Chapter 77
The Moth in the Battlefield
Her kind had never been good with emotions and feelings.
They valued knowledge more than anything else and, with the ability her race had, they had used it to gain even more knowledge of the future and take it back to the past in the great library city of Pnakotus.
She had been born during her race's last era of peace, prior to the cataclysm. She had another name back then.
It was during a war that it began to change and many had to flee and escape the extinction that had not been predicted in the future.
It was during the last period of the war that she and two of the group she was always with decided to do something more for a world that no longer seemed to have any hope of progress.
Using failed experiments, which had been discarded by the research teams, she and the one she had developed feelings for, managed to escape the destruction that was sweeping the Earth. The third in that group died because her experiment failed, but not that of her beloved and herself.
An experiment that completely changed them both.
Their race could move consciousnesses through time to different species. But with them it was different.
The same consciousness going between past and future, but in the same body. She and her beloved did not need to move to another body to shift their consciousness, as her species had done for so many millions of years that there was almost no record of when it had begun.
From that experiment she changed. And from the future came the knowledge of the name she would use for the rest of her life.
Azusa.
Azusa was in the abyss of time, an ethereal observer who had witnessed the dance of existence since the Paleocene, when she was born. As well as the final causes that would determine her death, millions of years in the future.
That was not entirely certain. Since the advent of destruction by that menace from the sidereal abyss, the futures that had been recorded as probable had proven to be wrong.
Something had changed.
War continued to spread across the planet. Further south the Elders, battling against their own creations, who threatened to destroy everything in their path and the Yith, Azusa's race, against two threats from deep space.
Until only she and her beloved were left behind. Few Yithians had managed to flee to the future, while the vast majority who escaped took refuge in a hidden dimensional space, never to return to the three dimensions.
Azusa and her beloved were separated from the others. They had already been strangers among their own kind, but now they were strangers even more.
In the silence of their being, the memories of past eras resounded: the growth of the continents, the wars between species from outer space. The life of many of the organisms created by her race since the Devonian, applying directed evolution or evolutionary projection. The extinction of a great part of her race, the flight of another part, the extinction of the great saurians, and then the blossoming of mankind.
More wars, which had ended by sweeping away the knowledge of eras prior to the evolution of those who had come to call themselves Homo Sapiens.
The earth had been an Eden and a hell for billions of years. A melting pot where hundreds of races had passed and where the passing of the years had gradually erased their traces.
The passing of the ages erased the passing of everything. Or at least almost everything.
Each moment was a thread in the vast tapestry of destiny, and Azusa, no longer just an observer, knew that each strand was crucial.
Her ability she had gained by trying to crystallize her consciousness into a higher dimension had transformed her into something completely different.
She was not supposed to intervene, but she had done so in a minimal way. And with each intervention her destiny changed a little. Not her place, but her own feelings. Everything was going to happen the same way, but it was her consciousness that had changed. Seeing things in two directions had that effect.
Her mind could go between the past and possible futures, but the experience was pseudo-physically on a timeline to the future. That caused her physical body to accumulate experiences with those she had interacted with.
Although everything seemed to happen at the same time, the truth was that her physical form in the past was not emotionally developed enough to understand many of the actions she would take in the future, even though she had the memory of it and the different paths.
Therefore she did not understand in the past why she would keep the name that fey girl would give her in the future.
Millions of years passed until her physical body aligned with the timeline in which she would meet her. By then she had changed too much over time, but she still knew not to intervene too much. Just as she had done in the past, inspiring certain people or warning them, whispering in their ears. Lives that generated legends, or conflicts in the worst case.
But the destiny of that fey would be different because of a unique quality in her being. A quality that, despite the cruelty, she would earn through suffering.
Azusa had seen her since she was a child.
Her attention was focused on her, when she was still a half-fey, half-human girl named Rei.
Since her childhood, she had seen her spirit blossom, but also her struggle to belong to two worlds, in an era when it was still too early for humans to accept that there was another species living with them on the planet. While the feys had been human, and could even procreate to a greater or lesser extent, going to the Other Side changed them on such a physical and mental level that, although a large percentage retained a humanoid form, they could no longer be said to belong to the same species.
