Their Own Duties

Katherine looked at the Nightmare Incursion and recalled her years serving as a Lady of the Void. She had never experienced being subjected to one, or taken by surprise by the sudden appearance of the Nightmare and this… whatever this sphere of darkness was.

She had seen the aftermath of many, however. The destruction of The Great World Tree, Sylvanus, was a site of pilgrimage for all trainees of the Order of the Void. When Elizzel mentioned that it had been a home to her, the first place she had ever called home, all Katherine could feel was sorrow.

The world tree had wreaked havoc upon the lands, creating massive desserts and other desolate areas devoid of life. An entire nation, from the time when the lands were whole, had been destroyed overnight by the ancient Void Region, the Nightmare Land’s first name.

Another Incursion she had visited was the sunken Turtle Island. A place once inhabited by monks and weapon masters, according to history. It had been a civilization thriving atop the shell of a colossal, flying turtle. Gone now, when the Incursion had turned all of those people into Nightmares. Signs of their madness, the destroyed fragments of the turtle’s shell, were the only evidence that that place had once existed.

There were many other places Katherine had had to visit during her training years. None of them displayed this giant sphere of darkness.

“It’s because the Incursions there were over,” Elizzel said through their Tether. “But I know what you’re thinking…”

“It’s not as big as I thought…”

Katherine blushed and reprimanded herself for thinking like a child. Elizzel afforded a soft giggle despite their current situation. Small lewd jokes like those were exactly what Frein would’ve done. Not that the two ladies could afford those right now…

“It’s how it’s supposed to start,” Elizzel said, materializing behind Katherine. “It should be expanding soon, unless someone managed to destroy a Nightmare Sign.”

“They have to destroy a lot,” Katherine commented.

“Well, destroying one is like thirty minutes of respite before the Incursion summons two with an army of Nightmares behind it.”

“You seem to know a lot about Incursions, Eli.”

“I don’t know enough,” the faunel admitted. “If I did, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

Katherine sighed. Elizzel had a point. “We should go back. If what Maffelyne said is true, the Princess should be coming back within the hour.”

She managed to contemplate a little on how to break the news to the Princess before a massive earthquake lifted the ground. Katherine quickly recovered while Elizzel returned to her Mind Palace.

Entire lands broke apart, toppling over trees, A.I.R. ships, and people in the distance, as a massive wave rippled from the Nightmare Incursion.

It began to expand.

Katherine was at the forefront of it all, the black sphere growing ever closer. She hopped away, skipping over floating rocks while dodging everything else that flew her way.

Eventually, she reached the reinforcements. Her father, Admiral Garm, hastily issued commands to get everyone back up in the air. Maffelyne saw her return. She approached, stumbling but recovering with every step.

“Did you find them?” she asked.

“I didn’t go out there to look for them,” Katherine replied while ordering the half-elf to get on Enza’s back. She complied, but she had an accusative expression for just a few seconds.

The Lady didn’t like it, but she understood the lack of respect. Maffelyne was high on vengeance, or at least, the desire for it. Fortunately enough, she wasn’t as attuned to meiyal as Frill, or things would’ve been complicated. In exchange, however, the half-elf’s eyes had turned to blaming everyone she could see.

With a wordless command, Enza carried Maffelyne to one of the A.I.R. ships that had managed to lift off. Admiral Garm replaced the audience. Unlike the first one, he could steady himself effortlessly on the shaking ground.

“We should go,” he said. While his words were, at most, suggesting escape, he understood that they had no effect on someone of Katherine’s caliber. So he delivered it in a way that implied he was leaving her behind. “If you can manage to stop this, we’ll return to land. If not, we’ll start evacuating the entire nation.”

To where? Katherine didn’t give voice to the question. She simply nodded. Her father looked at her for a brief moment before nodding back in return. He turned.

“Pa,” she called out, stretching two arms to her side. Admiral Garm smiled, almost to tears, before embracing his daughter.

“Whatever happens. I’m proud of you.”

“I love you, Pa.”

“I love you too, dear.” He arranged Katherine’s brown and white hair before letting go. “You can do it.”

Despite delivering his parting words, the Admiral stayed rooted on the ground. Katherine smiled and wiped away her own tears that she hadn’t noticed were there.

“You need to go, Pa. I can’t do my work with you here.”

Garm sniffed and nodded. “Right. Best of luck, sweet.”

As her father turned away, so did she. Katherine looked at the slow, expanding sphere of death, devouring all under its crushing Influence.

She stood still and took a steady, deep breath. Since there was no Void Mother or Father around, the task of protecting the remaining territory free of the Nightmare fell into her hands.

Free… Nothing about this is free.

Katherine accepted that truth. The world, Brymeia, was dying. Frein and his predecessors were the keys to prevent that from happening. She now understood why he wouldn’t spend his time preventing his death. Why he would rather search for a way to save this world even at the cost of his life.

Right now, she felt the same.

