Smoke. Everywhere.

All around him, mana transmitters lay broken, houses were reduced to rubble, roads were shattered, and people were dying.

When he looked up, the sky was filled with smoke, the occasional flash of light hurting his eyes. Figures blurred above him, and he heard rapid chanting of words, before a powerful blast shook his body down to the bone once more.

He remembered his body protesting as he sat up. He remembered as he stood up and almost got knocked back down by a powerful shock wave, stumbling to his knees as he groaned. Despite it, he pushed on, standing back up, and shambling away from the source.

He heard people cry out in pain. He heard the dying breaths of mothers to their children. He heard kids his age cry for their parents. He ignored them and kept walking, head held up, lips trembling, as he forged on.

Fire raged around him, and he heard explosions happening deeper in the city. Smoke filled his vision as he hacked and coughed, trying his best to keep moving and breathe as little as possible, lest he give up.

And then-- a dead end. A large pile of rubble and debris. He couldn’t climb it without hurting himself, and he wasn’t sure if it was even the right way out. For all he knew, if he climbed the debris, he would just see more danger.

He looked up helplessly. The flashes of light were bigger here, and the voices louder. Faintly, he knew that it must be some sort of big fight-- the kind that were only talked about in legends-- but for the him of right now, it did not help.

He glanced behind him, at the hopes that maybe, just maybe, he can find another way out. But it was too late. More magi-tech equipment had burst into flames, blocking his entrance with fire and smoke. Whoever had not gotten out beforehand, were sure to be dead now.

Just like he was supposed to be.

And yet, the world seemed to say No.

He felt an especially powerful and close shock wave occur. He looked up and saw one of the figures falling down towards his position.

The boy panicked, and, despite his failing condition, found a little bit of strength to hide behind a crumbling piece of wall just as the figure hit the debris.

The ground shook as the man hit the ground. The debris blocking the way was blasted outwardly. The boy quietly tried to endure the shock, but he wasn’t completely unaffected. Being so close to the drop, he had to hold on to the wall just to not fall over again. His ears were ringing and his whole body cried out in pain, but he still did his best to hold on.

He closed his eyes and tried to shut it out. The pain, the fear, the situation. He didn’t want to deal with any of it. And yet here he was, in a city about to be destroyed, at the place where it was most dangerous.

He held his breath as much as he can while he waited, hoping that whoever fell down just left, but it seems it wasn’t meant to be.

He glanced towards the fallen figure, and saw a different man land in front of him. A man dressed in white robes and blond hair. He grabbed the fallen figure by their shirt and held them in front of him.

The boy thinks the robed man was saying something to his enemy. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he looked anyway. He needed to see. A feeling...

He saw the robed man throw his enemy to the ground. He saw the wind gather around his arm, and then--

Something. The wind fizzed out and he lost his grip on the man. The robed man staggered backward as if he was struck. His enemy immediately took advantage and punched.

The robed man was sent flying backwards, straight towards the boy’s hiding spot.

The boy tried to dodge, but was still damaged by the robed man’s impact. He stumbled forward, wounding his chin and his palms as he tried to hold himself up against the hard and rough ground. He heard the robed man groan as he reoriented himself, and heard the shifting of debris as he rose back up.

The boy tried to crawl away, hoping to any god that was watching him that the man did not notice him.

He did.

The robed man immediately took the boy hostage, sneering as he held the boy up with a bubble of wind. The boy panicked and instinctively cried out in surprise.

The robed man’s enemy arrived a bit later, and, while the boy couldn’t see through the wind bubble properly, he could swear the man looked familiar...

“I know why you’re here now,” The robed man laughed harshly, “It’s because of him, right?”

His enemy stayed silent. The boy couldn’t see his expression, but he heard him click his tongue. “Aeros, don’t do anything you might regret,” the man warned him.

The robed man, Aeros, just laughed even louder. “Anything I might regret?” The boy swore the air inside the bubble suddenly felt a lot harder to breathe. “I wouldn’t regret it, and you know that, don’t you?”

The man stayed silent. There was a standoff in front of the boy. He did not know how strong these men were-- he could only guess, and from the destruction they caused by their fight...

“You’re right,” the man sighed. “But thankfully, I’m not alone.”

“What—” the boy saw the Aeros look somewhere he could not see, but the decision to look somewhere besides his enemy cost him.

The man rushed Aeros far quicker than the boy could perceive and sucker punched him. Aeros gasped in pain, and momentarily lost focus. The bubble of wind around the boy disappeared, and he finally saw his savior’s face.

He had black hair and a rugged face marred with scars. He had a stubble and a furious expression set on his face. But what shook the boy the most was that he had shining silver eyes.

But why... The boy thought, as he landed harshly on the ground. The robed man was launched backwards again, and now his enemy now stood in front of the boy. Why does he look so familiar..?

“You good?” the man asked. The boy nodded, but realized the man would have no way of knowing that he did, so he tried his best to answer.

“Y-yes,” the boy rasped. He swore he saw the man’s fist tighten when he did.

