Suta had reluctantly gotten used to blinding waves of conspicuous rays of light bombarding him. It's half why he shut his two eyes firmly together before touching Celina's near-perfect jade arm.

‘Why is it always so bright? Can't I teleport or transfer wherever without the theatrics?’ he wondered half-heartedly if these strange sensations were any closer to waking up in the afterlife.

“Heh, sheesh-Suta, when did we become so morbidly obsessed with death.”

The view of dense pale softly began to shed away. A swash of azure stained his skies, and Suta felt a sticky fuzziness gathered against his two eyes. Very placidly, his view unearthed a golden morning. The air was richly cool, and the sounds of a gentle breeze combed over a vast land covered in rolling hills and a bed of tall sunflowers.

‘Why am I dreaming of sunflowers? Wait…this feels strange, it feels, it feels like.’

Before Suta was given a moment to gather himself, he heard the wailing storm of a fantastic creature suddenly shattering the gentle peacefulness of his world. With a renowned swiftness, he pulled his body away from the ground. Where his eyes swept over a vast acre of familiar land, he saw the towering oak in the corner of his rattling stare, the reddish cottage beneath the sinking hills. And Suta was suddenly filled with a euphoric realisation. His gaze jolted towards the skies again.

A hurried gasp freed itself between his short breaths. A dazzling winged creature hung against the azure backdrop—thousands of shimmering golden particles made up its almost illusionary body. Suta could merely stare wordlessly at the thing above, questioning whether or not fear or marvel were the appropriate responses at this moment. He narrowed his eyes into a squint; vaguely, he beheld something standing on the golden owl. The frail wind stirred the tattered helm of her discoloured brown robes. The edges were washed grey at this point. She carried a robust wooden staff in her tiny hand, almost as thick and tall as a little tree. Her countenance looked terrible. The full grey wispy hair danced like white flames. Her brown, wrinkled skin was covered in sweat, bruises and cuts. She looked like she had aged an additional ten years since the last time Suta had seen her.

Only how and why he saw her right now was a frightening mystery.

“G-granny?” A douse of blue fire rippled across the air. Suta’s gaze stroked the azure heavens in a flash. A meteor the size of a human head was soaring towards Granny Baba. Suta was about to toss his arms forward, but his warnings weren’t necessary. A book appeared floating against Granny's outstretched palm. Her fingers stroked the pages with a violent flurry and poise.

A large gold rune cracked into the air in front of Granny. It rotated and started to reflect a pale, burning white light. The smouldering meteor smashed into the revolving rune, sending a tremendous quake thundering overhead. Suta saw an earth-changing gale sweep across the golden stalked ground—a callous wave of wind charged without restraint against the meadowy hills. Debris and broken, soiled rocks rolled down the once lustrous, matted hills.

Only now was Suta painfully aware of the state of Granny's farm. A place he still remembers bathed in warm gold. Compared to the devastation littered before his gaze now. He almost couldn’t believe what this place used to look like. Doubt was the first thing circling his thoughts.

‘This can't be real? Why is Granny fighting…what happened to the f-farm?’

Suta couldn’t fathom any clear thought, his mind racing with uncertainty and confusion. By chance, his gaze finally fell towards the towering oak seated atop the hill. ‘Me and Demoria? Wasn’t we sitting on that same hill just before we-‘ like a rogue wind carving apart a cluster of clouds? Staring at what dwelt beside the oak tree left Suta’s words choked painfully in his throat. Nestled beside the thick roots bolstered beside the towering oak, he noticed what he almost couldn’t describe out loud. Two sleeping figures were placed securely against the colossal-sized tree.

The blue-haired girl he couldn’t mistake, Demoria. But the girl had her helm gently laid against another’s shoulder. His shoulder, to be precise.

“That doesn’t make any sense. How am I here and there at the same time?” Suta stared in horror at what was no doubt a perfect copy of himself. He started to piece together a strange occurrence that was either currently happening to him or had already taken place.

'Could this be...Celina's doing? S-space time...arcane?'

A terrible-sounding explosion quaked, and his eyes flashed towards the skyward planes once again. Golden tendrils as thick as iron chains roared out from a second owl with four wings, spiked iron bolts ferociously tore across the air and slammed head on against the burning blue light Suta noticed hovering in the air. The chains wrapped around the entire ball like an iron belt before layering countless golden chains against it until a sizeable shimmering ball of iron remained in the air. Suta could barely keep up with the compelling battle above and the strange feeling of stealing glances at his prone body lying close by.

He remembered the feeling of touching Celina's hand; somehow, a strange sense of knowing flowed through his mind about this scene.