“Is suffering necessary for growth?” wondered Azusa in her long life and the question had been asked millions of years before Rei herself was born as she already knew her then, but at that time her neural connections had not understood the answer of the future. The answer was a deep echo in her being, a paradox that resonated with the fragility of life.
She knew not to intervene in her life until the appointed time. Species had a path of their own to travel, a destiny they had to fulfill, and Rei was a fundamental part of that fabric. “Pain is a teacher,” she reflected, watching as the shadows of adversity loomed over her.
One day, when Rei was still young, life presented her with her first trial by fire. The death of her parents. Azusa did not feel a deep pain when she saw it in the past, but when she saw it in the present it was a sadness that transcended time. “Why must she suffer?” she questioned herself in the past and trying to comprehend the memory of the future it was as if she wished to open a portal and save her from her destiny. But she knew that if she did, it would alter the course of history. Intervention, could lead to a darker future.
As Rei faced the challenges of her youth, Azusa felt like a spectator in a cosmic theater. She saw how the choices she made, no matter how small, shaped her character.
“Freedom is both a gift and a burden,” she mused, realizing that her power to decide also brought with it the possibility of failure. But in that failure, there was a seed of wisdom.
So, she plunged into meditation between past and future. “What is purpose?” she asked herself in the past and her future self answered her and sometimes vice versa. Purpose was not only the fulfillment of a destiny, but also the process of finding meaning in suffering, even if life seemed absurd. “Rei must discover her own strength,” thought the past, ‘and to do so, she must face pain,’ the future replied.
As Rei grew, each wound, each disappointment, wove something into her being. Azusa watched, nodding with the understanding that trials were necessary. “Is suffering the only form of enlightenment?” The answer was uncertain, Azusa only knew the details of her own existence, and seeing her race destroyed in the past certainly brought bitterness as her memories remained fresh of it.
But what she knew for certain was that, at some point in the future Rei was important. The light her actions would shine would be a reflection of her experiences, the sum of her struggles. While what she needed from Rei was a unique quality of body that she would acquire over time, being so close all the time, she couldn't deny that she almost saw her as something akin to the daughter she could never have. It wasn't right to consider that, knowing that he would use her in the future, but it was how she felt.
Meanwhile, Azusa contemplated her own existence. “I live in time, but I am not bound to it,” she thought, remembering the certainty of her end. She knew that one agreed upon day her essence would vanish, but that did not fill her with dread. Rather, it urged her to appreciate the present moment through her form, every moment she spent observing not only Rei. But everyone.
Her mission was not to full interfere until the appointed time, but in the meantime to accompany from a distance, encouraging her growth without intervening in her destiny. No matter how hard and cruel it might be. Both her life and Rei's were simple flowers in the vast garden of the universe, ephemeral, but that until the last day they could struggle to survive in a world that could deny them the sustenance of water, as well as drown them in an ocean.
She met at that time something she had never seen in her memories. And meeting him altered parts of the future she knew. There was a great tremor in the fabric of her mind space as her conscious mind suffered the repercussions of meeting him. New possibilities and it took some time for her mind to understand the role of this creature. It terrified her. That being was something different from her and everything she had ever known. But she was even more surprised to find that this being had a destiny linked to Rei. To understand it better the time line was altered and then returned to its place. She had overturned a possibility just to make sure it was what this being wanted. But she discovered that it was more sentient than many others she had observed in her past.Yet entering his mind gave her parts of a puzzle that she and her beloved were unaware of.
She changed a few events, but after all the lines went back on course.
As Rei faced her hardest struggle on the Other Side accompanied by that being, she returned later transformed in Mai. Azusa felt closer to her than ever, even though she shouldn't have. In her heart, a voice resounded from the future: “The pain she faces is not in vain”.
And so, in the twilight of her existence, Azusa waited. A silent witness in the great work of life, aware that sometimes, the deepest love lies in letting the other walk their own path, even if that path is full of shadows.
And so the day came when Mai finally met her.
***
November 23rd. 2099. Ancient Era.