“Alright,” the man answered slowly, keeping his eyes on Aeros as his enemy reoriented himself. Inwardly, the boy wondered why this man didn’t just finish him off then and there, but deciding that there just wasn’t something he was seeing, he kept it to himself. “When I say jump, you do it. Don’t ask me any questions. I won’t answer.”

“But... who are you?” The boy asked the man. The man ignored him as Aeros growled at him.

“Damn it...” The robed man spat, “You’re certainly more annoying than I hoped you were. Think that speed of yours would be anything to real power? You can’t even hope of touching me!”

After he said those words, the wind started picking up around Aeros. His robe started fluttering as he kept talking. “You barely have anything! And soon...” The wind covered Aeros, and his voice started being distorted. At this point, the boy thought the man looked more like an elemental of wind than a person. “Soon, you won’t have anything at all!”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Jump, NOW!” The familiar man barked. The boy blinked and did as he asked, jumping as high as he could. As soon as he hit the peak of his jump, an explosion of wind happened below him, making him yelp as he was sent flying upwards. The boy felt a bit queasy and scared as he flipped on the air, still flying, so he closed his eyes, and hoped for the best.

He heard the fight resume when he flew up. He heard an exchange of words and anger being directed towards someone. He heard and felt wind attacks almost hitting him but missing by just a few inches. And then he just heard fire and smoke.

He felt someone holding his back into a sitting position, and the feeling of hard cement. He opened his eye a little, and saw smoke, fire, and general destruction. He saw wind tornadoes and a fight picking up once more. And he was confused.

“What..?” The boy rasped again. He coughed as he tried to get his voice to be more understandable. “What happened? Where am I? Who are you?”

He looked behind him to see a girl, about his age, to be the one holding him up. She had black hair and green eyes, and she wore a small dress, a little torn and blackened by smoke. She looked about as beaten up as he probably did, but from the hand holding his back, he can feel some sort of energy coming from her.

“She saved you,” Someone else said. The boy turned to his left, and there was a woman there, and he can practically see the mana radiate off her in waves. She looked similar to the girl holding him, with her long, black hair, but she was wearing a simple black shirt, some jeans, and high boots. She flipped her hair and turned to the boy.

He doubted he would ever forget it. Her shining purple eyes seemed similar to the man that saved him, and there was a disconnect that he couldn’t place. He didn’t know how they were related, but there was a feeling he couldn’t describe. As if something was telling him that they didn’t belong, that they weren’t completely human.

“She saved me?” The boy asked, numbly, still thinking about the feeling of familiarity.

“Yes,” the woman answered for the girl. The girl finally let go of his back and, and he heard her take a deep breath. “She’s pretty good. She can be as good as me, someday,” the woman chuckled. “But now’s not the time for that. You kids better get out of here, alright?” And just like that, she was gone, as if she was never there to begin with.

Not-quite-silence returned, the boy still trying to process what just happened. He looked at where he knew the fight was supposed to be, then shook his head.

He turned to the girl, and he saw her just breathing as deeply as she could. She saw him looking at her and just smiled tiredly.

The boy came to his senses and finally expressed his gratitude. “Thank you for saving me,” He said softly, trying not to strain his throat.

The girl simply shook her head. “I couldn’t have saved you without her help,” she told him. He assumed ‘her’ meant the woman from earlier. But, he couldn’t discount the fact that she still saved him.

“You still saved me,” he insisted. “That’s all that matters to me,” he did his best to bow to her, to show his respect. “I owe you a lot.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” she protested. “I couldn’t just do nothing after she taught me how to save you.”

Inwardly, the boy thought that the woman should have saved him if she knew how to do so in the first place, but he kept it to himself. “That doesn’t matter to me,” he offered a hand to her. “Let’s get out of here first, though.”

She nodded and grabbed his hand. He hoisted her up, and started moving. She was a bit out of breath as she led him to the staircase that let she and the woman with her get up the rooftop they were in, insisting to him that the only reason she was even able to help him was because the woman taught her how to use her magic. She told him that she thought the woman was teaching her so she could get out of the city by herself, but she thinks it was because she knew he was going to be launched up.

He knew what she was implying, that they, meaning the woman and the man who saved him, planned it. But he didn’t mind, since he was still saved and alive. It was better than just dying to the smoke, he reasoned to her. She shrugged.

“She taught and told me a lot of things,” she whispered to him as they walked the now abandoned streets, heading for where they heard were voices shouting out. Rescue services, the girl said. He believed her, since she saved him, after all. “She taught me about what my magic is, and that she was fighting someone important.”

“Someone important?” He parroted. He thought of Aeros, the man with an absurd amount of power and control over wind. The man was strong, so he didn’t doubt that he was important.

She nodded. “Yes, but she didn’t tell me who. She said we were going to find out anyway,” and then her voice dropped to a murmur. “Because of me.”

He looked at her. She was looking down at the ground as they shuffled past the debris. Her hair covered part of her face, blocking it from view.