‘I…I must have gone back in time. She mentioned I need to master this glitch skill. So then…something must’ve happened here.’

Celina was clear on the reasons Suta was somehow summoned to her. There was a reason he was seeing this. A reason he obtained that glitch skill. And a reason he held no idea what transpired here before he awoke to find himself inside of a strange land called Candy.

‘Something made me unconsciously use it and take both me and Demoria away, and I guess…I’ll soon find out what that was….’ Suta’s speculative glare quickly flashed to Granny. The ball of prestige iron had swelled in size by now and was still only growing like a hungry metallic planet. Granny, still standing atop a dazzling golden Owl, circled around the floating iron consisting of multiple chains. Her outstretched and practically bony arm remained poised on the floating book beside her. Once, the gigantic iron ball had successfully bound itself in place. The four iron heads rose away from the iron ball like a cobra and stalked around it like a quartet of vipers. Granny’s fingers stroked against the book. The iron spiked tails gently swayed to her movements. Her fingers gnarled, caressed, bent and slid. With each movement, the tails vibrantly danced. By their second twist of motion, Suta understood they were gathering momentum.

[Metacreativity: Four Bites]

Like a titan casting its final judgement, Granny stretched out her hand and clenched her fist shut.

The iron spikes reacted and moved in a spiralling motion to gather one last ditch of momentum. The second Granny's hand clenched shut, they dived down and sunk their sharp mouths into the core of the iron ball. Only a second passed when Granny waved her grotesquely shaped staff.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Ignus, spit out disasters and tales; spit out the sun and everything it swallowed in hell.”

[Spitfire]

Granny stretched forth her cane, conjuring a wisp of fire dancing on the bulbous end. Three identical flames appeared beside the first. The four fires conjugated into a single flame and burst forth, battering against one side of the floating iron. Tiny pebbles of tiny fires spattered like a shower head. The scorching incantation caused the side of the floating iron to scorch beneath an intense heat. Underneath an intense red flame, the heavy weight of iron began to melt furiously beneath the spitting fires.

Suta watched on from below with an intense gaze. He was torn deeply. For the first time, the mysterious power Granny Baba had been tutoring him to understand, the art also known as Arcane, was on show before his eyes. Somehow, all those days he arduously spent burying his attention and focus into Granny's endless stack of notes were flooding back to him now. The components and principles of mana and incantations, formed against hardened oiled sheets, were like sticky notes he stamped against the large wall of his mind. Bearing witness to a 5th Ranked Arcanist this close felt like the final lessons he needed, the final steps to a renowned and sacred tutelage, which mainly had felt like long-winded tales and hope thus far.

This felt strangely like the end. And weirdly enough, just like the beginning of a long-awaited dawn.

Granny’s spells painted the skies in many colours, dazzling one after the other. The golden owl she stood atop shimmered with an ethereal grace whilst it almost fazed through the air, leaving a trail of dusty gold in its wake. Suta watched the iron ball melting into a corrosive silvery liquid. He never did see what that blue meteor was. But his gut told him whatever it was couldn’t have possibly survived that.

Strange enough, his feet started to move forward on their own. He wore a childish smirk as he slowly approached Granny's hovering bird. Suta understood there was probably no way he could interact with her. His intense feelings wouldn’t matter here. But the closer he crossed over the grass. Something was bothering him—an inkling of something he was missing.

There was a small hope in his heart that whatever Celina wished for him to understand would come through Granny’s triumph over whatever it was threatening her farm.

‘It’s strange that something could even breach her ward. She told me nothing short of a disaster could break through her 100-year-old barrier.’

Suta tried to overlook the seeds of doubt in his heart. He walked with his eyes pressed upwards. A strange sound suddenly caught his attention. Forcing his gaze down, horror flashed against his poised look.

Caressed against the bothered grass bed, the deep soils had been rooted out. And a tiny half-torn teacup lay half pushed into the dirt. Twitching with a mechanical discomfort, while its strange ugly mouth pulled a deranged smile while it heckled.

“Hehehe-she’s going to die, she’s going to die, the wicked witch is going to die-la la, du du du du-doh-oh. The wicked witch is going to die.”

Suta’s throat tightened, that whiny voice and insufferable melody. He only ever saw something so disheartening back at that place. At the place where the whimsically weird existed.

‘But how? H-how did that get here?’ There was no mistake about what he considered one of the inhabitants of Candy. More so, looking down at the thing staring right through his gaze without saying anything was a gentle reminder that he was currently in a ghostly state.

During this time, Suta felt a cold crawling down his scalp. He hastily twisted around, almost frightened to death by the sudden emergence of what he beheld.