Siberia
The plain stretched into a vast white desert, a blanket of snow covering what was once a vibrant landscape. Now, all was silence and desolation at that point, interrupted only by the occasional rustle of the wind, which carried icy flakes in a somber waltz. The rushing of the wind also brought distant sounds, screams and detonations, as well as shrieks impossible to describe. The night sky, leaden gray, seemed to have joined the lament of the earth, as if the atmosphere itself shared the weight of grief.
The battle and the war seemed to have come to an end.
It had been a few years the likes of which mankind had never seen. Internal and international conflicts, scarcity of resources. Dark Events. And then the crowning fruit.
The fractus that arrived in 2094.
Even if the Tripartite Treaty between humanity, the Aeon and the Feys had put an end to the internal conflicts, to deal with a greater enemy, that had not worked if the enemies continued to arrive and in increasing numbers.
Enemies were arriving through the spherical spatial distortion. A portal of a spatial dimension greater than three dimensions.
The sphere that had remained immobile since the invasion, but that had changed.
The sphere had moved for the first time in all those years, and with it the hosts inside it.
Special charges had been applied, no longer using atomic charges but leaving it in the hands of strategic magic. It had worked. But it had not been destroyed. The ten kilometer diameter sphere had moved slowly eastward from Vanavara to the Nyuya River, covering an extension of 600 kilometers in five days. Five days of which fractus continued to emerge from the interior of the sphere and spread throughout the territory.
And at that moment the sphere floated some thirty kilometers from the point where that battle had taken place.
The traces of the war were evident in every corner. In the distance, the shadows of destroyed structures loomed, military buildings that once symbolized hope and resistance. Now, they stood like monuments to defeat, covered in frost. While that part of the world was still almost as uninhabited as it had once been, the few buildings built in times of war were now nothing more than cracked and crumbling walls, adorned with marks of destruction, etched by the creatures that had invaded the world.
They were not of this reality, but of a fractal spatial dimension that defied logic itself. They were given classifications according to their dangerousness. Those that had emerged in the last few days were the ones that had wreaked the most havoc.
These entities, the Xe-res and the Shrikes among them, moved like nightmarish echoes, warping and reconfiguring themselves in a macabre dance that seemed to have no end. Their form was not static, instead, it twisted and contorted, giving rise first to geometric figures and then trying to copy animal species, creating abstract parodies that produced even more terror in those who saw them. Their bodies, made of a material foreign to the three dimensions, distorted the space when they entered the three dimensions and cut the air with a sound similar to the cracking of ice.
The battlefield, once a natural living space, was now a desolate landscape. The snow, dyed a deep red, was a chilling reminder of the battles that had been fought. The fallen bodies of those who fought valiantly for their survival lay strewn about, covered by a light layer of snow that could barely conceal the horror of their fate. The earth, scarred and cratered, was a mute witness to what had happened there.
As the shadows of the creatures glided over the ground, their movements seemed to defy the laws of physics. The ripples of their presence distorted reality, as if each step rewrote the very fabric of space.
Where once there were trees, only blackened trunks remained, petrified by the heat of war and the cold of oblivion. All that was once vibrant had been razed to the ground, becoming an echo of what once was.
The distant murmurs of entities reverberated in the frosty air, a mixture of unintelligible sounds that, given their behaviors, one doubted were even some sort of communication. They appeared to be life forms very similar to insects and with very light masses for their sizes although they could produce enormous damage on contact with biological matter in three dimensions. Their fractal forms intertwined in a terrifying ballet, merging and separating in a dance that defied comprehension. It was as if the very essence of chaos was alive in those forms.
The creatures fed on whatever they found in their path, and the atmosphere was permeated with a sense of desolate doom. Hopes of resistance had faded with each passing day, leaving the forces trapped in a cycle of despair. The small factions still standing were on the verge of being wiped out, and each new wave of attacks wore away the last vestige of hope.
If the resistance in Siberia fell, the rest of the world was about to face the darkness of that all-devouring sphere.
The snow continued to fall, covering every trace of struggle and sacrifice. The silence, deep and overwhelming, was the prelude to what was to come. As the wind howled, bringing with it an echo of the unknown, the future of the world hung in the balance. Time was slipping toward an inescapable destiny, and in that vast white plain, there seemed to be no room for hope.
Among the fallen bodies and the snow, a small figure shuffled along, wrapped in a uniform.
