When Tsuki woke up, she had no idea why she was in Hoomaikai’s bed. The forest of lemon trees, the condor of luminous words, and the snake-like man whose voice made her mind dizzy were all real yet false. They couldn’t have happened for real, as she had died yet was now alive. A dream? Maybe. But to Tsuki, everything that happened felt so nostalgic as a tear escaped her left eye without her control – the blue one.
But as much as Tsuki was surprised, the one who had it worst, with her heart almost leaping out of her mouth, was Hoomaikai. She was sleeping peacefully a moment ago and was awoken when a small red flower in her arms changed into a person.
After the morning confusion, the two girls got up—one more beaming than the other—and got ready for their long day. Not… As when they were eating a simple breakfast, alarms like they had never heard before were rung. They didn’t even need to run outside to see the issue, as in their vision, above in the sky, acting as if walls were a simple illusion, a wriggling sword with red veins was slowly descending from the high heavens down to the lowly city of Day Break…
The blaring sirens were almost splitting the two girls’ minds; no doubt everyone was awake. They rushed outside, with Hoomaikai casting a bolt of lightning toward the blade, only for this attack to then detach a fleshy pustule. It plummeted quickly to the ground, which upon landing produced a heart-wrenching scream like that of a wounded baby or one that didn’t get what it wanted and was throwing a tantrum…
As Hoomaikai wasn’t the only one whose reflex was to attack and then ask questions later, multiple similar pustules crashed down. In total, about nine attacks managed to reach the blade far up in the clouds, and so numerous were the cries drowning the sirens installed who knew where. Too sudden, all too sudden. Both the girls and many other people were frozen in shock at the unnatural sight. They all knew a war was coming, but waking up to a fleshy sword above them that spawned unknown monstrosities...
Then, bang. One of the nearby destroyed houses blew up, sending shrapnel everywhere. Just in time, Hoomaikai managed to create a magical shield over a few meters. The danger over, Tsuki rushed out of the protective barrier with a dagger in hand. She slashed before coming into contact with a figure hiding in the smoke from the explosion. From that one simple slash, what was light and visible became dark, and what was dark and hidden became light around the girl. The smoke vanished as she closed in on it and the figure hiding inside…
❀
In a basement, working on heaps of talismans, a doll simply following its creator's orders got up from their desk. The doll looked up at the roof, toward the sword, and then disappeared from where it stood. Above in the sky, the doll reappeared next to the sword, this time not with empty, glassy eyes but filled with a scarlet drowned in melancholy.
"You guys…" whispered Yuu. "You were a mistake that I ought to have never made. I’m disappointed in your measly goals."
The doll brushed a hand over the sharp blade, spilling blood. Like moths to a flame, every single pustule exploded to create winged, malformed humans. They all looked to be modeled after a young girl with long black hair, but every single aspect of the figure was twisted. Yuu understood better than anyone the reason behind this shape. It was simply those abominations of Change mocking their own kind. Yuu found it sad, for those were the failures of their own kind. For them, to live is to change until they die after becoming everything at least once. Some of them simply didn’t understand how much a normal human changed every seconds. The mind, the spirit, and the body: something able to create an almost infinite combination such that a self never really exists for one person.
As the abomination rushed toward the flying goddess, she simply looked down, not paying them much attention. Down in the city, there was the only abomination of Change that she knew that really embodied pure and eternal change… Changing didn’t require fancy transfigurations of the flesh and soul. It only needed time. And although there wasn’t much actual time left, something that only Yuu and someone else understood the meaning and reason of, she promised to give this weak girl all the time necessary to grow and change…
Yuu didn’t move much as the doll she was controlling was getting destroyed by a few hundred abominations. It was only once one of them plunged what could be understood as an arm – or maybe it was a hove – into the doll's chest that something changed. Yuu had installed a small explosive – to her standard – inside her doll’s chest…
From those that were below, the sky had completely turned red. Then, an explosive force followed that pushed many down to the ground—a small miscalculation. A large mushroom of smoke bloomed above everyone to shelter them from the sun; the burning blaze was now the only light to show the path.
