“Give it back! It’s not yours!” cried out a girl when the other children took away her pendant. It was a present from her best friend and seeing it in the hands of others playing with it made her furious.

“Get it back if you can,” she heard the voice of Hessian overlapping instead. She froze, frightened by the other children and the man, but it was all gone and replaced by a bottomless rage.

“Give it back to me!” she and Kiur yelled, demanding it back.

Hessian and his group jumped back from the sudden outburst of magic. The earth convulsed and shifted underneath everyone’s feet.

Wagons levelled and flew all around Kiur’s immediate proximity.

It came crashing down on them like a violent wave. No one could escape.

Mana travelled from Kiur’s core, sitting slightly above his solar plexus. His magic channels burnt, and the mana escaped outside to wake the sleeping consciousness of their surroundings.

Kiur was like a conductor where everything connected with him and erupted from his rough emotions. Fury was stirring.

“Why are you running? Why are you running!” shouted Kiur, releasing another wave of pressure. He siphoned more magical energy from his core and through the channels of his arms.

Like a broken dam, Kiur released a barrage of earth-based attacks, uncaring for the people around. Stones sharpened, sand convulsed, sediment liquified and turned to mud.

The earth existed only for the whims of their master. It obeyed and gladly targeted Kiur’s foes.

“What’s going on!? Someone, help-” Before the dazed soldier could get his head on the situation, Cylia hit him unconscious.

Taking his keys, she threw them over to Xander crawling out from his toppled and destroyed wagon like a car crash victim.

“Didn’t he say he can’t use his magic!?” Cylia pickpocketed the soldier.

“That’s what I remember too!” Xander undid the magic restraining handcuffs, feeling his cold mana coursing through his body.

The touch of his gloved hand gently placed on the metal bar of the carriage. Thin trails of ice spread on its surface and around Xander’s hand like a mist.

He broke off the rod, giving a satisfied smile in response. “I finally feel more like myself. Time to crack some skulls.”

Having heard the nearby commotion ensuing, soldiers rushed to the location to surround and point their weapons at the escapees. They demanded their surrender.

The Reiszer were at a clear numeral advantage. Xander quickly put up his hands without resistance.

“Me and my big mouth, hey girl, any idea what-” Xander realised too late that Cylia was already gone—she had abandoned him.

Xander cursed her existence for everyone to hear.

Hessian felt both upset and ashamed for having been caught off guard. He had never been so wrong in his judgement of someone than at this moment and was stuck dodging attacks.

The ground became too hazardous for him to move around—even jumping on the wagons provided little coverage.

Kiur’s magic ability to use command his surrounding and use it to his advantage took everything out of Hessian.

His body was too tired and malnourished that he was constantly on the verge of passing out.

Hessian was driving on mana to compensate for the lack of energy, but it was taking its toll on him. He needed to strike at Kiur’s core. He needed to take him out before Hessian went down.

“No distraction. Focus on this one strike. Hessian enveloped the tip blade of his sword with magic.

Reiszer magic created to take down opponents and cut through their defences.

“Hessian, let us help you-”

Hessian turned to the source of the voice.

Nertha and the rest were running up to him for support. He cursed, “Stay away!” he shouted at them, but it was a mistake. Hessian got distracted.

Were it not for his muscles and reflexes to react in time and deflect most of the blow, he would have left with far more than a broken rib.

“You grew some guts.” Hessian held his bruised side and gnashed a grin. “Good for you!”

Sucking in a quick breath, Hessian dashed forward.

He could more or less guess correctly where the spikes would shoot out from, sidestepping around them and keeping running.

Kiur buried his hands into the ground and convulsed the earth. An entire wagon came hurtling towards Hessian.

“You gotta be kiddin’ me.”

Just in time, Hessian cut a gash at its surface and leapt through it towards Kiur. Midair, Hessian readied his sword for a follow-up strike.

Then he noticed something was off.

First, his skin crawled, his eyes registering a flicker of magic particles fluctuating in the air.

They were flocking around Kiur, shielding him as they conjured a refined stone wall between him and his adversary.

Hessian’s sword shattered upon contact. He hardly had enough time to turn and jump away before a spike impaled him.

It wasn’t Kiur’s doing. “It couldn’t be him, impossible.” That’s what Hessian thought.

The surrounding area had tried to protect Kiur as he had already lost consciousness, tears rolling down his empty eyes and repeating the words: “Give it back. It’s not yours. Give it back.”

Kiur reached out with his hand. His magic channels flared up for another attack. The earth rose and fell like a violent wave, roaring like a stirred beast.

“How in Hel’s name am I supposed to go past that!?”

