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When Erna arrived to handle the serial killer fake angel, my heart flooded with relief. Not to say I was scared of being near him! I just…yes, I was afraid. Surely everyone knew I’d been a massive coward, mistakenly taking on a job I couldn’t handle. Someone as pathetic as I should had long since backed out, a pup taking on a massive wolf for scraps he clearly didn’t deserve. Yet, I was also scared, useless, stupid…
I put my hand in my pocket. There, a warmth pulsed. The warmth of a power I couldn’t comprehend. A power I shared with no one—if it was mine, there was no way it could be of any use.
I had nothing of my own to show—no magic, no confidence, nothing.
Couldn’t even bring myself to help. To act!
Charya acted capable. Even I could identify something as flashy as Spirit Magic, her bird of wind taking off towards Kelsey who fell over in her attempt to escape. Before the light crystals things (they had a name but I just COULDN’T REMEMBER!) could tear her apart, Charya grabbed her wrist. Kelsey nabbed Charya’s arm in turn, lifted to safety.
At the same time, I hid behind a trash can for safety. Bewildering amounts of crystals still jutted out of the ground at complete random, so the two landed and began to break them bit by bit. It was impressive to see their mastery over magic. Kelsey wielded that odd spear Erna gave her like a pro, though something about her movements bothered me. She acted with the movements of a badminton player, or something similar, with the way she swung the flat end of her spear.
No, I read too much into it. How stupid of me.
Charya demonstrated a much more terrifying front than I thought. The bird of wind remained manifested—but in a burst of fire and ice, a fire lion and an ice centipede the size of a horse materialized. The creatures went to work, unleashing streams of their elemental powers to destroy as many crystals as they could.
However, she couldn’t do enough on her own. Crystals would spread close to cars, or even close to people running away from the fight. I dashed towards a panicking young man and yanked him away. Out of the corner of my eye, Dori rushed to do something similar with a family.
The MPF not only worked to dispel violent magical crises, but they also had an imperative to prevent as much damage as possible. Crystals of light didn’t damage the ground upon creation, but they were capable of hurting people and objects they ran into, and so it became our mission to make sure they didn’t do that.
A mission that turned completely on its head when Kelsey ran into Dori. The two managed to shatter a larger crystal before it rammed into someone’s car. A useless effort, as the broken crystal’s energy spread out and reformed as if nothing ever shattered it. It moved as if on pure instinct to destroy everything around it—it grew and pierced through the dark veil of the night sky, before it soon realized and aimed its rage at the pair who didn’t have enough time to react, attention turned away from the crystal until it was too late.
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Charya stood too far away. No matter how fast her bird flew, she would never make it, nor would any of her other spirits.
But I wasn’t.
Yet I couldn’t do anything. I knew well, from the moment I walked into this stupid fight.
An idiot. A coward. A liar.
But…not selfish.
I’d never be, I hoped. I felt I always threw myself in front of others like a pathetic, groveling fool. Putting myself down where I should be, if it put a smile on someone’s face.
If that was all I was meant for—then perhaps my bravery should come in the form of a sniveling, pathetic shield.
So I ran. I ran towards them before I let myself doubt. As the crystals rolled in and out of the ground, a massive burst aimed right for two people that didn’t deserve to die, I threw my arms out as a shield for them.
I wanted nothing more than to protect them, to end this threat—and that was where my mistake laid. My soul reacted to my wish—my stupid, weird soul that had never been right since the day I almost died.
Red lines burned into the ground, beginning at my feet and fanning outwards. I gritted my teeth—I had no choice, so I gave in to the manifested power. Kneeling, I pressed my palm against the ground. It felt as though the very essence of my heart, my breaths, my flesh were being pulled and contorted, something precious to me warped and drained. Ah, like a lemon being squeezed…it felt unpleasant, like every muscle in your body somehow got pulled at the same time. The lines stretched further and split off to form a circle, to which odd symbols I couldn’t possibly decipher formed inside.
The crystals passed over the circle and flashed bright red before they blew to pieces—obliterated in a storm of pure red energy. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my own fragment of power—something I had never been able to decipher, yet decided to bind to me forever. I knew this, yet I…it wasn’t me. Along with this power came phrases and ideas inserted into my head that weighed on me with their mystique. This orb—as malleable as liquid, as red as my eyes blotted out by similar colours, and as attached as my own soul, always floating beside me.
I hid it. Treated it as a mistake, a blemish, a punishment for things I couldn’t afford to think about for years.
But I needed to save my coworkers. I wouldn’t understand how this power worked now, not ever, but if there was something I could make sense of out of this nonsense pushed onto me…
I willed it to change shape into a sword, and cleaved the remaining crystals to pieces. I didn’t pay attention to what anyone did, though the bursts of elements and pink void energy told me all I needed to. We were focused—and for once…just this once, maybe I wasn’t as big of a burden as I thought I was.
If my secrets were meant to be open, then let me do something good with them. If I could do any good at all.
The stars loomed over my head. Watching me. Watching for each and every mistake I made.
I stumbled back, a wave of dizziness hitting me from overexertion before someone caught me. Kelsey intervened and patted me on the shoulder before she raised her hand and swallowed those crystals into a void portal, a chill of a world without warmth briefly brushing by us until it snapped shut.
“Thanks for saving me,” she said, though I couldn’t see her expression from where I stood. Whether it was of gratefulness, pity, resignation, something terrible or something good.
Did it sound desperate to say those words meant too much to my terrified heart? My throat dried, accompanied by the taste of sand, and I barely mumbled out a thank you before Charya yelled our names. I realized no crystals came our way in our vulnerable moment, and could only turn and look where Charya pointed to see Erna had a white sword pointed at her throat.
Neither of us needed another cue—we took off in her direction. We somehow handled the situation, but one loose end remained.