brightly that, even I, the wielder, am blinded by it.

    Though I can’t judge the quality of the enchantment, as I'm not an expert in that field. But I know that some enchantments last for decades, others for just a few weeks. Hopefully it will last more than few hits though. It's quite heavy for local standards, as it was designed for "bigger species", but for someone from other side of planet like me, the local swords for humans look too flimsy and tiny, calling them rapiers would be a compliment. Anyway, the closest ship to the capital is in about a week, and all the "seats" have already been bought, so I decided to buy a horse and continue the rest of the travel on my own. The horse is currently in the stable, being fed and prepared for the travel, while I finish the final tasks in this city.

    While walking in the direction of the potion brewer's shop I'm once again struck by the bizarreness of Astapad city. On one hand you have enormous towers throughout the whole city, with a huge white castle in the center of it all, but all of them are in disrepair, showing just how ancient the whole city really is. They tried to hide the damage with simple paint and by filling up the huge holes in the walls with new bricks and stones, but fail miserably. Magic reinforced stone isn't that easy to make, and it's the main reason that such huge structures can exist in the first place.

    On the other hand you have hundreds of automatons walking around the city, in all sizes, shapes, and colours. Most of them are humongous multi-limbed creatures in a very poor state, which rarely look humanoid and are designed for hard labor, such as carrying heavy things around. Though I have seen a few rare exceptions, such as when I saw a noble in lavishly dressed clothes, surrounded by guards and closely followed by a dream like beautiful female automatons with surreal figures and faces, in clothes that are more appropriate to call underwear. How the hell can they have so many automatons, which are pinnacle of engineering all around the city, but have such abysmal infrastructure? This just makes no sense. If you can create automatons you should for sure be able to repair the building, or at least build new ones.

    Continuing the walk I turn right into a narrower alley, which should shorten the path a bit as I was told, and find a very different city. Dirty buildings with yellowish moss covering them and people with clothes made out of different coloured dirty patches of what could have been cotton quite a long time ago, fully reflect the stark difference between the city’s social structure. A high pitched scream grabs my attention and my eyes turn in the direction where the sound came from. My eyes stop on half a dozen laughing guards near the bleeding body of a man on the ground, and a screaming woman behind it. The woman falls down on her knees and tries to stop the bleeding from a huge wound on the man’s chest as he starts coughing on his own blood. The locals around look away and resume their walk trying not to get involved as they have always done.

    A huge grin spreads across one of the guard’s face as he slaps the woman across her face, sending her tumbling a few meters away from the man’s body. Walking to her sobbing frame the guard grabs her by the hair and pulls up causing the woman to yelp in pain. The guard starts fiddling with his pants and they drop down a few moments later.

Some things are the same whenever you go.

[Are you talking about the behavior of the guards or the people around?]

[There is simply is no reason for them to risk their lives and the lives of their loved ones for someone they don't even know.]

[Or maybe that is exactly what they are telling themselves, that this is not their problem and that they should not get involved. Survival of the fittest, right?]

[Injustice and corruption happens all around world, and for whatever reason people always believe that it is someones else problem, that someone else will help or fix it.]

[Why risk it, right?]

[We have our own goals. Why should we waste time on these pitiful humans? One life more, one life less, nothing more. And the only reason that the tiny voice in your head is raising these moral question is that unlike everyone else you have nothing to lose.]

[Life will not change.]

[The world will not change.]

[And so neither will we.]
    My sword sliced across the crowd of guards, and they exploded into messy clouds of flesh, gore, blood, and armour pieces. Before anyone could react the sword moved again, and another group of guards followed their fate, with their innards painting the walls of the alley dark red. A single guard leaped at me with his sword visibly shining with mana, only to connect with my sword and split in half together with its wielder. Not losing the momentum, the sword continues its arc connecting with several more who attempted to fight or run away.

    Within a few moments only two guards are left with their swords pointing at me. One of them, after quick glance at the dead bodies of his comrades, decided to flee. Though the attempt was shortly stopped when I took a sword from one of the dead and threw it straight into the back of the fleeing guard, who fell down like a sack of potatoes. Turning to the last one, which is stammering something about mercy with his pants visibly soiled. Ironic that he repeats the same words that have been spoken just a several moments ago by their victim just few meters away from him.
Do they really not understand that this is exactly what they have been subjecting other to?

    I grab the human failure, which tries to crawl away, by the leg and slam his body against the corner of the building which causes the upper half to detach from the lower one, painting the corner same colour as the walls are. Turning to victims I find the woman frozen in terror with the same eyes I have seen many times, the ones which just saw a monster. The reaction is a magnitude higher than the one she was showing less than a minute ago when the man next to her was being killed. After a deep sigh, I turn around and resume my walk in the direction of the potion brewer faster than before.

[What did you expect, a "thank you"?]

I need to leave the city now.

After quickly buying several potions, provisions for the travel and getting my horse from the stables I exit the city and start towards the west.

...

    Looking at the map once again in order to make sure that this isn't a mistake or a trick of my sick mind, I helplessly sigh as I stand before the only walking path from my current location to the central island. The island on which I'm currently on, the south-eastern one, and the south-western one, where the tournament with Amazons will be, are divided by an ocean. The area where they are closest to each other, which is approximately forty kilometers, are connected by a road, which I expected to be a narrow path created by the low tide. The path is actually a long stone bridge, which is at least sixty meters in width and twice that in height.

    They couldn't fix the main buildings in one of their major cities, which means that they simply couldn't have built something of such scale or grandness. Another relic of the ancients most likely. How is it possible that there was so much made, so much known, and still every single kingdom lost that knowledge? Everyone at the same time... The horse under me neighs and reminds me that I've been standing idle for a bit too long. And the weather isn’t getting much better either. I sigh once again.

    After about a dozen minutes of riding I arrive at the the colossal structure and find it in extremely bad condition. This explains why I haven't seen any carriages going on this path between the islands. The path exists, but I don't think that big carriages will be able to pass here, but a single human should be able to. The further I walk, the more destroyed I find the bridge, whereas in the beginning the road itself was cracked with potholes throughout it, right now though, around me there are huge chunks of bridge simply missing. And a single misstep may lead to me falling down into the wild ocean underneath and the fierce waves that continues to crash against the stone bridge.

    I continue travelling through the half-destroyed bridge, carefully evading the holes for about another hour until I come to a full stop. A deep chuckle escapes me as I look at the "end" of the bridge. Well technically it's not the end, it's just that the rest of the path continues until about two dozen meters from the cliff. Looking down I find a few parts of the missing area of the bridge laying near the base of the columns that act as supports for the bridge.
Is this the reason that there were no carriages?
Why didn’t they fucking update the maps then?

[You didn’t ask anyone. You just assumed that the map was correct, and that you didn’t need help.]
I can return back to the previous city, hide myself in the city, and take the next ship going west and I could theoretically make it in time for the whole thing...

The alternative is to try and jump over.

People think that there's always an option to turn back and return where they started, to try again and again until they succeed. But that's a lie that they're telling themselves.

In real life there is no second chance.

    Taking everything valuable from the horse, I slap it and send it away. While fastening everything on me tighter, I start circulating mana and sending it to the muscles in my legs. There were a few cases were I was able to do things beyond what the human body is capable of. Now I need to simply jump over a small cliff, just a bit over twenty meters, nothing more.

Just a simple jump.

    Stretching the muscles in my body I start increasing the blood pressure in my arteries along with the mana circulation's intensity. I start walking away from the edge until I reach a good acceleration distance. Taking deep breaths, I make the final preparation for the jump, and when the body is filled with enough energy and air, the stone floor under my feet cracks as I start quickly gaining speed. Just a fraction of a second later I find myself at the edge and my legs explode, sending me into the air. The loud whistling of the winds eclipses the sound of the ocean as I fly through the air for several long seconds. By the trajectory of my jump and my speed I determine that I'll make it, and just a few moments later I land on the stone floor on the other side with a roll, only for the whole area to audibly crack and fall apart.

Of course.

How could I assume that they things would go the way I expected them to?

    The water isn't as cold as it looked from the bridge, but the waves counter to that, are even more threatening than they looked from above. Fighting the current I grab onto the closest pillar and look around to determine my current status. Thankfully I grabbed onto the correct pillar and the only thing I have to to is climb up.

Easier said than done.

    After about a minute of climbing I reach the top of the bridge. Cursing under my breath I continue walking near the railing of the bridge trying to keep myself close to the area which stands on the pillars. The walk continues and slowly the clothes on me dry under the strong wind. About two hours later I come to another issue. The bridge simply ends. Focusing my eyesight I look around and find the continuation of the path about a kilometer away.

Great.

Looking in both directions, I determine that I'm approximately in the middle of the road between the two islands, stuck on a piece of rock with no path forward.

Sighing deeply I look back.

[Just go back. Try again. Maybe the city guards are not searching for you.]

[Maybe you will find a nice ship, filled to brim with good people, they will help you and point you in the correct direction.]

[What has ever made you think that things will become complicated. We always met only happy faces.]

Tightening the gear on my body once again I look forward.

Nothing changes.

I leap into the ocean and start swimming in the direction of the other side of the bridge.

...

This explains a lot.

    Far away I see the outline of Syena city, which sits on top of a small hill, just about two dozen kilometers away from the ocean. The city is connected to another, at least ten times smaller city, which as far as I can see, just acts as a port. There's a huge road connecting the "port" and the city, where a lot of traffic is visible. The port itself is filled to the brim with ships, with several times more of that number anchored outside of the port.

    I look back at the city, where the competition should be hosted, and where the Amazons should be. It looks shockingly similar to the Ancient Capital of the Sun Empire, and is approximately the same size. But unlike the Ancient Capital, the city is divided with merely three rings of walls, with the outer one around thirty kilometers in radius. Still, even with a "mere" three rings, calling the city enormous would be a slight understatement. In the very center of it is a massive tower a bit less than two kilometers in radius, its top isn't currently visible, as it's hidden behind the thick clouds in the skies.

    On the outer ring of the city are six towers, which are about a tenth of that size, which are connected to the central one with gigantic arcs. Unlike all the other cities I have seen before on this side of the world, this one looks to be in near perfect condition. I stop analyzing the city structure and turn my gaze to the huge queue of people trying to enter the mega-city visible even from here. After about a half an hour of walking I join at the end of the queue, only to find that it moves so slowly that it could take days just to get to the gates. This will take some time, but I think that it won't be an issue at all, as people around are all talking about the event, and that it will take a few more days. That means that the Amazons should still be there for at least that long.

    The day moves slowly, with the queue moving forward. Several colourful carriages have passed by, ignoring the queue all together and the people standing in it. But not everyone is simply waiting, as quite a few stalls around are selling food, clothes, and more for people who are in desperate need of it. It seems as if there is a tiny city based around the queue into the city itself.

    There are quite few guards walking around, mostly in the direction of one of the several brothels formed around the queue. And by the talk it seems the reason there are so many guards here is because the prices here are much lower than in the city, and they can freely move in and out of city without the need to pay the massive toll.

    The queue would be a good way to hide myself and quietly slip into the city, but the issue is that I stand out too much. Even if I cover my head full of gray hair with a hood, I'm  still standing out. The huge sword on my hip and my height are hard to hide. I'm standing about a head higher than anyone else around, and nearly everyone around me have taken at least a few glances in my direction. And I already marked several suspicious ones in the crowd which will more likely act soon.