“Ho-oh, they weren’t kidding when they said the heart of an Arcanist breeds nothing but calamity and ruin.”

The speaker had no visible expression, his face hidden behind a strange grey mask. He was wearing a tall top with a charred and torn long beige coat, underneath which Suta noticed a strange grey and black one-piece outfit. It half reminded him of a clown's suit and something a sci-fi officer might wear. Its shoulder pads were noticeably stiff.

“Look at all this beautiful land, tarnished for good.” The tall figure walked straight towards him, swiftly forcing Suta to step to one side. They couldn’t see him within this realm it seems, he was practically a ghost looking in from the sidelines. For the first time since his arrival here, Granny lowered her gaze towards his direction. Suta quickly flinched in response. Her golden eye was covered in a sinister greyish and black fire constantly burning away. Staring at her dishevelled face brought a sharp wound to his chest. Despite the overwhelming power exuding from her body, there was something off about this battle. Granny’s eye never gave away much, but Suta was almost assured she wasn’t enjoying this fight. Traces of blood and an azure glow sat between her cracked, aged skin.

Her face creased with an ugly smile. “So you still live? Good, choosing to bring yourself into my hand might be the stupidest thing anyone has done. But then again, it might align with the atrocity you tried to commit today.”

Suta felt his ethereal body turn cold. Granny's voice sounded different, as though there was a second voice constantly overlapping her own. The strange figure beside him must be the aggressor, he thought. But why did his appearance fill him with unease? In fact, it starkly resembled what someone from his own world might wear.

The eerie, dark voice from above echoed down. Suta soon withdrew from his daydreams and returned her gaze to the heavens. Granny Baba’s ominous aura towered like an impregnable mountain—a God of gold swallowed by an unfathomable power.

“I decided death will be too much of a delicate touch for you. You will know pain.”

She swung her cane forward. Four bright lights burned into a smouldering existence before streams of amber lights fell from the skies. Suta panicked, but his soles remained rooted to the ground. Watching the quartet of starlight arching down towards him, he braced himself, locked into a strange stillness of despair, as though the world was coming to an end. He moved his arms in a frail attempt to shield himself.

A slender shadow appeared directly in front of him.

“Kuku…book…[Strange Mirror].”

Suta's brow shivered; somehow, he felt he had seen that spell before.

A surge of azure particles flashed. Suta blinked and saw a purple-cased book flapping around the air. The sky waned, and four coherent bangs clapped. Suta's eyes snapped open. A cloud of dust rose, tracing his gaze towards the slender back. The loose end of the coat fluttering with the wind remained unscathed.

A wall of shimmering glass appeared in front of the masked fellow—a ward of protection. The four blasts were eaten up, but the ward wouldn’t last. A crack appeared against its surface, then a second, a third, and more. The ward shattered, and broken fragments rained down.

The masked fellow held out his gloved arm. Where a cyan light bloomed from, very quickly, a surge of fragments pieced together and formed into a greatsword almost as tall as his slender frame.

He tilted his helm back to face Granny Baba, still heralding overall in the skies above. Whilst the pieces of rock and melting stone ricocheted off the collapsed ward, Suta realised the state his body was in was utterly devoid of anything in this space. He tested his theory by lowering and attempting to pick up one of the smouldering rocks, only to find his hand passing right through.

Another set of brightly glowing lights, burning in gold, appeared before Granny and her benevolent mount. Suddenly, a deep crack appeared against the floating iron sphere. Followed by a cackling laughter from the mysterious masked fellow standing ahead of him.

“My-my, one should always take care to finish their dinners…Dear Granny Baba.”

A deep indentation appeared across the floating iron ball. A puff of smoke breathed through its cracks, and an azure light wildly streaked across the iron ball. Another rumble ensued, followed closely by a rapturous collapse from the centre of the ball. A tiny hand could barely be seen poking out from the clustered debris. Snatching at the empty air a few times before it clenched its fist. Waves of azure particles started to rove around its tiny hand. A soft glow appeared, dousing its entire hand in a pale glow. Suta heard the sounds of light fracturing and the impending arrival of a colossal explosion.

Smouldering Iron scattered and rained unrelenting upon Granny's farm. The beds of golden wheat were scorched and set ablaze whilst iron bolts and 3m poles staked the rolling hills. The red cottage afar took a huge brunt if the force, large slabs of iron and rock bulldozed through it. From the stables torn apart into sunder to the barren man-made gentle streams. All were reduced to unrecognisable states in moments. Suta had barely blinked before witnessing the devastation of his homely abode. His hoarse breaths escaped through his partially opened mouth whilst the look of absolute terror glazed against his rattling, widened stare.

This was terror...no...this was hell.