Hessian prepared to jump back but thought otherwise and jumped sideways. Behind him, the earth had shot forwards and almost grabbed him.

“I need an advantage. How can he attack with that girl still nearby-” Hessian then noticed that Ninda, the little girl from before, was nowhere to be found—as if she had disappeared from the face of the earth.

Disappeared was the right word for the current situation—that’s how Xander felt doing when surrounded by soldiers ready to dice him up.

“Don’t you dare moving!” they yelled at Xander, who tensed up, trying to calculate a plan.

A sweat drop rolled down his cheek. His hands were still in the air. Two Reiszer approached him slowly.

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Could he take them on?

Yes, he could, but should he? That was a different kind of topic.

A glance at Kiur showed how reckless it could be to interfere. He was fighting one Reiszer and pushing back anyone else trying to approach him.

Making a run towards Kiur could put Xander in danger, too. There were too many factors to consider, complicating his decision-making further.

“Dang, it!” Xander snapped at the soldiers. “I’ll just do it!”

Xander willed his magic into his hands and out into the air while drawing in the nearby moisture to cast a spell.

He had to help Kiur if he hoped to improve his odds of an escape. He had to risk it, and he hated that.

“Cold Repel!” A cold swirl of magic scourged around Xander, driving back the soldiers and gaining distance to prepare for another spell.

Xander concentrated his magic in the centre of his palm by congregating ambient mana and moisture to freeze and charge it.

“Crystal Shot!”

Shooting the soldier right at her chest, Xander disabled her core, forcing it to discharge and form an icy shockwave to knock back those behind her.

“Anyone else, huh!?” yelled Xander. His triumph was short-lived. The white smoke cleared, revealing twice the number of soldiers approaching him than the amount he had just defeated. “Just my luck!”

Before Xander could do anything, the newcomers were taken out as quickly as they came.

A man cloaked in a beige robe and a child under his arm appeared, taking out an additional soldier creeping up on Xander from behind.

“Go, take shelter.” He let Ninda go, and she ran towards Cylia and Jeorg, hiding close by.

“Curse you for hiding on me and not helping!” Xander shouted at Cylia, but she ignored him.

Xander was about to nag on her. He stopped when the stranger grabbed him by the shoulder. It made Xander tense up even more than the soldiers did.

His instincts told him to run, but he couldn’t. He stared into the wild green eyes of a fox therianthrope wearing a red robe and bronze shoulder armour underneath.

“Take Kiur and head for a nearby wagon. He won’t hold on any longer,” he stressed, his clawed grip burying into Xander’s shoulder.

“What are you talking about? He’s doing perfectly-” Xander finally had the time to examine Kiur’s form. He frowned, noticing an anomaly happening around him.

Xander was an expert at mana manipulation, so he could tell what was wrong.

While Kiur summoned the surrounding earth, Xander witnessed two different coloured particles clashing.

Orange and Red lights violently collided with one another all around Kiur and extinguished themselves. There was more orange than red, but not for long; the reds were increasing.

They influenced the conjured earth of Kiur, burning it away and turning it into ash. It was visibly affecting Kiur’s performance. “It wouldn’t be long until all he could produce was nothing but unsustainable ash.”

“We’ll put the escape plan ahead of time,” said the stranger. The rising fireworks and explosions overshadowed his tone. “It’s now or never.”

—✧—

Kiur couldn’t remember the last time he had lost control over his magic and emotions.

As one of the first lessons, priests taught children that emotions and magic went hand in hand. They could either become helpful assets or detrimental tools—moulding their impressionable minds to take into account what nature wanted.

They understood early on what their hearts and minds perceived and how to bring everything together. It became a connection the children built with their surroundings, bonding with the magical particles they always lived with.

In Kiur’s case, it became a chronic state in his late teenage years.

Whenever he experienced strong emotions of fear, anger, or sorrow, his magic would go rampant and out of control.

And whenever his magic went rampant, he became even more emotional. A vicious cycle he didn’t know how to break.

At first, his magic was calm, benign—like Kiur was as a child. That’s why their patron God Enlil planned to make Kiur his next Gala.

However, when his second element suddenly awakened, everything went downhill.

Not only had he lost his content life and friends, but he had also lost his mental stability—his balance.

The earth he conjured would turn to ash. His teary eyes saw fire everywhere. Anyone he looked at was burning like iridescent blue flames, emotions fuelling the intensity of his magic until his mana swiftly burned away.

It was wearing him out, making him dizzy until he would fall unconscious and return to the drab, ashen fields of a desert.

Panting heavily, Kiur turned his head left and right to check his surroundings.

It was always the same place he went with his delusion, but this time, he was alone.

