Granny held her movements before she slowly descended. The golden owl appeared again and cushioned her landing. Her wild grey hair clung to her face. Her breathing had become erratic, with sweat glazed against her aged brown skin. The burning eye remained locked onto the great oak. But then, a loud howl marked against the air. She swiftly spun around and just about intercepted the azure beam smashing against her guard. Granny was knocked off her mount and sent free falling. Suta panicked and found his legs almost moving on their own. He remembered he was powerless to do anything in this state, but his mind couldn’t take watching her lose, even if it were in the past.
A loud hoot echoed before Granny met the harsh ground waiting for her from below, followed by a shower of golden particles conjugating beneath her. Her golden owl steadied her fall once again.
Suta noticed the blue creature streaking violently against the air toward her in pursuit. Granny's floating book danced before her. This time, she held out her hand and forcefully tore a page away from it. This evoked another loud cry of blood howling from the book, which buzzed around in distress. Granny didn’t react and crunched the sheet into her bare hands. The golden page incinerated into red ashes. And then Granny held out her hands and spoke.
{Murderous Blaze}
She released the red ashes, igniting a furious maelstrom of devastating red flames. The rushing creature collided with the pillar of red fire and screeched in agony.
At the same time, however, Suta noticed something in the corner of his eye. A dark-furred feline slowly approached him. He felt his scalp turn cold as he watched its three eyes lock onto him suddenly
‘C-can it see me?’
Suta didn’t want to believe there was a flaw to this strange dream walk he was on. The idea of somehow being remotely wrapped in this gave him cold chills. He purposely diverted his walk away from the creature's line of sight, only to face the harrowing truth of the three-eyed creature following his every move.
‘Ah…Crap!’
Further fright appeared in the form of that ghostly voice suddenly appearing behind him.
“Hm? What is it Genjuro? Do you…see something?” The masked fellow spoke, referring to the three-eyed panthers.
Suta braced himself before stiffly twisting his head around. He wasn’t sure why, but he held his breath, encapsulated with fear after seeing the masked fellow appear so close behind him. The fellow gazed around the decayed hills; the moment his mask passed over him, Suta visibly shook before cupping his mouth with his two hands.
“Something is here? Hm? I don’t see anything. What is it you’re seeing Genjuro. What is it hiding.”
The masked figure moved towards Suta’s direction with measured steps. He held out his gloved hand where cyan particles swiftly conjured into a great sword.
Suta’s chest tightened. He sensed danger crawling closer. He glanced around his surroundings and recalled the devastation surrounding Granny's once cheerfully vibrant abode.
‘Yeah screw that, getting caught isn’t an option.’
While he continued to press his heels slowly in retreat, the masked figure continued to advance. Suta’s startled gaze scanned his surroundings. He found no way of escaping, and perhaps he inwardly knew trying to flee would be futile.
The sheer level of their incantations completely dwarfed whatever he thought he could handle. He readied his heels for a desperate dash. But then the sky painted bright gold and red, snatching his attention. He saw Granny floating away from her mount with what looked like a piece of the sun floating atop her raised staff.
“Tsk-tsk! You are determined to make this as unbearable for me as possible, aren’t you? Kukuku-how unfair," Said the masked fellow.
Suta stared wide-eyed at the miniature sun above Granny and felt his breath almost cease. A smoulder of deathly flames gathered. Granny’s silhouette had shrunk beneath the mighty meteor. And slowly floating beneath her was the blue creature staring at the apocalypse stirring above .
“There’s no helping it. I have to…take things…to the next level.” The masked figure began slowly sliding the gloves away from his left hand. Suta was on high alert again, this time however, his gaze borderlined intrigue and weariness. Seeing a very shrivelled hand covered in a strange white glow. Halfway out into the open, tears of blood dribbled down from what Suta quickly understood was a half-closed eye—writhing around against the underside of the fellow's hand.
Something else caught Suta's attention just before his gaze traced the masked fellow entirely removing his glove. Well, someone oddly familiar, to be precise,
‘W-wait…why am I…getting up?’
In the near distance, rising away from the cool protective shadows beneath the great oak. A youthful and rather skinny boy had emerged from what Suta expected was a lengthy dream. His initial response to seeing his past self in the flesh was one of the strangest things he had encountered. And that weighed beside talking fish monsters, alien guardians and bizarre talking furry animals. It was a strange horror he couldn’t quite put into words. His ghoulish figure walked slowly from the oak in measured and slow footsteps. An eerie stillness seemed to have sat against the farm.
Suta watched his past self from afar, advancing in this strange, zombified manner. His head hung low. His braided electric pink locks covered his face, only fuelling the strange uneasiness brewing in the air. He watched himself placing a single foot against the barrier’s threshold and then stopped. With his head still lowered and his braided locks softly shivering against the wind, a cloak of silence seemed to fall against the entire farm, freezing all occupants in a tense, frigid sense of longing.
All eyes stared at the ghoulish Suta, barely moving an inch now.
