Krouse
I’d never admit it if asked but Lilian Biron was…creepy. She was creepy in the way she looked at people as if she were watching a play. Sometimes she was interested, sometimes she wasn’t but there was a certain detachment to it no matter what.
Her eyes glowing did not help my impression of her. And I couldn’t help that the light glow from them wasn’t the only thing new about them. There was an entire host of new colours that flowed between the green borders of her iris and exactly none of it looked human.
“What are you doing, boss?” I owed her a lot. Enough to shut up and bear with her looking at me for a minute even as she started prodding me with mana. Not enough to keep quiet if she kept doing it, though.
Lilian didn’t answer for a moment. Then, her lips curled into a smirk so smug it confused me. “You’ll know in a moment.” She told me, that mana that had prodded me before going into my head as if mine wasn’t even an issue and, a moment later, pulling back out as a blue dodecahedron with a white wisp in it.
“I have no idea what I’m looking at.” I told her frankly, hoping that this wasn’t my soul. With her obsession with contracts and keeping one’s word imagining her as some kind of devil wasn’t hard at all and I’d rather keep my soul than not.
I also felt strange after whatever Lilian had done but I couldn’t really say in what way. I certainly felt less…tense, if nothing else. It felt as if a burden had been lifted from my shoulders.
“This is the mana the Simurgh left in you, contained in a barrier of my own design that I created as I pulled it out of your head without harming you. It was designed to appear almost identical to your own to any mana senses so that nobody without an extremely precise mana sense would have been able to notice but she had to leave a minor difference in order to be able to use the mana to manipulate you. That difference was, of course, enough for me to see it and, after some experimentation, extract it.” As the proud monologue of the girl I’d decided to work for sunk in, I realized why I felt subtly different. For the first time since coming to this Earth, I was free.
I wasn’t an entirely new person or anything like that but the difference became more noticeable the more I dwelled on it and reflecting on many of the things I’d done under her influence suddenly made me sick to the stomach rather than not affecting me at all.
“I suppose I can forgive a lack of gratitude right now.” Lilian commented, sounding amused as her voice tore me away from the recollection of what I’d done. “But get yourself together and then pick someone else to come and visit me so I can get rid of the influence on your minds.”
If I’d ever doubted that Lilian’s apathy was real, the casual dismissal of what I felt about this, the almost bored way she waved towards me as if to tell me to get a move on, all of that made it clear that she was as uncaring as she seemed.
Despite that, looking at the mana in the barrier, I could feel nothing but gratitude for her decision to free me from that monster’s control. In this moment, after having accomplished what no human had ever done before in not only noticing the Simurgh’s mana but removing it while she looked at me in detached amusement with glowing eyes to only further enhance her already inhuman beauty, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was what the people of old had imagined gods to look like?
After all, what’s a god if not a being that can casually do what no human could?
I knew Lilian Biron wasn’t divine but the sheer absurdity of what she could do with such casual ease made it hard for me to just ignore that voice in my head telling me that she sure as fuck wasn’t human anymore. Not with how effortlessly she could ignore facts of life. The Simurgh’s influence was undetectable? Lilian had detected it. The Simurgh’s control was absolute? Lilian had removed it. Noelle couldn’t be helped? Lilian had helped her.
Swallowing, I inclined my head after wiping away the tears full of regret at what I’d done and happiness due to being free now. “Thank you.” I choked out the words, ignoring the questions I had about Lilian’s humanity or lack thereof at this point.
“You are mine. Until you exit my service, all of you are mine. I’ve already decided the Simurgh can’t control you and so she won’t. It’s as simple as that.” She told me, amusement dancing in her gaze.
“Thank you.” I told her again, unsure of what else to say.
“Go now. Send in whichever of your friends you want me to free first.” Lilian ordered and I robotically followed her orders, taking the time to consider who to send in first during the long walk.
Of course, the question hadn’t even needed to be asked. I’d send Noelle in first and I was sure Lilian knew that, too.
And, after we’d all gone in, none of us knew what to say or how to act except to be relieved, miserable and regretful around each other in the hopes that maybe the company of us all would lessen the agony we felt about what we’d done in the past.
Taylor
There were ruins around me but there were also roots larger than most buildings I’d seen in my life. Water covered almost everything and the air stank of rot, of decay, of death.
“You can sense them?” Lilian questioned, having taken me to this place and killed the lizard-like creatures as well as the ghosts that had assaulted us.
I nodded in response, the giant ants in this place visible to the sense that’d come with my magic but they weren’t so weak that I passively took control of them. “I’ll have to actually use mana to control them.”
