Part 7

White clouds.

Light blue afternoon sky.

Over the sound of raging, blistering winds, a slight groan broke out.

Clouds were nothing more than a mild inconvenience.

It was hard not to feel nauseous as she tried not to lose her grip on the waist of the brown-skinned, blue-haired girl.

Aoi and Camellia Lucia.

The Water Crystal Guardian and a young mage.

Right now, the pair is rapidly moving through the clouds on the back of a dragon made of water.

Below the pair were several grassy wetlands.

"I think that this is the location," Camellia said, pointing to the ground below through pained groans.

"I see it," Aoi said before grinning.

The water dragon's wings flapped up, causing Camellia to look around puzzledly.

"You may want to hold on tightly; the descent is going to be a little rough.

Blank.

Camellia turned her head toward Aoi.

"What do you mea-"

Before she had a chance to finish her sentence, the water dragon stared to descend nose first, and the left wing flapped down hard, causing the dragon to roll right.

"Huh"

Before she could react in a mild panic, the dragon rolled halfway, and it flapped its right wing down to complete the roll.

Before rolling over completely, the dragon swung its wings forward. There was a light roar that escaped its mouth. In a quick motion, the dragon flapped its wings back, thrusting them forward with an unnatural burst of speed.

Over the sound of Aoi cheerfully yelling was the sound of Camellia screaming as the pair spun around on the back of a water dragon like a drill towards the ground, with a loud boom breaking the sound barrier.

Queens

It was a beige two-story building with black windows, having an appearance one would not assume belonged to a morgue, but without a shadow of doubt-

This is where he needed to be.

Aurelius Lucia.

As he stood there, his eyes glanced over the ledge of the nearby roofs.

(East, north,.... west, and...)

Aurelius turned around to glance at the roof of the building behind him.

(...South)

On the ledge of the roofs of several buildings in the cardinal directions was a single black bird.

In their beaks, the birds were holding a black-beaded necklace with a green amulet attached to it.

(They are in position.)

Aurelius interlocked his fingers, with his right thumb resting over his left thumb and his fingers pointing outward.

With a soft exhale, he spoke under his breath.

(Now.)

The bird's eyes began to glow white as they extended their wings up into the air.

Suddenly, the four birds were engulfed with a blue flame-like magical energy that quickly spread out and enveloped the area.

To the non-magicians, it felt as if a quick gust of wind blew past them.

Aurelius closed his fingers.

[Barrier Spell.] Aurelius said under his breath.

The Bronx.

The light blue sky.

Warm temperatures.

Fluffy clouds are slowly moving across.

The planes flying by.

A slight breeze.

She was hoping that all of this would take her mind off the chaotic mess below, as she glanced down to the street below.

Valeria Lucia

In the almost forty minutes that she has been here, and the city's response has only increased.

Multiple agencies and departments gathered on the street.

Right now, all she could do was wait and hope for an opening to get into the building.

Jamaica Bay

It was like everything was spinning as she stumbled forward.

Camellia groaned into her hand, using the other hand to use her staff as support to walk.

She felt nauseous, as if she were about to vomit.

Aoi was walking ahead with Camellia trailing her, after Aoi had created a walkway with her powers.

She watched as the Crystal Guardian cheerfully strolled forward before glancing around the wetlands.

"I wish the locations of the markings could have been more specific; this area is too large, and at the rate we are going, we are not going to find the sigil in time."

That statement by Camellia caused Aoi to stop in her tracks.

This area was huge, and time was not on their side.

Aoi closed her eyes, clapping her hands together.

There was silence as her hair began to sway in the wind, and her face began to slightly wince as she started to focus.

She began to cross her fingers.

Water nearby began to rise before flowing between her palms.

Aoi pulled her palms slightly apart, with her right hand horizontal to her left hand, revealing a small orb of water at the center, before quickly clapping her hands shut again.

After a few seconds of silence from the girl, there was a soft exhale.

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With a grunt, she pulled her arm apart.

The small orb of water quickly expanded and ballooned into a large, thin dome-shaped barrier with hexagonal plates that covered the area of the wetlands.

There was silence as Aoi closed her eyes and twitched as she mentally scanned the area.

And then-

Aoi opened her eyes and raised her right index finger, pointing to an area off in the distance to her right.

“There.”

Queens

The air was rough to get used to.

His shoulders bumped into people as they were walking past him in a trance-like daze.

Beyond the sound of footsteps, no one said a word.

The Four-Pronged Barrier Spell.

A low-level spell that, when initiated, created a separate space within reality.

