Grey
The rhythmic scratch behind Sylvie's horn nubs felt… borrowed. An imitation of Corvis's habitual affection, learned through observation. Her contented rumble vibrated against my shoulder, a warm counterpoint to the chill Sapin air biting at my cheeks as we neared Ashber Town.
Dusty fields stretched towards the cluster of simple, timber-framed buildings, smoke curling lazily from chimneys—a deceptive picture of rural peace.
'Did Uncle teach you, or did you learn it yourself?' Sylvie's mental voice held a playful curiosity, echoing in the quiet space between our minds. She knew my preference for silence, for the internal landscape over spoken words—it was cozy.
I observed him doing it and you reacted… very favourably. Just simple deduction, I told her.
My gaze scanned the horizon, not for Ashber's welcome, but for the invisible stain I sought.
Sylvie, do you sense any trace? Uto's signature? That lingering decay, that shadow-magic resonance?
A flicker of unease crossed our bond. 'You should have told Corvis,' she whined mentally, her small claws tightening slightly on my cloak. 'He's the Vice Commander. He plans for everything.'
Virion already knows, we agreed on that together to leave Corvis in the blind. The thought was firm, laced with a protectiveness that felt like old armor settling back into place.
Corvis is brilliant, Sylvie. Frighteningly so. But he's also sixteen years old. The weight Aldir and the other Asuras placed on him… it's crushing him stone by stone.
The memory of Wren Kain's grim revelation echoed—Kezess Indrath, manipulating Corvis, seeing him not as just a lesser, but as a uniquely useful pawn. The thought ignited a cold ember of anger in my gut.
Aldir named him Vice Commander for his mind, his abilities, but they forget the mind resides in a body still learning to bear the scars of war. He pushes, he bleeds, he doesn't ask for help. Stubborn. Too much like…
Too much like King Grey, who buried his burdens until they nearly buried him. I'd restarted total mobilization on Earth for vengeance; Corvis enacted the Corvis' Laws for survival. However both carried the same isolating weight.
My fear of becoming that King again had made me blindly trust Corvis with everything, absolving myself of the burden of command, of questioning. A disservice to us both.
'Grey.' Sylvie's mental voice snapped sharp, cutting through my introspection. 'A mana signature. Clearly not Dicathian.'
Location? The command was instant, thought translating into action. Mirage Walk wrapped around me like a second skin, bending mana and muffling sound, turning me into little more than a heat haze in the cold air.
Confidence in defeating Uto was one thing; recklessness with a town full of innocents was another.
'Outskirts of the city. Near that large barn west of the main square. I can't pinpoint… it's diffuse. Like oil on water.'
Understood. We moved, phantoms skirting the edge of Ashber. The town felt tense beneath its sleepy facade. Men and women moved with the weary purpose of those whose lives had been upended by war, their old trades abandoned for whatever service the mobilization demanded.
It mirrored memories of Earth—the grim efficiency before offensives, the quiet dread before the Paragon Duels I'd eventually rendered obsolete, only to resurrect the practice myself in a fit of vengeful fury.
Corvis's mobilization was necessary, brutal, efficient… and seeing its echoes here, in these worried faces, was a stark reminder of the cost he carried silently. He hadn't learned this from King Grey's history; he'd arrived at the same harsh necessity independently.
Pulling my hood lower, I blended with the sparse midday foot traffic, a shadow among shadows. Ashber was unremarkable, yet Corvis had mentioned it often. His foresight, even fragmented, was rarely wrong. We reached the indicated barn—a large, weathered structure smelling of hay and animal musk.
Empty. Silent. Too silent.
'Below,' Sylvie confirmed, her senses sharper, cutting through the mundane. 'Many. Alacryan mana signatures.'
Scout the perimeter. High and silent. Alert me to anything unexpected. I sent the order as my boot pressed firmly onto the packed earth floor. Earth magic surged, not violently, but with precise intent. A circular section of the floor, three meters wide, simply separated.
Like a giant stone cork pulled from a bottle, the platform descended smoothly, silently, revealing a yawning darkness below, lit by the faint, sickly green glow of Alacryan portal runes and the startled faces of a dozen soldiers caught mid-preparation.
Go. Sylvie launched from my shoulder, a streak of white against the barn's gloom, phasing through the roof slats soundlessly. I dropped into the cavern.
Chaos erupted. Shouts in guttural Alacryan, the snick of blades being drawn, the crackle of mana gathering for spells. They were setting up a reinforced portal anchor, a staging point. My descent wasn't stealthy; it was a declaration.
Dawn's Ballad materialized in my hand, its teal blade already shimmering with condensed ice magic. I landed lightly, the earth platform re-integrating seamlessly behind me. No escape that way.
