Despite now being illuminated, the underground city didn’t seem any less empty. The streets were now lit by lampposts, and a few lights dotted the interiors of buildings. Beyond it all were walls of snow, encasing the small slice of the city in its own little cavern.
They’d powered on the Black Energy counters for a moment to gauge the city, and, for the time being, they read green, making almost none of their clicking noises. Assured that the danger was low here, him and Celis slipped their masks off, finally giving their faces some time to breathe.
Him and Celis walked through the streets, eyeing every alley and window, fearing that something may be looming within them. So far, there were no spirits like the ones that had tried to shut down the generators. Well, there wasn’t really much of anything. Metal wagons lay derelict on the road, and glass lay shattered across the sidewalks. No signs of any human remains, no blood, no bodies, nothing. Not even rats scampered here.
There were however, those familiar signs of battle. The odd brass shell lay every other meter, and holes dotted the city, large and small. Some were about as large as Alisson’s thumb, others, as large as a small house. The same with the shells, now they found larger and larger shells. Alisson could only imagine what kind of battle took place here, what kind of war raged here. They were walking down what seemed to be the main road, it was quite wide, and they could see it lead into one of the snow walls in the distance, into a man-made tunnel. Enhérejär kept on expanding as they walked it, so for the time being, the city was just sight-seeing; their objective seemed to lay deeper into this crypt of civilization.
To say it was a burial ground of people was inaccurate. What perished here were not merely individuals, but a way of life, a culture, a people, died here.
One of the buildings they passed had these two massive machines parked into some kind of port. They had treads on their bottoms, and looked vaguely humanoid, but their arms melded into round, metallic devices and their heads were small and littered with antenna. There was something intimidating about them. The gleam of their barreled arms and sharp, visored heads. They were each a story tall, and their treads as wide two horse-led wagons.
Although Alisson eyed them warily, the relics stayed put, thankfully.
They passed through the rest of the city with little incident. Before them now was what looked to be an endless tunnel. Side mounted lights illuminated the first hundred meters of the tunnel, going dead after that and leaving a black void looming in the distance. With Enhérejär still expanding, Alisson flicked his head to Celis and they entered the tunnel with narrow eyes.
image [https://i.imgur.com/vxGUzj2.png]
If push came to shove, Alisson, with Enhérejär rotating around him in an extraordinarily wide range, knew that he would be at a significant advantage. The mana was thick here, and as result, his mana regeneration, and Enhérejär’s strength, were at the highest that he had ever known.
Alisson bet that if an Andestine Platinum knight were to cross swords with him in this environment, Enhérejär would be able to singlehandedly split off and tear the knight to pieces on its own power alone.
Alisson suddenly remembered Eufrozina’s words regarding Enhérejär:
‘…No one is the master of a VWS. There is only hope and prayer.’
Alisson eyed his weapon. To say he knew it on a personal level was an overstatement. He had history with Enhérejär, and it saved him on previous occasions. But to say that it liked him? That it wouldn’t suddenly turn on him? Alisson couldn’t say for sure, despite Enhérejär at one point being his closest companion. With Celis at his side, it felt far easier to look at Enhérejär as tool, and not as a person.
During Alisson’s musings, they had reached the end of the illuminated portion of the tunnel, and with it, him and Celis deployed mage lights in the absence of the side mounted lighting of the tunnel.
The tunnel, like the stair shaft of earlier, was fairly long, and time dragged. Apparently wanting to fill the air with something, Celis asked,
“…Do you like flowers?”
Alisson raised an eyebrow at Celis, not knowing where the question was coming from. He glanced at his surroundings for a moment, before replying,
“I find myself liking them when I can’t see them outright. In a forest it’s all taken for granted but here, without any, I would say that I like them.”
Celis smiled at him smugly. “…Only when you can’t see them do you yearn for them…” She paraphrased. Still flashing a devious expression, she continued, “What about the flowers that you like the most?”
