The next day, Barbosse and the group discussed what happened during the Night Ecarlate; they resumed the journey that awaited them ahead. Just as Lord Ainsley had described; the trail left by the dragons suddenly came to a halt, as if they had suddenly disappeared in the middle of the forest. But that wasn't all. There was something strange about where the trail stopped. There was something strange about the trees ahead. They appeared to be younger and greener than the other ones littering the place we were previously at.
So far, their group had been following these said trails to determine where the dragons went, but now without them and without having found the thing that drew the dragons to this place, they decided to consistently head southward as they always did.
They kept walking for several kilometers until they reached the steep edge of a plateau that overlooked a green forest spreading endlessly on the horizon, with no sign of the Giant Dragons. Instead, the sky was swarmed by wyverns and small winged creatures, in the middle of which was a blue U-shaped lake. The most preeminent feature of that scenery was a giant tree that stood in the middle of the mass of land between the U-shaped lake. The said tree was so enormous that it was simply impossible for one to overlook it.
Without wasting too much time, they continued their march. In a few minutes, they reached the outskirts of where the tree should be. Once they arrived, they could finally see on a closer view how massive the tree was, and how strange it was with the holes drilled in the middle of its trunk at quite a high level from the ground, and yet we couldn't help but stop caring about it, instead focusing on two things at its base.
"What is that thing!?" escaped Lord Ainsley's mouth upon seeing what they five saw.
At the base of the tree, there was an enormous dragon, a wyvern-based one, easily the size of a middle-sized noble mansion, sleeping soundly as if completely obnoxious of their presence, but yet, despite being a unique creature, it wasn’t that that drew the most of their attention, but rather the thing the dragon was curling around.
A strange barrier of sky-blue and golden was enveloping and second-layering a three-meter tall egg-like object of dark and red.
The golden radiance aside, there was no doubt that anyone living on the human continent, especially those like the five of them who were closely related to the church, would be shocked to see that blue barrier here in the middle of nowhere.
From a single glance, the five of them recognized the similarities. That blue spherical barrier enveloping that huge egg-shaped thing was similar to the barrier that spanned the entire human continent.
"What is a barrier like this doing here!?" One of the two, Lord Paladin said.
"Hoy Armand, do you feel it?" "That egg-shaped thing."
Yes, I don’t know why, but this is... unsettling! This blue barrier too! "
Monsters are known for their extremely raw, innate yet unrefined use of magic, and while monsters using magic intelligently isn't unheard of, a monster using the same magic as the barrier was an absolutely never-before-seen case. So they were left with the only assumption that this was the doing of men, or in the worst case, a highly proficient magic-wielding being.
It was just a guess for Barbosse, but for a dragon to have settled here, he assumed that it must’ve been a long time since that egg-shaped thing had been left there. The dragon was indeed enormous, but Barbosse, as someone who knew how powerful the barrier was, couldn’t imagine a dragon like this one being able to come up with a barrier like this one.
There was no way this was the doing of this dragon. This must’ve been something it had discovered and elected residence upon.
They were left stunned for several minutes until the small wyverns swarming the sky simultaneously let out loud screech that instantaneously woke up the up-until-now sleeping dragon.
Easily above the twenty-meter level, it towered over everyone and everything in its surroundings, except for the tree it was sleeping under, as it arose from its slumber. Finally, their gaze was drawn upward. They finally noticed furniture that appeared to be man-made within the hole drilled in the middle of the trunk.
Carefully, if not even in a gentle manner, the dragon rose to its four limbs and drew some distance between the egg-shaped thing and them by walking forward, toward us.
It didn’t go immediately threatening like most monsters do, but what it did next instantly told them that this wouldn’t go as smoothly as we would’ve dreamed of.
In a matter that completely betrayed its earlier gentleness, it let out an earth-shattering roar that made the ground itself shake.
"Step Back!" the two Holy Paladins ordered the trio.
Lord Anisley and Lord Armand stepped forward, sheathing their weapons; the former, a great sword whose blade appeared to be geared toward bludgeon damage rather than slashing damage, and the latter, his spiked shield and a great harmer, which he wielded one-handedly. whereas Barbosse, along with the two Lord Paladins, stepped back as they were instructed.