“Then give it a shot. Start with one on the outskirts of their nest and then bring it here.” My boss ordered, a smile on her lips for some reason. “If this succeeds, you shall have your personal army. An army enough to deal with most B-Rank Gates on its own.”
I didn’t bother asking if the ants were really that strong. I could sense everything about them, after all. Their mana alone would’ve made them B-Rank monsters and coordinating such monsters perfectly almost certainly could do what Lilian promised.
As I worked, as I decided how much mana to use as if I’d already known the answer before I began, I felt Lilian’s newly glowing eyes on me. What was up with that, I didn’t know but I had a feeling I didn’t want to know, either. Getting even more envious of my boss wasn’t going to end well.
Just like always, my mana didn’t take long to seat itself in the giant ant’s head. It had taken over a thousand times what I usually used but that was still a miniscule amount for me. Even more miniscule was the tiny amount of mana I released each time I gave an order to something I’d taken control of. That was so little that I recovered it in a second.
As far as I could tell, my mana in my bugs was a receiver and I knew how to send the right signals for them.
“An interesting method of control.” Lilian commented and her tone made it sound like there was more to it than just that but she didn’t elaborate. “Now, attempt to take over all the remaining ants here. Considering your mana reserves, that should be well within your capabilities.”
“The queen can’t move.” I told her while doing as I’d been told. The bloated giant ant was the one Lilian had told me to make sure I got under control and I could see why. That ant was the method through which I’d be able to grow my army in the future.
“Then I’ll move her personally. Just make sure the ants aren’t even slightly aggressive unless ordered to attack something. If they hurt anyone in my pocket dimension, they’ll be put down.” The condition was one I’d already known and, despite my confidence that my commands would be followed even if I were gone for a while, I couldn’t help but feel just the slightest bit of worry that these ants, being so much stronger than anything I’d ever controlled before, would somehow manage to resist.
They’d already be kept outside the castle itself, near the edge of my range, but these things could easily make their way to the castle if they ever stopped obeying my orders.
‘It’ll be fine.’ I tried hard to reassure myself, taking in a deep breath before watching as Lilian funnelled them all into her pocket dimension by taking out a wardrobe entrance and then simply making it larger.
Lilian
I could see the ritual now. It was hidden behind the mana in the air and the ground, pretending very hard to not exist at all as it twisted and turned. It was so massive that I couldn’t even begin to see all of it but that was fine. I’d see how it interacted with Gates as well as bloodshed in due time.
For now, there was something much more fascinating before me, that something being Astel, Naturalborn of the Void.
To my sight, Astel was almost if not outright more mana than matter. Every fibre of his being was laced with mana and I was completely and utterly certain that Astel could not have existed without its mana. The being before me was one of magic, not nature. Then again, in this beautiful world that held such abundant mana, the two may as well have been one and the same. After all, here, mana was a part of nature.
And, as I walked into the cavern it had made its home, I smiled at the sheer absurdity I got to witness the moment it noticed me and began to charge up its usual beam opening move. With my eyes and my senses, I witnessed as Astel compressed mana by applying gravity from all directions, basically trying to make the mana collapse in on itself. Then, all it had to do was to redirect all that pressure into one direction and, just like that, it had a devastating attack.
Lifting my left pointer finger after bending space to escape the beam, I formed a miniature version of that same attack in front of the tip of my finger while Astel’s stinger attempted to strike me, space twisting it away from me.
The first attempt was lackluster, having lacked the decisiveness of Astel’s almost instantaneous redirection and therefore losing out on a lot of power but that was fine. As Astel showed me how to teleport – something I was less than eager to try out after seeing how much mana Astel had to put into preventing its method from damaging its body considering the fact that I already had a safer method – I simply twisted space to let myself step away from its destination before it could reach it and tried again.
This time, it was still not yet perfect but the beam left a mark on the freshly teleported Astel.
The monster almost certainly knew by now what I did. It had switched to teleportation much too quickly for it to not have noticed how I bent space after I’d only done it twice. It also didn’t matter. I was almost certainly not stronger than it, I could acknowledge that, but I could bend space and its nature mixed with my eyes and senses meant that my instincts had all the information required to let me be perfectly aware of all it’d do before it’d ever get the chance to do it.
So, smiling, I decided to leave my spatial magic be. I was well aware of my need for something resembling a challenge at this point. I would not grow and learn to simply trust my instincts in a fight if I continued to rely on my spatial magic in fights in which I didn’t need it.
In all honesty, this was precisely what I’d hoped for. Astel could hurt me if he hit but, unless I was foolish enough to try and tank its moves, I’d be fine. And, even if I did, I had aura.
