A/N: Here is the next chapter, hope you enjoy! I know that I have some explanations to do in terms of the world but there is a time for everything. Before any grammar nazi pops up, I just want to clarify that Ignis is a villager separated from humanity so his grammatical syntax and understanding of language will be different from that of a city girl like Calliste. Also don't worry about if I forget any fine details, I always remember, if something is missing it's missing for a reason. As always feedback is appreciated, heck even suggestions. Tell me what you would like to see or wouldn't like to see. Most likely it wouldn't change my story, though it would be interesting to see what others think can make the story even better. Just had to once again place indentations after post *sigh*
P.S. Can someone tell Karnage to hurry up with Falling Star of Evolution? I want to read the next chapter already T^T
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Taking a few minutes to process what just took place, Ignis finally retrieved his hunting knife strapped to his right leg and took up a defensive position.
Meanwhile, Calliste was still trying to figure out what was wrong. She was sure she drew her bow and took the proper steps to draw essence to nock an arrow, but nothing happened. Looking at her left hand that she used to nock the arrow, she was dumbfounded. Her arm was like a wet noodle! Of course it would be like a noodle, Ignis only knew basic first aid and only used a strip of cloth to hold the hand in a proper position. When she frantically got up from the table she basically made all of Ignis’ hard work null.
In all living things quintessence is present, whether it be a human, snake or plant. In plants, quintessence is concentrated at a central location, usually by its food store. In humans and animals however, quintessence is distributed throughout the body and are channeled parallel to the arteries. They operate just like the veins however, and absorbs essence from the surrounding and transports it throughout the body to three essential locations; the heart, under the navel and the brain. Due to how these “vessels” operate they are usually coined as the Secondary Veins or the Quintveins.These Quintveins are always absorbing essence and needless to say, quintessence is looked at as the presence of a soul, because the only time the Quintvein stops functioning is upon death.
The average human and warrior tends to not have all Quintveins in use and use mainly the Quintveins leading to the heart. An academic tends to have a focus of Quintessence on both their brain and heart while a magic user (can be a mage but also someone capable of melee and magic, oh and magic=essence if you needed to know) will have a focus of Quintessence on their heart and under the navel. The amount of Quintessence a person can take in at once is purely based on what tasks they perform and even their bloodline. For example a farm boy may want to become a swordmage but if he doesn’t have the means to practice sorcery nor the ability to swing a sword, then he won’t be able to train his Quintessence to become a swordmage. If his family doesn’t even have some sort of mage or warrior in their bloodline then he wouldn’t even stand a chance of becoming a swordmage. Due to how hard it is to gather essence in the brain and under the navel compared to the heart for a regular human, there is a high concentration of warriors compared to academics and magic users in the world (will be detailed later). The limits of using essence is wholly dependent on how strong a person’s physical body, mental strength and consumption rate of essence is. It also varies depending on what the essence is being used for (magic or physical strengthening).
An Artifact is an item which is used to accommodate the use of essence. Instead of having to use the essence within the body, thereby placing a strain on the Quintveins and the person, the artifact acts as a medium which allows for the effective channeling of essence. It reduces the strain placed on the user while allowing him or her to draw on more power. These artifacts tend to come in the form of an orb and only reduces the strain placed on the user, nothing more. There are however, artifacts which come in the form of weapons and are a rare find in the current world.
Calliste’s bow was one such rare artifact. It needed the use of essence to function. To use it, one hand is used to draw essence to the actual bow in order to activate the artifact, and another hand to draw essence from the air. The essence drawn by the second hand would be shaped into the form of an arrow using the artifact as a medium of absorption. This is not easy to actually use in battle, but if one can master it then he or she can have unlimited ammo once they can handle the tedious concentration it entailed.
“Wha...” she stuttered, only to hear laughing coming from the brick.
“Hahahahahahaha! Look at this ungrateful b*tch, I saved her and she draws her weapon on me. Ignis why do you always make the bad choices? Oh man I make some really bad choices in my life don’t I? Yes you do.” Ignis on the other hand found her predicament funny and proceeded to hold his own one man show, talking to himself.
