Fiora was not having a good couple of days. Reminiscing while in the infirmary for example was not something she often did, but it most certainly was horrible every time she did do it.

'And it is all the church's fault.'

An unfortunately accurate assessment. She had not understood how it'd all come to pass despite her best efforts to get past the usual interference, but when she did, the whole affair turned out to be rather simple.

She was not important enough or affluent enough to get to hear that something was afoot with the demon's movements in a completely different front, which had sent the church in search of an ‘in’ to sabotage said movements, and then her report about Aki had landed on their table like a juicy steak.

After a short period of observation, it'd been determined that while he could be useful in the future, his presence and capabilities had not gone unnoticed by her demonic counterpart.

So she had to send him out and start hunting for traitors in secret, because apparently Desvios had not been the only one to turn coat. If and how that made sense to anybody along the command line, she did not know, but clearly she knew a lot less than she previously thought she did.

'And in turn it is all your fault for not being more like your brother.'

Certainly, if she had had the chance to find like-minded individuals willing to follow her then she'd also have the information on all of this long before her com received the message that started this. But no, nobody wanted to follow the cold bitch who'd kill you for so much as looking at her, and she couldn't rely on her brother to deal with both their problems at the same time.

'Like mother used to say, you lack patience. Everything would have been easier if you kept sleeping with him and then got your revenge.'

It had never been worth much to her before he broke her trust, nothing like the Red saint and the White saint had, but Ray had always been there, hadn't he? Maybe if she had been there for him too then they could have had something real too.

Instead he was broken and she got laid out before battle by some seeking spell. She was going to die for this fucked up publicity stunt, just like those soldiers she'd sent to their death, uselessly getting struck down before doing anything.

'Is it still worth fighting? You will be a shame to them no matter what you choose, so why bother with the pain?'

"It's arguments for killing myself are getting better." She warned the priests in a monotone. It was also getting harder to fight the apathy and self loathing, but she had experience with that to a certain extent, so this was just a new level of learning.

"Can't you dispel or exorcize this thing already?!" Bob screamed at the healers, impatiently pacing.

"It's hard enough to heal anything with this much death mana inside someone, nevermind the insidiousness of the spell, which we already dispelled! She's now dealing with pure mana and emotion." One of the priests screamed back in explanation, unwillingness and tiredness obvious in his face.

'And so it is inevitable. Delay as they will, entropy is inexorable, and so is the mark of death on you.'

She wondered what 'entropy' meant, but the curiosity was fading even as the hole in her collarbone finally closed.

There was a great flash of light. The air started to smell like a thunderstorm. Then the screams reached her despite the tent's muffling enchantment, and with it came the increase in temperature.

………………

As luck would have it, the guy with flaming eyes did actually get a bullshit power up after seeing the woman with female lead presence dying, something that he could feel in his (AGAIN) heating skin even as his eyes continued to fail him.

He tried controlling his vitality to infuse his left eye with faster regeneration so he could at least participate in the coming battle (Thank you Annie), but his lack of direct participation in the clinic incident was fucking him over. Sure, it'd been the most effective way to deal with the situation and he had even saved a few people that'd been stricken with clinging energy, but he had neither the expertise nor the raw power to fix himself fast enough now.

Stolen novel; please report.

So there he was, blind, unable to communicate his issue, while in the middle of an active battlefield where a man that was literally on fire would be trying to melt his face off any moment now. To say the least, he was failing rather miserably in subverting his panic and anxiety with anger, logic and pride.

Oh, it was humiliating and aggravating, sure, but he was not able to grasp his feelings with the same intensity as he had moments ago exactly because of that. He was useless and unable to buoy himself in a sea of despair with the usual senseless pride due to an inability to affect his immediate surroundings.

And now he’d just wasted time weaving poetry to describe his sadness.

It took a couple more moments, but he managed to get over himself enough to get up and walk backwards until he stumbled on the potion stands, which got him a few insults and exclamations, but ignoring them, he crouched down and took two potions at once, and started trying to convert his mana to vitality to accelerate his recovery even as his mana went over the limit for a few moments at a time and he fought to convert it faster than his body could absorb it so as to avoid some kind of poisoning.

Perhaps someone else would be able to figure out some use for life mana despite his circumstances, but he was far too shaken to make anything but cancerous growths all over his face, possibly leading to a permanent loss of vision due to death.

Somehow however, it was not due to his own efforts that he saw again, but rather because a pair of strong and small hands grasped his face and right eye socket before pouring something he soon realized was either blood or a health potion due to the carmesin coloring.

It hurt a lot, mostly his eyelids which were trying to fight back despite his pittance of strength in comparison to the one he soon came to realize was his new handler, but also his eyes in general as the sudden exposure to daylight hurt the recently healed crystalline and nervous structures.

"Can you see?" He grimaced and shrugged before nodding to the uncomfortably close and sweaty face of the horned woman. A bit of burning wasn't going to make him close his eyes when he had much bigger fears coming down on him. "Then go help!"

Turning towards the direction she was pointing at, Aki saw what he could only describe as a blotch of black and red trying to fuck. The lack of resolution in his vision came from rather obvious reasons, but it was rather hard to misinterpret the size of said color blotches.

Which, considering the fact that everything else seemed to not have changed too much in size since he could last see, meant these blotches were rather huge. Which meant they were likely experts fighting considering where he was.

And considering their enemy had a guy with flaming eyes, then he was dead if the red blotch won.

After a small false start, Aki started running towards the area closer to the fight. Luckily, people were either moving away from the area or unconscious, the former were even more blind than him and moving slowly too. Most were without help, but tried to go somewhere less hot than where they currently stood if their general direction and order was any indication.

Maybe he could woo someone to bed later by saying how brave he was, the only one rushing towards danger, but the truth was that he absolutely did not trust his team mates and would much rather guarantee his safety with his own power.

Even as he ran he tried to think of a way to tip the scales, and although most of it could be summed up to either straight out killing the opponent or childish tricks that would not work due to him having absolutely no idea how the guy’s lover or companion had even looked like, he did end up having an idea that might actually work so long as he wasn’t sniped out.

Gods, he needed a movement ability, this would all be so much easier with a*BOOOM*

“Fuck me sideways, is that guy half eagle or something?!” He exclaimed after refusing to look back and check the result of the fireball he’d just dodged with a roll. Truly, the Souls franchise had it right, the human sized enemies were a fuck ton scarier than the giant monstrosities.

Vying sideways, he jumped over a crumbling fissure in the wall and did an emergency stop, avoiding a collision with a demon running towards someone. Deciding that he wasn’t going to get a much better position, Aki straight up stopped, hoping the shadow guy was too much on the way already for more fireballs to come for him.

Then he started infusing the surrounding heat and fire mana with emotion and intent, for once using barely a tickle of his own mana. The smothering pressure of duty, the irreparable void of grief, the fear of accepting your own failures, and finally, the numbness of being meaningless, and it’s soothing inertia. Only after he had tapped a good contingent of mana around him with whatever emotional force it would take did he start pumping his mana to move his ‘poison’ together with an order of elemental change. From fire to ash, from ash to dust, from dust to void, from void to shadow.

It was all he could do, but damn if it wasn’t tiring to even get his debuffs that far. Luckily he could at least move slightly while channeling his emotions into the sponge that was the ambient mana, and since there was no other mage around really doing anything, he could just pick up any intact mana potion to keep going.

So long as he wasn’t shot down. Or the wall crumbled under his feet. Or his magic vomit spell didn’t knock him out. Or he didn’t go into a catatonic state of depression where he could summon up no more emotion to poison his enemy with. Or…