The fight was brutal, efficient, a grim dance honed over lifetimes. I moved like water flowing around stone—ducking a searing bolt of fire, sidestepping a spear thrust, parrying a sword strike with a jarring clang that sent sparks dancing.
Dawn's Ballad flickered, a pale ghost in the dim light, leaving trails of frost on armor, severing weapon hands with surgical precision. I wasn't killing indiscriminately; I was disabling, disrupting, shattering the portal runes with precise bursts of fire magic aimed from my free hand. Panic spread faster than blood.
These weren't elite Strikers or Shields or experienced soldiers at all; they were support troops, engineers. They broke, scrambling towards secondary escape tunnels. I herded them, a relentless, silent predator, ensuring none slipped away to warn Uto.
'GREY!' Sylvie's mental shriek was a lance of pure alarm. 'Uto! He's moving! Fast! Coming from the north ridge—straight towards the barn! He felt the portal disruption!'
Intercept him! Buy me seconds! The command was pure instinct, adrenaline sharpening the world. The clipped message pulsed through the miniature radio device concealed in my vambrace. No time for more.
I burst from the underground cavern just as a sonic BOOM echoed across the fields north of Ashber. A plume of dirt and shattered rock erupted a hundred meters away.
Sylvie, a brilliant dark metekr trailing violet energy, had dive-bombed from a thousand feet, slamming into the ground directly in Uto's path. The shockwave rattled the barn's timbers.
Through the settling dust, the Retainer of Vechor emerged. Not staggered, but annoyed. He brushed dirt from his dark robes, his face a mask of twisted amusement beneath the obsidian horns. His weapon, a cruel sickle of blackened metal, dripped visible tendrils of shadow—decay magic made manifest. Blood Iron. The air around him seemed to absorb light.
"Tch. Pesky drake," he muttered, his voice a rasp like stones grinding together. Then his crimson eyes locked onto me as I strode from the barn's shadow, Mirage Walk dissolving. Recognition flared, followed by a predatory grin that split his face.
"Ah! The wonder kid! The runaway reincarnate!" He spun his sickle lazily, the air humming with its malevolent energy. "Sending your pet lizard to greet me? How… quaint."
He moved. Not with speed, but with a horrifying, liquid wrongness. One moment he was thirty paces away; the next, his sickle was a black blur aimed at Sylvie's descending form as she recovered from her impact.
Dawn's Ballad met the decaying metal with a shriek of protesting energies. Teal ice met swirling shadow, sparks flying like angry stars. The force reverberated up my arm. Uto's grin widened, showing sharpened teeth.
"Quiet one, aren't you?" he taunted, pressing forward, his strength immense. Shadow tendrils writhed from his sickle, licking hungrily at Dawn's Ballad's icy aura. "I like talkative prey. Especially fellow descendants of the Sovereigns. Makes the hunt more… personal."
"I don't waste breath on Agrona's rabid dogs," I stated, my voice cold, flat. Realmheart flared to life. The world exploded into motes of mana. Mana streams became visible rivers—the vibrant life force of the distant town, the flickering panic of the fleeing Alacryans underground, the dense, oily blackness coiling around Uto, and the brilliant, straining purple of Sylvie circling above.
I poured pure fire mana down Dawn's Ballad's length. It ignited not with a roar, but with an intense, focused sunburst, a blinding white beacon that pushed back the clinging shadows around Uto.
"Not fun!" Uto shrieked, recoiling momentarily from the searing light that disrupted his shadow-magic synergy. With a snarl, he ripped open his robes. His torso wasn't flesh; it was a grotesque tapestry of dark metal studs embedded directly into his skin, each one a tiny well of shadow. "Let's make it interesting!"
A dozen obsidian spikes, sharp as nightmares and reeking of decay, erupted from his chest with terrifying speed, fanning out in a deadly starburst aimed to impale me from multiple angles. Time fractured. Static Void clamped down.
The world froze. The deadly spikes hung suspended in mid-air, mere inches from my skin. I flowed between them like smoke, a phantom in the frozen tableau. Time snapped back. The spikes slammed into the ground where I'd stood, melting the frozen earth where they struck with sizzling decay.
"Disappointing trick, Grey," Uto spat, already whirling, his sickle becoming a blurring vortex of darkness Corvis had warned about, capable of shredding stone and magic alike. "I'll peel your skin slowly for that!"
"Apologies, Uto," I said, my voice devoid of warmth. "But I require your horns." A pause. "Actually, I'm not sorry at all."
His crimson eyes bulged with fury. "I WILL SKIN YOU ALIVE!" The Hurricane intensified, a localized tornado of shadow and death roaring towards me.