“The most?” Alisson asked himself, staring forward. He racked his brain for a moment about what kind of flowers he preferred. He shook his head a moment thereafter. “I’ve never thought about it…I guess my favorite would be whichever one showed itself first if I were trying to find one.”
Alisson said absentmindedly, not concerned with why Celis was asking him something so mundane. Celis didn’t reply for a long while.
“…Does that mean you’d settle for any flower?”
“Well, it would have to be a fairly pretty flower now wouldn’t it?” Alisson replied right away, not understanding Celis sudden tepidness.
“….What about shadows? Do you ever find yourself wanting to stay in the dark?”
Alisson frowned. “What are you trying to get at with these questions?”
Celis again didn’t respond, so Alisson turned, about to cross his arms when suddenly she increased her pace. So much so that she blurred past him.
“Wha-?”
Alisson stumbled back, almost knocked down from her sudden increase in speed. He saw her sprinting away, down the tunnel, into the darkness. She flashed a childish smile at him, proudly clutching something in her hand. Before Alisson could make it out, his vision was suddenly hampered as one of his bangs fell over his eyes. Alisson lifted a hand to his hair, feeling for a moment before realizing that Celis had swiped his hairclip as she’d passed.
“W-what are you doing?”
Alisson asked, his eyes wide, fearing the worst. After Celis disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel, leaving her array of lights behind, it became apparent that she wasn’t coming back. Alisson broke into a sprint, chasing after her. The lights couldn’t keep up, and soon, he too was plunged into the darkness.
His heart was racing. Just what did she mean by this? Had he done something wrong? Did he answer her questions incorrectly?
His eyes sharpened. Or perhaps it was a Darkwalker attack. Her smile at him however, it was not one that someone under a beast’s influence would be able to make.
He tried contacting her over telepathy, but nothing rebounded to him. He cuffed his hands over his mouth and called her name into the darkness, with each time his desperation growing. He stopped for a moment, and let his lights catch up. His eyes darted around as the tunnel was once more bathed in light, but there was no sign of Celis. He cuffed his hands over his mouth,
“Celis! This isn’t funny! Come out!”
No reply came, and again Alisson burst forward. In a full-on sprint, if he crashed headfirst into a wall he’d stand a good chance of cracking his skull, but in that moment, Alisson didn’t care. That familiar hole was eating away at his stomach, anymore and he feared that he’d break into tears.
Before he realized what was going on, he was suddenly jerked backwards and to the side. Two hands held him still, and a light suddenly winked on. It was Celis’s reading light. Without a word she slipped in front of him with a smile. With the advent of her meager light, Alisson could see that the ground was a black rock, and that behind him, lay a jagged rocky wall. In front of him, beyond Celis, the floor suddenly disappeared into black. Some sort of cliff.
Alisson looked around, about to ask where this place was and swipe his tearing eyes away from Celis’s notice, when she grabbed onto him.
“So?” She asked with a great glint of expectation in her eyes. “Do you know what your favorite flower is now?”
Alisson squinted his eyes. “W-what? What do you mean?”
Immediately upon hearing his words, that glint of hopefulness drained out of Celis’s eyes. She frowned, averting her eyes with genuine disappointment. Alisson’s eyes shot wide. He never saw that kind of expression from Celis. He didn’t know if he’d just done something gravely wrong, and immediately a portion of his prior fear wafted back into his mind.
“Never mind then…” Celis sighed.
“What is it?” Alisson stepped forward, desperately wanting to amend Celis’s expression, but she didn’t give him the chance.
Celis simply closed her eyes.
The lights of their formations gently floated into vision, their blue glow slowly wrapping around the rock. Only now Alisson saw where they were. The tunnel came to an end, and opened into a large, rocky cavern. The road that ran in the tunnel wrapped around to the side, but evidently had fallen into extreme disrepair and didn’t even look like a road any longer. Alisson was right in his assumption – A few meters in front of him did the floor drop out into a black, bottomless cliff.