Seconds turned into stiffening minutes. Suta’s brows narrowed, then loosened quickly enough as he observed his body finally moving. He slowly lifted his arm, and his lowered palm would rise. Then his second hand lifted and met the first. His right palm faced the open, and his left hand moved closer. Using his littlest finger, he drew a slow circle against his palm, and his index finger and thumb lightly pressed their tips together. Then, he joined the three fingers together to form a pyramid. He crossed the space between his thumb and index finger, between the index and the middle finger against his other hand. And then, in almost illusionary movements, he smacked his fingertips lightly against the adjacent hand. He locked his two hands together to form a downward triangle, then locked them again to create a crane, a horned creature. And then, finally, he interlocked his hands together to form claws pulling away from one another.
And then…Suta’s gaze sat frighteningly wide.
[Glitch]
A strange dark liquid appeared around his two hands. Slowly, he pulled his interlocking claws apart from one another the same way one forcefully pulled apart a stiff door. A dense gaseous dark swirl of matter was forming between the space gradually being made. It stretched slowly into a writhing liquid, forming a large disc, before it slowly expanded into a tall mirror filled with what looked like the backdrop of a star-filled galaxy. Suta’s eyes sat as wide as saucers. The shape and strange liquid surface alone sent alarm bells ringing throughout his mind.
“Th-that can't be? A…a portal?”
Suta stared with a complex wanderlust at the shimmering tall mirror nearby. Suddenly, it pulled him back to that night again: the red portal and his mother's last defiant smile. Ringo’s departure alongside that crimson-eyed creature and even the strange alien Po, there was no mistaking that oval-shaped doorway for what he thought it was.
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“It was a portal, a portal made by…me? H-how was that…no-it kind of made sense. That glitch ability…” he swallowed harshly before he could repeat the truth staring him in the face.
“I can cr-create…portals?”
A sharp wail echoed from the skies. Suta momentarily withdrew his troubled gaze away from his strange figure to observe the commotion above. The little tyrannical blue creature was wailing to the top of its lungs, being held forcefully by a conjured hand of bones and pink tendon flesh straight out of a Nightmare from Granny's floating book. The arm, being almost thrice its size, squeezed the life out of it. At the same time, the comet held above Granny was slowly ascending away from the two, dousing the entire farmland in a scorching reddish glow. Suta moved his gaze towards the masked figure again, whose whole attention was still poised towards the giant white-leafed oak tree.
“My-my, now this is a surprising turn of events.” He said
“What kind of ability is that? An incantation without a summoner rite? Hmm, but with the use of somatic hand seals? How oddly intriguing.” The masked figure spoke before his voice fell into a chilling cackle.
Suta watched him lift his gloved hand again, and those identical crystal daggers from before danced behind him, ready to fire.
Suta heard a clap against the skies at that moment. A rapturous bang echoed like a torpedo had been fired. The masked figure almost reacted instinctively and swayed to one side, a strange cloak dusted before him; untangling from its cyclone, a wooden staff lurched forward and slammed right into the masked figure's side. A horrible crunching sound echoed and tossed the masked figure down the hill. Granny unearthed herself from the cloak, which had somehow appeared like a spectral assassin out of thin air. Standing this close to her filled Suta with a host of complex feelings. Firstly, it felt like an incredibly long time since he last saw her like this. How long had he been trapped in that realm? His emotions were on the brink of overspilling. He only needed to remind himself this vision was not his reality. Granny couldn’t see or hear him.
Granny turned to face the frozen figure of this reality, the Suta of the past, who was still unmoved from his current position. His helm remained sunken low. Standing beside the shimmering portal, he miraculously conjured. Granny pressed one foot ahead. Her movements surprisingly matched her age. “Little Su? Is…is that you?” She had that same eerie dark voice overlapping with her normal one, but her demeanour had returned to what he remembered before things went wrong.
“Don’t be afraid, I’m here now. Little Su It’s ok, I’ll protect you both, come to me it’s…ok.” Granny gingerly inched her way forward without her cane. Her footsteps weren’t hurried at all, gentle and patient. Suta could see her, the old tea-drinking Granny for the first time. Her hair had gotten so thin, and it was evident she had lost a lot of weight. All the while, the ghoulish version of himself remained unmoved.
‘What’s going on? Why am I just standing there like that.’ He wondered, growing more tense the longer this went on. Granny was almost close enough to reach her barrier when the figure finally moved. Its limbs twitched, and its helm slowly raised. Suta beheld his lethargic gaze, and a short gasp escaped through his mouth before his brows furrowed.
‘Wh-what happened to my eyes?’
Glaring into the open, devoid of any signs of life, a pair of sparkling blue irises shone with a mysterious hue. Granny was left speechless at the scene before her, but she managed to free herself quickly and hastened her feet forward.
“Suta...suta, what has happened to you?”
Granny took a step forward, and her instincts immediately screamed at her. She vanished from her spot, narrowly evading the downpour of light beams raining dread upon the earth.
*Shrill-Du-Du-du-Booom*
The tiny blue creature above hurled volatile balls of mana down, wearing a fiendish grin creased widely against its round face.