Batting its wings, the dragon then aggressively roared at them,
Winds rippled, then it did exactly what Barbosse expected of a monster of this kind; it charged at them.
"Here we go again." Lord Ainsley announced, seeing the charging dragon.
As the dragon's head slighered first toward them, Lord Armand, at an eye-challenging speed, propelled himself just below the enormous dragon's mouth and swung his sword upward, causing the dragon to have his head bounce upward powerfully as he let out a painful screech.
It was a powerful blow, but not enough to end the fight. Lord Armand attempted another swing of his sword, but the dragon leaped back, at a speed unfit for a creature of its size, to give himself room to send out an attack. Something which he immediately did even while being in midair, charging a breath attack, fired in Barbosse's direction upon landing on the ground.
Using his magic, and stomping powerfully on the ground Lord Ainsley summoned a wall made of sturdy rock that shielded not only him but Barbosse and the others as well.
Lord Armand, who was on the first line, was engulfed by the flame, but once the dragon’s breath stopped, he came out completely unscathed, and immediately went after the dragon, repeatedly swinging his sword at it.
At one single glance, one could tell that Lord Armand was the one with the upper hand and that, by a large margin, all the dragon could do was writhe in pain, as its giant body was more of a hindrance in the fight than anything else, since he was slowed by it and couldn’t even land a hit, while Lord Armand, with his small stature, had no problem slithering through it and landing blow after blow.
This kind of scenery has become quite common, despite dragons like this one being Mythical Beasts, and despite this one's particularly unique size, it wouldn’t be the first time Barbosse would witness the Holy Paladin Armand or Lord Ainsley utterly and one-sidedly wrecking a dragon. Those two weren't called Holy Paladin and ArchBishop for nothing.
The dragon once again leaped back with all its might with its bloodied body, but this time several dozen meters backward. Lord Armand didn’t immediately follow; instead he was in a set of swords ablaze with lightning radiance. While Lord Ainsley was on his side, he deconstructed his wall to form in midair one giant lance darting toward the dragon.
In a desperate attempt, the dragon charged yet another breath attack, but before he could fire, Lord Armand charged. It was so fast that it looked as if he was teleporting himself. By using lightning magic, he propelled himself once, twice, and thrice, appearing this time above at the dragon’s head level, swinging his raging sword.
This blow, they all knew, was intended to be a lethal one, or at least with a knocking-intent one, but that was if it landed. Before he could even swing his sword, we all saw his focus drawn to something from his left, followed by a strange high-pitched sound from the same direction, and then followed by a blast from where Lord Armand was.
None of them had any idea of what was happening, given how fast it was. It all happened in the span of a single second.
"What! What just happened?!" Barbosse internally screamed.
None of them had the answer. All they knew was that they saw Lord Armand's body being blasted heavily on the ground, then bouncing several meters away, finally crashing against a range of trees deep into the woods.
"Wha-" Lord Ainsley roared.
Neither Barbosse's brain nor his eyes had yet processed what they had just witnessed; that a second blast, almost simultaneously, occurred, this time, where Lord Ainsley was, completely annihilating his magic lance in the passage and creating a smokescreen.
He, unlike Lord Armand, was fast enough to step back to avoid the blow by stepping back. He retreated toward where we were, bearing his shield, ready to counter if another one were to come.
This time, Barbosse was more lost than he ever was by what had just occurred. There was a little less than two seconds between the two blasts.
"What was that!? What happened? " Lord Ainsley exclaimed in a voice Barbosse had never heard him in.
The smoke where Lord Ainsley earlier stood faded, finally revealing what struck him.
A golden spear was buried almost entirely on the ground.
Their eyes went to where Lord Armand was blasted away from, and they saw what was responsible for both the lance throwing and Lord Armand's being blasted away.
They saw a youthful figure, her back facing them, slowly floating downward, toward the ground.
"A girl!"
The amount of shock contained in Lord Ainsley's voice was similar to what Barbosse could’ve ever expressed himself.