Alisson stared at Celis. The only movement he saw was how she thumbed something in her hands, his hairclip. She suddenly looked up to him, the disappointment not completely masked out of her expression, and said,
“Come on, let’s sit down. I’ll put your clip back on…”
She turned away and started down the side of the cliff, their magic lights now having caught up and surrounding them. Alisson reached out to stop her, but his hand slackened for a moment as he stared at the back of her head, unsure of what to say. He hurried to keep pace with her.
Alisson took the chance to wipe his eyes. His bangs, having grown quite long, had probably masked the fact that his eyes were teary to Celis. He silently breathed a sigh of relief.
Celis slouched onto the rocky ground and Alisson nervously did the same, his shoulders up and wary. She proceeded to fumble with his hair for a minute, as if putting it back herself was some sort of atonement. After his hairclip was back in its place, Celis rested her hands on Alisson’s head.
After a moment, Alisson attempted to peer back at her, but she tightened her grip and kept his head facing forward. She leaned to Alisson’s ear, the mere sensation of her hair rubbing against the side of face was enough to send shivers down his spine.
“…You know…” Celis whispered gently into his ear, her prior disappointment seeming to have been replaced by a motherly care. “You’re really dense, Alisson.”
Alisson shifted uncomfortably in her grip. He opened his mouth to speak when the surrounding magic lights started to die out, one by one. Within a few seconds, they were all out, their durations having ended. Alisson was about to raise his hand to cast more lights when Celis instead shifted her grip to his arms, and pinned them to his chest as she pressed herself against his back.
She continued to whisper, “What’s it going to take to get you to realize it?”
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Alisson shuddered anxiously. “Realize what?”
After a moment of silence, Celis let out a large sigh, and let of him. She slouched down by his side, a light forming before them. Far before them. Alisson looked out, wondering why Celis had cast a magic light so far away, only to realize, that the source of the light, was no magic. A few kilometers below them, off the cliff, was a glowing blue column. At first Alisson didn’t know what it was, but squinting, realized it was some sort of building. He then doubted himself when he saw that the structure was not solid, it was made of a glowing blue wireframe, like it was fake.
The light from the glow of the structure was dull, but it was enough to let Alisson make out the surroundings and see his own nose, despite it only being about as big as his thumb from where he is.
Before Alisson could question it, another structure suddenly winked to life. Within the blink of an eye, there were two, two buildings that glowed with a powerful blue wireframe. Alisson saw this for himself – The second building hadn’t been there before – It had just now come into existence. Alisson squinted in suspicion, laying a hand on Enhérejär instinctively. More and more structures came to life, all with same transparent blue film, like they were just lights with no form. Roads came into being, buildings, tall and short, lampposts; only then did Alisson realize what it was, a whole damn city was forming before his eyes.
image [https://i.imgur.com/jlb3pn3.jpeg]
Animation
“…What the hell?”
Alisson muttered. Celis seemed fairly disinterred, replying bluntly, “That button you pressed that turned on the lights is probably responsible for this. All the power around here is probably still being brought online.”
She shrugged. Well, if it wasn’t dangerous, then it was no matter. If anything, it was useful, the intense glow of the now hundreds of structures finely illuminated their cliff face and rock wall behind them. Alisson could easily make out the road along the cliff. It led to another tunnel; this one however had what looked to be metal doors that blocked its entrance.
“Come on, that must be where we need to go.”
Alisson started to stand, his eyes set on the door. That had to be the path forward. Celis however, grabbed onto his wrist, and prevented him from standing up. He shakily glanced at her.
“You’ll do anything to get out of someone probing you, won’t you?”
She said wryly. Alisson submissively sunk back down, averting his eyes. “W-what do you m-”
“You know what I mean Alisson. The last time I tried to talk about your feelings you just started crying.”
Alisson’s eyes widened. “M-my feelings? What does that have to do with anything?”