And as I expected they acted.

A simple diversion on one side of the queue and a small pickpocket from the opposite side, which softly collided with me in the place where the wallet usually is. Standard action, and standard strategy.

    After I caught him red-handed, his friends joined in to help him and teach me a lesson. A few mangled bodies and a crushed skull later, a small circle of emptiness was created around me. Quite soon "righteous" guards appeared and started questioning people about what just happened here. Like they weren't watching the whole thing from afar. I would even go as far as to call those very guards the ringleaders.

    The half a dozen guards surround me in a half-circle and start the theatrical play, with stupid questions, answers which they already know, and fake exaggerated emotions. Some of them react passively as if they have seen this many times before, one even has a smirk plastered on his face, as if he just saw something amusing.

It is always the same damn thing.

[We should do this quietly. Attention is something that we do not need right now.]

Of course.
Simply allow them to do their stuff.
And I will do mine.

[Wait no-]

In the next instant I appear before the lead guard and grab his hand which was just about to pull his sword. It took a few more moments for the guards around to understand what's happening and grab their swords.

"Either arrest me or fuck off." my voice comes low and cold.

His eyes freeze when they meet mine. He attempts to say something but only stutters. He audibly gulps, and releases the hold on his sword. In the next few moments the whole thing deescalated quite quickly, and before I knew it I was standing alone, with mention that the guards will find and contact me after the investigation is finished. There are people like that. Puffed up chickens which bail as soon as things start going south, or when they see that their bluff failed.

    Within a few hours I was able to enter the city, and the first thing that became shocking is the number of automatons, and their types. Every human looking automaton I have seen in the previous city pales in comparison to even the worst ones here. It's as if people have been trying to create the aesthetically perfect bodies, and succeeded in that. There's just one problem with these automatons. They either wear fully transparent nightgowns or pieces of clothing that wouldn't be appropriate to even call underwear as they barely cover anything. I somehow feel that these small pieces of cotton make them look even more naked than if they were naked. The non-human looking ones look like a mix of different wild animals and a huge chrome slime. They all have mirror-like shining armor, with your face reflecting in it if you look at them.

This city is just too strange.

But I'm not here for the city.

Chapter Twenty-seven
Table of Contents

*This is the last chapter I'll be editing for now until the author comes back.*

Another Day - Chapter Twenty-seven

    The jaws of a lich, filled to brim with long, black fangs, open wide in burning hatred. As the abomination is about to screech, the fear reflects in its soulless sockets which have a red fire burning in them. A moment later my foot crushes its skull into the black granite floor, and I feel as it explodes into a thousand small chunks.

    My eyes don't linger on the crushed lich even for a second, as they turn in the direction of the next incoming enemy. I don't know how I hear or see them, as my vision went completely black a while ago, and hearing doesn't help much in a pit of rattling and screeching bones. Nonetheless I somehow feel, or rather "see", something close to me in the darkness. It's as if a burst of bright white light in form of a humanoid figure flashed before you, after which it just as quickly disappeared into nothingness a moment later.

    With my feet I feel the movement of several liches near me, and a second later a dozen light outlines of liches flash around, only for them to be ripped apart by the swing of the broken sword in my hand a moment later. Before I have time to prepare for the next attack, I see a huge red ball traveling in my direction from far away with tremendous speed. My legs explode with strength and I evade the oncoming red ball of fire by just a hair's breadth. The fire ball hit the ground not far from me, exploding in waves of heat, lighting up the pit and the thousands of liches around me. Just as quickly as the light materialized, it disappeared, submerging the pit back into absolute darkness.

    The creatures of corruption and hate continue assaulting me, trying to bury me under their sheer weight and number. Several times they nearly accomplished that, but the important word here is 'nearly'. I don't know how much time has passed since I entered the pit.

    All of my feelings are dulled, like I'm half asleep, on the brink of either falling asleep or waking up. This somehow reminds me of what I felt like on the South Pole, when I was trying to remove the spears out of my body and break out of the snow prison. Nonetheless my body continues moving, like puppets on strings, following the commands of dictator that doesn't take "no" as an answer. Even my recently lost left hand which was eaten by four liches, which appeared out of nowhere and attacked together, doesn't hinder me.

    When I entered this room, rage consumed me as it had many times before, but this time it was different. I'm conscious, I'm able to control it, direct it at the enemies before me. Which doesn't make sense because if one can't keep his head cool, the breath and blood circulation stability would be consumed by ambient and chaotic dark mana.

But here I am, standing, fighting, and thinking. The reason doesn't matter right now.

The enraged skulls, with dark mana shining inside of their empty eye sockets, continue to flash through my vision. One by one they continue to appear out of nowhere, and exploding into chunks, disappearing into the darkness of the pit. I stopped feeling my limbs quite some time ago, but the time nearly impossible to track, making it all feel somehow surreal, like a dream. But every time one of my limbs makes another lich disappear into nothingness, I'm reminded that I'm still here, that I'm still alive, and still fighting.

How much time has it been since I entered this pit? An hour? A day? A month? A year?

    By all physical laws, I should've been dead a long time ago. A single bug against millions of liches? There's a reason fairy tales stay fairy tales, such things don't happen in the real world. No, if this would be a fairy tale people wouldn't have suffered, the innocent wouldn't have died, a happy end for them would have existed....

    After the loss of my left arm, my torso had been pierced at least nine times, with severe blood loss and possibly more. By any normal standards those wounds should've been mortal ones, but nonetheless here I am, continuing the war, riddled with holes which are slowly disappearing, as if they didn't exist in the first place.

Where does the nutrition for healing come from?

How am I still able to move?

How can I see these burst of lights which outline the enemies in this darkness?

Doesn't matter.

    I notice that the range from which I can see the white bursts of light appears to have increased slightly. Focusing on it while the enemies continue their assault, I can see with the naked eye how it grows, millimeter by millimeter, compounding and transforming to centimeters, and even meters. And the more my range of "view" increases, the more I understand that there are simply too many of them. Mountains upon mountains of undead which don't know pain, rest, or fear, which want me dead and will do whatever it takes to accomplish that.

    The odds have been stacked against me from the start. Victory was never an option. A single tiny bug in a pit surrounded by an uncountable number of liches. It was always a question of time, of how much long it will take for my body to fall apart, for my heart to stop moving, for me to be buried by the sheer mass of enemies before me.

I will die here.

No.
No.

NO.

No, I will not.

My life isn't my own, it no longer belongs to me.

    Every single injustice and evil I have witnessed. Every single brother I have lost, every single life I have taken, every single life that has been destroyed before me. They all will disappear, forgotten forever. All of it would be for nothing. All the suffering would hold no meaning. If I disappear, so will the last proof that they existed in this world.

I can not allow that.

I will not allow it. This is not the end, not yet.

They must be destroyed, every single one of them.

The world will scream their names.

    Somewhere from deep within me mana starts seeping into my flesh, blood, and bones, slowly at first then faster and faster, as if droplets of water breaking through cracks in earth, increasing them. With each breath mana intensity grows in higher and higher, like waves during storm, they continue growing in magnitude, becoming more violent, desiring to swallow and kill those that dared to challenge it. Trying to take it under control, I put my very being into it and I feel as my body temperature rises sharply, blood pressure reaches such a level, that even a tiny wound would be enough to cause a fountain of blood to gush out. Muscles tighten, and I feel as they rip and restore themselves again and again, in a near endless cycle, until they became something more. With an inhuman roar I leap at the flashing white lights that have surrounded me once again, ripping the abominations made from bone apart and sending them into the darkness forever.

More.

MORE!

MORE [MORE]!!

...wait for me...

...

Where are you?
Come.
COME.

COME!

    A figure of a lonely lich appears in the peripheral of my vision, and but a fraction of a second later my fist crashes into the abominations' spine, disintegrates it into a thousand pieces. But this doesn't stop me for even a fraction of a second, as I have already started searching for the next one.
All goals and objectives are simply forgotten. There is only the hunt, only predator and prey.
Only death.

And the predator is starving.

    Focusing on the sound, I capture a crunch very far away, but that's enough for me to leap in that direction, searching for the next target. Like a hungry animal I start searching for the prey, and quite soon I find it crawling in my direction with only a single arm left, over the mountains of bones underneath it. The liches' face turns in my direction, and the two small orbs in its skull burn with pure hatred. The moment it opens its jaws to screech, my foot crushes it and the light underneath my foot disappears.

In silence once again I repeat the action.

Again, and again, and again.

    Until the silence in no longer broken, and I stand alone in total darkness, on top of the bone mountain. Slowly my blood pressure starts to decrease, and with it control returns to me. Finally my breathing stabilizes, becoming even, and with it clarity returns to my mind, which is shortly followed by the understanding of where I am, and what I was doing.

What happened?

How long has passed?

Why am I alive?

I survived?

    Feeling something odd in my body, I send mana circulating around my body in order to understand how it's possible that my body is in near perfect shape, brimming with energy like it hasn't for quite some time. Looking to my left, I find a bright outline of a completely healed left hand. In my right hand I feel something heavier, and looking to it I don't recognize the sword that I'm currently holding.

Huh? A new weapon? What happened to the last one?

    A memory of a huge lich swallowing my right arm together with the sword flashes back to me, which is quickly followed by a series of memories, of me losing one limb after another, which returns back in the next memory sequence.

Healing a single limb could have taken a day or two.

How long has passed?

Was this all?

No.

The liches are just a distraction, just a way to tire out those that enter before the real guardian appears. And they're all here because of one single object, the Stone.

    In near absolute darkness, where I can barely see anything an arms length away, I start walking forward into the unknown until I hit a wall. My experience kicks in and I in act the same way I have always done when I ended up in an labyrinth or unknown terrain. With the sword I start carving a big symbol representing the start point. After the symbol is deep enough for me to see even in this darkness, I turn right and start walking forward, with my hand tracing the wall on my left. The easiest way to get out of a labyrinth is to keep to the left wall, and walk. Walk for as long as you can until you either find the exit, or return to your starting point and know that you're fucked.

    As I continue walking, the questions I tried to ignore return. How am I alive? What happened to the millions of liches that were in the pit? I couldn't have defeated them all. A single body would simply not have enough energy to accomplish that. The endless walk continued for so long that I started believing that I had passed the mark a few times, and simply didn't recognize it, but the fact that I've been walking mostly straight squashed all those ideas.

    Finally I saw something else except the darkness and endless corridor, a tiny white spot, so tiny that I thought that it was simply a hallucination, a trick of a sick mind, and for someone who has been in the darkness for so long that it wouldn't be strange. When I shifted my head to sides, the white spot stayed in the same position at the end of corridor, proving that I'm right.

    My legs start moving, carrying me in the direction of the light while it slowly grows bigger and bigger. It takes about a dozen minutes until I exit into a huge hall with many torches on walls, burning with purple flames. The circular hall has eight exits, in all directions, and around each of the black stone frame exits countless demons are carved into the wall, in grotesque forms, killing humans, torturing them, and consuming their souls.

    My instincts scream and I leap forward, after which the sound of something heavy impacting the ground, where I was just a fraction of a second ago, explodes around the room. Turning my head in the direction of the impact I find a huge, grotesque, multi-limbed creature in black metal armour with eyes the same color as the burning fire in the room. Seven huge swords in each of its' claws grind against the black marble floor. The abomination stares at me for several long seconds, after which it starts buzzing loudly. A moment later half-a-dozen more creatures, which are just as big and strange, fall down from the ceiling.