Her silver hair, tied in a long braid, and her face, as well as her clothes, were stained with blood.
She had been in the platoon that had fallen a couple of hours ago, when a group of Xe-res and Shrikes had swept through to continue heading southwest.
The girl's name was Mai, a fey who had been in the Siberian battle theater for the past three years.
Mai was dragging herself along, the piercing cold of the snow enveloping her exhausted body. Her breathing was ragged, each inhalation costing her monumental effort. The snow was a deep red around her, a constant reminder of the brutality she had witnessed and suffered at first hand.
Her regeneration was a slow process, so she was still bleeding even though she was regenerating. If that continued for long, it was likely that the place would become her final resting place, as it was with those she had been fighting just a few hours ago.
Beside her, the faces of those who had once fought side by side with her now lay in eternal silence, their empty eyes gazing up at a sky that offered no light.
Brought by the wind could be heard screams and detonations of battles going on somewhere.
The cold was leaving her body as she felt that she was still losing her strength.
After a few minutes Mai's vision began to blur and she stopped moving.
She didn't want to die, but she had no strength left to move a single muscle.
“In spite of all you have suffered, do you want to stay in this world?”
I don't want to give up, Mai thought.
“Wouldn't it be easier to move to a new body and start over, leaving all the pain behind?”
Confused, Mai struggled to concentrate. The voice asking seemed to be coming from a part of herself, as if one part of her essence was trying to communicate with the other. But it felt strange. That was not something that came from within her. It felt foreign to her. That voice spoke to her expressing ideas calmly and mixing her senses, but everything was expressed as if it were a perfectly understandable dialogue.
Maybe it was all just a hallucination of her mind in her final moments, Mai thought. An illusion of her unconscious to deceive herself and make her feel that she would not die alone at least. That a ghost had been present in those final moments so that she would die in peace. On the other hand, she was beginning to feel less cold.
As the voice continued, the pain in her body momentarily faded, as if the presence of that voice gave her a spark of energy. It was true that upon freezing to death there was a warmth felt in the final moments.
“What do you say?”
Move to where? If this place falls there will be no hope.
“You don't have to move to a body that shares this form. Life has many forms.”
I have something to do yet. I can't die yet. I made a promise that I don't want to break.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The voice did not speak for a few moments, then asked in a different tone. “If you were given the chance to end this war, would you do it?”
Why do you think I'm here?
“Even knowing that more challenges await you in the future?”
What are you talking about? That's life.
“You will be like a ghost for most of your life. Even knowing that, do you want to continue?”
I've been a ghost for most of my life.
“Even ghosts have responsibilities.”
It's not in my plans to spend an eternity scaring people.
“Will you let me into your body?”
Mai's eyes were blurry, but with what strength she had left she looked around. She didn't have the strength to use her antennae but, that last question had alerted her. As she thought, that voice was not hers. She was not having a conversation with herself. Something was trying to get inside her. In her mind. Trying to reveal every part of her being.
“There is not much time left, but the choice is yours alone, little one. You have the choice and I can't force you.”
Mai was trying to understand and with what strength she had left she decided to continue the conversation. What difference did it make at that point? She had at most minutes left. Who are you?
“I am someone who has been on this planet for a long time.”
What do you want?
“To offer you the chance to change the course of this war.”
What could that be? Some elemental? Some had been discovered in recent years but not nearly powerful enough to do what the voice cried out for. Something that was trying to possess her, perhaps?
If you can do it, why now? Why didn't you do it years ago, before this started?
“It would be hard to explain. But hard trials are part of evolution. It took an enemy of this kind for the world to change. And if this war ends, the world will have even harder tests to keep it from falling back into pre-war folly. Humans seem to be a species that have a hard time living with themselves, but they have hope.”
As the words intertwined with her consciousness, Mai felt an impulse, a need to get up. She had heard shrieks not too far away. Surely there were some shrikes around. Maybe a new group.
Mai thought about it. What difference did it make in that situation?
What do I have to do?
“Will you let me into your core?”
Mai was breathing heavily. She should only have a minute or two left at most. The light had faded from her eyes.
The voice from inside Mai came out as a whisper as she felt her being fade away. Yes…
Mai thought she was dying.