Tsuki sheltered herself from the explosion by mounting Sinorous, who escaped into another plane of existence. All the horrible and wonderful things the girl saw in that world… This escape only lasted five seconds at most, yet each of them felt stretched over multiple millennia. The blood moving in her body was all so loud in those twisted eternities that it turned to mad whispers, retelling her what she imagined to be arcane words. This was a song of fragmented imagination that shattered after five or so seconds. The red blaze in the sky was first to enter her mad eyes; she simply flailed her left arm like a nostalgic wail, her dagger equipped, listened to her orders, and cleaved all that stood in front of it.
To the onlookers, like Hoomaikai, the sudden explosion captured all their attention, which was reclaimed by an eerie wail followed by the apparition of a tear in the fabric of reality. The abomination of Change in the form of Tsuki was at the center of such a tear, and its body was pulled inside. The real Tsuki stood there aghast at the seam between reality. She was like a princess from a bygone world. Slowly, reason returned to her as ethereal hands from the tear tried to pull her back in. They scratched at her skin, a nostalgic sensation, until blood was drawn. She cried out, her hand reaching toward those in her sight.
Hoomaikai was shocked beyond words. It wasn’t the first time she saw Tsuki avoid something by using Sinorous. Each time, nothing bad happened. Now Tsuki looked as if she hadn’t slept for weeks. The young sorceress dashed toward the sudden tear in reality, an action that awarded her the gnarling of Sinorous. The hound, his maws ready to bite, tried to attack Hoomaikai but was dismissed just in time by his master. Tsuki fell heavily to the ground as what was under her disappeared. Hoomaikai then managed to pull her away from the tear, while all Tsuki did was look at her right arm with newfound disdain. Did Sinorous try to betray her? She had no clue…
While Tsuki was being pulled to safety, small battles spread around the city. In one corner with houses that could barely be called one due to the sickening poverty that acted more like a sickness than anything else, illusory giants of fire fought one of the monstrosities alongside two brothers.
"Baka! Tie up sister’s doppelganger with your magic! I’ll attack from the front!" cried out Krimira
His brother, Bakasura, looked at him with a teasing smile while creating a scary illusion of himself. "Brother. Brother. You called her ‘sister’ and not ‘miss’ like always!" – "Shut up! It’s not the time!!"
Krimira, with a face red like a tomato, engaged an abomination of Change with only his fists. His opponent looked almost like Tsuki, if only the facial figures weren’t out of place. As mystic flames consumed him, he snapped a kick at the abomination, and his figure divided into two as if one was the reflection from a mirror. The strikes from both collided at the same time. Unperturbed, the abomination didn’t even react. Instead, a large, bonny nail splurged from its back into nothing; its tip still drew a bit of blood. The real Krimira, with a bleeding cheek, struck a right hook at the back of the abomination’s head after barely avoiding the nail with the help of his brother's illusion. This time, the abomination’s head was blown up, and the body was sent tumbling into a house of fortune, quickly crushed by the fist of one of the fire giants.
Backing off to see whether the abomination was still moving, the two brothers regrouped, with Bakasura instantly tending to his brother’s wound. The wound was infected! Small clumps of dirt were moving with a will of their own. Bakasura whispered a name – the name of the first Rakshasa, the embodiment of their kind – and bit down at his own brother’s cheek. He pulled chunks of flesh and licked the blood dripping down while praying to this ancient Rakshasa…
"Enough!" Krimira pushed away his brother, whose eyes were lit with an alluring glint. Slowly, the young rakshasa’s skin regrew, but there was a ball of anxiety forming in his chest from how Bakasura was acting. They had done this healing process multiple times in Naraka, yet Krimira never saw lust in his brother’s eyes…
When the smoke dissipated from the crushed house, they couldn’t find any trace of the abomination.