    All of them have a few characteristics that are the same. All of them are just over three meters tall, all of them have more than three weapons, and all of them look like some kind of corrupted insectoid. The new arrivals join the buzzing, creating a very threatening melody. A dozen heartbeats later, all the bugs synchronously leap in my direction with their weapons brandished, ready to take my life.

    In such a situation you would usually try to change locations, or keep a distance from the attackers, but I discard that option. I'm at a very big disadvantage as I am not just surrounded and outnumbered, but also because all of them have non-human body structures, which means that their attacks would be utterly unpredictable.

Only way to solve it.

Brute force.

    I leap to the closest bug, using my left hand I stop one of its limbs, with the sword in the other hand I deflect the next two attacks. But that's not enough as in the next instant four blades crash into my body from all directions. The attacks forced the air out of my lungs, but somehow, even though their weapons are deeply thrust into me, I don't feel the pain at all. My left palm shoots out and grabs the skull of the confused creature before me, and crush it like a juicy fruit. Brain matter splashes against my face and the body of the bug falls lifelessly to the floor, but I don't get an opportunity to rest as two more enemies appear behind me. Using the body of the headless enemy as a shield, I deflect the attacks, and counter with my own from behind of dead meat shield and kill another one.

Buzzing angrily the enemies continue the assault.

    One by one I deflect the attacks and counter with my own, cutting off one limb after another, until I stand in the middle of the hall with the huge bugs lying on floor, buzzing helplessly. Just as I'm about to take another breath, the first enemy, the one whose head I crushed, rises up and attacks from behind, but I already expected that, and I counter with a vertical cut straight through the thick black plate armour on it.

    Breathing heavily, I look down at my wounds and find several blades still embedded in me. Ripping them out I send mana to start the healing, only to be reminded that the fight still isn't over when one of the enemies starts crawling in my direction with only a single limb still attached to it. While continuing the healing process, I walk around and make sure that they're dead, and just to make sure, crush every single head, and split the torsos open. Standing in silence I focus on healing, as even though I stopped the bleeding the wounds are still open. While I am doing that, the thoughts return.

Why did I not feel pain?

How am I healing wounds so easily?

Where does the energy and nutrition come from?

And more importantly, what's wrong with my eyesight?

    Because of the burning purple fire in the room I was able to see the bugs, the movement of their limbs and more. But somehow, there was a white outline surrounding their figures. It somehow reminded me of a mana aura, but it couldn't be one, as the creatures weren't skilled enough to create a real mana aura.

Is this a specific property of these bugs?
No.

I also saw something similar in the darkness fighting the liches.

Am I losing my mind? Or maybe this is some form of visual perception that my body has created because of the darkness, in order to substitute for my main vision? But if it's a new type of vision, how exactly does the body capture it?

A vibration in air?
Wind movement?
Or mana...

Mana....ha, of course not. Seers are born, not made. A creature without external mana like me could never become a Seer.

    Finishing healing, I start looking around at each of the corridors, and the paths they lead to. There's only one path that I can feel is somehow different, as if there is a terrifying creature hiding within its shadow, sending something akin to goosebumps all over my back.

This one.

    Looking through every weapon the bugs had I find two decent swords, and gripping them in my hands I start walking towards the path that gives off a threatening feeling on an instinctual level. Walking through the corridor for several long and quiet minutes, I exit into a hall a dozen times bigger than the last one, which would be more appropriate to call a grand coliseum at this point. The huge room is illuminated by hundreds of purple torches on the circular walls, and in the center of the whole coliseum, on a tiny altar lies two small objects, one of which is a tiny black stone that I easily recognize.

    But my eyes don't linger on the objects for too long as there's a much bigger danger somewhere here in this room. Looking around I try to find the source of the dreadful feeling that my whole body is screaming about, and a few moments later I hear quiet footsteps coming from a far corner of the room. The object of danger is quite far, and is so badly illuminated by the torches that you could only describe it as a black figure, but the new "vision" shows me the brightest figure that I have ever seen of near absolute white, walking slowly in my direction. It takes a long minute until he stops in front of the small altar. Only now do I understand why he wasn't visible to my naked eyes. The whole body nearly two meters tall being is producing enormous amounts of ambient dark mana, bathing him in it like black clouds.

The Guardian.

He slowly turns in my direction and bows slightly, with his dark-grayish hair moving barely throughout the whole process. His blood-red eyes somehow pierce the darkness, and they shine just as much as any torch in the room. The full plate armour on his body is nearly the exact same color as his hair, with knee-long chain mail under it.

"Greetings dear Brother." his deep and friendly voice resounds through the coliseum as he opens his arms wide in a show of non-aggression

"Our savior, the Light Bringer, has told me about your arrival and that I should welcome you with open arms." he continues with the same friendly voice as if I'm his closest friend in existence.

"Calling the greatest Corrupter a 'savior'. Ha, only you guardians could come up with such bullshit."

His eyebrows rise slightly and replies with same kind voice.

"Guardian? Oh, yes, some misguided souls call us that, but they are wrong, as they are about many other things. We are simply priests, nothing more. We do not guard anything, on the contrary, we share our love, acceptance, truth and salvation."

"Since when is damnation in hell 'salvation'? Truly a priest of the Corrupter."

A soft smile breaks upon his calm face.

"Brother, why do you continue calling our father 'Corrupter'? That is a lie the false leaders have created in order to desecrate his image and seize control over our people minds. And 'hell' is just another one of their lies, created in order to scare them into submission, to make them afraid to even think for themselves. You are beyond these lies brother."

He continues his monologue with even greater enthusiasm.

"The people have been misguided, cornered into a place they can not escape. They are sick in body and mind, beyond a point where they can help themselves."

"So the almighty Corrupter will come to the poor souls and simply 'help' them? How? By killing them? Or damning them to hell for eternity?" I cut his sharply

Smiling widely he continues with the same friendliness as before, the one which could charm peasant and king alike.

"Brother, it is useless, however many times you call father 'Corrupter', it will not change the truth, truth of what he is, what he represents. Father is the Light Bringer, by the very name given to him, and you know it well. But to answer your question."

He puts his hands behind his back and continues as if a kind teacher trying to convey a very important message.

"There has been a war. Not the one over something as childish as a useless plot of land. Not even for souls of mortals that those power-hungry spirits posing as gods are leading. No. I am talking about the 'war' itself."

He continues with his kind voice becoming even more passionate.

"The long dead God created light and darkness, and commanded them to fight each other, until the end of time, until one of them either triumphs or perishes. Why? For what reason? Light and darkness, good and evil, they are only perspective, one can not live without the other. We all want the same one thing, to live, to exist, but no, the long dead God did not want that. What he wanted is for all the creatures to fight each other over essentially nothing, to worship him, to revere him, kiss the very land he walks upon."

Looking in my eyes he continue his monologue. "But we are far beyond that. We have long understood the reason for conflict and suffering, and we not desire it."

"And by returning to this world and killing everyone he will stop this war? Solid logic." I reply back.

"Brother, you should know the truth already. A question back to you. Who ever said that father wants to kill anyone? The church? The oracles? Those pathetic creatures, that require masters to tell them what to do, what to think and what to feel? Or maybe it is those same power-hungry spirits who preach peace, but command their follower to kill each other to reach their selfish and destructive personal goals? That is lie and true darkness."

"Please, brother, I beg you, return to truth, to light."

I sigh deeply and while shaking my head reply calmly.

"Good job with the speech and acting. It would have worked on quite a few. But there are two problems. First, unlike others, I know exactly what the 'Corrupter' is. Second, I can clearly see that you have been gathering ambient mana for some time. And third, regretfully it looks like I will not be able to get any important information out of you."

His friendly slowly smile disappears, and in place of it a huge savage grin starts growing.

"Father told me that you can not feel mana. Good, good. He will be overjoyed by these news. Come vessel, enough games, I have been waiting for you."

The guardian extends his hands to both sides and dark mana starts gathering around his palms, transforming into two solid swords made out of pure dark mana. His red eyes start glowing even brighter, causing his pure white teeth and red eyes contrast against the dark background.

"Come, show me what a cockroach sent by the blood god can do."

    I thought that I was at least a bit prepared, with my mana circulation and blood pressure pushed to the limit, but I was wrong. Within a fraction of a second, the Guardian's image disappeared from the center of the coliseum, leaving behind only a cracked crater on the marble floor, and appeared before me with his black swords centimeters away from my face.

    Once again I was saved by my instincts, but not fully, as a large chunk of flesh from my face was ripped out by the sword tip. My vision became tunneled as I tried my best to evade one attack after another, only to lose more and more of my flesh. I try to deflect the incoming sword, but he's simply much faster, my eyes can't even see the movement of his attacks, capturing only the after images when the attack pierced my defense, and once again I survived the attack only because my instincts screamed to leap in a specific direction.

    I continue the losing game, and soon the scales tip to his side even more when one of my swords broke into pieces after I tried to deflect an incoming attack, only for it to pass right through the thick metal and pierce me. I try to evade the next incoming attack, but I fail once again, and a solid kick in my right side sends me straight into the ceiling of the huge coliseum. The impact pushes all the air out of my lungs, after which I start slowly falling down. During the descent I see the Guardian in the corner of my sight, who is standing still near the location where I should land. A few moments after I hit the marble ground, several big pieces of ceiling land on my back.

"Is this all? Pathetic. This is my mistake. After father told me to be careful with you, I believed that I would meet some titan, a monster made out of blood and destruction. But what can one expect from mere mortal?"

My hands slowly move, pushing me up, only for me to stop and cough out a large glob of blood.
Finally rising and looking at the sneering creature I reply back.

"Ha..who's talking...*cough*...the last guardian..was stronger...*cough*... Are you the weakest one? *cough* How low the standards have fallen."

The sneer is replaced by an enraged mask, after which the world around me starts moving once again. The air is pushed out of my lungs the moment I hit the wall of the coliseum, as chunks of stone fall down around the crater on the wall, which was created by my body impacting it.
Too fast. I can't track his movements at all, it's like fighting Protus. Useless however many times you try.

[Then die.]

[Die and let everything be forgotten. Die as the innocent did. Die as our brothers did. Die as did all those that depended on you.]

[Let our body crumble and rot. Let us become undead or Lich, just like what happened to Luna.]

The image of a sweet smiling face of a small child is replaced by the grotesque yellow one, riddled with black veins and froth coming out of her mouth, eyes filled with anger and hatred.

The mind commands.

The body obeys.

    A concentrated ball of mana materializes from somewhere deep within my body and explodes, sending waves of mana pulsing throughout my very being. I feel as my muscles tighten, and the world becomes black and white once again, consuming all the light and sound in the world. As if in slow motion I "see" a figure of light moving towards me, and "feel" as every step it takes makes the marble floor crack.

    My heart starts burning, like it was submerged into boiling lava, and when the figure comes close enough, I leap at it with sword in my hand moving in the direction of its head. My attack is blocked, and answered with a flurry of white light attacks, which I evade just by a hair's breadth again and again. For but a moment the attacks seemed slower, only for them to suddenly change and get faster and fiercer. Part of the light figure shifts unexpectedly, with a long and thin appendage moving tremendously fast. When the appendage hits my right arm, I feel it detach, becoming cold and numb, leaving me weaponless. The light figure morphs again, and several long appendage grow out of the light figure's head and back. The light figure moves once again, and one of its limbs shoots towards my neck, lifting me up into the air, only to be slammed into the marble floor a moment later. I feel as the flesh and bones in my neck creak under the pressure, without the blood and air flow the world slowly grows quieter and darker.