The Incursion loomed over her, threatening to infinitely expand and engulf her within it. While she wouldn’t have trouble herself, the rest of Irista Nation was not as privileged. The earthquake had long since stopped, but the Nightmare’s advance continued.

It was so close now, but Katherine had to wait for the right moment. She Opened her meiyal core and expanded her own Influence. At the same time, she utilized all her divine meiyal-charged materials with Elizzel’s help.

As expected, not all of them responded. While they did not outright reject her, as Brymeia had promised, following her every command was a different matter entirely. It felt like trying to convince skulking children out of their bad mood. Unreasonable, to say the least.

Two materials, fortunately enough, responded to her and Elizzel’s call. The first was Brymeia’s Embrace, the material that Brymeia herself had created and bestowed upon her. It provided her with warmth, and guidance, assuring her that the world herself will be supporting her actions.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

The second was called The Beauty of Darkness. A material of a forgotten deity who, according to Brymeia, was once a malevolent god that had been forced to help Evanclad’s cause against the Nightmare. How and why this material responded to her so easily compared to the materials supposedly from more benevolent gods was a mystery Katherine had no time to deduce.

For now, these would have to do.

The weights of these meiyal-charged materials were nothing to scoff at. Katherine understood that if she let up, even for an instant, the meiyal coming from these materials would undoubtedly crush her. Yes, even Brymeia’s Embrace wouldn’t afford her that luxury. These materials were meant to be taken seriously at all times, and something only the strongest of the world could handle.

They were constantly asking Katherine to prove herself, and she wasn’t one to back down. Likewise, the Nightmare Incursion was doing the same.

It was dangerously close now. Too close. The Lady of the Void reached out and held the black sphere with her left hand.

“Let my words speak true.”

Void Control Techniques between combat oriented members of the Order of the Void, namely the Lords and Ladies, and their leaders, the Mothers and Fathers, were completely different. Lords and Ladies utilized these Techniques to aid themselves in combat, while Void Mothers and Fathers created literal pockets of territories safe from the Nightmare. They delivered those Techniques in a completely different way, originating their powers from the one who created their organization, Evanclad Irista.

In a sense, Void Mothers and Fathers were the people closest to replicating the First Monarch’s way of bending reality through mere words. A pseudo-Monarch’s Law.

And so, Katherine began to speak.

“From this point onwards, you shall go no further.”

A layer of her own meiyal, mixed with The Beauty of Darkness, manifested in front of her. It expanded northwards and southwards, reaching far into the horizon blocking the Incursion from expanding east.

It was the only thing she could afford. Holding a complete surround on the Nightmare Incursion required three other Void Mothers or Fathers. Katherine’s Influence could protect only one side.

But protect it did.

The Incursion expanded in other directions, the sphere growing ever larger, but it dared not surpass Katherine’s Influence.

The Lady of the Void rested her hand. Immediately she could feel the Nightmare Influence slamming against her very being. The Incursion dropped its entire weight on her protection, testing how sturdy it was… how sturdy she was.

The world was behind her, acting as support. She wouldn’t easily relent. Katherine held her breath for a long time, waiting for the Nightmare to push harder, to force her stability to break. But it didn’t arrive.

Just like that, the Incursion stopped.

----------------------------------------

“What do you need all those dead Nightmares for?” Kristel asked. She leaned on Testra, her yuma. She and the rest were back in Oray Town. While the other abled bodies piled up the dead a distance away from her, she, on the other hand, was forced to take a break.

Her Verdict took a toll on her body that was beyond a simple Art fatigue. It was taking her all to barely stand, but she couldn’t afford to be seen on the ground by these people. They looked hopeless, and showing them her weakness would further decrease their morale.

She had to keep looking like the beacon of hope until the very end. So she leaned on her yuma and started small talk with Venry instead.

“It’s our agreement with the Floating Dream,” the Guard Knight explained. “We provide it with dead Nightmares to eat, then it’ll carry us wherever we direct it, so long as it will remain relatively unharmed.”

“That sounds awfully convenient.”

“I get that. It sounds too good to be true for a Nightmare, but Dystro explained that the Floating Dream is actually a mutated creature, not a Nightmare. Like Cloud-Nesting Rocs.”

Kristel found a tangent and took it. “You seem friendly with those Vyndivalians.”

“They taught me how to survive in the Nightmare Lands. Them and Mother Selfiya.”

“Where is she?”

The answer was hard to explain, she noticed. Venry abandoned his current task and started from the beginning. He mentioned how he had almost died of shame from abandoning his duty as a Guard Knight, and actually almost dying from having a shard of Mount Rindea literally embedded in his stomach.

He showed the piece of rock, a meiyal-charged material of his own making, but was too stubborn to integrate inside his Exhibit.

“I’m studying Meiyal Armaments now,” he continued. “If Exhibit won’t work, I can probably Forge it into a Weapon or Armor. Mining and Smelting are completely different from Gathering and Milling, though.”