“Because of your affinity?” He murmured to her. He knew that everyone had an affinity for a certain element, but he thought it wouldn’t be as simple as just having an affinity for fire or water, considering that she somehow pulled him to her position in what seemed to be an instant.

She nodded. “She told me I would be in the center of it,” she rasped. “That I wouldn’t be safe for a long time.”

The boy thought on this. He wondered why the woman would have known that. He wondered why they saved him and her, but not everyone else, when they clearly could have. He wondered why they were here specifically to fight Aeros. He wondered why they felt so clearly wrong, but yet so familiar at the same time.

Then, he looked to his companion. The girl with him, walking slowly with her head downcast, as if she was beating herself up for something she couldn’t help with. It dawned on the boy during this, that it didn’t matter to him why he was saved, only that he was. Just like it shouldn’t matter to this girl that she was in danger, because--

“Then I guess I’ll just have to keep you safe, then,” he declared. “I still do owe you, after all.”

She shook her head. “I told you, you don’t owe me anything. If you try to do that, you’ll just be in danger too.”

“That means you have less danger on you, right?” he gave her the best grin he could muster at the moment. It was shaky. He knew that he was promising a lot. He knew that it might be very dangerous. But she saved him. Or was at least one of the people that did. He didn’t know how to repay her in any other way.

So he stopped moving and faced her. The girl, noticing this, stopped walking as well.

“You saved my life,” he said as solemnly as he could. “Even if sticking with you is dangerous, I’ll still do my best. I owe you my life.”

“You don’t owe me your life,” she mumbled. “That woman taught me how to use my powers. It’s only right that I use it to save someone.”

“It doesn’t matter if it was right or if it wasn’t, you still saved my life. I owe you enough, just for that,” he stubbornly replied.

The girl stayed silent for awhile, possibly thinking of what the boy had said to her, of what he promised, and of what it entailed for him and her.

“I’m Vertas,” the boy introduced himself as a way to break the silence. “I’m still a kid, but I’ll do my best to protect you from now on.”

“... Tia,” the girl-- Tia-- replied quietly. “I still think you shouldn’t be with me. The woman didn’t seem like she was lying.”

Vertas simply shrugged. “Then that just means I shouldn’t lie about protecting you as well.”

“... right,” Tia sighed. “Then, I hope we get along.”

“Right,” Vertas agreed and gave a proper grin this time. Tia looked at him, and saw his smile.

----------------------------------------

They started to walk through the shattered path once more, this time with more pep to their step. But Tia wondered to herself.

How, she thought, as she watched the boy-- Vertas-- walk confidently in front of her. How does he still smile like that? After everything? After knowing what he’s going into?

Perhaps she wouldn’t know. But she followed him anyway-- as he was the pillar of stability in a city of rubble. Vertas initiated conversation while they walked, babbling about random things. During his babbling, Tia learned that he grew up as an orphan, and didn’t know his parents. It was awfully similar to what her childhood was like, she told him, and he just shrugged.

And on they went. Two kids in a crumbling city, with only each other to lean on. They walked until they heard shouting. Vertas’ face lit up, and he quickened his pace, Tia following him closely behind.

When they got to the source of the shouting, they saw rescue operators scouring the area, destroying debris, stabilizing crumbling buildings, and healing injured people who had been stuck inside when their buildings collapsed with their magic.

They were immediately spotted by the rescuers. Some of them broke off and checked the duo for any pressing injuries, and finding none, told them to go further into the checkpoint.

“Sorry,” one of them apologized. “We can’t afford to use healing magic right now. Mana is tight as is.”

“It’s alright,” Tia assured them. “We just need some water, and we should be fine.”

“Right,” the rescuer that answered them smiled. He took a bottle from his utility belt and placed it into Tia’s hands. “Share it with your friend, alright?” And with that, he jogged off to his co-workers.

The duo took small sips from their shared water bottle as they walked through the streets. There was no more fire and less debris here, as the rescuers had probably cleaned it up. Vertas led the way, a bit more relaxed as he didn’t have to deal with as much danger anymore.

Eventually, they got out of the city. They walked through an open gate and were greeted with several rescue workers providing supplies to refugees and applying basic healing magic. There were some heavily wounded people in the camp, which the rescuers were focusing on, and there was a vehicle loading people up and driving away, presumably to another, safer city.

Vertas, being the one with the more obvious wounds, had been checked more thoroughly than Tia. The workers had told him that there his wounds were mostly surface level, thankfully, and that he didn’t need to be carted off to a hospital. Tia herself had not a lot of wounds and only suffered from a bit of exhaustion, nothing some food and rest won’t fix.

Tia agreed with that diagnosis, as she had been positively exhausted by what happened. Her home was destroyed, she saved some random boy, who had then attached himself to her, and she got told that she held a power that many people wanted...

Frankly, she didn’t want to deal with it at all, but she figured that she owed it to the woman who saved her to at least keep her head down. She was worried, however, that the woman was right, and that keeping her head down wouldn’t be enough.

Well, she groused It can’t be any worse than this, right?