Not knowing what was happening, Calliste attempted to draw essence from the air once again but to no avail, she failed. Only then did she pay attention to the brick standing before her. Laughing hysterically was a young man which had a head full of unkempt jet-black hair draping down to his waist, a pair of red, dilated eyes and, because of his wide open mouth, scarily sharp-looking canine teeth. He wore a haggard trousers and a bear pelt draped over both his shoulders. Various scars were evident on his fit body and no one could refute the many life and death battles he has fought. In one phrase, what Calliste saw was a “beastlike beauty”. Physically he looked like a 15 year old, but mentally it looked like this child was over 40, having fought many wars and on the verge of retirement. Calliste, without her knowing, began to be drawn to Ignis.
“This brick is one stu…*cough cough* I mean, who are you and what do you want with me?” Calliste mumbled the first part of the sentence before abruptly changing it and voicing her question out loud.
“And I almost died!...What?” Ignis, finally concluding his one man show, looked to Calliste and questioned her.
“WHO.ARE.YOU.WHAT.DO.YOU.WANT.WITH.ME.” Calliste reiterated her questions loudly but now stated it as if she were speaking to an illiterate.
“For who I am, I am Ignis Vox. As for what I want, I want a thank you for saving your hind.”
“Wha…” Calliste couldn’t believe what she just heard, but after a second of thought she concluded that he wasn’t lying. He seemed much too idiotic to be lying and it was true that she did fall unconscious after crashing into some mountain.
“So what’s your name, where did you come from and why were you so heavily injured?” not even waiting for Calliste to recover, Ignis quickly fired back his question
“MY.NAME.CALLISTE BEATORUM.I.COME.FRO-“
“Stop that, otherwise I will kill you right here, right now” Ignis cut into Calliste’s sentence and easily placed his threat as it seemed she actually believed him to be illiterate.
Observing the boy standing before her and the tone of his words, it seemed that he held no qualms proving his threat true. She was currently unable to draw essence from the air, for some unknown reason, and he had also saved her life. After judging the situation she was currently in, Calliste decided to comply with his demands although a little reluctant about it.
“My name is Calliste Beatorum, I’ve come from the great city of Albarka and I am injured due to battling another Beatorum in the skies” Calliste followed up his questions, making sure not to miss one.
“Family feud huh? And fighting in the sky? Clearly I have run across a psychopath. Remember what mum always said about the mentally ill, I must care for them because they cannot care for themselves.” Ignis thought out all of this upon her response and most ironically…he called her a psychopath! It was understandable that he wouldn’t know it was possible to have battle in mid-air though, since he was locked off from the outside world since birth and no one in his village wielded essence.
“Alright Calliste, right now I’m gonna prepare dinner for myself and you can go do what you want…Oh do you want some too?” after stating the first part of the sentence Ignis walked out to his kitchen, only to reappear and pose another question. Of course he would have to care for the mentally ill.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
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Finally finished tending to her wounds, Calliste walked out to where Ignis disappeared to. Right now she couldn’t trust this man but she had no choice in her current situation. If she couldn’t use the only weapon on her, the bow, then she was basically defenseless, not saying she was unable to fight in melee range, but with a broken arm that was a long shot.
A sense of nostalgia washed over Calliste as she approached the doorway only to be interrupted by a disturbing odor.
“Yuck, what is that stench!?” exclaimed Calliste upon reaching outside. The scent of the bear and viper carcasses permeated the air.
“A beast this big was slain by a boy this small!?” she thought, seeing the large viper Ignis was skinning, Calliste was speechless. Of course she wouldn’t know that Ignis only came after the viper was unconscious and dealt the final blow.
Ignis made a simple snake stew, which Calliste found tasted disgusting to say the least. It lacked any form of spices in it and was basically just boiled meat with some random bush Ignis thought tasted interesting. He never learnt how to properly cook and after 2 years of eating virtually raw meat, he grew accustomed to the blandness.
He separated the venomous sac from the viper and placed it in a wooden container (picture a wooden disposable bowl). He would extract the venom later and use it when hunting.
Next he took the bear and skinned it. He would use the pelt for clothing, since he did not have any articles of clothing aside from a few worn out trousers and a jersey. Though a pity, he would have to use the poisoned meat as bait while hunting.
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Fatigued from his continuous activity since the night before, Ignis departed to inside his shack of a home. Before he entered however, Calliste spoke up, “Do you have any articles for me to wear?” Her current set of clothing was burnt and damaged from the battle with Carne and she felt uncomfortable in it.
“Articles? Like something written?” Ignis questioned.