That was the moment she felt as if her heart had burst. She felt a stabbing pain inside her and how it was spreading to every bone and muscle in her weakened body.
“I'm sorry, it's necessary. It's only for a moment.”
Mai felt every muscle in her body twist, every cell and neuron being shaken. But she also saw something she hadn't expected. It was as if she herself was seeing inside her own body. She could not explain it. She was aware of every bone, vein, artery and organ in her body and saw them as if she had plucked out her eyes and put them inside herself. She could smell her blood, taste her insides, hear it flowing through the blood vessels and feel every part of her body as if she were touching them with her hands.
She saw the weak life flowing throughout her body. And coiled around her heart a green crystalline form.
Her Shy Organ, the FAE nucleus.
So many names to call that thing that disappeared when one tried to investigate it directly. In spite of the impression she felt at that moment, she also felt good. That was what had saved her on so many occasions. Even if it was weak compared to other feys it was her own core.
Mai was feeling her body warming up as her core was extending beyond her heart. It was as if the core was growing extensions and going beyond the heart. Gradually she was regaining strength. The bleeding had stopped and the wound in her stomach was stinging from the regeneration.
It was at that moment that Mai sensed something else.
Memories that were not hers.
They went far back in time. Different faces, different souls, all seen from a perspective almost like a bird's eye. Castles in flames, wars, armies fighting. Sages in their laboratories trying to produce elixirs. Young girls burned at the stake. Battles of the deserts where armies had fought against creatures that had never appeared in any history book.
But beyond the bloody scenes, Mai saw calm scenes. People coming and going, trying to live as best they could in a hostile world. Mai could sense that whoever that entity was it had seen a lot in its years of life, but beyond the savage scenes she had also seen hope.
Humans seem to be a species that have a hard time living with themselves, but they have hope, she recalled.
“W-what are you?” asked Mai, regaining her strength and using her voice. “What am I seeing? What are you doing to me?”
On the other hand now the voice of that entity was heard inside her.
Your perception of the world is three-dimensional. What you are seeing now is your inner self because I am entering your body. You are perceiving what you would feel beyond the three spatial dimensions. You have slightly different sensory capabilities because you have some lepidopteran traits absorbed into your genetics.
“I mean also these images, what are they?”
I can't answer you.
“You can see my secrets, but I can't see yours?”
The entity did not answer.
After a few seconds she stopped perceiving things in that way. Instead, everything was replaced by a strange sensation on her skin.
Even with some pain she crawled and tried to stand up. It was then that she perceived that glow that shone around her with iridescent tones. She felt very warm.
Mai watched in amazement as the clothes she was wearing were destroyed. Although the equipment had the ability to absorb damage to some extent, the clothes fell off her body as if they had been cut to pieces by something incredibly sharp but invisible. It was then that she saw the change in coloration on her arms and the rest of her body. Her skin had taken on a darker hue, as if she had been tanning for too long.
The moth's antennae regained strength and rose above her head, emitting an iridescent glow.
Not only that. On the skin had just appeared something that Mai had only seen once in her life.
She had seen it that night when she had returned from the Other Side to Earth in 2004.
On her skin and from various parts of her body appeared patterns that seemed to have a vegetal motif. Almost as if it were a tattoo. But unlike a normal tattoo those patterns glowed on the skin as if it were some kind of bioluminescence.
“What have you done?”
I just opened and reconfigured the pattern of your core. I think you know that the reason your core is not the same as the others is because you probably spent very little time on the Other Side. But at the same time it is your core that makes you unique among the feys. You came in contact with a higher dimensional material on the Other Side, that makes your core unique.
“Define short time…”
Probably more than forty years, but less than a hundred years.
“What do you know about the Other Side?”
Just stories…
Mai was wondering if it had been a good idea to give permission to someone she didn't know at all to do something like that, but she knew she would have been long dead otherwise. If she hadn't agreed it would have been all over.
What was sacrificing herself if it meant that she could turn the tide of the war? If with that decision she could fulfill the promises and blurred memories of the Other Side it didn't matter. If it meant ending that horror, so be it.
With renewed determination, Mai slowly rose to her feet. She stood stark naked in the desolate night. The plain, full of snow and horror, looked at her feet like a red and white canvas.
