—Inside the Forest—

Bloom stared at the Baruchi, scratching the ground, his bum swaying as he waddled to another spot and sat to scribble again.

She looked at her hands and then at the tottering creature across the bushes. Should she go for Night’s Shadow Arts or just do it with her own tactics? It was a lucrative opportunity to miss. “They aren’t much to take care of, anyway. A sword is handy if things turn for the worse.”

Placing her palms on the ground, inches from the shadow of the bushes, she repeated the same drill—Concentrate between the brows, then at the shadow, and imagine slipping into the realm of darkness.

The shadow under her fingers vibrated, encouraging her to push forth. First a tremble, then still, and returned with much vigour. Dragneel observed the bush’s shadow as it withdrew itself and ejected a bubble-like shadow towards her fingers, and her shadow extended its pseudopodia, grabbed the bubble, assimilating it into its own. Then, it released a bubble of its own and discussion amongst the shadows began.

The frequency of the transmission multiplied, and they coveted the distance between themselves, merging into one.

Bloom flinched. She slouched, with her hair falling in front of her face. A torrent of images entered her mind, inundating her with data to refine. Her art felt crude compared to the seamless transition she had experienced with Para’s help back at Night’s.

Well, she had places to improve after all.

She felt the forest breath, its roots deep into the soil, firm and connected, stretching over a vast area. As her brain processed the information it received, Dragneel dived into a cavern of secrets.

She smirked. For the second time that night, she whispered, “Jackpot!”

Quickly, Dragneel drew what she saw in the flashes on the wet soil. As her eyes fluttered open, she couldn’t help but be transfixed by the algorithm that it ultimately showed itself to be. “It’s true, after all.”

A matrix of eight octagons with three elements—Time, space and summon, ruling over the seventh and eight octagons, all inside a circle. It was a rune for teleportation.

Dragneel placed two and two together. “Eight octagons means a rune from Demos, as it’s the eighth realm. Eighth and seventh octagons are highlighted, so a teleportation from Demos to Ivory. I see… Rebellion frontier smuggled these Uchis from Obsidian via Demos. Seems fair enough…but why?”

She looked at the Baruchi with her glittering eyes. All answers lied there with them. She reached into the darkness with her hand, then gradually immersed her head and finally plunged the legs into the shadow.

Dragneel winced as the immersion wasn’t pleasant at the slightest. She realised that when Paranoidiesis had done it for her; she had filtered multiple sound layerings for the chirping of the bird to be that clear. Moreover, Dragneel was dealing with a forest, not a house. All kinds of noises penetrated into her ears. The hoot of the owl, the chaotic harmony of the insects, the breath of the forest.

Dragneel shouted out loud in her head. “Stop! Everyone, out!”

That helped. The noises died down as Dragneel dragged her attention towards the Baruchi. She used the bush’s shadow as a medium and threw herself into the Baruchi’s shadow.

She kept her face towards the sky as she floated through the medium like backstroking through water. She mused over Night’s and Para’s shadow techniques. The fragment shadow technique employed by Night, combined with the constant bursting of particles during assimilation, had created a mesmerising effect, but Paranoidiesis had taken it to another level. Hers was akin to floating in a void of nothingness. Guess what? Dragneel was floating too, but in a viscous liquid, smooth yet stiff.

“Not quite there, hah.”

As she swam through the Baruchi’s shadow, she crossed his big booty flashing against the moon and found its muscleless, scrawny short skeleton feet and a single expected thought crossed her mind. “Seriously, how the hell does that bum balance on those toothpick legs?”

Well after, Dragneel found an arc drifting over her face. Her eyes identified blotches of colours smeared over it, a blood red akin to Paranoidiesis’s eyes. Before she knew, the arc’s two ends met each other, and it was a circle. She checked her sides and there was one on her left, on her right, up and down. Seven.

Seven circles, seven bombs.

Dragneel sat cross-legged in the immense darkness, eyes fluttered close. In the calm, the forest breathed in hums of lower octaves. Her ears twitched along the vibration, but somewhere underground, the vibration didn’t return after hitting a thing. With time, more anomalies sprang up.

“Seven bombs can easily wipe away the forest and—” Dragneel left herself hanging mid-sentence. “Wait! Snow Palace’s also on radar.”

With every info at her disposal, she came to the most plausible series of events. “So, the Rebellion Frontier used Demos’ universal borders to smuggle the Uchis into Dragonix. Demos used teleportation runes to bring them into Ivory. Now, they’re planting bombs in Ryuoketusai’s backyard. Hah!”

In a circumlocution it was an attack on the Great Aide’s position. They knew Ryuoketusai wouldn’t be at Snow Palace, as the Ball Ceremony would eat away his time. They knew the attack on the Great Aide’s den would challenge his authority, his competency. It would hurt his reputation and all hell would break loose on the Big Day.

Dragneel massaged her trapezius with a sly smile. “Shouldn’t I compensate them for their cute attempt?” She chuckled and shook her head from side to side. “Ryuoketusai’s too lax with his home security. Geez! What would he even do without me?”