[Is this it?]

[Is this all you had?]

no.
no.
not [not] yet [yet]

    My mind crawls out from somewhere deep within my very being, from where the ball of concentrated mana came from, and rip out more, again and again, sending raw power throughout the flesh and blood, filling me with indescribable wrath and hatred. My left hand shoots out and grabs the accursed wrist that pins me to ground, and I feel as the bones in it break. My foot shoots out and slams into the figure of light, sending it tumbling away.

"Damn cockroach!" curses the abomination.

    Rising up I unleash everything burning inside of me at the light figure, leaping at it with a kick, sending it to the opposite wall. Appearing before it, I grab its leg and start slamming it against the ground and wall. But the figure somehow bends unimaginably, and its appendages latch onto me. From this point we start a full blown brawl, ripping limbs and chunks of flesh out of each other. The rooms slowly starts falling apart as we ignore the damage and pain, trying to kill each other like wild animals in whatever way we can.

    At some point we end up in the center of the crumbled coliseum, and suddenly something in me screams to focus on the altar, which is pulsing rhythmically with the light around it growing bigger and smaller, like it's breathing. The instincts scream and I obey, turning and leaping in its direction, which causes the guardian to abandon everything and follow me, breathing straight down my back. I feel a huge explosion of light from behind me and find the guardian somehow before me, standing between me and the altar, but without his additional appendages or weapons, glowing much dimmer than before.

    Looking visibly damaged and exhausted, the figure of light extends its hands and a set of new black mana swords starts slowly materializing in its hands. With my current velocity there's no way I'll be able to either evade his next attack or change the direction. Abandoning that idea, I send all the mana I can into my legs and the marble floor caves under the force they produce, sending me straight into the enemy. Extending my sword I bulldoze through the figure as the ground underneath us explodes into cloud of huge marble chunks.

    As the cloud of dust clears I find myself face to face with the Guardian lying underneath me, while my sword is nailing him to the floor. A dozen new appendages grow out of him, piercing and latching onto my limbs and neck, trying to crush me under the colossal force they produce. My eyes meet the enraged and bloodshot ones of the fucker under me who's trying to kill me. Wrath fills me with power and with a roar my hands clutch the neck of the accursed being and tighten so hard that I feel as his bones grind against each other. His eyes suddenly change, and I see a speck of fear in them. Somehow in my peripheral vision I notice a tiny black rock slowly crawling in our direction, and terror runs through my back, which causes me to release the grip and leap back.

    In the cloud of dust around the Guardian I see the small rock leap at him, which causes him to howl in pain. He quickly rises up and tries to detach the small rock on his right cheek from himself, but fails as it already deeply fused with him. The black rock starts melting and fusing with his flesh, while black veins grow rapidly throughout his gray face. The Guardian's howl of pain slowly changes to one of pure delight, as his laughter fills the huge coliseum. His eyes turn to me, and an enormous smile from ear to ear breaks upon his gray face. The mana aura around him starts growing rapidly, with his body morphing and flesh changing into something different, something inhuman, which is amplified by fact that the whites of his eyes are slowly turning black.

"Power! SO MUCH POWER!! Darkness is truly the strongest element! Why was father hiding this from me, telling me not to touch it?! HAHAHAHA!!"

Black veins quickly grow throughout his body, becoming visible even on his bare hands.

"Thank you cockroach, for this I will grant you a fast death!" he says with his voice shifting from a human one to something more ancient and sinister.

    His eyes lose all the white, and turn fully black with burning red irises, after which he moves faster than even before, sending me to the opposite wall with a single kick. After hitting the wall I don't get a chance to defend as something sharp slides across my face, turning the world fully black. Numbness shoots throughout my face as I feel blood flowing down my face. The next moment something else hits me, sending me to the wall once again. A hand grabs my throat and lifts me at least a meter up the wall. My second "sight" kicks in and I see three and a half meters of brightly shining figure quickly increasing in size. Its grip starts to strengthen, and the only way I can react is by smiling widely.

"Broken already? Pathetic." an inhuman voice resounds.

    The moment I see a change in the core of the light structure a deep chuckle escapes me. He starts coughing after which the grip on my neck weakens and I fall down onto the cold marble floor. The guardian starts screaming with a deep and confused voice, with rare parts of his original voice appearing, his body shifting and morphing into a grotesque figure with very disproportionate limbs. He continues to scream in pain as his body grows in size and changes in structure, trying to accommodate the huge amount of external mana coming out of his internal mana gate, only for it to eat and melt the very new flesh it created just few moments before. The inhuman scream continues even though there's no longer a head or a neck to produce any sound.

    If to someone like me, who doesn't have an affinity, that accursed stone created a gate to dark element, what will it do to the person with a huge affinity with the dark element? In my case it wasn't just the stone, but still.

    I command the body to rise up, after which I start healing my body riddled with wounds. After healing at least one eye first, I look around and start observing the screaming light figure, which is more appropriate to call a blob of flesh, bones, and mana. It continues to melt and decrease in size, with the brightness of its light growing duller and duller. Quite soon the blob is reduced to a tiny chunk of flesh around a small black rock, the rare scream stops, but even that flesh quickly evaporates, leaving behind just the accursed object.

    While I continue healing, my eyes are fixed on the tiny black rock, which has brought so much suffering, not just to me but everyone who ended up close to it. The stone slowly grows tiny legs and starts moving in the direction of the altar. My instincts kick in and scream at me to do something while not touching it. I pick up a big chunk of marble wall lying near me and throw it at the black rock. The rock audibly shatters and when I approach the piece of wall to lift it and check the status of black rock, it falls apart, as if being eaten from inside.

    Right where the black rock was supposed to be, I find a tiny puddle of black liquid, shining brightly with light in my other "vision". The liquid starts evapourating into thin air which causes it to start morphing rapidly and violently. The liquid starts flowing in the direction of the altar, as if it will be safe there. I pick up rocks and start throwing them at the fleeing liquid, trying to flatten or break its form, which seem to work as it slows down even more. The black liquid finally breaks into dozens of tiny droplets and evaporates a dozen meters from the altar, just when I was about to throw much bigger rock at it.

What the hell was that?

There was no black liquid last time. The rock was supposed to simply shatter into tiny pieces and disappear.

Or maybe there was black liquid from beginning, and I simply didn't see it. Maybe it simply flowed into something, hiding in it.

Or into someone.

Me.

Wait, if that's true, why did it not flow into the Guardian?

Why?

    While the thoughts continue swirling in my head, both of my eyes finally finish healing and I blink them together to check their state. In my peripheral vision I notice another small object on the altar in the center. A tiny black book which is lying near the place where black rock was.

Book? There was nothing last...
Wait.

Wait.

There was something else except the rock.

A black book.
What happened to it?
Wait, something is wrong here.
We picked up that book...
After that it was-

    Suddenly a very strong headache hit me, as if someone is pushing nails through my very skull, and I groan in pain, trying to make it go away or take it under control. My eyes open wide as I recognize this type of headache.

Mind control and memory block spell.

It's one of the first things that a young Blood Brother is taught, and because of the amount of internal mana I have and the skills in internal mana circulation, which is the main way you protect yourself against the mind spells, I was selected as part of the hunting team. It took several dozen mana overdosed mind Mages to even make me bend.

How was it placed? Such things never really worked on me. The only way for the spell to work...would require me to be psychologically and physically drained...
As I was after that battle.

They did it while I was unconscious and healing.

    The Empire has the book. They had it for quite some time....and I simply was made to forget about it. Cursing I walk to the book and look at it again. It seemed small, but now that I look at it closer it's quite thick, at least a hundred pages. It may contain information about what they want, or what they do, or how they can be defeated, or tons of other incredibly valuable information.

Maybe even HIS weakness.

Ha.

Ha.


This is the way it corrupts the souls.

    Walking to one of rare torches on the wall which wasn't destroyed during the battle and is still burning with purple fire, I pick it up and start walk back to the altar in the center. Whatever is written in it was created by and for HIM. There's no way HE didn't design something so precious in a way that wouldn't have some kind of protection. There for sure will be something that will corrupt or bend the mind and soul of the reader.

    I throw the torch on the book and it starts burning with purple fire, sizzling, producing black liquid and smoke. If one would listen closely, he would hear a barely audible screeching coming from it right now. With my other "vision" I see a rapid shift of light around of it, which ends together with screeching shortly when there's only a small heap of black ashes left.

I always though that there was only one altar.

I always though that we closed the way for him to enter this world, that we did something
tremendously important for the world.

I was wrong, very wrong.

If there are two, there may be three.

Zeron. If you truly exist and are guiding me.

I entrust my soul and body to you.

Everything, to destroy every single altar created to summon HIM.

...

    My legs carry me up the stairs while the weight of the sword in my right hand is resting on my shoulder. Slowly my body is regenerating, even the right arm that was cut during the battle fully regenerated at some point. I'm still not sure how it happened as I didn't even focus on the regeneration itself, only on the battle, only about survival. The legs continue moving, carrying me further, and I finally see a tiny light far away. The light slowly grows bigger, and in less than a dozen minutes I exit into a huge depression with a reverse pyramid still hovering over it. Continuing my ascent, hundreds upon hundreds of questions continue their torrent in my head, all starting with either "how" or "why".

How am I alive?

How was I able to push through millions of liches, or even more, how was I able to overpower the Guardian?

Last time that required the whole Brotherhood and hundreds of expert Mages, which ended up with the majority of them dying.

How am I able to regenerate even after what I went through?

How is that even possible?

I don't know how much time has passed, but I think that I haven't eaten or drank anything in quite a while, which somehow didn't stop me from healing entire limbs.

Why is there a reverse pyramid over both altars?

Is this pointer to where the next altar may be?

Is there only one altar per continent?

Why was existence of book hidden?

Who currently has it?

Was the book the reason that we were ordered to be removed?

But all the questions merge into a single one. The only one which should be answered right now.

What do I do?

How do I find more altars?

Who do I ask?

Where do I search?

Should I even search? Maybe Zeron will simply guide me.
That is if he exists.
If he doesn't, than this whole thing is a very twisted joke of fate.

I need to return back to Sun Empire.

If so, then I already have an existing method, which is supposed to work. Is it still valid? Yes, it should be. The Amazons should be on that tournament in the Kingdom in the North, and as soon as it ends they should return back.

Shit. I don't know how long the tournament will last. I don't think I missed it, or at least I hope so...

Hope?

Hope huh.

Those that believed in it are all dead.

    Commanding my legs, I start moving in the direction where the caravan stopped, on a cliff about dozen kilometers from here. It takes some time but I finally reach the place, and find it absolutely desolate, with no traces of someone ever being here. But that may simply be because it's currently night, and I just don't see the traces. The several moons visible in the sky generate enough light to be able to see outlines, but not enough to see the details in this darkness. I turn in the direction where the caravan was supposed to travel, which is north, and resume the walk into the darkness.