Her hair was loose and the blood that stained it was gone.
“What should I do?”
Are you ready?
Mai nodded.
Can you promise me something?
“What?”
I'll be with you for a long time from your perspective, but at some point in the future you'll have to let me go. When I ask you to do that, will you do it? Without asking when or why, will you do it?
Mai didn't answer for a while, but then nodded.
Your favorite weapon.
“Eh?”
I'm linked to you through your core. I will take a physical form through you. I'd recommend it be the weapon you're most comfortable with.
“Even if it's old-fashioned?”
A weapon never goes out of style. It's how you use it that gives it meaning.
“What can you do?”
I will help you end this war, but only you can do it. There is no other who can in the present state. Through you I can manifest in the three dimensional world. Only you can use my physical form.
Mai thought. “A bow. Can you take the shape of a bow?”
Are you sure?
Mai thought for a few seconds but nodded again.
So be it. Extend your arm and relax your body.
Mai did so and stretched out her left arm and placed her hand as if she was grasping something invisible.
The fabric of space around her hand distorted as if she had just broken some kind of invisible crystal.
The first thing Mai saw was a sphere and then a rhomboidal surface containing it. That geometric shape moved to the palm of her hand and Mai began to feel a tingling sensation all over her arm.
From that structure appeared on both sides more distortions like broken glass with a color varying between emerald and turquoise. The wind on the plain had begun to blow furiously from the east. Mai felt a new burning in her back. Something was bothering her shoulder blades.
She stopped feeling the ground beneath her feet. She was rising.
“What is this?!”
Resist it. Your core is changing to accommodate my existence.
“What does that mean?!”
Mai looked over her shoulder and for a moment didn't understand what she was seeing.
From her back had sprouted what appeared to be green and turquoise wings of a translucent color. But those could not be wings. As far as she knew she had no wings. They were ridiculous in size. They stretched out in a westerly direction and must have been three times the size of herself.
She felt the same burning in her lower back. From the part closest to her gluteus medius muscle two other small wings had sprouted on either side of her body.
“What is this?”
Your true form. But I can't control its size. It must be because your core is like a rough diamond. It doesn't have a polished shape. By merging with your core, it's taking on a shape in an extra spatial dimension.
“I don't understand what you mean.”
Those wings should be part of you just as your antennae are, but due to the short time on the Other Side they never developed properly. This is forcing your evolution to what you should have been if you had been on the Other Side for a thousand years at least.
“A thousand years?!”
Don't pay attention to that now. Concentrate on your hand.
Mai took a shaky breath, but she did. That didn't seem like the best time for questions. In her hand the structure had taken the shape of a bow.
But it was not like the bows Mai was used to wear. Now it was black in color, but with a polished surface that reflected the surroundings as if it were an obsidian mirror and its surface showed the same pattern that Mai had on her skin. It had a much more modern shape and other parts that Mai could vaguely discern what they were for.
On the other hand, the size was something she did not expect. That thing was the same size as Mai and should have weighed at least more than herself. But in spite of that it felt light and cool in her hand.
The string was a red color of a material she couldn't make out.
Let's get even higher, Azusa warned.
At that point Mai said no more. There was no point in asking any more questions. Less than five minutes ago she had been on the brink of death and now she was soaring through the skies naked with a ridiculously sized bow in her hand.
What name do you want to give me?
“What?”
I need a name, just like you. A word to manifest me whenever you want in your hand.
“Why?”
I don't make the rules. Names are important, they work like magic calculus circuits.
The wind was hitting Mai's naked body, which was still rising, but she didn't feel cold at all. She must have been above a thousand meters and could see the full extent of the desolation of the war.
Thirty kilometers away the gray sky was cut by a dark mass that obscured the landscape.
The sphere. Could it be real? Could it all end there? Six years of war so that everything could be settled there?
“You're going to help me end this, right?”
Yes. Just one arrow and it will all be over.
“Is that right?”
I have no intention of lying. Just give me a name and the pact is sealed.
Mai thought for a few seconds. “You are a bow, what about the name Azusa?”
The answer was not long in coming. I like it.
Mai, for the first time since that voice had started speaking to her, had discerned a change in tone. She couldn't say it was cheerfulness at all, but it sounded different.
