‘I never liked it.

The fight.

From the beginning, he knew it.

He knew I hated it. And he knew, avoiding it was never an option.

‘Reality is cruel. Life is hard.’

Those were his words.

‘But how would he know? He’s hardly older than I am.’

Those were my thoughts at the time.

Our relationship- lord and vassal, was a strange one. He never forced me- us, to do anything.

Except for two things.

The first was to grow strong enough to protect ourselves. Because no matter how strong he was, he could never protect everyone.

The second was to create a box in our minds. A chest- or rather, a switch for our emotions. For our morals. For our self-righteousness. For our egos.

The second was to find a way to turn off everything until all that remained was our loyalty to him and an indomitable will to survive.

To fight.

I never resented him for it. I only resented the switch. Illogically so.

‘To serve a devil, you must become one.’

Those were the words we heard before our lives changed forever. But… it never happened.

We never became devils. Fully at least. Instead, we walked in the light. We toed the line between day and night, light and darkness, underworlder and celestial.

But the switch remained.

Because the only way to change a cruel world was to become cruel yourself.

The switch remained.

Because it had to.

Up until the moment it didn’t.’

Core’s Record. Ch 17: Spiritual Tag.

***

‘Jaimess A. Corey, you are to enter your dormitory portal at the seventh hour of the morning to encounter a creature chosen by the Bodhi Tree Staff, Class Instructors, and members of the Optimus Regni to test your abilities. Your task is to kill or otherwise incapacitate this creature. Failure to do so will result in a deduction of 300 points.

‘Good luck. Bodhi Tree Headmaster, Zorrenor Knagh’

“So I’m being hunted. Just like old times.” Chuckling lightly, I attempted to fold the leaf in storage and wound up crumpling it to dust.

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Ignoring it entirely, I reached into my side pouch to withdraw a vial from my ruck and upended the dull blue syrup into my mouth. Then stepped through the portal without delay.

A wondrous jungle spread before my eyes just as the potion kicked in and at long last, I felt it. I was… high. Both figuratively and metaphorically. My body was in an environment in which it had never been before. The air was a bluish-gray like dirty glacial ice that had frozen around craggy rock faces and pine tree clusters that seemed to grow wherever they could find purchase. But my mind. My mind could feel the subtle pushes and pulls on the mana around me. Within me.

In the leaves, the grasses, and the trees, I felt it. Glowing like embers buried in ash. Glowing embers spread far to the horizon. I felt it in the birds, in the reptiles and mammals scurrying about as I wandered in waiting to be ambushed. But… stronger than anything else was a… a warmth. A gentle heat that almost hummed the air itself like a minstrel plucking a harpsichord. Almost like a… call. It pulled at me. And I let myself be pulled. I felt the absent dryness clinging to my back while the wet air slapped at my front and I answered. Still wary of my task, but eager to feel the warmth in its entirety. Indifferent as to what I was to fight, but excited as to what I was about to meet.

Before I knew it, I felt myself smiling. I felt like the air around me, flowing and free while another part of me skipped up the rocks.

Then I stopped.

Up here, the mist was thicker than anywhere else. I couldn’t see beyond a 10-meter-wide ring of mosaic stone tiles. But the sights couldn’t have been better. The feeling couldn’t have been greater. The warmth couldn’t have been stronger.

Or... warmths.

They came in three. Round and oblong spheres, like burnt-red teardrops placed on their sides to make stiff tails and round faces dotted with five holes. Two for the wings, plumed red, gold, and white. Two for the eyes, hollow black holes filled with an ethereal white point. And one for a human mouth, smiling, laughing, or yipping excitedly as they bobbed and weaved under each other. And not to forget the elongated, bulbous noses.

Their warmth blossomed and so too did mine. Without thinking, I shouted. And to my surprise, the same word came racing back into my thoughts a moment later.

‘Play!’

I reached out, and so too did they. Weaving with incredible speed around my arm to playfully headbutt me in the chest and force me back a step.

“Oh!” I laughed. “Tag it is!” I reached out again, attempting to tag the grapefruit with wings back, only for another to headbutt my shoulder from the side. I stumbled again, then stumbled forward once more after the third pelted the back of my head.

With so much warmth around me, my own warmth bloomed. The world blurred. And then I found myself retracting my hands from their shocked faces. The game was now even, and they reacted accordingly. Whizzing around and through the trees frozen in the ice and themselves in order to poke at and jab my sides. But I was unyielding as well. The heat allowed me to do nothing less, for it was everywhere now. Burning like the sun as if it were desperate to give me energy where there was none. And when it bloomed hotter, so too did mine.

I was unaware of how much time I spent reaching. Running. Laughing. Playing. In time, I even forgot the reason I found myself in such a wonderful place. Or, perhaps I forgot the moment I arrived. But how could I have not? Remembering such a task while chasing such wonderful creatures through such a wonderful place was impossible. We skimmed vast lakes, weaving across the surface like Jonet would in the old days to evade the headbutts and hands of each other. Chasing one another, we scaled the realm until the unforgettable sight of endless blue filled our eyes. Then, we dove and weaved and fell until all we saw around us was brown and blue and green. And through it all, the heat remained. Burning and radiant and blinding like a furnace in my heart. In our hearts- theirs and mine. Building and rising and growing in tune with our unbounded glee.

We tagged and tagged back for an indiscriminate length of time until, like all things, the warmth started to fade- both mine and theirs. First into a depressing cold. Then into a dreary darkness. But that was fine. The game was still even. And I had long since grown comfortable with the darkness.

Due to that and perhaps that alone, I still felt it through the darkness. Or rather, I felt them. The pockets of warmth. One above. One in front. And one below. I could feel them heating up ever so slowly.

I could feel their words- their laughs, resonating with mine. And I couldn't help but feel utter giddiness.

“Heh. That was fun.”