Upon reaching the ground, the youthful figure looked at the egg-shaped thing surrounded by the blue barrier for a few seconds before reaching out her arm to the dragon. The dragon, upon seeing her extended hand, lowered its head to her level.
Words escaped her mouth, but the sounding was completely different from anything Barbosse had ever heard before.
Upon touching the dragon, the dragon’s body was engulfed in a blue and golden radiance that faded a few breaths later, revealing a fully-healed dragon with no trace of her previous injuries inflicted by Lord Armand. Then the girl turned herself to face them, and then and only then could they see her face clearly.
Barbosse could tell she was no older than his youngest son, Uriel, who turned 15 a few months ago. She was wearing a white dress that had been customized with a strange, quite primitive clothing complement. Though her facial features were still quite young, her face was of such beauty that it felt oddly out of place in this dangerous and horrible place.
It took them a while to notice it, but clinging to her shoulder was a small creature that they later identified as a baby dragon. A red baby dragon, the size of a puppy, hisses threateningly at Barbosse.
The young girl raised her hand upward and muttered words that were once again impossible to figure out the meaning for Barbosse, but soon after she said those words, the small dragon crawled to her palm, to then be gently taken into its mouth by the enormous dragon, before it started batting its wings and leaping off into the sky.
"What’s this again? What a goddamn little girl is doing here! " Lord Ainsley exclaimed.
Similar questions were haunting Barbosse's mind, among which were:
Were there people living here? What was that language? What was a girl doing in a place like this one? What was her relationship with those dragons?
Barbosse realized she was most likely connected not only to that dragon, but also to that blue and golden barrier, which the dragon was most likely guarding in some way.
Having calmed himself, Lord Ainsley said, "Hello, Young Lady," trying to open a discussion with her.
The spear, to simple hand motion of her, returned to her hand.
"Leave this place immediately!"
Though in a very weird accent, it was clearly in human language.
Hearing her speak lifted from Barbosse's heart the thought that she could be some sort of monster in human form, or worse, a sort of hallucination caused by a monster.
Though there were still some doubts lingering in his heart, and though he still had a hard time stomaching that a person was living in this forest, he was now more or less certain that the young girl in front of them was a human being.
That being said, and though she did talk, suggesting that she was no monster, Barbose still felt a sense of danger lingering around. He was no fighter, but he still felt.
"Leave this place! There is nothing that is yours here. "
Holding his shield and his hammer in a way that showed his unwillingness to cause harm, Lord Ainsley said, "We don't mean any harm." We simply want to talk.
"I don’t know who you are! You came here and hurt Ezra. That’s enough for me. Leave this place! I have nothing to talk about with you! " She said this with an angry and threatening tone. She even lifted her spear toward us.
None of the group knew who Ezra was, but if they were to assume, then it would be the dragon from earlier.
Putting down his hammer and removing his helmet to reveal his face, Lord Ainsley once again insisted, "We simply want to talk."
His words don't seem to have affected the girl in the slightest.
"If Ezra was that dragon from earlier, then we’re sorry, we didn’t know that. We're here to investigate creatures that brought something called the "calamities." You might know them as the 7 giant dragons, I still don't know if you've seen them, but facts are that we are only here for them, nothing more, nothing less."
Only this time, did Lord Ainsley's words seem to have some effect, as she slowly lowered her spear.
Lord Armand slowly made his way toward the others from where he had been knocked off. A single glance at his tough armor, which, despite all the monstrosities we’ve encountered so far, had never been scratched, revealed how powerfully he had been knocked away. The speed and the strength behind it were beyond Barbosse's own imagination to imagine.
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"Since our first interaction was quite a bad way to start, I think we should start by introducing ourselves. I am Ainsley. You are?"
"Ainsley?..."
"Come on Young Lady, I gave my name, why not give yours too?"
Though hesitant and wary, she said, "Nia."
"Nia, that’s a beautiful name. May I ask you one thing: how old are you? "
"... fifteen."
Barbosse heard Lord Ainsley heave a sigh of relief, then ask, "So, Nia, may I ask where your parents are?"
