"Something just came within the range of my senses," Ciel said.

"Where, and what are they?"

"Into the north, past the Great Clock. They smelt of blood and oil, either a foreign mercenary or a vampire that went by team seven. They might also be others that liked to act as an oriole, fishing in troubled waters."

"Let's go greet our new 'friend', shall we?"

She nodded, and onwards we go, towards the lost lamb waiting for slaughter.

We passed by the bustling stalls, full of customers and happiness, towards the darkened alleyway where our guest stops in their tracks.

There, we found a man with an egregious wound on his back, as if he was mauled by a feral beast. He appeared conscious, however, his wizened eyes betrayed what had happened to him.

"His soul is gone," I stated, after briefly examining the unknown man.

"Soul eater. They released a goddamned Wendigo in a place like this!" Ciel raged.

"Let's calm down first. We have to contact the others about this problem. Remember the control beads they gave us?"

"Use it to make contact to the leylines?"

"Yeah, and transmit your voice there. I believe they should also know of this trick, but they don't really tell us much because we're just civilians."

Ciel nodded. She fished out the control bead from her pocket and started fiddling with it.

Keeping watch of the semi-dead body, I noticed droplets of blood pouring down from the victim's eyes. He started moving erratically, jerking about, as if something within was trapped in a cage of flesh. Ciel who also witnessed the spectacle, readied herself to strike whilst also trying to contact the others.

She managed to get a response from another team, when a pale white hand, boney in appearance, thrust out from the victim's mouth and ripped apart his body to pieces, revealing the contents within. A skin-stealer, demonic in origin.

"Kneel!" I commanded the creature.

As if the weight of a thousand suns appeared above it, its knees gave out, broken at its seams.

Ciel who was ready for its eventual appearance, morphed one of her arms, into one with scales the colour of obsidian, where a sea of stars and the universe could be seen within.

She dashed, faster than the speed of sound, breaking the paved cobblestone road, and stopped behind the skin-stealer whose neck was slowly sliding downwards, delivering a deadly coup de grace.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

"Headquarters here, what's the problem team eight?" my elder sister's voice echoed from the control bead.

"We just passed by a skin-stealer here, it's already dead. We suspect team seven is in trouble; since there's a high chance a Wendigo is present."

"You what?!" she lost her cool.

"A skin-stealer, dead. Wendigo at team seven."

"I know that. Alright, I'll task team one and six to move north."

"Please, send us. You know both of them have their hands full."

"No can do. You're civilians."

"Then at least task team one with escorting us, since Cirque du Ciel lies in the north-east."

"... fine. You're to move northwards asap after dealing with the aftermath there. Team one will go towards where you are right now, and both of you will go towards team seven. I just received their SOS notification."

"Roger that."

Ending the call, I noticed Ciel had already started with the clean-up of the body after the skin-stealer dissipated into thin air. She charred the remains with a black flame, which consumed it ravenously until it was nothing but dust.

Then, I whistled to the wind, asking its help to carry these ashes into the sea, where it could wander freely in peace. As a response, a gentle breeze flew by, carrying all regrets and ashes along with the wind.

"It's the first time I've seen a magick user use her abilities in person," someone commented from afar.

Two men, one big and the other small, came towards us. They're using a knight's armour, which we recognized from the briefing this morning.

"Hey kid!" the smaller man, still larger than us, greeted.

"Hello sir," I greeted back as a sign of politeness.

"We haven't had the time for self-introductions at the briefing, so we'll do it quickly right now. My name is Ornz, and you can call the big taciturn man behind me Smogh."

"My name is Layne Karlott and this is my lovely fiancee Ciel Bhan,"

"Nice to meet you, sir," Ciel greeted the two men.

Ornz nodded, before hardening his gaze towards the north. Both he and Smogh took out their armaments, a great spear and a colossal hammer respectively, and quickly paced their way to where team seven was last located.

On our way there, we felt as if we had passed by a film or some kind. The control bead had been used by team seven, and the sound of battle is close by.

"They're near. Can the two of you use a bow?" Ornz asked.

"We could," I answered confidently.

"Good, now go to a high ground, and use these to help us," he handed us two thick discs that morphed into magick bows.

We nodded to him, and went towards the rooftop of a somewhat high hotel, one where we fought Dracul before, while they ran towards the battlefield.

Arriving at our destination, what greeted us was a hellscape of destruction, for it would happen should the battles of the Other Side erupted in the world of men. Buildings crumbled around the knights who were facing a foe like none other.

It was around 9 metres tall, with long limbs and short legs. Compared to its sluggish figure, it was quite agile, capable of attacking the knights from impossible angles due to the length of its limbs. Even with two teams of knights, it proved an insurmountable task to defeat it. And since it has both reach and strength, more and more knights fell prey to its claws.

Seeing the enchantment in their armours was getting undone, I pulled the string of my bow and asked the wind to guide my arrow true. I released all the tension within me and with it, my arrow. It flew far and pierced deep within the beast's right eye, rending it with the wind's rotation.

The sudden arrow released by the knight captain's little brother increased the knight's morale, they believed in him, and some immortalized him within their hearts as the one who managed to wound the beast. Gaining some believers, his bottleneck loosened, at least enough to use a law once.

The feeling of pain that it had never felt before led the beast to cry in agony. It looked in my direction with its still-fine eye, and wrath could be seen bubbling within it. It raged and tore across the ravaged land on all fours, bringing ruin and destruction with its cloven hooves.