Thunderclap Impulse. My nerves screamed as raw lightning mana supercharged my reflexes. The world slowed, not through time manipulation, but through sheer neural acceleration. I saw the micro-tremors in Uto's leading shoulder, the slight hitch in his spin where the metal studs interfered with his musculature.
The path wasn't through the hurricane; it was inside its deadly eye for a fraction of a second, exploiting the split-second gap in the spin's apex when his guard was momentarily realigning.
I moved. Not away, but in. Ducking under the screaming scythe-blur, my left hand shot forward, palm open, not to strike, but to connect with the studded flesh of Uto's lower abdomen. His eyes widened in shock, the manic fury replaced by utter confusion.
"What pathetic sorc—?!" He began.
"Something I've been preparing," I cut him off, a cold smirk touching my lips. Realmheart blazed. Two spells ignited simultaneously, fueled by ruthless focus and Sylvie's distant, supportive presence.
First: Blood Iron. Not to attack, but to dominate. My mana, guided by Realmheart's intricate understanding of magic's structure, slammed into the dark metal studs embedded in Uto's body. It wasn't a contest of strength; it was a swift, surgical hijacking of his own magic at its source. I felt his will, his corrupted mana, recoil and sputter as I imposed control. The studs flared darkly, then stilled, their connection to Uto's intent severed. No more spikes.
Second: Ignition. Pure, concentrated fire mana, hotter than a forge, erupted from my palm where it touched his flesh. Not an explosion, but a focused lance of incinerating heat channeled directly into the now-dormant metal studs. They weren't just heated; they were superheated in an instant, glowing cherry-red, then white-hot.
Uto didn't scream. He laughed. A guttural, pain-laced, utterly deranged sound that echoed across the field.
"BURNING ME FROM THE INSIDE? DELICIOUS!" He jerked his head forward in a vicious headbutt. I met it with my own forehead, reinforced by a surge of earth mana. Bone crunched—likely mine as much as his. Stars exploded behind my eyes.
Simultaneously, sensing an opening, he twisted the hurricane's momentum, bringing the sickle whipping around in a backhanded slash aimed at my spine. Dawn's Ballad was already moving, a teal streak intercepting the decaying blade with a shower of dark sparks. The impact jarred my teeth.
Now. Ignoring the blinding pain in my skull, I planted my right foot and unleashed Burst Strike. Raw kinetic force, amplified to bone-shattering levels, detonated from my hip through my leg. My boot slammed into Uto's chest, right over the superheated studs.
The sound was horrific—a wet, crunching thud mixed with the sizzle of searing flesh. Ribs shattered like dry kindling under the enhanced blow. Uto's manic laughter cut off into a choked gasp. The force lifted him bodily off the ground.
He flew backward like a discarded ragdoll, trailing smoke from his smoldering torso. I was also catapulted backward by the recoil, skidding across the frozen earth, agony screaming from my overloaded leg.
Sylvie! Finish it! The mental command was raw, urgent.
Above, Sylvie folded her wings and dropped like a meteor. She didn't roar; she was silent fury incarnate. Uto, writhing on the ground, smoke rising from his ruined chest, saw her coming. He tried to raise a hand, shadow magic flickering weakly. Too late.
Sylvie hit him not with claws or teeth, but with the devastating kinetic force of her draconic mass striking from terminal velocity.
CRUNCH.
The impact shook the ground, throwing up a fresh geyser of dirt and snow. I hit the ground rolling, wind magic cushioning the worst of it, but pain flared white-hot in my skull and leg. Gritting my teeth, tasting blood from my split forehead, I forced myself up. Dawn's Ballad was a cold comfort in my hand as I limped towards the new crater.
Dust settled. In the center, Uto laid broken. His chest was a concave ruin of shattered bone, charred flesh, and melted metal. One horn was snapped clean off near the base while the other was cracked but still attached.
His crimson eyes stared sightlessly at the pale Sapin sky, the manic light finally extinguished. Smoke curled from his wounds.
Sylvie stood over him, her sides heaving, dark obsidian scales smeared with dirt and dark blood, her golden eyes fixed on the fallen Retainer with fierce satisfaction.
I reached the crater's edge, breathing hard, every muscle protesting. The icy air burned my lungs. I looked down at the corpse of the Retainer of Vechor, then at the snapped horn lying a few feet away.
I stood in front of Uto and with a swift motion of Dawn's Ballad I cut off his other horn. I took both of them in my hand before I stashed them away in my storage ring.
Then, I heard a female voice and looking up at the edge of the crater I saw her.
"Grey, it's certainly been a long while." She said—Scythe Seris.