Waves of blasts continued exploding around him. Suta found his body almost immune to anything within this realm. With dust smoke blooming forth over the scattered debris. Countless flashes of gold and azure lights streamed violently across the air, in a bedazzling show of opposing powers tussling together Suta stood rooted to his heels, a mere spectator amidst a chaos of frenzies. The howl of a great creature erupted, shifting his gaze to the heavens again, where he saw a tremendous golden owl surging forward.
The owl smashed head-on into the blue creature, which evoked a rapturous bang echoing against the atmosphere.
“Deary me, with all the strange mysteries flying around, one tends to forget you, dear boy, are the one shrouded with the most troubles…isn’t that right? Raito Suta.”
Suta shifted his widened stare back towards the giant oak. The masked fellow was standing inches away from Granny’s barrier. Practically face to face with the ghoulish figure of his own body.
“Hm, where was I? Oh yes, let’s see just how special you are”
Suta watched the masked fellow slowly pull away one of his leather gloves. A withered and bone-racked snow-white hand appeared, against which he saw that same writhing eyeball slowly opening. Red and violet-coloured eyelashes flew away from its lids like colourful songbirds taking flight. A terrible feeling began crawling against the nape of his neck. The appearance alone of that thing sent shivers running through him, a warning that something dark had appeared.
Before he could make a sound, the ghoulishly placid version of himself finally moved. It turned around, bent over, and grabbed Demoria rather offhandedly by her ankles before dragging her into the shimmering portal. The oval greyish portal bent inwardly and wined before dissipating into tiny sparkling granules, leaving a stunned Suta blinking aimlessly towards what had just happened.
‘Where did they go? Where did I go? And…th-that power.’
He tried to refrain from falling into the rabbit hole of the unknown and instead tuned his thoughts towards understanding how that portal surfaced in the first place. ‘Hand seals, they were so fast…but I…I think I could remember-‘ Suta heard a ruckus imploding around him at that moment, cutting his thoughts short; in response, he felt a sizeable quake unsettling the ground beneath his feet. The earth almost threatened to tilt. It was a strange and somewhat terrifying experience to endure. Dark clouds suddenly clouded the spotless azure air above him. Observing the change around him a little deeper, he saw remnants of the golden owl burning away. Sparks of electricity and steam fissured away from the blue creature, who had now become the only visible figure amongst the smoke-studded tussle.
‘Where did Granny go? What’s happening now?’
A slight panic ensued before Suta noticed a depression forming in the air beside him—a greenish rune adorned over a noticeable tear being formed. Suta looked up again, desperately searching for Granny. Just before despair took route, a small red flame conjured within the gust of howling dark clouds. The red flame ignited into a torrential burst of roaring hellfire. A twin-headed creature covered in red scales reared its head through the grey clouds. Its giant saddle was made of golden particles with tiny bells hanging beneath its great, large wings. The twin-headed bird creature was finally on show in its entirety. Suta felt his breath almost ceasing in his throat, along the fiery body of the great twin headed bird he noticed a golden core rested in the creatures bosom. Burning away like a great sun. Suta narrowed his gaze and stared intensely at the glowing core. He almost missed it at first, but after a careful look, Suta noticed the silhouette of an almost bone-riddled figure inside. A tussle of white flowed away from her scalp like pale fire.
Suta felt his gut churn; Granny’s robes were reduced entirely to whispering ash. Leaving a body covered in glossy reddish marrow. The sight alone spoke of the untold horrors she had likely gone through to cast such a technique.
“Alas, you’ve finally used it. Oh great Granny Baba! The last of the last. Kukuku. Well... Let us toast to the forceful rise of a...Rank 7 Arcanist!”
‘R-rank 7 Arcanist?’ Sutas mouth had long dropped open. But only now did he understand just how far Granny had gone. The jump from Rank 5 to Rank 7 was a feat Granny herself spoke of being almost as achievable as splitting the moon in half. Only one or two Arcanists had sniffed at its door in history. Suta recalled Granny mentioning those two, notably, as close to achieving something the ancient folk dubbed... Godhood.
The thoughts made him shudder with the bit of practical rationality he could make with how mana and the states of an Arcanist worked. He was almost sure this was a place Granny's body could not withstand.
‘Is she…n-no-she can’t be thinking about….’
“Suicide? That’s as good as shattering your mana core attempting to use such an incantation. Ara! You’ve fused your core with your heart and fast-forwarded the process of carefully absorbing the power of a great beast. If memory serves me well, I believe there was a sub-group of arcanists famous for such suicidal acts. Warlocks, right?”
Suta grimaced at the sight above, in actuality he could see a smouldering heat consuming Granny within an impregnable shell. Her body was consuming and being consumed. He took an unconscious step forward but felt something moving against his will. A slender pale hand appeared and wrapped itself around his bosom. The delicate voice filtered into his ears like warm tears.
‘It’s enough for now, it’s enough.’
Golden runes covered the slender hand. His entire body numbed at the touch. Then he felt this ethereal form of his turn dangerously hot. A blinding sheet of white flashed across his gaze. Suta saw his entire world being turned upside down before a harrowing howl screeched painfully within his ears. Before falling into the dark pool again, he heard her serene voice.
"Be strong my heart, the passage towards strength. It is one filled with great peril. Do not indulge in the dark whispers. Do not let little Cel win."