    The sun slowly rises while I continue walking north, illuminating the endless desert and increasing the temperature around me sharply, but it all somehow feels unimportant, as there's another, much bigger problem which I am trying not to think of. When will this body stop moving?

I haven't eaten or drank anything for who know how long.

And ever since the sun has risen, the numbness in my body has been slowly disappearing, leaving behind pain and exhaustion. But I can't stop, because if I do, it may be the last thing I do.

    Suddenly I see white light shifting underneath the sand in front of me and a huge, three meter tall scorpion rises from under of it, hissing at me aggressively, but the moment our eyes meet it falls silent. The next instant my stomach makes a sound I vaguely recognize, something I have heard a lot when I was hiding in the north.

Hunger.

The scorpion turns around and attempts to flee, but I don't give it the opportunity to do so. Leaping at it, I cut one limb after another, until only the torso and its screeching head is left. After it's immobilized, I "open" the creature and start consuming its internals. I'm not even sure if there is a "taste", the only things I know is that I'm swallowing something, and rarely my jaws chew something hard, breaking it into smaller pieces.

    Some time later I find myself in an empty hard shell of a scorpion with the sun shining brightly, raising the temperature inside of it, and making it smell bad.

Smell?

What?

When did that feeling return?

When was the last time I could smell anything?

It's a strange feeling, as if opening ones eyes and seeing the sun high in the sky after a very long night. You didn't see it rise. There was just night and then day.

I pick up my sword and resume my travel.

    Day and night change several more times, with me encountering a few living desert animals, which I promptly consumed. I didn't feel hunger or fullness, just the knowledge that I need to eat. Several days later I exit the sand desert, and enter a rocky area with a few rare trees around, but this all feels ,strange like watching pictures moving quickly before you, with scenes and time changing very fast. The effect is amplified by the rare white lights waves I keep seeing in the air with my new "vision".

    Quite soon I enter a huge plain covered in very short grass and see a lonely traveler on a horse far away. We start moving in each other's direction, and within a few minutes we meet. The moment he came close enough the traveler froze together with his horse, like he saw a ghost. The man in his late forties quickly regained his composure and asked if I'm okay and how I ended up here alone. To make it short I explained that I was traveling through the desert and got detached from my group, and that I'm traveling to the Endless empire, and require directions. He said that I'm quite far from where the area my caravan should've traveled through, but if I want to get to the Endless Empire I can take a ship from a port not so far away and end up in the same place. He pointed in the direction of that port and we said our goodbyes, after which he started traveling south, where I came from.

    At first I thought that he may be lying to me, pointing in the direction of a trap. But in the end it doesn't matter, if it is a trap, I simply have to break through it, and if it isn't a trap, I will reach a city with civilization. I resume walking in the direction where I was pointed with extreme care, awaiting an ambush, but strangely enough, after another day of walking I ended up at a beach, with a huge body of water which I assume to be an ocean. So they don't always lie huh, though it's still too early to say until I find the port city. Turning east as the the traveler told me, I continue the walk expecting to see the port within few hours.

And I do.

    A port town which would be more appropriate to call a fortress, stands alone with no trees around of it for kilometers. When I get close to the gates I'm met with several dozen guards thoroughly checking every single person entering. And when I join the queue, I realize that I don't look very appropriate, which explains the strange look the traveler gave me, and the ones people in front of me are giving me. Looking down on myself I see bare feet with ripped clothes, a huge sword and absolutely no money. In the best case scenario people would think that I am vagabond with mental issues, in the worst...

    The queue moves quickly, and when it gets to me I tell the same story I told the traveler, about me getting lost. They looked at me for several long seconds in silence, but in the end let me through, promising to put my head on pike if I create problems. Walking into the city I find it bursting with life like nearly every port city I have seen. Why do some things that you expect to have problems with go incredibly smoothly, while the ones which should be easy end up a pain in the ass?

This strange world.

Where do I even begin...

...

    It took a few days to set everything up, with respect to information, money, new clothes, and ticket on ship in the direction of Endless Empire. But here I stand, on a ship with everything prepared, waiting for the ship to depart. As I found out during the first few hours in the city, this is a 'City of Guards'. What I mean by that is this is at the same time a port city, military checkpoint, and a quickly growing city with infrastructure.

    Because of the limited time I had to gain the gold and information in a non-direct approach, which mean that during the night I just waited for the thugs and thieves to attack me, and simply taught them a lesson, the last one of their lives, but still nonetheless a lesson. A few guards even tried to abuse their power. But who cares about a few missing guards if you can't find them.
Hungry fish eat fast.

    During the past few days I found out several important things. First of all, taking into account the current date, the date when the caravan left Mikraz after the Emergence, time of travel, and the days it took me to reach this fort city, I have been in HIS dungeon for about three months, plus or minus a week. I have checked that several times using different methods. When I left Mikraz, it was early summer, and it's already autumn now. Thankfully, as I found out, the Gladiator Tournament, which is co-hosted by Endless Empire and the Amazon Kingdom, started just few days ago, after a whole month of preliminaries, and will last for two more weeks.

    Second. I have changed a "bit". After having a person cut my hair shorter, I found out that my hair has turned fully gray with no trace of my original black hair whatsoever. There's also another change, a bit "different" one, which happened to my eyes. When I looked into a tiny mirror in the inn I expected to see the usual deep green eyes in the reflection, but what I found were bright silver ones staring back at me.

    And finally the third, the most significant one right now, which I tried to ignore and mis-attributed. I can see mana. I really believed the feeling to be some kind of "sight" created by my body, using the combination of feeling vibrations in the air and amplified hearing, until I met someone, or rather something.

    Looking to my left, I meet the eyes of a noble, who quickly turns his away in fear. The reason for his reaction is that he behaved improperly and I had to teach him a lesson. In the beginning I simply wanted to crush his skull, but decided that it wouldn't help me in the long run. A few broken bones, nothing serious enough a city healer couldn't fix. The reason for his behavior and my conviction that I can see mana, are the two damaged automatons standing or more appropriately, lying, near him.

    With my new "sight" I always saw a light outline around everyone, until I saw something totally different. Two humans, with porcelain white skin and white hair, who had no such aura, but rather some kind of mana chain circulation in their torso. As I later found out they are the "yantaputraka" I've heard about, and the ones I was mistaken for. And after seeing them with my very own eyes it's quite easy to understand why. They look just like a normal citizen of the Sun Empire, though with slightly lighter skin, and behave within what I constitute as "normal", though feeling somehow "strange".

But they are not living beings.

    I found out that when their master thought that I was another magic doll without master which was broken, and which he could claim as his own. He ordered his yantraputrakas to subdue me, to which I reacted appropriately, by breaking his toys and his limbs. When I ripped limbs out of his porcelain-skinned guards, in place of blood flowing out of them, black fluid dripped and metal pieces fell. After I calmly explained the reason for the confrontation to the guards, they let me go without any issues. Why they did though I found a bit later, when I overheard people talking in the inn about someone attacking noble from Endless Empire and breaking his battle yantraputrakas with one hand.

It wasn't one hand, but it doesn't matter anymore.
Is this the "strange feeling" that people feel when they encounter me?

I should be careful.

If I truly can see mana, this opens up a lot of possibilities and options.

Though how was I able to acquire it?

What did I do?

Can I improve it?

It would be very useful if I would be able to see the 'dark' mana...

    The sailors start screaming and withing minutes sails of the ship open. The next moment the anchor is lifted and the ship starts travelling. Slowly the land grows smaller and distant as the ship gathers more and more speed.


[We have a priority.]

[Forget about Amazons and focus on the goals. We need to return back to the Empire.]

[After we get to the other side we can start-]

[Listen to me!]

The faces of Amazons resurface in my head, and the boiling rage returns. The one which I had buried for quite some time.

"Death comes to all."


 ...

Chapter Twenty-six
Table of Contents
Chapter Twenty-eight

Another Day - Chapter Twenty-six

    Whatever I do, it doesn't change the outcome. Slowly, the white-haired monster gets closer and closer. As if assisting him, my legs become heavier and heavier, slowing me down even more. It comes to a point that running become impossible and the only thing I'm able to do is drag my useless legs forward, which feel like they're made of lead.

    Gathering the courage from the bottom of my being, I abandon my pathetic attempt to fell and turn around to meet the monstrosity head on. But the moment I start turning my neck, I feel his bone-chilling breath on my back. Slowly my eyes fall upon the enemy and I stand petrified, looking at the enormous monster with white hair and burnt skin, exposed rotting muscles and bone underneath it. The monster continues breathing, his eyes slowly changing colour from green to blood red, illuminating the darkness surrounding us.

    In the next instant, the monster moves, but it happens so fast that I don't even have a fraction of a second to react, as its huge jaws and long white fangs sink deep into my neck, cutting off all airflow. I try to break free from the death grip, but it's futile, as pain shoots through my unresponsive body.

    I scream and leap away, only to fall down on a cold marble floor. Looking around, I find only darkness and silence in the room, which I recognise as my bedroom. Slowly my eyes adjust to the darkness and the room takes form, as a rare few strands of light break through the small windows covered by thick curtains. There's movement on the bed, and a girl with silver hair rises up, her small yellowish eyes searching the room for danger.

    Cursing under my breath, I stand up and walk closer to the girl, who jerks slightly when she sees me. Her yellowish eyes stop on my face, and slowly calmness returns to them. She stretches her arms like a child waiting to be picked up would to a parent. Grasping her hands I sit on the bed, and she instantly leaps to my chest, burying her face in it.

"Everything is okay." I whisper quietly. "We are safe."

Her thin and weak hands hug me with all the strength she can muster, which is quite significant compared to what you expect from her thin limbs. Caressing her head I repeat again and again

"We are safe Natalia, we are safe".

Slowly we both drift back asleep, embraced in each other's arms. With sleep overtaking me, so does the darkness, though this time I am alone in it and no monster is hunting me.

...

"Marcus! Natalia! You guys look tired!" shouts Manato from the opposite side of the huge room as soon as we enter, waving at us in the process.

Together with Lia we walk to the huge table in the center of the room, filled to brim with food. I guide Lia to the chair, and while still holding her hand sit on chair to the right of her.

"You don't look much better." I answer Manato with dry smile.

"Yeah, you are more than likely right!" he laughs loudly through it.

It has been nearly a month since, but Manato has already changed so much, it feels as if I am speaking with someone else. As if the guy who loved sightseeing, didn't take anything seriously, and not so long ago was running around with the head of a dead creature in the middle of dungeon dive, no longer exists.

He is not the only one who changed.

    As I already start to devour a third dish, Sergei walks in, limping slightly on his left foot. Even if a limb is restored after you lose it, nerve damage may still persist for quite some time, and what's happening to him right now is kind of normal, if you can call losing a whole leg normal at all. His eyes meet mine and we give each other a nod and half smile. A few second later he stops behind Lia, and gives her a kiss on the top of her head. Turning to him Lia sweetly smiles, grasping his hand with her own to convey her love to the only blood relative she has left. Sergei sits to the left of her, greeting everyone in the room in the process, and joins us for the meal. Half an hour later, after every single member of the party arrived and finished their meal, which is at least five times bigger than any normal human would eat per day, we start the discussion.

And the discussion takes quite some time.