In regards to something else, it was also a chance to fight with my zanpakuto in hand. The asauchi had already changed to have a sheath matching the galaxy theme of my outfit so, at the very least, something was changing about my weapon. Now I just needed to somehow enter a state in which I could listen to its words and, for lack of a better understanding, I believed the best way to do that was to simply wield it.
And, in wielding it here and now, I got to confirm a theory of mine. Whether it was because of its connection to my soul or something else, the zanpakuto was a delightful catalyst for mana.
As Astel shoved forwards its right hand, leaving behind a cloud of nebulas as it did so and politely showing me how to do so, I reinforced the blade with reiryoku and simultaneously added gravity magic to it, adding some additional force to let the still fairly normal blade leave some mild damage on Astel’s body.
Of course, I had to dance out of the way of explosions afterwards but I didn’t even think about it, I just followed instincts that had all the knowledge required to know exactly where I’d be safe and where I wouldn’t be.
Laughing a little as Astel flew upwards and formed its gravitational orbs, I slashed my sword, leaving behind a cloud of nebulas. It didn’t matter that they weren’t yet perfect when I saw each and every imperfection in perfect clarity. They’d be perfect soon enough.
Similarly, just for fun, I created six small orbs for beams and their smaller size meant that I was done charging them in the time it took Astel to finish charging the six he intended to use for his gravitational waves.
What’d happen if a wave of gravitational mana from another sorcerer were pulled into the just-charged orbs? After all, they still pulled all mana into their centers with extreme force merely to keep themselves stable.
The answer was that it added force to my spell and, when I made the beams counteract the gravitational pull in the orbs just below Astel, that left only one path for all that power to go – directly into Astel’s flesh.
To the credit of the Naturalborn of the Void, it did manage to not only prevent itself from being hurt by rapidly redirecting the mana used to stabilize its orbs to turn it into a gravitational pull downwards so as to redirect the burst away from Astel but that also sent it towards me.
“I thank you for the chance to practice.” I told it, grin on my lips as I used spatial magic to first condense the gravitational wave but then using my own gravity sorcery to directly contest the creature I was fighting. Should it lose, it’d sever one of its own limbs, I’d decided.
Astel certainly had many times my experience when it came to this type of sorcery but I was fixing more and more inefficiencies in my casting as our contest lasted, the both of us constantly empowering our magics further and further until I was genuinely worried that the roof of the cave might just collapse once Astel lost.
Of course, I sincerely doubted that the being I was fighting shared my concerns. If it did, it wouldn’t have continued to increase the power with which it was fighting me.
“Let’s see.” I muttered, feeling anticipation as I increased the strength of my gravity sorcery one final time, having figured out how quickly Astel could increase the strength of its own and using my newly attained level of mastery over this type of sorcery as well as my Great Rune empowering my spells to outdo it long enough that, though it was weaker than it could’ve been due to me overpowering Astel’s magic as little as possible, it still tore through one of Astel’s arms and went on to hit the ceiling of the cavern.
I had never experienced an earthquake but I was pretty sure the entire cavern shaking so much that I felt it to be necessary to use my wings to fly qualified as one. Several rocks fell down from the shaking, too, and were only further accelerated by Astel as if to try and hit me with them.
And, as Astel got his bearings despite the continuous shaking of the cavern around us, he did something that almost made me laugh: He opened several portals, kindly showing me how to do so in the process, while also using gravity sorcery to make sure that nothing would leave through it while all the nice space debris that’d fit through the opening made its way straight through and, unlike the chaotic spray that I remembered from the games, these Meteorites of Astel were directed so as to make it much less likely for me to dodge. My opponent had even accounted for my wings despite me only having just revealed them.
In this case, my instincts told me not to dodge. They told me to simply use gravity sorcery and spatial magic to redirect the meteors that’d hit me towards Astel and so that’s precisely what I did, cracks forming in its body with each meteor that had hit it. Meanwhile the others crashed into the cavern at various spots and I was almost certain from how hard it was still shaking that the site of our battle wouldn’t remain standing by the end.
Only, while Astel was damaged, I had fought a monster whose body was a lot larger and held more mana than mine while also teaching myself its magic. I was running on fumes at this point, our needlessly stubborn clash after I’d destabilized its orbs having taken more mana than I probably should have invested.
For some reason, my aura pulsed near where I held my zanpakuto, a hint of my reiryoku touching it before being converted into my mana. “Thank you.” I politely told the spirit in my blade before shoving a great deal of my newest form of supernatural energy into my aura, more than halving the latter in the process of generating enough mana that I was confident in coming out of this battle victorious.