A nebula stretched above his head like a starry blanket in this cavern-like structure he found himself in.

“Where am I?” wondered Kiur. The place constantly faded in and out of his mind, so every return was a mix of familiarity and ambiguity.

He wandered in this desert aimlessly, following an invisible road in his mind he was supposed to follow every time he came back here.

Kiur had to look once, and the dark dunes changed their patterns, disorientating him. He knew better not to rely on his sense of sight.

“Just go forward, trust my feet and heart,” repeated Kiur, and he found himself before a palace. A ziggurat built from dark adobe, coloured in different shades of red from the light around.

“Ganzir,” said Kiur, instinctively knowing what the temple was called.

Ascending the large platforms step by step, Kiur’s breath became haggard—exhausted from the never-ending levels.

He needed a break. Just for a moment, he wanted to close his eyes and rest.

“Don’t rest,” he heard a voice, but it vanished before Kiur could find its source. It was a man’s voice—one he knew but couldn’t place.

“Alright… keep… going-” Kiur winced in exhaustion but kept climbing the palace temple that had no end above or below.

Hands bruised, feet blistered and lungs protesting, Kiur reached the top of the palace from where the desert disappeared entirely, forming a wall of a starry mist.

Bringing his attention to the centre of the ziggurat, Kiur found a pool of surprisingly crystal-clear water. Something he knew shouldn’t be here in this ashen wasteland.

Being the only place with clear water Kiur had seen in a long time, he imagined it was calling him to take a sip.

Kiur eagerly cupped his hands and took a sip before simply dumping his head.

“Much better.” Kiur whipped back his wet hair and gasped. “I feel calmer.”

He looked down at the water again. He imagined seeing his tired face but instead found the reflection of a woman mimicking him.

The same one from his delusions.

Kiur instinctively jumped back, and so did his image in the water.

“What was that? Why is she…” Gathering his thoughts, Kiur crawled up to the pool again and looked inside. The woman looked back at him, but now she looked more like a real person than she ever did.

Tanned smooth skin, wavy midnight blue hair and silvery eyes filled with nothing but melancholy and sorrow—the only clothes she wore were a darkish drag of a brown robe, torn and worn out.

“Who are you?” asked Kiur, watching how her lips moved with his. Inspecting himself, Kiur saw that his body was still his. Yet they both moved identically like reflections of a real mirror. “What are you?”

Then her image stopped mimicking him and slammed against the mirror, startling Kiur again.

She placed her hands on the surface of the water. A gurgling sound came out of her mouth. The water on her side turned to mud as the woman drowned.

“Wait, come back!” Kiur jumped into the pool—but it was too shallow, leaving him drenched. “Come out and talk to me, you hear me? Come out!” yelled Kiur.

He punched his fist into the water repeatedly until most of the water was out on the palace floor. “I have had enough of being so miserable! Every single day for the past three years! Why am I like this? I don’t understand. What do you want? How much longer do I need to endure this?”

Violently Kiur tugged against his golden hair, almost ripping it out of his head when he cried and yelled at the pond, unable to understand anything about his emotions.

He had enough of it all.

“I want to know something.” Kiur raised his head, eyes red and dry from crying. He was tired and angry; he needed to direct those somewhere. Vent his feelings. “Are you one of my delusions or real? If so, who are you?”

Kiur’s words were directed at the following figure his mind projected. One he felt like he knew very well.

The giantess with the twisted crown and downcast wings was now before Kiur, sitting comfortably with her owl-like legs to the side.

With one large hand on her hip and the other on the ground, she observed Kiur patiently with eyes closed and wings flapping slowly, seemingly drying the wet floor.

“Let me guess; you won’t speak either or tell me your name?” Kiur pointed his finger at her, demanding an answer he knew he wouldn’t get.

The goddess stirred from her position and bent forward towards him. Kiur thought he insulted her and stepped back, fearing he was about to be crushed.

To Kiur’s surprise, he found her large hands brushing his body and drying it with magic while combing his hair with her fingers.

She tried to soothe him, caress him attentively, almost like a mother—reminding Kiur of how much he missed his mother.

“Who are you?” repeated Kiur

His eyes drifting away to the other delusion. She was on her knees, crying into her hands and avoiding Kiur’s look at her.

The goddess kept trying to soothe her by brushing her hair and rubbing her back, similar to how she did to Kiur.

The eyes of the delusion looked over to Kiur and locked with his—realisation flashed into his mind.

“I think… I know now who you are,” mumbled Kiur, falling into the goddess’ hand and taking in the brief respite he received.

Right before he plunged back to reality, he was calm, sleeping soundly.