Quite a good question thought Barbosse. Despite not being able to fathom the idea of someone living in these woods, given how dangerous it was even with a Holy Paladin and a High Bishop at their side.
If Barbosse was still to go by that assumption, she was still fifteen. She must have had someone who took care of her and taught her how to speak. There was no way she could have survived in these woods on her own forever.
"I no longer have any parents."
"So... you live here, all on your own?"
She, though reluctantly, nodded, and they all cast our eyes to the two chambers made on the tree’s trunk.
"I see that-"Lord Ainsley was interrupted by a sudden change of mood from the young girl.
She wasn’t doing anything, yet a palpable threatening aura suddenly started emanating from her.
"What? Is there a problem? " Lord Ainsley asked, just as confused as she was by her sudden mood swing.
Raising her spear toward Lord Armand, who had just removed his helmet, "You, what’s your name?"
Lord Ainsley threw a glare that clearly meant, "What did you do?" and Lord Armand simply responded with a head shake.
"Armand... Armand Aubrecht." He said it very slowly so as not to accidentally further anger her.
Her reaction was one of silence. Her head facing the ground, she asked, "Could it be that you knew of someone going by the name of... Ronandt?"
That name rang like a lightning bolt to Barbosse, but also to both Lord Ainsley and Armand.
Killing intent flooded the room.
"From where did you know that-?"
"How-" Before Lord Ainsley could even blurt out a word, she had already attacked.
With just a wave of her hand, she sent out two bubbles toward both Lord Ainsley and Armand.
Reacting almost instantly, they both defended themselves against it.
They both countered the same thing, one by swinging his lightning-enhanced sword and the other by sending out an ice spear, and neither worked. Instead, they were both engulfed by the elemental magic they used.
Carrying the elemental attack, they each used the bubble charged at them in a very bubbly yet insanely powerful manner. Using their sword and shield, they protected themselves from their own magic to the best of their ability.
"Let’s calm-"
They weren’t even given the time to breathe out from that first sudden attack, and she prepared yet another
Once again, with a wave of her hand, she summoned two giant bubbles on each of her palms, from which a multitude of other smaller ones emerged. "So that’s what you were here for?" She said, clearly angry at something.
Her countless smaller bubbles flashed at them like lightning. It might be difficult to imagine bubbles being fast, combat-effective, or even less violent, but hers certainly was.
She fired all of them at the group.
Both Holy Paladins stepped forward, and made themselves the focus of the attacks.
"Fall back!" Lord Ainsley ordered.
Before they could even consider the option, she shouted, "As if I would let that happen!"
A barrier, similar to the one spanning the human continent, spread and engulfed them in a small area of maybe two hundred meters in diameter. The boundary being just a few dozens of meters away from them, it didn’t seem to have the offensive property of the church’s barrier, for if it had, they at this distance would've already been attacked by some magic of some sort.
The two Lord Paladins at Barbosse's side charged and fired their magic at the barrier with their magic and, to no one's surprise, it didn’t even flinch.
Both of them looked at Barbosse, upon which he immediately shook his head negatively.
Barbosse's combatability was close to zero. As such, he was of absolutely no help at all during the fight that arose during this journey. The fact is that he was brought here without being given even a choice, for a reason: his magic, teleportation magic.
With it, he is able to teleport people across the continent as long as they are provided with the right catalyst, usually a body part. Long-ranged teleportation aside, he can also perform short-ranged teleportation, which requires nothing but sight of where he wishes to teleport to.
This is why the Lord Paladin was so set on protecting him. If ever they were to stumble upon an enemy they could not escape from, which was quite possible given the nature of the place they were planning to venture to, Barbosse would be charged with teleporting them back to the Human Continent unscathed.
Yet, right now, trapped, trying to use magic to teleport himself outside this field, he could feel it to the bone. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he couldn’t teleport himself beyond this barrier, only within could he somehow teleport himself, as if this bubble was completely shut from the outside world.
Looking back at the Holy Paladins and the girl, he saw her pour out her bubbly attack effortlessly on both sides, for they had split up, with Lord Armand being the front liner and Lord Ainsley protecting us.But that strategy didn’t work out as well as expected as she seemed to pour her attack endlessly and effortlessly onto both Paladins, causing them to be unable to make any move toward or even less against her.