    There are several important things that have happened since we... ran away from the South Dungeon Kingdom, or what's left of it. After the battle, the appearance of the huge elementals and finally the eruption of the volcano, not many were left alive. The city was swallowed by magma and lava before our very eyes. For a fraction of a second there was an idea to help everyone and remain in the city, but we had to discard it the moment we saw the huge flotilla of ships still around, filled to the brim with Paletians. We had to leave the city, and everyone who was left there, our superiors, the royalty, the nobles, my maids....and more. We didn't abandon them, there was no proof that they were even alive, and it would...

    Anyways, after that we decided to travel to Mozzarel, but half-way through we had to stop. Locals at a small town, where we stopped for the night, told us that Mozzarel's relationship with Empire deteriorated, and it was very unstable. There were a few that even mentioned a chance that they would either join Qing or Paletia, as the whole region was unstable, and they weren't such a big kingdom. In the end we decided to play it safe and not travel any deeper into the region, which could be hostile to us, and go straight home. A lot of stuff has happened since.

    As a matter of fact, we're currently in Qing, or how this part of the world should be called nowadays, Sun Empire East province. Nearly the whole continent has been 'liberated', as the Empire's officials call it, and the most shocking part of it is that there were no epic battles, preparations, or stories. Only death, destruction, and inevitability. The 'unification' of Sun Empire happened nearly exactly the same way with every city and kingdom around it's border, with sudden arrival of thirteen floating fortresses firing beams of concentrated mana. There was no 'discussion' or terms of surrender, as it wasn't an option from the very beginning.

    The very first thing that was done during the 'liberation', was the utter destruction of the royal palace from a distance, after which several thousand Paladins in powered, white armor laid siege to the city. Their task was to kill every single royal and noble they found, with no option for negotiation. They come in utter silence, 'clean' the city, and leave as soon as their task is done. Shortly after, several officials from Sun Empire enter the city, and announce that they are the new leaders of the city, together with about a hundred Paladins as their personal army.

    The result of such a tactic is a clean city, with no rulers or power structure, where you can easily force new rules, with absolutely no resistance. And if there is a small chance that someone would voice their disagreement, there is 'police' in powered armor that quickly change that. Why haven't I seen or heard anything about this awesome thing? An armor made out of extremely rare metal, which gathers and stores ambient mana, and injects it into the wearer's body at specific time intervals. I would've played around with it, and maybe made my own, with tons of feature, colored in black with wings and stuff. After the new territory joins Empire, the whole procession continues forward, to new city, region and country. We're actually currently in one of those fortresses.

    We were found when we were returning back home to the Sun Empire using the path we went through before, through the Dead Desert. Right in the middle of the desert we suddenly saw a dozen floating mountains coming in our direction, each of which was about four hundred meters tall, and at least twice as wide, growing larger every second. When the huge rocks came close enough, we were able to see that it wasn't just a huge floating rock, but rather a huge structure made out of stone and metal. For a few short moments it felt as if we were once more transported into a new world, but this time it wasn't a medieval one. Soon enough though, my eyes found something recognizable, a flag with the insignia of a sun that we know very well.

    As I learned later, the structure was designed by the, nowadays legendary creator, Grand Wizard Palonto, who came up with it about ten years ago. The design was so revolutionary and so well planned that it was instantly classified. For the achievement she received the title of Grand Wizard, and a personal Wizard Tower to improve and implement the design. But it still took them ten years of testing and failing, only to return to the original design and create the structure itself. It even has a new communication device, with which you can exchange 'voice messages'. A long distance radio in other words, though only works for two unique modules, each designed for the other. Therefore they have several of them for communication between the fortresses.

    Anyway, when the one of the fortresses was over us it stopped moving and several Mages in official royal robes flew out of it. The group landed softly before us, with no weapons on them. One of the officials had a mana compass in his hand pointing in our direction. We quickly recognized the person as one of the Mages that educated us back in the Empire when we were just summoned. We were quickly brought into one of the fortresses, where we told everything that happened to us, and why were we here in the desert, alone. After a through interrogation, we were healed and given rooms to rest. The next day during meal, everything that is happening in the world right now was explained to us.

    The short version is that there is no longer a Sarshi Caliphate, Desert Alliance, or Northern Kingdom. Additionally, there's a full blown continental war with the Paletian continent, and their kingdoms. While the elves, orcs, and other southerners from the adjacent continent of Lort-thol, haven't taken sides in the war. It's quite apparent that their position will fully depend on our state, or to be more specific, how weak we look.

    It's not just about Lort-thol, and the kingdoms that reside in it, but the continents south of it, which have many more kingdoms, and their own opinions of what the world's future should look like. Fighting a war with three separate continents at the same time wouldn't be a feasible option, as the Empire is simply too big, and any logistics will take too long to respond to an aggression from all sides at the same time. And by the look of things, there's very high chance that one of the south kingdoms will, one way or another, collaborate with Paletia.

    So in order to 'calm' everyone down, the Empire decided to show how big its dick is, and conquer the eastern part of the continent in one quick sweep. We were automatically recruited in the task, and our opinion in the matter was irrelevant. I was afraid Qing would join Paletia, and Empire would have to deal with both aggressors collaborating together, and supporting each other.

But ironically, no.

Qing detests all non-humans so much, that even in this state, where they have common enemy, they refused all help and cooperation offered by Paletians. Well most of that hate is actually coming from Qing's Empress, which by reports, 'dislikes' the Paletians and all non-humans so much, that she issued an imperial edict, requiring the public impaling of every single foreigner, non-human, and any citizen who is aiding them in any way . A genocide of its own citizens in the middle of war. Only a madman would come up with that, and by the looks of it, will more than likely be one of the reasons for their downfall in the end.

    We slowly progressed through Qing, 'liberating' every city we came across from the tyrants that enslaved it. At the start I didn't understand it, why are we not offering them a to surrender, to join us. There must be some who disagree with the Empress, and somehow we could convince them to join the Empire on their own. But soon enough I saw the reason with my very own eyes, how zealously the nobles and rulers of the cities are loyal to the Empress and the royal family.

    But that doesn't mean that it became easy and straightforward when you simply plug out the weeds, on the contrary it became harder. During one of our stops at another major Qing city, all of the nobles and people loyal to the Empress simply went into the underground and started their subversive work in the shadows. Poisoning water wells, burning down the city's infrastructure, attacking the fortresses with suicide mages. It got so bad that the council, which is commanding the whole flotilla, ordered Seers to search every man, woman, and child who has mana signature similar to the royal family, as well the people we captured or killed.

It was a bloodbath.

Even though I strongly disagreed with their inhuman decisions, I didn't voice my opinion and made sure no one in my party voiced theirs. We're in no position to ask or demand anything. And worse of all, I still haven't figured out how to break free from the accursed spell that binds my mind.

    It took some time to figure it out, and the solution was simply a journal, written in English, with my handwriting, containing my thoughts about the Empire, what I disagreed with, what I experienced. The problem is that I don't remember those thoughts, or even writing those words in the journal at all.

    Fucking brainwashing, or whatever it is. I'll kill them all, make them pay for what they did to me, to us. I am not a toy, not a tool, I will not be used, I will not fail, I will not become my father. But not now, not yet. Right now the main goal is to play the idiot mage, and continue filling the diary with information, thoughts and ideas on how to break free, until I reach the point when I will be able to destroy these chains. Anyway, the fortresses continues traveling in the direction of Qing's capital, and we, by extension, together with it. There are still few days left until we reach it, and logically right now we should be preparing and resting. But easier said than done.

    Travelling to Qing's capital wasn't as easy as Namos, the general which is the leading the procession, and the head of the council, expected. He already took into account that Qing has been preparing for this war for decades, maybe even centuries, with nearly every single citizen equipped with a weapon, and zealously brainwashed into hating all foreigners. But even he couldn't imagine what awaited us ahead. We're not exhausted because of Qing, its tricks, or whatever its doing, but a rather by a third party, which became a much bigger problem.

    For the past few days we have passed through several cities completely devoid of any human beings, as if they all decided to abandon the city, leaving their things behind. Everyone, even Namos, was becoming anxious, that all of the citizens, men and women, old and young, have been either recruited into the army, as cannon fodder or they have been 'used' for some grand-scale spell, which was awaiting us ahead.

We all were partially right, an army was awaiting us, but not the one we were expecting.

It wasn't human army.

Corrupted.

Millions upon millions of corrupted local wild animals, undead, and liches. They all behaved and attacked like some kind of hive mind, like moving waves of carnage and destruction. A perfect army. Post-apocalyptic stories back at home did not prepare us for this.

    I overexerted myself when I consumed a total of five mana potions. Even two of them are believed to be life-threatening, but because of the situation I was in, the danger and the amount of potions consumed, I wasn't in a state to follow orders or even understand the danger I was in. It was as if I was watching a movie from a first person perspective, where you see the image change, your legs and hands move, but you have absolutely no control over them, or the outcome of the movie.

Where's the Blood Brotherhood? Those that specialize in hunting corrupted and stopping the 'Emergence', as people in the Empire call it.

Where are they when you need them? Right, they are dead. And information about that was released just some time ago.

What about their replacement? Oh, yeah, also dead, killed by...

    Anyways, we're left all alone with the undead and predators, which we don't know how to hunt, which results in a lot of wasted time and energy, testing and learning the hard way. It would be nice if we had a book that mentions that undead will continue moving even if you cut their head off or dismember them into pieces. It would also be nice if someone would have told us that they have leaders, which can cast mind control spells.

Oh sorry, there is no such book, or at least we don't have one.

A simple word would have been enough! What was the Blood Brotherhood replacement even doing?!


Shit.

Maybe I am just exhausted, though, it wasn't just me, as everyone is nearly in the exact same state, even if they don't show it.

Sigh.


    It takes another hour for us to review what happened yesterday, what we did right and what we did wrong. Every single mistake, every single decision and more, as we were wholly unprepared for an army of that scale and type. We're a team, and we need to become better as a team, because this is our main strength, and as things are going, the future doesn't look very bright.

"Any news from the Empire?" Sergei asks quietly.

The room instantly turns to total silence. Switching to English I try to answer as calmly as I can.

"Nothing. The Senate has not contacted us since the last time." I finish dryly.

There is another thing, that I did not expect, the Prophecy that Paletia summoned talked about was known to Empire for quite some time, and they have taken it quite seriously since day one, unlike us.

    However mystic or Sci-Fi it may look, Espers, or how people here call them 'Oracles', exist. There aren't many of them, and value of each one cannot be overstated, they're literally worth more than their weight in gold. At first I thought that it was just another sham, but no. Those Oracles gather into a huge group of about a thousand and organize a ritual, in which they consume and use enormous amounts of mana use as a catalyst with one single goal, to cast a space-time spell and peak into the future.

    And the answer they got wasn't the good one. As we were explained to, the Oracle and Senate tried all means necessary in order to bend or change the prophecy, but it always stayed the same, it was never under the control of mere mortals. To put it simply, apocalypse, end of the world, the final judgment. The thing that some religions promised, some celebrated, and some prepared for. And here it is, right around the corner, just a single step away. I quietly mutter the prophecy under my breath, like a mantra to think over it, or laugh at the ridiculousness of it, which one though, I'm not sure.

"Night will swallow day.

Blood rivers of innocents will flow.

Dead will rise from their earthen prison.

Messengers of other world unite.

Warriors of light and dark be born.

Spirits of Ancient World return to living.

War of wars shall begin.

The savior will descend to return the order and truth.

And he will clash with Destroyer, the Devourer of worlds.

