VERRO

Verro's fight was going nowhere fast.

Dyban was actively insulting him now, in that he wasn't even really trying to kill Verro anymore. Oh every so often he'd fire a barrage of glowing objects at him, everything from bones to air car parts to a rubber ball, but it all seemed extremely halfhearted.

And why should it be wholehearted? Verro asked himself angrily. All he's got to do is wait until I get tired and grab me, and I'll disappear inside him just like Aurina did.

“All I gotta do is wait until you get tired and grab you!” Dyban said pleasantly.

“I know that thank you!” Verro said with an accompanying barrage of arrows, all of which hit lethal points on Dyban's body and all of which just disappeared into the endless blackness of his Void Regalia.

“Really it would be a lot easier for everybody if you just stayed still,” Dyban said. “I already tried to give you a really cool death, what more do you want? Okay look, just for you, because you seem like a kinda chill guy, I'll improve my offer. A whole skeleton. I am offering—me, a genuine space pirate—am offering to blow you up with—get this—a whole entire skeleton. I don't know who's skeleton, I can't promise it used be like a famous admiral or something like that, but a real honest to goodness genuine skeleton. And hey, it might be a famous admiral there's a couple in here. So how about it it?”

“Of course not!” Verro said, firing another arrow into Dyban's head.

“Well okay then,” Dyban sighed. “But this is gonna get pretty boring unless you can come up with some other tricks.”

Verro had lots of other tricks. Unfortunately they were all different kinds of arrow, and he couldn't think of one that could counteract Dyban's Void Regalia. He was trying to come up with a witty retort when the pirate started acting...strange. He threw his hands up and started waving them around like he was swatting away a swarm of insects.

“Hey, hey!” the pirate said. “Stop it, stop it! Who the hell are you?”

“Uhm...” Verro scratched his head. “It's still me...”

“No not you somebody's...hey!”

The pirate flipped over backwards and landed facedown on the asphalt. Verro blinked in confusion as the shadowy figure pulled itself up off the street.

“Okay okay,” Dyban nodded his head. “I see how it is. I see. I don't know how you found me, but I'm gonna ahhhhhh!!!!”

The pirate cartwheeled erratically through the air as if some enormous fist kept punching him over and over. As he flew his flailing limbs caught parked ground and air cars, street signs, trees in the sidewalk and pieces of statuary, sucking them all inside.

“Ow ow ow ow!” Dyban shouted. “Stop it! Stop it! I'm getting reallymad now!”

“So if you've gone insane,” Verro asked, “are you crazy enough to tell me the weakness of your Void Regalia yet, or do I have to wait until you start making the animal noises?”

“My Void Regalia doesn't have any weaknesses!” Dyban declared. “And it's a lot tougher than you think it is! I'm only lightly singed at best! I'll wahhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

He flew so high into the air Verro thought for a moment he was going into orbit, but before too long he came crashing down, embedding himself in the street. Rather than a crater his body absorbed an exact mold of his shape out of the ground. It was a few minutes before the pirate manged to climb back to his feet.

“That's it!” Dyban said. “I don't care that you aren't charged up yet, out! Get out get out get out get out! I'll kill you out here!”

In the darkness that made up the pirate's form Verro saw a small dot appear. It grew larger and larger, and Verro got the sense of it coming closer and closer. It took him a moment to make sense of what he was looking at.

“Aurina!” He gasped, just before she was spat out onto the street in front of him, clinging to the back of a heavily armed two headed snail.

AURINA

At first, when she'd been sucked in, Aurina thought she was dead.

She floated in endless darkness, alone. Well not really alone. She had the rabbit-creature—it really did need a name—and Booky in her pocket. She was sorry she'd gotten them killed—well, at least that she'd gotten them into whatever this was. The longer she floated in darkness the more convinced she became she wasn't really dead. She was breathing, right? Breathing was probably a good sign of not dead. For that matter she wasn't really in darkness, since she could see herself as if she was perfectly well lit. It was just that everything around her was, well, black. As if it were extremely dark, like the bottom of a pit or the middle of the fields on a moonless night.

Of course then she'd have stars to look at. Or be standing on the ground. Here she was just floating, in darkness.

“Now what do I do?” she wondered out loud, stroking the fur of...

“You need a name,” she said suddenly, looking down at the rabbit-creature. “Calling you the rabbit-creature all the time is really clunky and it's playing havoc with the verb tenses, and besides rabbits don't have wings. Churmegoedon is a mouthful though. How about Sam? There's a puppy in the village named Sam.”

The rabbit-creature glared at her.

“Alright alright not that,” Aurina sighed. “Let's see, we know they called you a Churmegoedon, whatever that is. How about Churmy? Chomy? Chummy?”

This brought a more intense glare.

“Then how about Meg?” Aurina asked. “Come on, help me out here.”

The creature chirrped and cooed at her.