“My secret name is Rei. My middle name is Mai. And you are Azusa.”
The name is accepted. This arc will have the function of closing distortions in spacetime just like that sphere.
“What does that mean?”
That mouth through which this planet is being invaded has disturbed the fabric of spacetime for a long time. Even when we close it others will open.
“Others?”
I will explain later. Now just concentrate on what you have in your hands.
At four thousand meters Mai stopped in mid-air. She looked over her shoulder but those membranous wings like a butterfly or moth were not fluttering at all. They were still. She turned her attention back to the bow.
Just shoot.
“Shoot what? I don't have arrows.”
You don't need them.
“How?”
Just imagine you are about to shoot an arrow and draw the bow as tight as you can. Imagine as if it were real. As if you really had an arrow in your hands, as if it were a part of your very body that you were shooting.
“I can't use magic, how am I supposed to materialize something out of nothing?”
Don't try to understand it. Just imagine it.
Mai took a long breath and tried to calm down.
She closed her eyes and tensed her left arm, while her right arm grasped the anchor point of the string. It was very similar to a compound bow, but of enormous proportions. As she pulled the string taut she could hear inner mechanisms moving.
She carefully aimed at the shadow that was located kilometers away. It seemed impossible. Couldn't it all be an illusion of her mind in the final moments of her death? Maybe she was still there on the ground bleeding to death and it was all a product of her brain shutting down.
It's not an illusion. Focus.
Mai tensed the bow and felt the string brushing against her naked body. She positioned herself better trying to protect her chest from the string. At that moment she was glad she had a small chest. That bowstring, whatever material it was, was so thin that it could transform her into an Amazon if she accidentally let go of the string.
She had practiced archery for years, but it was very different to aim when her feet had no foothold and it was as big as she was. On the other hand the bow seemed so light that it gave her the impression of being glass. Perhaps it was after all, despite its appearance.
With the string taut, Mai tried to think of an arrow in the place where there was absolutely nothing.
Seconds passed, but nothing.
She decided to relax her breathing and think about the bow. How she had seen it form.
Crystal.
And what she had seen inside her body. She thought about both things at the same time. The material of the bow and a part of herself. Just as Azusa had said.
She had said that her body was enough to house Azusa's existence, so if that was true it had to be that she was some kind of medium between her and the physical world.
She began to feel a warmth in her fingers. And it began to grow.
It was the same as making crystals grow, only she was doing it from her fingers. Light, weightless. The crystals took a linear shape from her fingers to the point of support that the bow had to hold the arrow.
The crystal arrow had a spiral shape in its central body that ended in a green head.
Mai concentrated as much as she could trying to polish that vision. If she could do it through her mind she had to form it properly.
Concentrate all the tension on the target and release it.
Mai paid almost no attention to the instruction. She was more than focused on the arrow and that black spot in the distance and it seemed that even the wind was slowing down.
She released the arrow and there was a green flash from the bow.
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The hit seemed to Mai to be instantaneous. There was no wind resistance or anything like that. The arrow had gone out of sight after a hundred meters, but not the path it traced to its target.
Thirty kilometers. It seemed impossible, but if that entity really was from a different dimension it could be that space was folded or distorted in some way that the movement in three dimensions was something direct.
In the first few seconds Mai saw no result and lowered the bow a little, holding her breath. Then in the distance there was a flash of white light and the next thing she saw was the sphere contracting in on itself. The next moment there was an implosion, or at least that's what Mai could understand.
The sphere actually contracted until it disappeared, but a shock wave of such energy was released that for a moment Mai thought she had done something wrong. The snow on the nearby mountains and plains where the sphere was located was swept away in a radius of at least five kilometers and seconds later the shockwave reached Mai.
Her body lost balance and she was pushed by the brutal wind.
Mai felt how she was feeling tired all of a sudden and those bioluminescent tattoos had just disappeared from her body and at the same time she felt cold again. Those wings on her back dematerialized and only the bow in her hand remained.
She was falling. She saw the ground very close. Maybe the snow would save her, but if she fell unconscious in that state she would die in a matter of minutes due to the cold.