Kristel followed along, keeping her thoughts to herself. She didn’t dispute when Venry proposed his idea, and he quickly caught on to it.

“I expected you to disagree,” he said, implying his understanding.

“I recently found out that both disciplines were supposed to work together in the first place,” Kristel explained. “If you can achieve that, then you would be the living proof of that concept.”

“Oh…” Venry held the shard tighter and forced a smile. “Seems like a lot of things have changed since I was last around.”

“I can tell you all about it later,” Kristel smiled in return. “But you first. Why do you look so old now?”

Venry continued his story. It was Mother Selfiya who saved him from death’s door, but in exchange, seven years was taken from his lifespan. It advanced his age quite significantly, but, in Kristel’s opinion, he didn’t really look that much older.

“I think men who look more handsome as they age are pretty cool,” she said.

Venry blinked. “I didn’t think you preferred older men.”

“Shut up. I’m eighteen, you only look like twenty-six-something. You’re not that much older.”

“Oh, so you’d rather I’m older…”

Kristel narrowed her eyes. “The last time I remember, you were the one busy trying to woo me with words. Not the other way around.”

“That was years ago! Way back before you even went to Minaveil.”

“Guess you’re the sort who gives up easily.”

Kristel mentally smacked herself for saying something so stupid. She expected Venry to recoil away from it, and so she panicked, trying to find the right words to apologize.

“I’m—”

What she didn’t expect was the Guard Knight kneeling gracefully in front of her.

“Princess Kristel Irista. You’re right. When I heard about Tryvinal planning to propose to you, I was ready to give up. But when you summoned us to Minaveil Province, and I found out you rejected him, I was ready to try again.

“I thought I’d make my intentions clear after we fended off the Vyndivalians, but I never got that chance. And with the Nightmare ever-growing, I’m afraid I won’t be able to properly have that chance. So please hear me out.”

Kristel felt the heat behind her neck. Testra’s warm fur didn’t help at all. Nor was the fact that her yuma was too intuitive to keep her nose out of their business. The Princess pushed her snout away.

Venry took that as a sign for her permission.

“You might have a lot of prospects and suitors, or the Visitor might be the one you’re aiming for, but it would loathe me forever if I keep my piece withheld until it’s too late.”

Kristel’s eyes widened. She motioned to interrupt, but the Guard Knight just kept talking.

“All these days away from Irista Nation made it clear for me that I am smitten by you, Princess Kristel. As embarrassing as it is for me to admit, I feel just as strongly and proudly to say it. And I’m sure that you have a lot of other things on your mind so I’m willing to—”

“Okay, okay. Stop.” Kristel stood, fanning over her neck while forcing Venry on his feet. “I get it. It’s not like you’ve been doing your best hiding it before. But can I just clear up a few things first?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t have a lot of prospects, because I turned them all down for you. Alright? Even Frein, the Visitor, is nowhere near my radar. We’re like siblings, and I and Scuti look to him as our big brother, but that’s all there is to it. I’m not getting in Katherine’s way.”

Testra teasingly licked Kristel’s face just to push her forward. The Princess pushed back, annoyed. “Get out of here!”

The yuma barked before heading for the rest of her kin. Kristel and Venry were left alone. The other people were too busy and tired to surround them, content on observing from a distance while they did their work.

“I’ll give you my answer when this Incursion is over,” Kristel began. “We’ll meet back at the High Palace, you’ll earn your new rank as a Royal Knight, and only then will I give you my answer.”

This was all she could give for now. As much as she wanted to say ‘yes’, it would not do her well to be distracted. Neither would it help the Guard Knight. So, she gave him encouragement instead.

Venry took a step back, but he quickly recovered with renewed fire in his eyes. He straightened and made the Iristan salute.

“I’ll do my best!”

Kristel returned the salute, but with a different one. Rather than placing her right hand on her left collarbone—where Monarch Denis’ meiyal core was located—she placed it on her chest instead.

“It’s here now,” she said, allowing for Venry to piece the puzzle.

His eyes widened and happily corrected his salute. “Congratulations, Monarch Kristel.”

Kristel delivered her gratitude and allowed the Guard Knight to return to work. At the same time, Testra returned to serve as leaning support.

“You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

The yuma simply barked.

“You should’ve just said yes,” Evanclad intervened. “Who knows what might happen in the next—”

“Shut up! Don’t give voice to it, idiot Monarch!”

“She’s right, you know…” Norazzel followed. “Why would you jinx them like that?”

Silence.

“You’re right. I apologize.”

Now that the First Monarch mentioned it, Kristel couldn’t help but think through the conversation again. She absentmindedly watched the Floating Dream feast on the dead Nightmares, not caring for how grotesque the entire process was. She noticed it suck up the bodies using weird tubed straws, but her mind was swimming on things she could’ve said better.

The next thing she knew, she and everyone else was flying on its back, on their way out of the Incursion.

There, she realized how ironically distracted she was. The Nightmare Incursion had expanded, but fortunately enough, someone was stopping it.