The nature of her bubble seems to be slightly physical, but is capable of absorbing the magic property it encounters, forcing both Holy Paladins to face her attack with merely their bodies, their armour, and Aina.
Both of the two paladins wanted to spring into action, but right now, they were in a strange situation. To put it simply, with one of the Holy Paladins on the left and the other on the right, Barbosse and the two Lord Paladins were simply spared or ignored by the young girl's attack. Though Lord Ainsley and Lord Armand were clearly drawing her attention away from Barbosse and the two other Lord Paladins with their actions, she seemed to be solely and utterly focused on the two Fourteens, especially Lord Armand.
Too much is going on right now in Barbosse right now.
How did she know that name? What was she doing here? Was she connected to the Great Calamities, because there would be no way for her not to have felt the presence of the dragons in those woods? What was that magic?
There was simply too much for him to take in, and yet despite that, Barbosse knew what had to be done: we needed to restrain her.
So, when he saw a wordless glance from Lord Ainsley, he knew what he had to do.
With the girl's attacks being poured endlessly, Lord Ainsley took action. With her attacks being impossible to parry with magic and taking her as a target not being an option, he opted for a third option.
Using earth magic, he suddenly and powerfully stomped the ground. He summoned a small-sized but powerful earthquake that crackled the surrounding area. Taken aback by the sudden turn of events, the young girl suddenly lost balance. Taking immediate advantage of the momentum created, Barbosse teleported once to Lord Ainsley’s side, put a hand on his shoulder, and then teleported once again, this time next to the young girl.
The plan was, from what Barbosse understood of it, to take her aback, to teleport themselves next to her, and ultimately knock her off and restrain her, but that wasn’t what happened next.
"Tsk!" escaped Lord Ansley’s mouth.
A loud metallic noise reverberated, followed by the sensation of something piercing through his chest; a long and cold object, followed by an acute pain.
It took Barbosse a few seconds to realize what had happened: a spear was piercing through his chest, making its way to the other side. The girl who had supposedly lost her balance and was now floating completely unhinged within a small barrier against which Lord Ainsley's shield simply bounced off. The spear was aimed at Lord Ainsley's waist, but he managed to avoid it in time with a subtle and instantaneous maneuver, whereas Barbosse couldn’t.
Just like before, she wasn't even holding the spear; it was floating on its own; in fact, Barbosse, in his eyes, saw in her eyes what he believed was a flicker of surprise when she saw him being impaled. But that was only for an instant. For the next one, she, using her floating spear, swung and wiped him off her spear like one would wipe blood from a sword.
Barbosse voiced out a pained shriek, as he felt the foreign object lodged within his chest, organs and bones alike, being torn apart by her sudden action. Lord Ainsley tried to catch him, but just as he reached for me, an extension of her bubble stopped and tried to cage him up.
He flew off, on his way to crash several dozens of meters away, straight toward the barrier, but before he could crash onto something, he was caught by one of the Lord Paladins.
Despite the gentle reception, his vision was blurry and blood was gushing from the gaping hole in his chest.
"Vicar Barbosse, your ring, quick!" urged the man who caught him.
It took Barbosse some time to remember what the man meant by ring, but then he remembered that their group, which was quite fairly balanced, didn’t have any healers, for it was believed that a healer would be more of a burden than anything, but instead they had rings that provided healing magic.
Lifting his hand up, he activated the power of the ring. Though it didn’t immediately or instantly heal his wound, he felt its healing property at work.
Feeling a little bit of relief over his injuries, he turned his focus once again toward the ongoing battle between Lord Ainsley, Lord Armand, and the other Paladins who chose to join in against the young woman. Within her now visible, small sized blue barrier, she repeatedly fired her attacks without being slightly concerned about running out of mana.
At first, there was no opportunity for a single word to slip in, until something strange happened with her barrier, the one prohibiting us from leaving this place. She suddenly stopped attacking.
The three Paladins, witnessing what suddenly occurred, drew some distance, wary of what she was about to come up with again.