Aurelius pulled his sleeves up, staring at his forearms, before staring at his face in a glass window of a building he passed by.

Black markings.

What kept him from exiting this space of reality was anchoring him to this space.

This spell subconsciously caused all those who were not marked to leave this space within the barrier and push those who were outside the barrier away, but that is what he needed-

Aurelius continued walking to the beige building.

-Unfettered access.

He tried to mentally prepare himself.

His attention was drawn to the doors of the building opening, followed by a group of people exiting the building.

The sound of footsteps.

Silence.

Aurelius walked past the people.

Footsteps.

Aurelius opened the door, stepping inside.

Even though the barrier spell created or carved out a separate space in the world, he felt that he was walking into the land of the unknown as he entered the lobby of the morgue.

He just needed to find the sigil and destroy it.

Central Park.

Measuring 2.5 miles north to south, from 110st Street to 51st Street, and 0.5 miles from Fifth Avenue in the east to Eighth Avenue to the west.

Anatoli Azarov.

For whatever reason, it was crowded, but the elderly man paid no mind to it.

Anatoli walked down a shaded path under the sun.

His eyes slowly widened.

It was as if something had mentally alerted him, which caused him to stop in his tracks in the middle of a path in Central Park.

Something happened.

He closed his eyes and began to focus.

(The space between the open world and the sigils has been breached.)

In his dark mind, a blue pentagon appeared.

His spell.

Three points.

The Bronx.

Queens.

Jamaica Bay.

Three points on the pentagon, which had represented his city-wide spell, stared to flicker on and off.

(Because of the method of establishing the point in the Bronx, I was expecting that they would become aware of it, but that doesn’t excuse the other two breeches. I can't ignore this as mere coincidence; somebody is aware of the spell.)

Anatoli raised his hands, with the back of his left hand facing his chest and the back of his right-hand facing outward. With his palms touching, Anatoli interlocked his thumb on one finger with the pinky of the other, and the middle fingers were bent inward, touching each other.

With a soft exhale, he closed his eyes.

Central Park.

Haruko Matsumoto.

The teen ran through the crowd of people, quickly scanning the area.

His eyes drifted left and right.

If he was lucky, the person they were after was here, among this crowd.

-Seven minutes earlier-

Haruko and Alistair were running down a path in Central Park.

"Hey, we are going to split up from this point on."

It took a few seconds for the teen to process that statement.

Haruko turned his head left, staring at Alistair.

"Huh?"

He could not believe the words that were just uttered.

"Central Park is roughly around fifty-one city blocks, so we are going to cut that area in half between the both of us.”

It was a quick, blink-and-miss-it moment, but Haruko saw a white light flake off his feet before-

Alistair leaped forward several dozen feet into the air.

The sudden action caused Haruko to stop in his tracks.

"What the....."

Glancing back at the teen, Alistair spoke.

"I'll let you handle the north section, and I'll handle the south section.”

Before Haruko had a chance to object, a white, faint energy surrounded his body.

Vsssshhhhh!

It was a faint sound, but he heard it.

And as quickly as that sound was heard, Alistair vanished, leaving the teen bewildered.

(What the hell was that......that speed.....it was almost like doctor four-eyes.)

(No)

(I don't have time to lose track.)

-Present time-

"Huff."

He wasn’t sure how many blocks he had traversed, but he needed to catch his breath.

"Huff."

Trying to find this guy was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Suddenly, the ground began to shake with a light tremble under his feet.

"...What the hell?" Haruko mumbled under his breath.

The Bronx.

Several heavy bootsteps rang out in the office of a morgue as several armed men from the tactical response team, dressed in tactical gear, were preparing to exit the building.

There was a faint noise that sounded like buzzing and crackling.

It was easy to miss because of the shuffling sound of heavy clothes and bootsteps against the blue tiled floor.

The noise caused several of the men to glance back at the wall.

The sigil carving started to illuminate.

"Hey captain..." The man said, causing the other men to stop in their tracks.

The glowing sigil started to illuminate the room a bright red.

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Something was going on down below as she watched.

Several of the officers and agents started to rush inside the lobby.

There was loud chatter from the group.

Something was happening; before she had time to comprehend all the commotion, everything began to lightly shake.

Jamaica Bay.

It was a decaying, overturned canoe that was partially submerged in the water, as a large piece of wood kept it from sinking.

The water was parted as Aoi raised her right hand, facing the canoe.

On the side was a sigil in white.

"That is the symbol," Aoi asked.

"Yes," Camellia said, placing a slip of white paper with three black dots in the shape of a triangle.