She turned her attention towards the Baruchi, who had his nose stuffed in a yellow, creased thin blueprint. Under the moonlight, the scribblings on the sheet had become comprehensible from the other side. And by the looks of that Uchi, he was copying the rune to the ground from that old paper.

Dragneel mused, rubbing her chin, “So, he isn’t well versed in runes. It’s going to be much easier than I thought.”

Bloom placed herself under the rune and snapped her fingers, and an old, mottled black brush appeared between her fingers. Her light reticent irises zoomed in and out, allowing her to read through the runes' energy and weaknesses. She found energy traces that bound each individual circle to the rest six. “Since all of them are connected to the bombs. One wrong step and everything’s gone.”

On the distinguished piece of the rune, she marked the seven major nodal points, the points with the largest number of energy traces. Now, she had to remove those nodal points to diffuse the rune without actually harming it. She swam through the shadows and positioned herself beneath the first node and stared, mesmerised by its pulsating vicious red energy, as if a heart pumping out blood.

The white, hairy tip of her brush touched the pulsing, bright node. And with each anti-clockwise stroke, the energy of the node swirled along the brush tip. With utmost care and attention, Bloom solved the energy threads of the node, one knot at a time. As each strand loosened and the node fell apart bit by bit, Dragneel collected the threads on her other palm, assimilating them into her vessels. She felt a void as a sizable chunk of her energy descended towards the bombs. She checked her arm and mumbled some words under her breath.

A delight ran through Dragneel’s features and she sped up, dismantling the nodes, adding new threads to her body, changing blood red to golden. A shiver ran up her spine, spreading throughout the latissimus dorsi, then the trapezius. She welcomed the foreign energy into her back. A return gift thrice that was lost earlier. Her muscles craved for every ounce of the energy she could extract from the algorithm until the blood red rune stopped glowing.

The Baruchi sighed as he finished drawing the rune and began searching for someone. Probably his head, the Kalguchi. He glanced at the rune once and on the second take realised it wasn’t glowing red. The stick fell down from his trembling hands and Bloom could bet she heard his bones clatter.

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He croaked in his shrill voice, “Urupi shubu Kalguchi! Shubu Kalguchi!”

Bloom was sure he meant—It’s a disaster, Kalaguchi! It’s a disaster!—in his own language. But for Throne’s sake! She couldn’t have him screaming and yelling.

And before the Baruchi knew, his own shadow had snuck up to his back. He felt a tug on his hair and in an instant, only his lower jaw remained with his body.

Dragneel stepped back as the Baruchi’s blood spewed up in the air like a fountain drenching her and her Dragon Blade with his warm blood. His beheaded body slumped to the wet ground, staining the rune with his own red.

The severed head lolled to her side by its minimalistic hair. The tongue finally got the chance to know the wind. Blood streamed down the arteries where the medulla oblongata had once existed.

Dragneel raised her sword and twirled it a few times in the air, getting rid of the blood. Dragon Blade then clicked back into its scabbard on her hip. She was done collecting intel.

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Under the shade of a ginormous tree with aerial roots dangling, twenty figures sat huddled, circling a burning pyre. They had perpetual hollow sockets, a dot for the iris. Mud on their skinless torsos, fear in their bones. They clinked their horns, some big, some small, and held each other’s hand, staring at the crackling wood.

“We will die, won’t we?” said a small, unflinching voice.

His mate’s bones rattled beside him, and he tilted his gaze towards the smallest Aruchi, who was doodling circles on the grass with his finger.

The small Aruchi was sitting still, with bony knees to its chest, jaw hidden between the thighs, watching the burning pyre with unblinking eyes. He raised his hand and touched his tiny, conical horn as if it was his last chance. “We’ll die. Everyone will, all of us.”

“We know, damn it!”

The group turned their attention to the gruffest voice. He was on his feet with a frown on his face, and the wedged socket bones did nothing but enhance his scowl. Veins popped up around his neck as he shouted in his gruffly tone, “I’m sick of it! We all know what’s coming, so stop your fucking nonsense!”

He sucked heavy breaths, in and out, with his chest collapsing and rising again. He realised his shadow projected on his mates and the warmth of the embers flying from the pyre. Slowly, he pivoted on his heels to face the fire, tears swimming at the edges of his sockets.

“That lad was lucky as hell! He bombed himself out!”

“But that was an accident…”

“Hell with it!” He balled his fists, the body shuddering with wrath. “He isn’t waiting to die like us! He’s gone for the better while we prepare for our funerals! I’ll fucking off myself with a bomb rather waiting patiently for death to choke me to sleep!”

He didn’t know what he was searching for on their faces, yet he gawked at each of their faces, etching them in his mind. The tension was thick in the air and no one dared squeak a word.

“You’re scared,” said the lone little voice, this time with a smile. “But worry not, we’ll die.”

Immediately, he marched to the little guy, and his body loomed over that little stature. Before the Aruchi could even lift his face, a foot came thrashing down on his chest. Alarmed, the others scrambled onto their feet, trying to stop the big guy. Some clung to his waist while the little one grabbed his ankle to push it away in vain. The gruffly Aruchi still landed a couple of hits and left the little Aruchi coughing with his might.