“Right,” Aurina said. “You're an animal. At least I think you are, you're pretty smart for an animal. But if you're some kind of sentient you definitely don't speak my language. Ooh, how about Chirpy?”

This got her a set of bared fangs.

“Wow I knew you ate meat but I didn't notice your teeth were that big,” Aurina said. “I've got it! That noise you make kinda sounds like, uh. Chur-roo. How about that? Charu?”

That got a happier cooing noise, and Aurina hugged the silky furred and feathered animal to her chest.

“Yay, we found one you liked!” She said. “Now that that's settled...what should we do?”

Charu, as if it wanted to reward her for giving it a decent name finally, pointed it's tail into the darkness. Aurina hadn't even realized she was slowly rotating as she floated until she saw Charu working to keep the fluffy tuft at the end of its tail to the same spot as they moved.

“Something over there?” Aurina said. “Let's go look!”

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She flailed her limbs in the void, to no result. Or at least she thought there was no result. With nothing else around for reference how was she supposed to tell if she was moving? She tried swimming, but that didn't feel like she was getting anywhere either. Charu gave her a pitying look, then pointed towards the same spot again and squinted.

Now it felt like they'd moved. The scenery was completely the same—in that there was nothing but endless darkness and therefore no scenery—but there had been a lurch to her gut, an internal sense of progress. As if she'd just jumped really far and her insides were still catching up.

“What was that?” Aurina asked. “Charu, did you do something?”

Charu didn't respond, just squinted again. And again the sense that they'd gone somewhere, moved some great distance, despite there being no way to prove it from their surroundings.

“You did do something!” Aurina said. “Well whatever it is keep it up! I don't know what you spotted or smelled or whatever over there, but it's better than sitting around here!”

Charu squinted again. Now there were things, every so often. Floating skulls, or signs, or pieces of chain, or a million other things Aurina didn't even know to recognize. They always floated in the distance, like her well lit despite being surrounded by nothing but darkness. Three or four Charu-squints along something appeared right in their path, just a dot in the distance but it had to be what the rabbit-creature (she could still say it now and again, after all Charu still was a rabbit-creature) was leading them towards. Another squint and she could make out that it was the figure of a person, one more and they were right beside them.

He was stocky, with scraggly black hair and a receding hairline. He wore a green jumpsuit covered in metal strips, all segmented like a centipede. She couldn't make out the man's face because it was covered with a shiny metallic gas mask with smooth metal where eye lenses should be. Even his ears were completely covered. He was walking in place in the void as if he was walking on the ground, and gesturing with his hands.

“Who are you?” Aruina asked. There was no response. “Hey! Hello! Can you hear me? I don't think he can hear me.”

She sat and thought for a minute.

“Okay wait,” she said. “I already worked out we were inside Dyban, right? But you know what I think, Charu? I think he is too! I mean, Dyban is inside Dyban! Because this is Dyban! That's why Verro couldn't get a hit in, the real Dyban is all the way here, inside Dyban! That doesn't sound like it makes sense but I swear it does. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

She bit her lip in concentration, the only sounds Charu's comforting coo and a murmuring coming from inside the gas mask.

“What's he saying?” she wondered, putting her head close to his mouth area.

“Okay look, just for you, because you seem like a kinda chill guy, I'll improve...”

“Sounds like he's talking to someone...oh, it's Verro!” Aurina slapped a fist into her palm. “I get it! That rig he's wearing connects him to what's going on outside! Lets him see, hear, all of it! His senses are all linked to the outside of this whatever-it-is he's got inside that shadow body. He probably doesn't even know we're here! How about we change that?”

Her grandfather had offered to teach her how to fight more than once while he was training Andry, but Aurina had never really been interested. So without any training to fall back on she just clenched her fists and pounded them against the pirate's Regalia. It didn't feel like she was doing much damage, but the way he threw his hands up to try and ward her off meant he must have at least noticed.

“Hey, hey! Stop it, stop it! Who the hell are you?”

“I'm the girl you sucked into this stupid place, you jerk!”

Not that she thought he could really hear her, when he spoke again it sounded like he was responding to someone else. She found that mildly irritating. And besides, she'd been thinking of ways she might be able to do some actual damage...

“No not you somebody's...hey!”

Aurina hit him in the face with a blast of pure auram. She still had no idea where all her newly discovered auram came from, and she still couldn't control it, but a big random blast of unfocused auram was the weapon she had on hand to work with. Her strike sent him bowling over backwards until he landed on a ground Aurina couldn't perceive.

“Oh I get it,” she said. “That rig must let him walk, too. We're all floating, he's still working on the planet's gravity. Well let's see how he likes this! You found him, I hit him, now Booky deserves to get revenge for being sucked in here too!”

She took the snail out of her pocket and pressed it's shell, enlarging it to full size. Both heads flailed around, slightly panicked to be floating in the air, but Aurina soon soothed them.