Alisson sheepishly asked, chagrin flooding into him on the mention of the fact he broke down crying only a few days ago.
“Flowers.”
“W-wha-”
“Friends, Alisson. I was talking about friends.”
Alisson’s face straightened in realization. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”
Celis shook her head. “I know you wouldn’t have given me a straight answer. You don’t have to be embarrassed about speaking openly, Alisson.”
Alisson hadn’t been looking at Celis directly, as he probably should’ve been, rather he stared into the ground, only seeing her in his peripheral vision, illuminated by the distant blue glow of the city.
Without him realizing it, his heart was racing, and his hands shook. He felt pricks all around his side. He didn’t want to be here. With that thought occurring in his head, it clicked for Alisson, about what Celis was getting at.
He brought his gaze at her, squinting in confusion. “Why? What is there to speak about? You, you already know everything there is to know about me…” He averted his eyes, his shoulders rising. “…I’m, I’m just some prideful fool who can only carry out orders…”
Celis laid a hand on Alisson’s, making him jump. She shook her head side to side. “Not about who you are…no one can ever speak truthfully about their personalities…Your feelings, Alisson. They’re what’s going through your heart, not your head.”
Alisson stared into the ground in silence for a moment. He didn’t have a clue what to say. Nothing was in his head, his mind was outside of his body, in the form of the uncomfortability pricking his side, urging him to break into a mad dash, and leave the vicinity.
“What makes you cry?”
Celis continued to prod him. Alisson stared blankly into the ground. “What makes me cry?”
He repeated Celis’s question in his head, but nothing formed in response to it. Alisson’s eyes widened.
Nothing.
That was it. Nobody.
“I-I guess…When, when I’m all alone…when I know that no one cares about me…” He said slowly. Each word was a painful battle just to get it to leave his lips. “I…I don’t know how to put it into words…it’s, it’s just this sort of unbearable dread…”
Celis leaned in even closer. “So, it’s loneliness.”
“D-don’t trivialize it...” Alisson whined quietly.
Celis smiled softly at him. They both stared into each other’s eyes. The minute dragged, and Celis’s smile slowly faded away. A peculiar blankness overtook their faces, the prolonged eye contact putting them into some sort of trance. Celis drifted ever nearer to Alisson, and before Alisson knew it, their breaths were overlapping. All that filled Alisson’s head was the blackness of Celis’s dilated pupils.
Celis’s eyes slowly closed, and with them, Alisson realized how fine her eye lashes were.
Without Alisson realizing it, and maybe without even Celis realizing it, their lips met.
Alisson didn’t know how long it lasted. It only came to an end when he realized it was happening, when Celis withdrew her face, her lips parted, still bearing a blank, lackadaisical expression.
“Alisson I…I love you.” She whispered, still staring into his eyes. “I…I love you…I…” The light of realization suddenly donned on her, and gradually, her face brightened until she was beaming, and declared proudly, “I love you!”
She pushed him down onto the rock floor, pinning his shoulders down. “I love you!” She stated once more, louder, her smile even wider. With that action, a flash of white assaulted Alisson’s vision. When the light faded,
Atop Celis’s head were two, blue, feline ears, two tails swung back and forth behind her.
Alisson stared up at her, his mouth agape. Only then, with Celis bearing over him, repeating,
“I love you!”
Time and time again, did logical thought finally return to him. It didn’t flood into him with the same euphoria as Celis displayed; Rather, it manifested itself as the tears forming at the edges of Alisson’s eyes. He didn’t even manage to get out any words before the sobbing overtook him.
Celis didn’t stop him however, because she could see it clearly, the fact that Alisson was smiling. The tears he shed were not of sorrow, but clearly of joy. Perhaps wanting to put a stop to Alisson’s tears, Celis leaned in, and attacked his mouth once more with her own, not giving him any say in the matter. Alisson’s eyes only widened as he saw for himself Celis’s head filling his vision. Perhaps this last kiss was what finally convinced Alisson that what was happening was real.