“Stop it!” A taller Aruchi snagged him by his shoulders and charged at him, head-butting with his long horns. The gruffly guy met the horns with his own, and with a loud crack, the taller Aruchi’s horn broke off. He rubbed the stub of his horn and said, “Everyone here knows we aren’t going home! Each of our mouths is treacherous with secrets, our bodies—evidence! So if someone’s comforting themselves mumbling like that, let them!”

With steady pants, the gruffly Aruchi looked at their faces again. His muscles froze, his bones rattled.

Fear, the fear of death, had he known was so horrifying he wouldn’t be there. Had he known that tension, that palpitating heart, he wouldn’t be there.

The taller Aruchi’s voice cranked up. “We fear for our lives; Uchis don’t. After all, Aruchi is the lowest rank. Life’s unfair, brother. Life’s unfair! If we escape, they’ll hunt us down, both Obsidian and Dragonix!”

The others lowered their gazes at the bitter truth.

Silence ensued. Only the breathing chest and the beating heart were heard. Their spirits had become as hollow as their eyes. Reluctantly, they reached for each other’s hands and instinctively felt the wave of fear in their circle.

“Let me join your pity party~ Will you not?”

Their eyes fluttered to their sides. Who said it? As eyes searched for answers in each other, they found a mate’s eyes aghast. That miniscule of an iris expanded and a shy green greeted them for the first time in their lives.

He was looking at the sight in front of him. Only at the fire.

“Will you not? Please~”

It was a familiar baritone. The depth, the slur in the end, and everything belonged to him, except the words.

“I th…thought,” whispered one of them, “he wasn’t supposed to…speak anymore.”

~Will you hear me sing?~

~How blood tastes sweeter than ru-uubies~

~A drink you-uu must bring~

~On a date with your death personified~

~Will you hear me sing?~

~How blood tastes sweeter than ru-uubies~

~A drink you-uu must bring~

~On a date with your death personified~

The lines repeated. The baritone lingered in the air. Trees sang the song in different octaves, in various tones, as if death were whispering in their ears. Their stomachs churned in a bottomless whirl. Backs shivered. Joints clattered. And eyes creaked towards the fading embers, the pyre.

~On a date with your death personified~

He was sitting. He was sitting on the top of the wood and inhaling smoke and exhaling heat.

“Have heard of corpses sitting up when they’re burned?” The little Aruchi spoke, his soul captivated by the burning spectacle. “They say it’s their last wish to die with dignity.”

“But, they don’t smile. They don’t sing. And they don’t stare at others with burning red coals.”

None of the Aruchi responded to his statements, but none refuted.

It was sitting on the pyre. A hand supporting the cheek, blazing eyes of flames, the exoskeleton on the head and legs were cracking, and it smiled cynically.

“Ah~ The muscles are falling apart but the tendons are yet to melt. So, I thought I might borrow this body for a bit.” It smiled again, as if following the norms of a polite conversation.

The gruffly Aruchi opened his mouth, but his voice choked. He tried again and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Run!”

The Aruchis dispersed. With his heart in his throat, the gruffly Aruchi ran through the thickest vegetation he could find. His pupils dilated, trying to absorb as much light as he could from the moon. He waded through the shrubs and creepers, whipping his head back each time the forest whispered the song.

He felt a tug on his ankle and found a creeper coiling around it. He lifted his other foot and stumped on the creeper. Unfortunately, his foot slipped on the plant and he fell headfirst.

He groaned and rolled on his back, and when he touched the grass, it was wet. For a second, he didn’t move. Then he slid his hands to his knees and stood on his feet.

Blood

There was that burning pyre, the Aruchi on fire, sitting and smiling.

How did he end up there again?

His eyes fell to its side. It was petting something…peculiar. It resembled a ball at first glance. Then he spotted horns. He peeled his eyes away from the pyre to the ground. A little body with muscleless legs laid limp in a pool of viscous red.

The Aruchi turned on his heels and ran again. His chest pulsated, his steps quickened, and somehow he was there again.

That time, the burning Aruchi had someone flailing their arms in its grip. It opened its jaws wide, flaring rows of teeth as sharp as knives. The teeth pierced through the torso of the captured Aruchi, crushing his bones in its wake.

A gruesome screech filled the air. It chuckled with its mouthful and tugged on the flesh, stretching out the muscle fibres before they tore and the screech was replaced by a crunching sound.

He ran again and again. Each time he tried to escape, he encountered a grotesque death scene. By his twentieth round, he was shivering.

He stumbled upon the place again to get surprised by a certain scenario. He wasn’t the only one standing with the creature. There was a red-haired.

“Look at the mess you made, Para.” She glared at the burning inferno. “Of course you won’t.”

She then turned her amused blue eyes towards him with blood sprayed on her face and said amusingly, “So you kept one alive after all.”

He noticed her hands and his heart went cold.

Two faces dangled by their hair, one in each of her hands. A small rounder one and a large rigged one with wedged sockets akin to his—The Baruchi and the Kalguchi.

“Pl…Please! Let me go!”

And oh boy, all eyes were on him.