“See that there?” Aurina said. “That's the bad man. And what do we do with bad men?”

“Okay okay, I see how it is. I see. I don't know how you found me, but I'm gonna ahhhhhh!!!!”

As soon as the snail's owner identified the architect of their distress Booky aimed cannons and fired, smacking Dyban with a barrage of energy bursts that sent him flying backwards as if being punched by an enormous fist. Unfortunately the recoil sent Booky reeling backwards through the void. Aurina grabbed onto his shell, pulling herself to his back as if she were riding him.

“We're losing him!” she said, as the spun away through the void. Worse than that, it didn't look like they'd done much damage to him. He was stilla powerful pirate after all, he could take a few blasts. “Booky! Can you, I dunno, use your cannons as rockets too...”

Charu squinted, and they shifted in space again, now floating directly beneath him with cannons aimed up at the pirates legs.

“Perfect Charu!” Aurina said. “Alright Booky, Charu's got targeting covered—oh right, I named him Charu earlier you weren't there for that—whatever, targeting is handled you just open fire!”

“My Void Regalia is doesn't have any weaknesses! And it's a lot tougher than you think it is! I'm only lightly singed at best! I'll wahhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

A fresh salvo sent Dyban up like a rocket, spinning through the air with each fresh blast until he finally crashed down to—it still felt weird for Aurina to think of something she couldn't see or feel as the “ground” but there weren't better words. Booky's cannons were sagging a little and she got the sense that he was tired. Well he'd never fired them for so long before they must be sore or something. They'd floated away again too, but she trusted Charu to handle it.

“It's okay Booky,” she patted his shell. “Rest your gun muscles, we'll come back with another barrage when you're ready.”

Charu squinted, repositioning them directly in front of the bandit. Game for another try Booky leveled his cannons. Dyban was already shouting something.

“That's it! I don't care that you aren't charged up yet, out! Get out get out get out get out! I'll kill you out here!”

Before Booky could fire they were moving, faster and faster, Dyban's body disappearing into the distance. A few minutes later there was a light behind her, and then she was bursting back out into the street, skidding to a halt next to Verro as he gawped in confusion.

“What happened to you?” he asked her.

“I was in there!” she pointed. “His Regalia is like...like a great big pit, and he's at the bottom of it controlling everything! For some reason Charu could move around in there...”

“Charu?” Verro asked.

“I named the churmegoedon, not important try to keep up. We ended up right next to him and he couldn't see us! So I hit him a whole bunch of times but I couldn't do much damage.”

“Ohhhh!” Vero said, slapping his forehead. “Oh, it's just space! His Regalia is a big empty space!”

“I just said that!” Aurina told him.

“You don't understand!” Verro laughed. “I thought he was, like, a walking black hole or something! But if he's just a bunch of empty space in there I can deal with it!”

“And what fairyland did you get that idea from!?” Dyban snapped angrily, glowing objects appearing in his chest. Objects, Aurina realized, which had been inside him long enough to get “charged” with whatever that explosive energy was. “I'm still going to kill you both!”

Verro leaped to the side to avoid the barrage, while Booky carried Aurina out of harms way. Verro had readied an arrow before he leaped, and even while dodging he didn't let go.”

“So you said he's at the bottom of the hole,” Verro said. “Is that down by his feet or...”

“I think it's like a big empty sphere,” Aurina said. “And he's in the exact center of it.”

“Right right,” Verro said. “That makes sense.”

“No one has ever found me in there once I sucked them up!” Dyban ranted, calling up so many things to fire at them his silhouetted form changed to glowing yellow with a few black cracks in between. “I'll obliterate you!”

Verro was unperturbed. The end of his arrow began to glow yellow and green, solidifying and coalescing until there was an oval around the head of it with a sharpened end. Something about the shape gave Aurina a feeling of expectation,of coiled power ready to be unleashed. And then the Eagle Knight fired, and the shape of light unfurled it's wings to reveal a shrieking eagle formed of light, claws outstretched for the kill. It flew into Dyban's shadowy Regalia and disappeared between the glowing yellow lights.

“Another arrow won't make a difference!” Dyban snarled. “Get ready, once this one's charged up I'm gonna wipe out everything if a five block radius!”

“What was that?” Aurina asked.

“Fareye Eagle Shot,” Verro told her. “According to legend the woman who created the Eagle Regalia once hit a target in another star system with that technique. I'm not nearly that good, but I also bet I don't have to go that far...”

“Here we go” Dyban said, no bursting with yellow light. “I'm gonna--!”

And then an arrow appeared, sticking out the front and back of the shadowy head. The glowing yellow lights dissipated, and the shadow melted away to reveal the same stocky form Aurina had pummeled in the shadow universe. The arrow remained, stabbed directly through his brain, and having finally and fatally lost a fourth battle the wielder of the Void Regalia fell to the ground in a mist of dissipating auram.