"Please, calm down. We don’t even know why you’re suddenly attacking us like this! "
"From where did you know that name?" Lord Armand shouted.
The young girl remained completely deaf to their words.
At first glance, both Paladins seemed to have come up with a strategy since they charged toward, but then immediately disengaged, withdrawing to at least twenty meters away for reasons one could immediately grasp, but what immediately happened after explained their reaction.
Not even a second later, the earth shook violently in a very strange manner. Each of the envoys were all grown-up and had at least once experienced an earthquake at some point in their lives, but this one was completely different.
It went for a couple of dozen seconds and then calmed down.
Glancing toward the girl, Barbosse, clueless, saw her, upon the quake calming down, discarding her barrier, the one she was in.
This might sound reassuring, but not to Barbosse and his group. For the next instant, as she reached for her spear, an orb suddenly formed middair at the tip of her spear.
Barbosse didn't know what that thing was, but the moment he set eyes on it, he knew that it was something that could annihilate all of them.
"I have nothing to hear from the likes of you." She cast a glance toward Barbosse. With her spear on, stancing herself, she imperatively said, "Don’t move."
Barbosse couldn’t explain how he felt the moment these words reached his ears, but with his current condition, moving was something he didn’t even want to consider. Yet when he heard these words, it was his body, every fiber of it screaming at him to "not move." Barbosse could only witness with dread how even the healing he was subjected to had stopped, and yet the effect it had on him went as far as to cause his body to completely ignore the pain that was teeming in his body. His whole focus was directed toward obeying that order. His glance still fixed on them, Barbosse saw that the freezing was not only the case for him alone, but for both Lord Armand and Lord Ainsley as well.
Seeing this reminded Barbosse of what I’ve read in one of the reports about the seven calamities. He had read reports of the water calamity being capable of inducing this kind of reaction in water-users, but having not experienced it firsthand, he couldn't tell whether or not it was the same feeling, but he could tell that this was something closely approaching it.
Though Lord Ainsley and Lord Armand were affected, they somehow fought back to the point of being able to slightly move their arms, which once again prompts the young girl to further order. "Don’t move, don’t resist. "
This second order came even more violently than the first one, for Barbosse’s body, which wasn’t in great shape, contorted itself to fit her order.
Having seen how effective her words were, she started summoning from the strange orb a strange chaotic magic, which Barbosse recognized as light magic.
Barbosse didn’t even know that she could use light magic. In fact, he wasn’t even sure anymore if that thing she was preparing to unleash on them was light magic at all. One of his two sons could flawlessly use light magic, and what he was seeing right now wasn’t it at all. But he knew for sure that if it were to be unleashed upon them, it would be their death. It would be powerful enough to exterminate everything in a single go.
What she gathered grew bigger and bigger, until reaching something as big as her height.
She was about to be unleashed at any given moment when she abruptly broke it off, her gaze slowly shifting to something behind her. Barbosse instantly felt freed by her bind; it was the case for everyone, including the three paladins, who retreated to Barbosse’s and the other paladin’s side.
At this point, the girl's focus suddenly shifted from them to something else, just like she had completely forgotten about their existence.
With a glance to Barbosse, Lord Ainsley asked if somehow he was capable of teleporting them away right now, and once again Barbosse answered with a negative head shake.
Earlier, with the barrier still on, Barbosse couldn’t teleport himself outside. If he were to compare the feeling, it would be similar to trying to get past a stone wall. This was something he had never experienced before. Teleporting someone or himself is for him, with a catalyst, similar to moving something from one point of a table to the other corner of that same table. He could do it without a catalyst if he had a visual sight of the destination, but teleporting without a catalyst to an out-of-sight location is like falling into a bottomless ocean with no guarantee of resurfacing. At least that's how he experienced it.
Yet right now, for reasons even more incomprehensible to him, with the girl's barrier cast, he couldn’t teleport himself beyond this place.
Still curious about what happened, he followed her gaze toward the egg-shaped thing trapped within one of her barriers. Though Barbosse didn’t immediately notice what caught her attention, it didn’t take him long to notice that the thick blue-layered barrier around the egg-shaped thing started to fall apart, like broken glass, revealing the egg-shaped thing entirely.