Concluding that Ignis was indeed brainless, she rephrased her question slowly, “Do you have any clothing that can fit me?”
“No, if you need something to wear, follow the trail going down this mountain and you will find a village. You don’t need to worry about any residents there, no one lives there anymore. Check through the houses and you should find something to fit you” he instructed.
Not wanting to keep conversing with the psycho, Ignis abruptly turned and left for his bed while Calliste did the same, except towards the village below.
Here we have Ignis thinking that Calliste is mad and Calliste thinking that Ignis was an untrained illiterate…which was basically true in Ignis’ case.
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“This male, he is so irritating! First he dares to threaten me and worse yet…he brought his face …his face…” Calliste fumed until her voice began to dwindle and her face began to redden. Remembering his wild appearance when she first regained her consciousness, her face became flushed. It was only morning and here we had a young woman blushing profusely.
“How dare he be so rude to me the…” her voice trailed off as she caught sight of Thysia. Sensing a malefic aura emanating from the village before her, Calliste raised her guard and proceeded to enter the nearest house.
Finding some a hunter’s trouser and shirt to fit her in the first house, she decided to explore the rest of the village. The eerie silence creeped her out but this only made her want to find the cause of it more and more.
Entering one of the houses, Calliste was taken aback and exclaimed, “What the hell!” Before her lay the skeletal remains of a human, but not just any human, these skeletons belonged to those of a child.Being who she was, Calliste had encountered many corpses and skeletal remains in her life, but those were adults, seeing those of a child horrified her.Seeing this, she sprinted through the village and focused essence in her eyes.
She was unable to gather essence from the air due to an unknown reason but that did not mean that she couldn’t use it, she just preferred not to as that would drain from her own reserves and she wasn’t sure when she would be able to gather essence once again. Using essence from herself right now would mean that she would suffer constant fatigue from the missing essence in her body, until she was able to draw upon essence from her surroundings once again.
She viewed her current situation as an emergency though, and luckily the magic she was using didn’t require much essence. By focusing some essence into one’s eyes, they would be able to view the surrounding essence flow and a somewhat x-ray vision (not through clothing you pervs, just earthly items such as dirt or clay). Though simple, this technique was somewhat risky as persons can go mad from what they see and was termed as the God Eye technique. As the saying goes, some things are better left unknown.
Sadly, this was one such case. In various houses what she found were the skeletal remains of toddlers or children at least 8 or 9 years old, but not one adult. From one such house, Calliste found a red line. This red line was only visible by using the God Eye technique. While following this red line Calliste found the reason for her inability to absorb essence from the air, there was none present! Deciding the strange line was more important she continued her search. It led to the center of Thysia and what she found there surprised her no less than the child skeleton. Laid out in the middle of the village was a vast circle. The circle was deep red in color and had various characters Calliste recognized. What shocked her the most though was what was at the center.
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-1 Hour After Discovery-
Returning from Thysia, Calliste lazily strolled into Ignis’ house. While moving she pondered, “There was no essence in the air, no wonder I couldn’t form an arrow. But wait…that means I am in a Demonic Realm!”
The term Demonic Realm was used to describe a location which was devoid of any essence and likewise a Godly Realm was used to describe a location which was saturated in essence. A Demonic Realm was very rare to find though, because there were no living beings in it, after all since it had no essence living beings couldn’t be born in it and essence couldn’t be used. Most Demonic Realms were also destroyed by multiple mages and Beatorums coming together and pooling their essence into the area, thus causing the deficiency of essence to be eliminated, this was usually a tiresome process though.
Continuing her stroll, Calliste spoke to herself, “That explains why there weren’t any people alive, since they would’ve all died to the…Wait, if no persons were alive, then how is Ignis still alive!?”
Coming to this realization, Calliste once again used the God Eye technique and ran to where Ignis should be sleeping. There what she saw was not even surprising anymore, it was much more to the level of a trauma. Laying on his side, Ignis could be seen sleeping with the naked eye. Using the God Eye technique, he could also be seen sleeping regularly. But that was the issue in and of itself, where were his Quintveins!? It was common knowledge that all living things carried Quintveins, even a damn plant had one, so how is it possible that a healthy, breathing human without any Quintveins laid before her!
Calliste, now overcoming her astonishment looked at Ignis with eyes of fear, “Demon…” was what she uttered.