Seren

  The whispers again. Chanting and lamenting in languages beyond her tongue, only her mind perceived it in ways Seren couldn’t explain. It was her Realm-art, summoning the future in the form of whispers. They weren’t always accurate, often predicting dozens of outcomes that could not be differentiated, which are true and which are just illusions. Her Realm-art is its side effect.

  They died for you to be here.

  Thousand voices spoke to her similarly to the nightmare of the war that haunted her, telling her the futures shared by the gibberish of her maker.

  And the worst of the words came to reality: the containment, the cage of His glory, shattered by an outlander, a Faust.

  How could I let this happen? I promised him, darn it, Seren, why are you like this?!

  She coughed as she pushed Nameless away from her, but Nameless did not resist. Seren wiped the blood on the damp wall as she pulled the sword out of her chest. Her flesh grew back, being made in the same flesh as an Existence was sometimes handy. The familiar sword handle felt comforting, like shaking the hand of an old friend. Her sword was made by herself, it mimics the power of her pen.

  “Hey, Rosemary, first time seeing each other, but do you want to contain an abnormality?” Seren offered, walking away from the wall as she spun the pen in her hand.

  Nameless did not respond, only looking at Seren’s sword, muttering words to herself as she followed. To Seren, Nameless was more interesting than she thought. She didn’t speak a lot, but through her fighting style, Seren could see that Nameless was someone freer than her. Someone who could follow their heart to a level that is enviable.

  “Dinner’s on me,” Seren added. Hoping that it would work just as well as Suiming had told her.

  “…No…I can’t…”

  “Why? Is there a thing the possessor of a piece of an Unknown Existence can’t do?” Seren asked as she grimaced.

  “…I’m afraid, yes. I hold many things, things I want to hold, burdens pushed onto me, but the fate of others is not one of them.”

  “And you lied, that thing is not an abnormality, it is a flesh carved out of the Starseeker’s body, something you vowed to its glory,” Nameless added as she let her creations surround her, petting the glowing thing and slowly letting them fade out of existence. Like a real creator. Seren thought to herself.

  “Fate of others? I don’t reckon that, you don’t have to hold it, it’s more like you are bending it like a string. That incident, Suiming told me, without it, many fates wouldn’t even exist.”

  Nameless smiled, her eyes looking at Seren with a hint of sarcasm. What could a caster, thousands of years old, say in this situation? Seren couldn’t be more curious.

  “Every war has its victim, everything is a war, Iris, what would be your victim?”

  “I will let you see my curse, my sorrow.”

  Acryl

  Through the fog and heat, he saw Kaspar’s figure. He stood there, unmoved, only his jacket open, fleeing in the wind. Acryl could feel the crushing wave of his Realm-art, armed and probably aiming at him. He did not like that feeling, it was something akin to performing on stage for him, but much more uncomfortable.

  Four times sharpened Realm-art, and Kaspar, from what he saw so far, was a Kindling and Gate archetype Realm-art. Acryl would not doubt that he would lose against it. There are only a handful of casters with that sharpness, as long as he knew, there are only two casters with four times sharpened Realm-art in the Brotherhood, one’s Parsley, one’s Iris. He is never a fighter and has never dared to consider himself one.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Yet he fought to protect someone dear to him, he didn’t want to be the one unable to do anything, he wanted to make a change. He observed Kaspar; right now, he did not appear as if he would fire another shot. It came to Acryl that Kaspar, like him, was observing his Realm-art.

  “Kid! Close in on him!”

  The slip of sunshine came in from the open rooftop as Acryl strode towards Kaspar. His colors were before him as he ran closer to Kaspar. Acryl followed the messenger, his silhouette sharp and confident.

  Kaspar was moving in the direction of Acryl’s right-hand side. He let his colors crush Kaspar’s side as he did what Josh told him- Closing in. The thing covered by masks moved as he ran toward Kaspar. The moment it met his eyes, he felt a crushing pain in his mind and body. It was like seeing something utterly glorious and praised by millions, it was something beyond his experience as a human. Something beyond senses and intuition.

  As he bent down from the strain over his nerves and questioned his own mind, Acryl felt the air heating up.

  Kaspar is ready for another shot.

  Before Acryl could react, he felt Josh grabbing him by his collar. He pulled Acryl away from that mount of matters ineffable to human perception. Flowers bloomed. Another heat, another powerful wave of casting. Acryl tried to hold his colors while his head felt heavy as lead.

  “Block his way out, we are keeping him as a crab in the bucket.”

  Acryl raised his hand, trembling, in pain as he did so. His visions started to blur as he felt his mind dissociate from his body. The colors that were like a part of his body felt even more like an extra limb. Acryl couldn’t hold longer, Josh was already on his way. Acryl could already see the first beam, shot from Kaspar, reaching towards him.

  And in the blur, Acryl let the colors fall. A shockwave of air slammed him in the face. He prayed that it would not crush the old messenger.

  As the dust settled, Acryl noticed only one figure standing, it was Kaspar; Josh was nowhere to be seen. The flowers withered into dust, mundane and lifeless, and swayed by the wind. Acryl couldn’t feel the casting of the messenger. He froze in place. He tried to move his legs, but they felt like limbs of a different body. He wanted to cast, but he had already reached the limit of casting.

  Acryl kept his stance low, almost ducking. He felt that his limbs were tired out as if he had just run a circle around the Grand Dome, but his heart was beating fast. He felt like he had been dropped into a frozen body of water, sinking.

  A light.

  Acryl had a plan. Instead of closing in on Kaspar, he would try to exhaust him, maintaining Realm-art requires high focus, and no matter how powerful Kaspar is, he can’t escape the side effects.

  Only that he had to figure out what it was.

  He felt the dust and mist shifting more slowly as he moved away from the Realm-art’s path.

  The beam passed right next to him, touching his braid that swayed in the air, and the smell of things burning rose to Acryl as he froze in shock. The unbearable pain eventually reached him as if a large boulder had crushed onto him, he collapsed to the ground.

  The freezing cold slapped his face as the rays of sunshine lit on him. As he tried to push himself off the ground, he heard something fall.

  Then the clanging and falling become a drizzle of something hard, akin to wooden plates. The drizzling grew into a rain of that thing, a summer rain. Acryl felt that one of those things fell on his back as he stood up. His thought was racing, would Kaspar notice that he was on the edge of over-casting? Did Kaspar find where Josh was?

  “Grossartig,” Kaspar said. His voice echoed. Acryl couldn’t see him, but he heard his footsteps getting closer. And then stopped near where that thing that fell out of the roof was. A thrilling fear ran up his spine. Kaspar was near him. Acryl stood up, limbs wriggling as if he were a puppet with its strings cut away and abandoned.

  “Only a fraction of an Existence, just a part of it, can bring this much benevolence,” Kaspar said while Acryl slowly moved toward him. Every footstep felt heavy. Before he could reach Kaspar, Kaspar came to him first. Kaspar’s footstep, steady and swift, stopped in front of Acryl before he hardly moved forward. Acryl raised his head, and Kaspar grinned as he stared into Acryl. It felt like the stare from a statue, an emotionless stone.

  Then, the Auderheimian man kicked him in the stomach. Acryl coughed as Kaspar punched him. The pain crushed him as he regretted his choice of fighting someone beyond his power. Regret. In his mind, it was colored purple. Purple for using the wrong color, purple for smudging the canvas. Purple when the sun fades, before he enjoyed the sunlight.

  And purple of the flowers that bloomed under him.