Acutely aware of how he appeared, and, feeling an intense burn of shame at the fact he was crying before Celis, Alisson forced himself to calm down. By the time Celis withdrew, staring down at him with joy, Alisson’s had managed to steady himself.
“I-is this because I said I was lonely?”
Alisson hesitantly asked. Celis shook her head. “My feelings are my own.” After a pause, she continued, “That night when we were split up by the cultists…Dereleg ‘Bol helped me realize it…that I was helplessly in love with you…”
She looked away with a guilty smile. “Up until I met you…I didn’t have any purpose…Any drive, anyone to call a friend…”
The weight of her words were only now starting to sink in to Alisson. I love you. That person. That person whom Alisson had waited for, yearned for, had just proclaimed her love to him. To think that only a month prior did Alisson think that she despised him.
“I’m…” He started, his lips trembling, “I’m glad…”
He didn’t know what to say. He never thought this moment would come, let alone so abruptly. Then, a thought suddenly popped into his head. Being the only thing he could think of, he spat it out without much thought.
“When we get out of here…I’ll make it up to you.”
Celis tilted her head. “What are you on about?”
“For that time in Pūshkinskaya when I slapped you upside the head for no good reason…I, I never apologized, I…”
Celis smiled softly, and said simply, “Then apologize now.”
Alisson, a little surprised at the curt response, did as he was told. “I’m, I’m so sorry.” He blurted out his words, averting his eyes in embarrassment.
“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Alisson’s eyes slivered once more, and he looked up to Celis’s soft face. “That night, the night that that happened…I…It was terrible…I was crying and in despair, I thought that, I thought that you’d left me forever, I…”
Alisson didn’t know why exactly that day was only now popping into his head, and his words came out as a jumbled mess, just trying to get something out of his mouth, still not fully comprehending Celis’s sudden confession.
Celis’s smile turned melancholic. “I would tell you that it’s bad to be so worried about such little things but…” She averted her eyes guiltily. “I’d be lying if I said I’m not pleased to hear that.” She blushed.
Her tepid words of shyness made Alisson realize that he’d just inadvertently admitted to how much that incident had affected him, in other words, how much Celis had affected him.
“I’m here now, Alisson.” She tilted her head. “You don’t have to cry anymore.”
Alisson smiled despite his teared face and silvered eyes. His smile faded when suddenly a thought of doubt came to him.
“Why…why me?” He looked up to Celis’s eyes, like a puppy dog. “I can be huddled up one night crying myself to sleep but then then next morning be murdering people and not feel a thing…I’m…I’m not…” He shook his head, another abundance of tears beginning to well in his eyes.
Celis leaned in. “That’s not you, Alisson.”
His mouth parted, as he started up at her.
“The Alisson I know is a kind, soft, and protective leader. Don’t let any battlefield or mission ever change that, okay?”
Alisson stared at her, in shock. Was that, really it? It wasn’t him who was the bloodthirsty killer who roamed battlefields slaughtering innocent, conscripted farmers. It wasn’t him who the serene pillar of elegance and authority that lead troops into battle. It wasn’t him who was the scumbag that let go of Rei’s hand. And, it wasn’t him, who insisted that he place the mission before his own feelings for Celis. He remembered keenly, thinking to himself that his relationship and mental state may hamper the mission. Currently, it was doing just that. Celis, however, smiling down at him, said without any words that that was okay.
Everything felt so surreal. He could hear the noises of his throat, he felt acutely the chilling air poking away at his skin, he saw every little detail in Celis’s face, every notch in the rocks that surrounded him, and he felt each of Celis fingers wrapped around his shoulders.
They had been staring at each other dumbly for a few minutes in silence. Celis’s eyes had begun to slack, like suddenly there were weights on her eyelids. She suddenly yawned with fatigue. “I guess confessing my love took a lot more out of me than I thought…” She chuckled wearily.