Spinning in her fall she looked towards the horizon. There was no doubt about it. A huge cloud of snow had risen and was being displaced in all directions from the epicenter where the sphere had been.
It was not there. It had disappeared.
Mai gave a weak smile and fainted.
Her fall was slowed a bit, but she crashed into the snow and her body tumbled several hundred meters from the shockwave until she became immobile. In her hand she still held that bow tightly gripped.
All around the planet a massive blackout was occurring and the shockwave was spreading further and further. It would take hours to go around the entire planet, but it was not necessarily a bad thing.
It was the sign that the long wait was over.
The bow in her hand began to disappear as if it was being destroyed into floating crystals, but instead the crystals were taking on smaller shapes and heading for Mai's right ear. They had taken on a rhomboidal shape of a green color as if it were a small emerald. After a few seconds metal parts appeared and attached themselves and finally a pin pierced the lobe of the ear.
It glowed once again until it looked just like a small earring.
Don't worry, I'll keep your body warm until the search teams find you, Azusa told the unconscious Mai.
The abandoned drone cameras of the battle data collection teams had recorded from a distance what had happened, even though there was no one to command them. Those in charge had been dead for hours, but they were still transmitting the data.
Mai would not know anything about it until a week later, when she would finally wake up in a hospital.
But the Great War had come to an end.
Celebrations would begin around the planet, but only a handful would know what had ended the threat that had plagued the planet for so many years.
***
March 22.Thursday. 125 S.A.
Douvaine, France.
Mai sighed and wiped a hand across her sweaty forehead.
The trailer that was being used as a command center felt hot at that moment. All the army personnel who were monitoring the situation had sighed in relief, when the communication had been given that the battle on the surface was over and that the interior teams were taking control of the situation in the collider ring.
She had just received word from Lizbeth and Jade that the squadron had just gained access to the elevator to the surface, as well as the room that provided power to the entire section on that side.
Oxy had been found. It looked like they had succeeded. But not entirely.
Professor Reubens had not been found. Shin and Jim Stuart had been separated, but had not yet been able to communicate with them.
Mai felt she couldn't take a break until she was sure that was accomplished as well.
She was discussing with the others and Carissia that the GSN had finally established communication with the owner of the two companies that had been hired by Janus for the operation and the owner had given direct orders for the remaining mercenaries to surrender, as well as the deactivation of the tactical droids.
Mai was about to check once more on the squadron's situation when something interrupted her.
Mai…
It was Azusa. Mai stopped. “What's wrong?”
The time has come.
“What time?”
When you met me, you made a promise. Do you remember?
Mai opened her eyes.
It's time.
Mai had frozen.
So many years had passed since then and although she had asked her on more than one occasion, Azusa had only evaded the question of when or where.
Inside her Mai had been with her for so long and had been on so many adventures that she was almost a part of herself. Although Azusa was quiet and rather sparing in her dialogue, Mai liked to treat her as if she were part of her family. Thanks to her he had ended the war, but she had also saved her life.
“Are you joking?”
No. It's my time.
Mai remembered. I will be with you for a long time from your perspective, but at some point in the future you will have to let me go. When I ask you to do that, will you do it? Without asking when or why, will you do it?
Without asking when or why.
Why did it have to be at that moment? Why right there?
Mai had just retrieved someone from her past that she thought had been dead for centuries. But did it mean that she had to lose someone else at that moment in return? She felt as if it was a betrayal. Why couldn't she have told her before? Why hadn't she let her prepare for that moment? Did she want to leave as mysteriously as she had arrived?
“Why now?”
No matter how much I told you not to ask, you always asked me when it would be.
“This doesn't make sense. Why now?”
The personnel inside the command center had fallen silent and several turned to Mai as they saw how she had changed to a different tone. They could not hear the conversation but that was not the Operations Director's tone. It seemed both deeply moved and sad at the same time. Carissia had gotten up from her seat and approached Mai without knowing what was going on, but she knew something was wrong.
Azusa, for her part, changed her tone to an even more relaxed one that Mai had not heard for a long time. This is the precise moment when you will let me go.
“What? Why?”
Because it's not over yet. The one you have to face has just appeared. If you don't, it won't end and nothing will begin.
“What are you talking about?”
Your freedom.