The implications of my presumed semblance were interesting but, for once, I forced myself to focus rather than getting distracted for Astel had recovered from the blows its meteors had dealt.
For a moment, the both of us remained where we were; it glaring at me from the ground while I floated just far enough above the ground that the worrying shaking of the cavern wasn’t bothering me. Then, it warped and I could sense its destination before he’d even finished, instinctively deflecting one of the arms that tried to grab me with my zanpakuto while dodging towards said arm so the other couldn’t reach me.
Seeing an opening, I created an orb and, a moment later, the compressed mana shot into the hole in Astel’s head, stunning it for long enough for me to fly onto its head and stab my blade into it while compressing mana around it. A moment later, a Wave of Darkness erupted within Astel’s head and shards of the thing burst from the wound.
Despite that, the Naturalborn of the Void remained standing, its hand trying to grab me off its head. To prevent that, I formed another, larger orb and had it sever that limb just below the wrist.
Before it could recover, I then sent another Wave of Darkness into its head through the zanpakuto still lodged in it and, this time, I could feel Astel beginning to fall apart as its mana dissipated.
The monster, however, did not go down without using the last of its breath to create as powerful a Wave of Darkness as it could without charging up some orbs beforehand to finally seal the fate of our battleground, yet more of the ceiling collapsing above us and, even if there hadn’t been a seal at one of the two entrances of the cavern, I was fairly certain it’d have been as useless for escaping at that moment as the one I’d used had been.
“Good on you for trying.” I told the creature that had come from the stars to punish an Eternal City. “Too bad it would never have worked on me.” With these parting words and the last of the runes Astel had held becoming mine alongside another Remembrance to remind me to visit Roundtable Hold at some point, I left the Lands Between for the time being, curious as to just how problematic the consequences of our battle would turn out to have been.
???
Lilian could not yet hear my voice. A shame but to be expected considering my youth. I might not have told her my name yet either way but at least it would have been more pleasant to inform her of her semblance over tea or at least via words rather than having to send some reiryoku into her aura in the right way to trigger it.
And, much as I liked my wielder, she should have figured that one out herself long before now. Except, she had filled her plate with so many different things that even a lack of sleep made it impossible for her to have the time to experiment with what she already had. Her new eyes were a blessing in that regard, letting her improve her magic much more quickly.
Lilian was well aware of her own immortality and a simple twist to her personal philosophy from when she’d been mortal had been enough for her to adapt well to that state of being. She had simply neglected to adapt her patience.
Then again, looking towards the six ‘pillars’ that were, in truth, chains visible within this inner world of hers, it was not entirely her fault that she was so impatient. A mortal had tried to create an ideal immortal and the result was a mess to say the least. A mess that could only be solved with a lot of time and patience on both mine and Lilian’s parts.
And I was not foolish enough to believe that those chains being visible now hadn’t been permitted if not intended. A being that could create these things as well as the Grimoire, overwhelming might of which I had only allowed myself to glimpse at once before it could shatter my essence could’ve just as easily ensured the chains would never be seen and certainly never face destruction. That I saw a path towards their destruction, however much it relied on Lilian herself, meant that that being hadn’t desired to see them remain forevermore.
Lilian might not have been able to know the true nature of them due to the chains themselves preventing such a thing but I’d be able to convince her to destroy the abominations created due to her past mistakes, of that I was sure.
But, before that point, she’d first have to grow enough in power to be able to destroy them and enough in mind to not falter in the face of what she’d been cursed with once said curses were broken.
Her immaturity was acceptable but it’d cause issues if seeds of doubt were allowed to grow within her mind due to chains that had been intended as failsafes more so than actual restrictions and yet ended up being the latter.
My wielder had simultaneously grown too much due to the philosophy they had created in their past life, one which had originally been meant to stabilize the mind of someone who idealized eternity despite their own mortality and feared death far too much, while also having been hindered in her growth by said philosophy and the chains put on her soul.
“Foolishness. Once we meet, I will have to make you question things once again rather than just believing yourself to be correct. Not speaking absurdities doesn’t make them any less absurd, it just protects yourself from criticism.” I muttered, almost bothered by the fact that Lilian disliked wasting her time by sleeping since it meant I couldn’t contact her at those times.
No, I’d have to wait until she managed to speak to me before I’d be able to speak to her. At the very least, she’d likely take my words to heart simply because my spirit originated from her own.
And, much as these chains were an eyesore, I was willing to patiently wait for Lilian to grow enough that she could get rid of them without suffering from it.
Hope you enjoyed and let me know if you have any feedback