❆
The next bout to take place was in a relatively secluded location. This time again, fire rose high in the sky. It was as if a phenix had awoken from its slumber. The cause of such phenomena was a singular man whose missing limbs were replaced by molten slag. Rouhong, the somewhat mysterious man from the north who was indispensable in fighting Scylla. In front of him were three monsters; behind him was Yuzuha, the blind girl.
"I told you, Yuzuha, to hide somewhere safe hours before everything. Why are you still following me…" said the man, whose breathing was difficult due to the lack of oxygen in this heat.
"Hide? In one of those crushed houses, obviously? Hongygong, did you forget I can tell the future? Don’t you think I wouldn’t know where the safest place to be was?" responded Yuzuha with a teasing voice.
"This…" whispered Rouhong. This was something he despised in this girl. She’d always find a way to stick to him in the most dangerous situations. And this scared him more than anything, as he didn’t want to accidentally kill someone innocent like in the past… At least, fighting alongside mercenaries was the only good company he ever had when displaying his power, as they all usually accepted a short life. And Yuzuha, other than being able to see a bit into the future, was a weak, blind girl that could die if ever lost.
The man gritted his teeth and looked with deep hatred at the three abominations in front of him. They were trying to infiltrate the sewers to launch a surprise attack at night. He knew them well… So well that he identified them as rejects from the Wave of Change’s forces. Their only existence was to leak information back through a sort of spiritual connection. Basically, they were cattle sent to the slaughterhouse – cattle strong enough to kill many people in a single breath.
The heat suddenly rose as flames coiled around Rouhong. Then, he leaped forward, creating a shockwave from where he was that pushed Yuzuha away. The sound barrier was broken, and to the horror of the abominations, one of theirs had already been grappled by its head and turned to ash. His name, Rouhong, meaning salamander, had always been a diminutive he gave himself. This little beast he would often see when exploring the thousands of mountains in his hometown had often amazed him. Able to resist volcanic heat and live at peace with turbulent magma surges. How much he wanted to be like them, to be able to be at peace with his mind and responsibilities… him, the heir of what used to be the Heavenly Draconic Land...
With lustrous scales on his body, this desecrated dragonoid breathed IN the flames starting to spread and used this heat like an engine to power his earth-bending magic, which he instantly used to trap the two abominations inside a box. He jumped high and released the heat he had reigned over as it mixed with stony debris from the surrounding area. It turned into an almost white waving robe with splashes of pale yellow and a crown of toxic fumes. Rouhong, inside this shell, descended like a meteor.
It was one of the high-ranking abominations of Change that made him lose everything. His wife, his son, his family, his friends, his empire, his people, "MY EVERYTHING!!! YOU GUYS TOOK MY EVERYTHING FROM ME!!!!!" lamented the salamander. If only he had been faster to react, if only he had been stronger, if only he hadn’t lost control and turned everything to ash. "I’LL MAKE YOU ALL PAY FOR THE PAIN YOU WRAUGHT TO THE INNOCENTS!!!!!!!!"
It was like a star collapsing onto earth, and this time Yuzuha wasn’t just pushed delicately. For her, blind as she was, she could never foresee this attack. Still, she did follow her instinct, which she called her foresight, and moved away when she felt the scalding heat and heard Rouhong's anguished screams. But she was too late. The explosion caused by Rouhong destroyed everything within a hundred meter radius.
As for Yuzuha, there was nothing. Not in the sense that nothing remained of her but that no sound, no pain, no heat, and no impact came her way. All she felt was a cold breeze…
Fi, the small spirit of stillness, was standing in front of Yuzuha. She was observing the battle from above, ready to act and find anything out of place, and she had blocked the enraged Rouhong’s attack and stopped it from doing more damage. There, she had both acted and found something out of place. Sinorous, Bakasura, and now Rouhong had all been changed or at least affected by something.
In an instant, the raging salamander lunged at her. He couldn’t distinguish foe from friend anymore. As fast as he was, able to break the sound barrier, he came to a crawl the closer he got to the spirit until he fell flat on his face, dormant.