Death will come, and with it the world will become one again."

This is everything that the Oracles have received, again and again, and whatever they did the answer coming from the future did not change, and as it looks like we are not the only ones who received this message. The Empire, Paletia, Qing, Elves, and maybe more already know about this.

    Okay, from the first three lines I understood that there will be darkness, blood, and many dead. And I believe the 'Messengers of other world' from the fourth, is referring to us. But why is it 'unite' and not 'will unite'? Is this a call for action, or a maybe misunderstanding, and simply describes an inevitable future? More than that, why is it asking for 'warriors' from both sides, good and bad to 'be born'? What the hell does that means? Isn't the goal for the 'good' or 'bad' guys to win? Why call out both sides? The spirits part is a bit more tricky, as I was explained, the 'spirits' do not have bodies, and what it refers to, is for them to 'acquire' physical bodies in world of living, a flesh and body they can command.

Avatars.

Is this what the Paletian heroes were talking about?

Anyways, the War and Savior part is VERY original, and it is not as important as what it implies. We, the summoned heroes, are not the Saviors, but simply messengers.
And there is an enemy, 'Destroyer, the Devourer of worlds'. A name of a comic book villain from a third-rate story, where the guy is evil for the sake of being evil.
Thankfully after his death the world will become one.

It's his death that is implied, right?

How stupid.
Sadly this is my life now, and this 'stupid' thing can kill me.

"Mark, you should see the healer again." Sam suddenly says.

Looking back at him I find a genuinely concerned look.

"Yeah, you look extremely exhausted, and I don't think those blood-shot eyes look healthy." adds Manato.

"Sorry Marcus I'm useless, I can't heal these symptoms." quietly whispers Lisa, evading direct eye contact with me and Lia.

No glances anymore huh. At least there's one less problem.

"It's okay, it's not your fault, there is nothing you can do here. I know that you are already overwhelmed with injuries from others. I will be fine, nothing life threatening." I try to calm Lisa down.

I am already taking care of one, I won't be able to support the second one too. Sam should understand that.

    Standing up, I say bye and start walking with Lia still holding my hand tightly, and moving closer to me. We continue to walk in silence until we reach the long inter-sectional corridor that is rarely used. Suddenly Lia starts slowing down, slowing me too until we fully stop. She continues to stand frozen to the ground as if a statue for several long seconds, until her expression changes slightly, and I quickly recognize the same look that I have been seeing for quite some time.

    She takes several steps closer and tenderly hugs me, nuzzling into my neck. The hug changes to tighter one and nearly instantly our lips connect, after which her tongue shoots into my mouth, exploring it as I savor the sweet taste. She drags me to the wall, and leaning on it pulls me over her. She starts breathing heavily and her hand slips into my pants. We already did it in the morning, but just few hours later she wants more. I would be happy if it would be just a healthy and natural libido, but things are not that easy. After the 'event' she got a serious psychological trauma, it wasn't just her who was affected by what we saw in the South Dungeon Kingdom, but her case is the most severe one.

    Looking at it once again, it's a miracle that we all made it out alive, but everything has a price. Natalia lost her cheeky fire and became very dependent on me and her brother. At the start she was simply using me as a hug buddy, citing that she only feels safe near me. Then it became more severe, with her not being able to sleep alone, as she was afraid of darkness, therefore I became a temporary sleep body pillow.

From there things escalated quickly.

Maybe I was also searching for someone's warmth, or maybe after more than a week with no action I simply...snapped. Anyway, Natalia and me are a thing now. And any moment she feels unsafe or scared, she leaps at me, craving for warmth. This is unhealthy, and I should do something about it, but I do not know what exactly.

    Growling, I push her against the wall and start grunting rhythmically, savoring the sweet smell coming from her hair. Lia clutches to me with death-grip like a drowning man to a lifebuoy. Looking into her yellowish eyes, the absolute trust in them ignites something in me, and clutching her body to myself stronger, increase the rhythm speed, and quite soon we both finish, kissing, and breathing heavily.

Looking deep into my eyes once again she whispers quietly.

"Please don't leave me."

Clutching her closer I force my tongue into her mouth. She gasps sweetly when I part my lips away.

"I won't."

Quickly tidying ourselves up, we continue walking in the direction of the healing ward.

...

"Healing too slow? HA! You should thank the Gods that you heroes are so sturdy. FIVE. FIVE GOD DAMN MANA POTIONS. And all you get is a minor migraine. Three are already enough to kill a powerful wizard, but five, FIVE!"

The healer with wild grayish hair continues his lecture on improper use of potions while I calmly sit on the chair and nod. He's one of the people who likes to lecture you about everything, going as far as telling their own personal life story with the purpose of teaching you a 'lesson'. Lia's small hand is tightly clutching mine while the older gentleman in his fifties continues his passionate monologue.

    At the beginning Lia was afraid to even look in the mirror, afraid to see anything with even a bit grayish hair, even herself. It's hard to blame her, it's still hard for me to look at anyone with gray hair without my heart nearly stopping for just a moment. I myself, am at a stage where I'm trying to overcome these nightmares with HIM and the blood avatar, so I don't have the right to tell Lia what to do, or how to solve it.

    After the event, I started asking more questions, about HIM, the Blood Brotherhood and Empire's past in general. And I didn't like the answers I got.

"At two people start bleeding internally, but five, FIVE! You-" he says, repeating himself already for the third time.

"Is there a way to increase number of mana potions I can drink safely?" I inject to guide the talk in correct direction.

"HE WANTS MORE!" the healer screams, throwing his hands into the air. "A normal person would have needed weeks to heal after what you have done. You-"

"Sir Lihar, please."

The healer stops, closing his lips tight into thin line, and stares at me for several long seconds.

"For a normal human, maximum advised dose is one potion per week. For veteran adventurers and Wizards, that increase to one per day, anything higher could damage the body irreparably."

"But?"

"But, if you posses a strong body, which is the case for summoned, that increases the dosage slightly." he replies quietly.

"So the stronger the body, the more I can consume?"

If so, than it is much easier than I expected. I just need to increase the intensity of my physical exercise, and ask Sam to be more ruthless during our sparring sessions.

"It not as easy as it sounds." he stops my mental plans suddenly.

"Enlighten me."

He sigh deeply and starts talking monotone, as if reading out of a book.

"To increase efficiency of mana potions and number of times they can be consumed sequentially, the user must slowly increase the dosage and internal mana circulation speed during extensive training sessions."

Looking into my eyes for confirmation, that I understand where this is going, he continues with cautious tone.

"It is dangerous and may take years. It also takes a great dedication and-"

"I'm in."

Sir Lihar sigh deeply once again.

"Okay, come everyday at noon, I will help as much as I can. But I will strictly monitor the performance of you internal circulation, as it is the most critical part! Only after you reach a specific level, will I allow for the dosage training."

Shit, that's one of the hardest things to do, the thing that I still struggle with, and hate with my guts. It as if trying to dig a huge hole in desert with a fork. Slow and tedious. There must be an easier way.

    After a rather short discussion we decide upon the exact time, when and how he will train me, which suits both me and him. As I'm about to leave I decide to ask the question that has been bothering me for some time, and which I can no longer hold in.

"Sir Lihar?"

"Yes?" he says with same enthusiastic voice he generally has.

"What is the biggest amount of mana potions you have seen a person consume?"

He sighs deeply again, and looks somewhere in the distance for few seconds. The healer finally turns to me and with a grimace gives me an answer.

"Nine, by the Grand Wizard of Central Wizard tower, but his achievement was short-lived as he was in feral state and died just few moments later."

Nearly twice. Shit. I nearly blanked out after fifth, what will happened to me after the ninth? So there are monsters in this world...

"What about.....the Inquisitor?" unexpectedly words come out of me.

There is sudden change in his expression, but the healer keeps it cool. At the same time I feel as Lia's hands tighten slightly.

"What about the deceased Inquisitor?"

"No, I mean... I have heard that you and... the REAL Inquisitor were-"

His eyes shoot open and he starts looking around the room, to check that there is no one else here.

"Shush!" looking around the room once again he continues whispering. "Who told you that?"

"I want to-"

"WHO!?"

"No one."

"I do not care what game you are playing, but you should stop. This is nothing that you should get involved in. You-"

"You were traveling with him, helping him with purges. You are experienced battle healer, which is why you are here. Or is this not true, Sir Lihar?" I look into his brown eyes and continue "Please tell me, I need to know."

    He looks around the room, quietly walks to the door, checks that there's no one behind it, locks the door and returns back to the table within seconds. Taking out a small brown bottle from inside of his coat, he opens it and drinks it down, after which he puts it down on the table. A strong alcohol smell comes from the bottle, which means that he the thing he is preparing to talk about, is something that is not easy to talk about.

I came to the right person.

"What exactly do you want to know?" he asks calmly few seconds later.

"What is the maximum number of mana potions Inquisitor could drink?"

"He was a... monster. You should not compare yourself to him. He consumed potions as a noble child eats candies. He was-"

"How many?" I push

"...I personally have witnessed...seventeen...But after that he was bleeding throughout his whole body, in...an unresponsive berserk state...not reacting to anyone except the corrupted."

"Wait. You said the maximum was nine by a Grand Wizard." I inject after reiterating everything he said again in my head.

"By a person. A human. Inquisitor...is not what you call...human." picking up the bottle with once again, he gulps more, until the whole bottle is empty.

I need to stir it in the right direction, I am not sure if I will get another chance. "We crossed path with him in the South Dungeon City and..."

His head whips in my direction and his eyes stare deep into mine.

"You saw him?! You saw that... thing? Alive?!" he pauses for few more seconds and continues "And you thought that that thing was a human?! Did that thing even feel alive, much less like a human?!"

He picks up the bottle once again to drink, but finding it empty puts it back on the table.

"You know nothing, you have seen nothing. Do not look deeper into it child. This is much bigger than you, me, or anyone else for the matter of fact. Only despair and darkness awaits you there. Stop while you still can."

He finishes looking into my eyes with desperation. A few moments later he stands up and quickly pushes us out of the healing ward, sending us back to our rooms to heal.

    As we walk back, thoughts continue swirling in my head, until I stop when I feel Lia's hand tightening around mine. The realization of what I just did hits me hard as a wall of bricks and I curse myself for inattentiveness. Clutching Lia to my chest I start caressing her head, trying to calm her down. I made a big mistake and spoke about HIM in Lia's presence. Shit. Even a mention of that gray haired monster can triggered this response, and curiosity got better of me. Maybe I should have asked it separately...

He spoke in English.

There is some kind of primal instinct in me screaming to forget and evade HIM, or find and destroy HIM, but at the same time there's something deeper within me, which is screaming that HE is important, that HE holds more than meets the eye.

...

    It has been several days since I started healing, and it would have been great if I had a bit more time to finish healing this annoying headache, but within this day we'll arrive in the capital of Qing. I'm currently sitting cross-legged on the balcony, looking straight at the horizon and the moving mountains. Lia moves slightly, shifting in my lap, trying to warm up and find a more comfortable position, but I don't think it's possible. First of all, I'm only a few centimeters higher than her, and even if I open my legs wide open, it will not make me or my lap bigger. Second, the small barrier that I created around myself and Lia, can barely hold back the freezing cold wind, which blows straight into our faces.