Alisson stared at the ears on Celis’s head. They were so fine and fluffy. He wanted to touch them.
His eyes widened. “O-opensen! Y-you unlocked your manifestation!”
Alisson exclaimed, so caught up in Celis’s confession that he hadn’t given a thought to the fact that she now had cat ear and tails.
“Wha-“
Celis leaned back, bringing a hand to her head and then freezing when she touched her own manifested ears. Her tails slackened and fell over her own shoulders, and she jumped with a yelp.
“I…I have…cat ears now?”
Alisson sat up quickly and held her by the shoulders.
“Do you feel anything odd? Is anything painful?” He asked with concern.
Celis shook her head. “I’m just suddenly tired.”
Alisson breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s normal. Your body isn’t used to your manifestation yet. It’s going to be very draining until you use it a fair amount.”
Celis yawned again, her eyelids heavy. “Is there anyway to turn it off before I faint?” She asked drowsily.
Alisson shook his head. “Not during the first time.”
“Is that…so…”
Her body waivered before her eyes finally drifted to a close and she fell limply onto Alisson. He jumped with surprise, but his countenance slowly regressed into a smile. He caressed her ears and her hair absentmindedly. His gaze drifted over to the metallic door at the end of the cliff’s path, illuminated dully by the distant wireframe city.
“I suppose the mission can wait…”
He murmured to himself, bringing his gaze to Celis’s sleeping face, her Opensen still activated. It would completely drain her body of its stamina before finally cancelling, as was the way all first-time manifestations occurred.
With Celis asleep over his chest, he finally had some time to think clearly about the events of the past ten minutes.
“Who knew that three words can make someone so happy…”
Alisson squeezed Celis tighter, closing his eyes in glee.
Almost two full hours passed. Time wasted by all accounts, but somehow, feeling Celis’s weight on him, it didn’t feel like wasted time. He still had a hard time believing it; Celis, here of all places, decided that now of all moments, was the time to confess her feelings. Although, to be fair, it sort of just, happened. They were talking, and then, without warning, Celis drifted closer and, that was it.
He looked out at the glowing blue city, his bottom thoroughly sore from the roughness of the ground after sitting down for so long. It wasn’t exactly the most romantic of settings either.
He could think clearly and logically about everything surrounding it. The setting, the environment, the context, but the actual event that took place, nothing came into his head. It served as endless source of jubilee, but at the same time waivered and undulated as if it were phantom, teetering on the edges of being real or not.
Realistically, Alisson thought, those three words Celis had spoken had flipped Alisson’s worldview on his head. He’d just gained something that for his entire life he hadn’t had. It would change everything. Thinking on these terms, Alisson reckoned that maybe he should be feeling more from Celis declaration, but instead only found a modest glee from it all.
It occurred to Alisson that the reason this was, was because nothing in reality had changed all that much. He knew definitively Celis’s feelings for him now, that was all. They had still existed a mere hour ago, so how was this moment any different to an hour ago? Alisson sighed.
How had it even happened? Was Alisson so stupid as to not notice Celis’s growing affection for him? Or was she just that good at hiding it? What made her even like him in the first place? How come it was specifically Celis that found him amiable, and not a single other person he’d ever met?
Well, he partly knew the answer to that. They were both helplessly prideful, that was certainly a start to unraveling the mystery. But Alisson knew love. It wasn’t something you could throw a lasso around, it wasn’t something that you could define in tangible, logical terms. It was a fruitless exercise in mental labor to try and figure it out. As much as he wanted to know, he let the thoughts slips through his mind, and decided to just enjoy the moment, instead of looking upon it through multiple lenses of cynicism and doubt.
Celis finally stirred, her ears and tails having long faded away into specks of light. Alisson smiled down at her, expecting a similar countenance, but what he saw was the polar opposite. Celis’s eyes were wide. She looked up to him, and trembling, said,
“I…I know why I forgot about my brother.”
***