She spoke some words, but they were, at least to Barbosse, completely unintelligible, but he knew from how she behaved that it expressed how unexpected this was for her.
Using a strange magic, she cast a barrier onto the one already in place around the egg-shaped thing, to which she immediately added another layer, but the moment she did, it shattered off like it did for the earlier one.
"What the hell is that thing?!"
As if having taken life, the egg-shaped thing started to twinkle with a black and red radiance as the egg-shaped thing started to turn into something more fleshy.
Earlier, it resembled very much an egg, with black and red colors, but now it resembled a clustered dragon’s scale with a red gooey-flesh-like bloody matter in between.
A strange reaction unfolded in front of their very eyes. All around them, small snowflake-like clusters of light crystalized in midair, on the ground, everywhere around them. Even though Barbosse had never used it before, he knew what that thing was the moment it crystallized in midair. This form was very different from what those adept at it knew, but the moment they showed up, Barbosse recognized, instinctively, that these things were nothing else but what people refer to as Aina.
A few instants after their appearance, the countless clusters of light, as if siphoned and consumed, were suctioned by the egg-like object, only to disappear inside it afterward. From the quantity that had been suctioned, Barbosse realized that those clusters of light spread beyond the girl’s barrier, kilometers all around them, yet like nothing they were consumed, leaving behind just the ovoid thing.
Upon absorbing all the surrounding light, the ovoid thing twinkled, even more rapidly, to a rhythm reminiscent of the beating of a heart. As the seconds went by, it got even faster. The pulses were now so fast they were almost continuous, but then, just as everyone was expecting something to happen, it abruptly stopped, leaving everyone, including Barbosse, the Lord Paladin, and even Lord Armand and Lord Ainsley, and even the girl, in a long, deadly silence.
Silence, which was soon broken by the sound of flesh being ripped apart. A thin, transparent humanoid arm emerged from within the egg-shaped thing.
That arm was clear and transparent, but encrusted within it were millions of white light-scattered particles that scattered across the transparent arm, forming what seemed to be a skeletal structure.
Shatters sprawled throughout the egg surface, and soon another arm emerged in the same manner as the first.
As if expelled from within the egg, the being whose arms belonged to it slowly made its way toward the outside.
First the head, then the torso, to finally unravel its entire body; what was within the egg fell off to the ground like a newly-born fawn.
Why the comparison to a fawn? Simple, for not even twenty seconds. The first thing it did was to stand up, which it failed, but before he could slump toward the ground, he was gently caught by the young girl.
The egg-shaped thing began to behave strangely again, transforming itself entirely into a gory, flesh-like matter that crawled its way toward the being that emerged from it, eventually merging to become one with him.
Him? Why refer to it as such?
The answer was simple: whatever emerged from the egg now appeared humane enough to be referred to by that word.
In a matter of seconds, there was nothing left of the egg-shaped thing. Upon absorbing the egg, the strange humanoid being that emerged developed color and clear facial features. He now looked thoroughly human.
The only exception would be his two arms, whose colors, from the tip of the hand to the shoulder, were a pure black teemed with a pure red vessel-like pattern. Besides that, he looked thoroughly like a normal boy of around 15 years old.
The young girl said, with a teary and happy voice, something in her very foreign language. He raised his eyes to the girl who was embracing him, like a perplexed little child.
"This can’t be!" Both Lord Ainsley and Lord Armand exclaimed, not wanting to believe what they were seeing.
In 8 years, people’s features are bound to change, especially those of a 9-year-old child, but that one person that came out of that egg-shaped thing looked exactly like the child he saw that night and abandoned with the ArchBishop and Holy Paladin Medvedik, under the pretense that he was merely doing what he ought to do as a Vicar of the Church.
Barbosse still doubted it, but the remembrance of the hostility the girl displayed upon having mentioned that name confirmed that boy’s identity.
The boy that came out of that thing was the one called Ronandt, the boy from that night, but also the one referred to by the Church as the "Faceless One."