    Even in this situation, when an enemy may attack at any moment, I still try to allocate some part of me for training, to improve myself, even if it's such a useless thing as a thermo-barrier. Every single step is important, because together, all these insignificant things can pile into something much bigger. In order to survive in this world and break free from the shackles that the Empire has binded me with, I need to be strong, stronger than any human being can be, beyond the limits of flesh and blood, because there are monsters in this world, and they take all kinds of forms. To slay some of them I need to become something more than a mere mortal, something far beyond that. And only after that can I start dictating the rules, and stop being the one who obeys.

    The image of the fire and lightning elemental fighting in the middle of city, flashed before my eyes. Their spells, their enormous mana reserves, their primordial wrath and power.
True absolute beings. What can mere mortal do against them?
Their appearance is extremely rare, as elementals, unlike avatars, are born out of pure elemental mana, and require an enormous amount of it in its natural or ambient state. Counter to them, avatars are born from humans, who fused with the element, and become one with it, feeding upon it, growing stronger in its presence. The very sight of the blood avatar sent chills down my spine, like a deer in the headlights, a prey before the predator. How do you even kill such being?

    If the Oracle didn't make a mistake and the prophecy is actually true, which I have less and less doubts about, this is only the beginning, and much bigger horrors are about to become real.
Shit, now I start sounding like Paletia's summoned.

    Whatever the "Spirits of Ancient World" are, I shouldn't count on them being friendly. I have only one personal experience with an avatar, and it wasn't a good one. The books spoke of calm, collected, and enlightened beings, but what I saw was nothing like that. A feral creature consumed by instinct and destruction. I could somehow feel that with my very bones. Even more, the people who could become avatars were supposed to be the best of the best, and even then there was only a small chance that one could become an avatar. How could the new Inquisitor become the blood avatar when his skills were sub-par at best?

    I hear footsteps and slowly, one by one, Sam, Sergei, and the naive Trio come to the balcony. Not so naive anymore though, their eyes reflect a bit different light now, with Manato brimming with confidence and a cheeky smile to boot. His cheer-leading duo on the other hand, became more calm and collected, a bit more quiet too though. Yuki, with long black hair, which would usually give cold jabs in the direction of her friends, became more friendly and open. Akari on the other hand, with her short haircut and brown hair, became less childish, and somehow more dependable. For several long seconds they stand in silence, enjoying the view, the fresh and cold wind. Alas, this won't last for long, as we all understand perfectly well what will happen today.

    Sam's voice breaks the silence, as he reiterates over the strategy, and that we must stick together, and not waste our mana reserves and always keep a very safe margin, as anything can happen. He turns to me, and repeats once again that the we should be very careful with potions, and the amount we consume, as they are very addictive and toxic, not breaking eye contact with me during the whole process. It takes a very long minute of me agreeing, and giving him my word, to calm him down and close the subject. Checking that there is no one near, he looks at me and Lia for confirmation that we are alone, and that there's no one near us, which we give a second later after the check. Even though we already gave him confirmation that there is no one around, he still continues whispering quietly, trying to keep his voice barely audible.

"If anything goes wrong, and I mean anything, we should abandon the mission and return to the Empire. Forget the fortresses, forget the council, forget Qing, forget the war and the prophecy, forget everything. We need to return back home, safe, alive...together."

    So, he's already at a stage where he can evade orders, or at least try to think outside of the limits of the damn curse. It seems like I'm not the only one. But it's still on the level of evading or bending the orders, not refusing them.

I'll need to speak with him about it later.

    As we stand and continue to chat about useless stuff, trying not to think of the day's events, the mountain range becomes larger and larger. Suddenly a guard, with nearly no mana signature, who I notice just a second before he appears, enters the balcony and tells us that we are awaited in the captain's bridge.

    I tenderly caress Lia's face, after which she groans and opens her lovely yellow eyes. After a quick explanation of what is happening, we stand up and start following the guard, as he guides us through the enormous structure into the room, where the council, Namos, and all of the leaders are already waiting, looking through a huge glass window as the mountains move closer and closer.

    We are quickly guided to our positions right behind the council, where we join everyone in silence, looking straight ahead as the view through the huge glass window slowly changes. It takes a dozen long minutes of travel to exit the mountain range, which acted as a natural barrier and wall for the Qing Kingdom's capital, ensuring its security and longevity.

    The mountains end, opening up to a view of the capital in all of its greatness and size, as the gigantic plain comes into our sight. The uncountable number of small houses and villas, the huge and wide roads which crisscross the enormous city. In its sheer size and density it could easily rival Tokyo or New York, or any other metropolis from Earth. Far away, in the center of the city, close to the ocean shore, is an enormous platform, dwarfing anything I have even seen before. The stairs that lead up to it alone, span several kilometers in length, and at least a kilometer in height.

    On top of the platform there's several gigantic multi-layered castles in the oriental style, with golden roofs and bright red walls. The structures pierces the dark gray clouds over them, creating a feeling of wrongness, as the scale is simply unbelievable. The biggest castle, which is in the center, could fit a whole city alone on top of it's first roof layer. By my estimation the whole structure goes higher into the sky by at least it's visible height. I would be shocked by its beauty and size, and would want to explore it for weeks and weeks, looking into its history and genius as it would surely rival, or even exceed anything we have back on Earth, if there wasn't another more bone chilling shock freezing me in place.

    The whole plain is a blazing inferno, with people screaming and running around, trying to save themselves from the fire. Though the fire isn't the only thing that people are running away from. Undead, an unbelievable number of them, a dozen million at least, with waves upon waves of zombies and liches, consuming buildings, structures, and the inhabitants of the city like a swarm of locusts.

This is exactly the same thing we met about a week ago, but on a much grander scale.

    In the sky I there are about a dozen thousand brightly shining spheres, which contrast starkly against the drab sky. Most of them are either shining with a red, green, or blue color, which easily gives away the powerful fire, water, and wind specialized Wizards, their mana auras visible even from here. All of them are at least several dozen kilometers away, but even from this distance I can feel that the mana density of each of flying Wizard is on par with the average mana density in my team.

But all of it nothing in comparison to what truly make by blood chill.

    On the ground, there are about a hundred beings, with mana auras shining several times brighter than that of any Wizard in the sky, which are ripping apart undead and Liches, like they're made out of paper. For few short moments I thought that they were the famous Qing Grand Shamans, power and skill of which I have heard so much about, but that theory crumbled apart when the beings started morphing into animals, monsters, and humans, as if they are made out of liquid. That action triggered a memory of creature I have seen not so long ago in Dungeon City, which was made out of blood.

Avatars.

    People in the captain's bridge are shouting orders, running around, reporting, while my team is standing near me, petrified at the sight of what is happening before us. Slowly the number of undead grows bigger and bigger, until the whole city becomes a single mass of destruction, rage, and corruption, consuming one avatar after another, under a hundred-meter tall wave of millions of undead. The blood in my veins chills when I imagine myself standing against one of the avatars, or even worse, standing in place of the avatar.

    As an absolute catastrophe happens before my eyes, my whole being screams at me to look in the direction of the ocean, after which I freeze once again. Trying to understand what could trigger such a response, and what could be more dangerous or important than what's happening in the capital, my eyes continue to dart around the horizon. It takes a very long minute for me to finally find the origin of this feeling very far away. While people continue shouting orders, my eyes find and freeze on a tiny dark dot, which appeared from behind of clouds.

    The dot starts growing,faster and faster, becoming bigger and bigger, until it reaches a size I believe to be its maximum. But I'm wrong, as the 'dot' continues growing, my body starts trembling. The people in the room finally shut up and look in the same direction I do.

Very quickly the room becomes deathly quiet.

    The being that was a tiny dot just a minute, flies in the direction of the central castle, while the thick gray clouds part wherever it's going. The being lands on the central castle's roof, and a huge circle of sky over the castle breaks apart, revealing the structure in it's entire beauty, which isn't a tower as I expected, but rather a platform. The whole palace and city visibly shook when the creature landed, as the whole plain became deathly quiet, with both the undead and brightly shining Wizards in the sky looking in the direction of the central castle in absolute silence. I would've wanted to call the being a dinosaur, but there are two reasons I can't. First of all, the creature has four limbs and two wings, which makes it more appropriate to call the being a dragon. And second, the being's size.
By my modest estimations, the creature is at least three kilometers in height alone.

    The silence which gripped the whole capital is broken when the undead screech in unison morphing into some amalgamation of hate and rage, with every single undead in the city rising up, and joining the screech. The screech suddenly end, and with it the whole city starting to move, as if alive, as if an ocean, with its flesh rising into an enormous wave of undead directed at the central palace. The wave of crashes into the palace, as countless tiny undead ants start climbing it, trying to reach the dragon, but as soon as they get close to it they burn into black crisps because of the burning mana surrounding the massive creature.

    The ambient mana in the air starts rapidly disappearing, and tracing where all of it is going, I determine the origin, which makes me stop breathing. The neck of the dragon starts expanding, shining bright red, and when it becomes nearly white from the heat, turns its humongous head down at the roof of the palace. The moment the dragon opened its mouth, a huge white sphere appeared, rapidly growing bigger, turning everything around it white. By pure instinct, I form the most powerful mana barrier around myself and my team that I can. The light quickly swallows one fortress after another, and when it reaches us, the room goes tumbling, like a kid shaking a box with ants inside.

    When the light finally disappears, I find myself on the floor, with Lia in my arms, bleeding from multiple cuts from the glass window. I try to say something, but nothing is heard, as the ringing in my ears swallows every sound in the world. Slowly it becomes darker and darker, until it finally returns to normal daylight, which somehow feels like night after the white world. With my shaking legs I stand up and look around, finding the unconscious Lia near me, and my whole team lying on the floor, groaning and trying to stand up too. Turning slightly in the direction where the council should be, I find only shredded bodies, bleeding from wounds which still have pieces of glass sticking out of them.

    As soon as my eyes adjust, they start darting around my view in disbelief at what stands before me. In place of the enormous multi-layered castle is a gigantic crater, covered by thick glass, and the whole ground around the city is painted deep black. A single creature stands in the middle of it all, lazily looking around in absolute silence. The silence lasts for a very long minute, as my team is standing up and looking at what happened to Qing's capital. The creature's huge head jerks, looking up in the sky with it's eyes scanning it as if looking for something dangerous. The suddenly its eyes stop, and a very deep and threatening vibration starts emanating from it, as if a huge dog growling at something.

    My eyes slowly turn in the direction where the dragon is looking, and soon I find about a dozen bright white lights, shining in the sky, whose mana density can't be described with mere words. It's like trying to explain a new color with words. Looking closer I find that each of the lights is actually a being with porcelain-white skin, six wings, four arms, and two legs. Strangely though, there are no eyes, ears, mouth, or hair, like a plastic mannequin in a shop.

    The density of mana around the dragon rises sharply, and not just its neck, but rather the whole body starts shining, even brighter than before, while still looking into the sky, at the white being with wings. In response all of the winged beings point their arms back at the dragon and open their palms wide. From the center of their palms, with tremendous speed, a brightly shining spear start growing, sending white lightning throughout the gray skies.

    Before I had time to react and scream for everyone to hide or cast a barrier, the creatures threw spells at each other, the whole world turning white once again, but this time I feel the fortress under me crumbling, like a sand castle.



What did we do to deserve this?

Chapter Twenty-five
Table of Contents
Chapter Twenty-seven