Yuzuha had only heard Rouhong run at her before a soft ‘thud’ made her think something bad had happened. "Hong? Rouhong?! Where?! PLEASE! Respond… What is going on…" cried out the poor girl as she crawled onto the molten ground. Her hand hissed as she left Fi’s protection, and she coiled back in pain. "ROUHONG!!!"
Fi, who was floating, looked at this curious display… It reminded her of her past. That once weak mortal with scarlet hair was like Yuzuha trying to reach something that was impossible to touch…
Tshhhhhh
Again, the blind girl tried to move out of her protection by wrapping her hands in her clothing – to no avail.
Fi landed next to Yuzuha. The sound of her small boots on the ground scared Yuzuha, who didn’t know someone else was there. The small spirit made a major decision by not wishing to see Yuzuha die here in a river of heat… She was just too similar to Yuu when she was young. Both blind, Yuzuha was just more shortsighted and weak-minded than Yuu.
Fi placed a frozen hand over Yuzuha’s eyes and whispered, "Do not get complacent… or life will escape from your fingertips…"
When she removed her hand, colors entered Yuzuha’s eyes. It wasn’t the colors like the blue of the sky, but infrared. She was seeing the sea of heat surrounding her, with a point brighter where Rouhong was. Yuzuha turned to where Fi was, only to see a void of colors.
"Go," whispered this void. "Make yourself known to existence…"
Then, color returned to where the void was. The previously blind girl looked around, confused and close to crying a deluge. "Go…" she whispered, and dried what little tears managed to escape her eyes. She looked at herself and the burning ground in front and said, "And make yourself known to existence…".
She stepped atop the surface that used to burn her and focused on those last few words the spirit whispered. When her foot touched the ground, its color changed to her own, and like that, she walked slowly toward the source of all that heat. One step at a time, she cooled down her surroundings, sometimes messing up and burning her skin, until she was in front of him. She embraced him to try and cool him up, and she felt something deep in his chest fighting against her attempt.
"I’ll make myself known to you, no matter how long it takes…" whispered Yuzuha.
Far in the sky, a little spirit found herself smiling at the sight below. She loved and hated this bittersweet feeling, and she regretted how headstrong she had been in the past with wanting to die.
"Jealous?" suddenly said a mischievous voice that Fi knew all too well. Fi looked behind her, where a small fairy-like figure with long scarlet hair was looking at her. "What? Disappointed? This plush is all that I can control without raising suspicion after that big boom I did."
"Yuu…….."
"Yes? Yes?" said Yuu, making the plush approach. "Hey, are you alright? I need to go help the two cats. Want to talk af---ARGHhhh……" The plushy was taken by Fi, who hugged it as tight as she could. "You! Aghhh… Break… Don’t. Only one… I have."
"No! Mine!"
"Fi… Did they affect… you also? Need to save—"
"No! You promised! To make me want to live. It’s our contract. leave, and the contract breaks. So don’t."
"But… Might die, the cats. Can’t let them die… Bad…"
"Then, hug me. Like them. The real you. Not a doll."
"Can’t… Still… on the run…"
"Too bad, then."
"Fiiii… please. Ouch! Don’t pull, or it’ll rip… Is ex…pensive…"
🙨
On another note, a cat in a trench coat walking with a child outside the city came across a man with a strange mask standing above a flowing river. The cat took off a newly bought hat with a large brim and addressed the mysterious man walking on water, saying, "Good day to you, sir. My name is Vergeltung, investigator, detective, and father. I’ve come to you to kindly ask you to stop polluting this water, as it quenches many people and children in the city near us. It would be a shame if a kid fell ill from your action. Don’t you think?"
"Never did I think to be found, by a cat of all people. And since you are so nicely spoken – as opposed to a mindless girl I met not long ago – I wouldn’t mind completely undoing my action. But that is only if you can prove my cause wrong. Otherwise, we'll need to make our heart do the talking. So, what do you say?" responded the still unknown man.
"Very well, let’s have it this way. I tire of fighting, anyway. But first, can I ask you what is the reason of your actions?"
"Yes. My kind act as it does for its love of life."