Staring at the slip of paper in confusion, Aoi spoke.

"What are you doing?"

Camellia clapped her hands.

"I'm going to use a spell canceling technique to neutralize the sigil; it is the only way to be sure that with this method, it would be easy for us to destroy the sigil the way that it is now.

As the Aoi was looking around as Camellia had her eyes closed with her hands folded in a prayer motion, preparing to tend to the sigil, something caught her eye.

“Hey, is the symbol supposed to be glowing right now?”

That statement caused Camellia to open her eyes in surprise.

“Wha….?" Camellia said, staring at the now glowing sigil.

Aoi began to look around as the water around the pair began to ripple.

“Something is happening,” Aoi said.

Queens

He could see his breath against the cold air.

The bodies.

He had to mentally shut his emotions down for this part-

The dead bodies.

The air was cold.

-But with each body, he felt himself die a little inside.

An elderly woman.

"Not this one."

A young male with a few puncture wounds on his torso.

"Not this one either.

A small child with heavy bruises

Aurelius, unit by unit, was examining body after body in the refrigeration unit.

He closed his eyes and exhaled in an attempt to mentally prepare himself to continue.

So far, no one in this section has the symbol.

There was a muffled buzzing noise that came from a storage unit that caught his attention.

There was a small sigil that appeared on one of the containment units before it quickly expanded, covering the wall.

As Aurelius turned his attention to the sigil, there was a light rustle from the metal instruments in the room as they began to shake.

“That is not good.”

As Aurelius began to walk towards the sigil, he stopped when he felt the ground lightly tremble under his feet.

Central Park

Something was happening.

Across the city, the ground was shaking.

There was a slight panic among the crowd of people around him.

Running.

Various people are screaming.

People are crashing into objects, but-

The elderly man paid no attention to it, with his hands still folded.

Slowly, he opened his eyes to the world.

[Krovat' Adskogo Bozhestva: Sozhzheniye Vozmezdiya] (Russian transl. Bed of the Infernal Deity: Burning of Retribution)

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Night.

Two and a half hours and fifteen minutes after midnight.

The dead of night.

Silent.

The area was quiet as a group of eight men dressed in black walked downhill through

Beyond the sound of brittle leaves breaking under their boots, not a word was spoken between the group.

That is how pretty much all their missions went.

Right now, the group was cutting through a forest that led to the Volkov family manor.

Among that group were Anatoli Azarov and Pavel Zotov.

Zero-six and Zero-three.

The group exited from the trees onto a clear dirt road with trees on both sides.

Beyond that path, Anatoli could see the Volkov family manor.

The group continued down the path.

Quiet

One foot in front of the other, his mind began to wander.

This mission was just like any other; that was what he was hoping for.

Just for all of this to be over

The conflicts.

The ever-growing threat of an all-out war between two countries in the world, with the possible reality of nuclear Armageddon on the horizon or a civil conflict between two populations that threatens to tear this country apart.

That peace.

The end goal of all this.

The bloodshed.

The lies to his wife.

The empty lies he told himself to feel better whenever he held his small child, that he was making the country a better place

All of it felt empty now as he glanced up at the night sky.

To leave this life, but-

With each mission-

With each life taken-

That wish seemed to fade more and more from his grasp.

Anatoli's thoughts were interrupted as the light ring of a bell rang out, breaking the silence. His right foot stepped on something, causing him to glance down.

A woven, stitched doll

He kneeled to pick up the toy.

Burned.

Tattered.

Blue button eyes.

Stubs for fingers and toes

A damaged blue and white dress.

It was almost similar to the child’s toy he got for his son.

Holding the doll in his right hand, Anatoli slowly became sentimental about a peaceful time.

"Hey, are you okay?” Pavel said as he walked up to him.

Sill holding onto the doll, Anatoli spoke in a soft voice.

“Yeah….I just…….” Anatoli exhaled, placing the doll back on the ground, before standing up. “It’s nothing,” he said in a weary voice. “It’s nothing now.”

“Well then, come on.”

Anatoli followed the group as they began walking down the path.

Walking behind, he started to notice that something was on the trees.

It was an uneasy sight to behold, and under the cover of night, it wasn’t any better.

Dolls.

Wooden dolls.

The same as the one from earlier.

Several of the trees on both sides of this path had a single doll that was nailed to it as if they were being impaled by a large nail.

Anatoli paid no attention to the dolls beyond a passing glance as he walked on along with the group.

Silence.

There was an eerie silence as one of the dolls that was nailed to a tree turned its head with a slight creak, staring at the group of men as they were walking down the path.