—Where are we? —Zein asked, his voice cracked and his eyes fixed on nothingness, while he tried in vain to control the trembling of his hands.
Miguel did not respond immediately. He began to look everywhere with a grimace of absolute annoyance, holding back a heavy breath from physical fatigue.
The environment of the technique was suffocating. Colossal branches extended in all directions like wooden highways suspended over a black and bottomless void, while leaves the size of buildings filtered an unreal, greenish light. The immense forest was not a landscape; it was a perfect cage.
—Inside an Imaginary —Miguel declared, wrapping his knuckles against the hypertrophied trunk on which they were standing. The sound was sharp, dull, lacking any natural vibration.
—This looks nothing like what I experienced that time... —Zein murmured.
—You had already been inside one? —Miguel asked, locking him in a sharp and annoyed gaze, visibly altered by the last-minute surprises.
—Yes, but it wasn't like this. It was when I fought Patoshe and the... —Zein cut himself off abruptly, clenching his fists as he felt an uncomfortable, cold sting running through his palms.
Miguel noticed the gesture, but preferred to ignore it for the moment. He let himself fall onto the giant wood with a snort of frustration, rubbing his temples.
—Come. Let's hope Sora is a patient, damn egocentric and gives us a few minutes alone. Use this time to catch your breath, boy —Miguel ordered, prompting him with his head to take a seat.
—Do you really think he won't come to attack us immediately? —Zein asked, letting himself fall clumsily in front of the veteran, keeping his legs tense in case he had to jump.
—I'm quite sure that sadist prefers to watch his prey be devoured by panic before moving a finger —Miguel spat, his teeth gritted—. But we won't give him that pleasure.
Zein swallowed hard, looking toward the infinite void beneath the branch.
—And then... what is this? What truly is an Imaginary?
—As far as I know, they are techniques capable of imposing their own rules over reality —Miguel explained—. When activated, the user generates a space where their personal laws have absolute priority over the outside world. A general told me once that they are the literal representation of a person's soul.
—Wow... But why is this one so different from Patoshe's? Hers didn't change the landscape, it just felt as if there were gas around and you had to fulfill certain specific conditions to be able to destroy the domain.
—Because there are two types of Imaginary, Zein —Miguel replied—. The first is like that woman's, the conditional type. They don't need to isolate you in a closed space, but rather affect specific concepts, conditions, or phenomena around you. Those are considered the weakest due to their lack of absolute control over the environment.
—And the other type? —Zein asked.
—The others are the domain type —Miguel continued, crossing his arms as his gaze scanned the greenish gloom—. These isolate a delimited space where the user's laws take absolute effect. Inside here, the environment manifests according to the creator's will, turning them into someone extremely powerful. However, both types share a weakness: always, no matter what, an Imaginary is governed by rules in order to be destroyed.
—Then, if we decipher the rules Sora imposed inside here... can we get out? —Zein asked.
—In theory, yes. But the truth is I haven't seen a single hint of what this damn place demands us to do —Miguel spat, leaning back slightly against the trunk.
—How is it that you are so calm? —Zein exclaimed—. I've seen how these techniques work, and none felt as lethal or as dangerous as this one.
—I've known very few bastards who managed to make it out alive from a domain —the veteran replied, with a bitter grimace—. Truthfully, theirs was pure luck. And even more knowing that Imaginaries are rarities you don't see every day.
—Well? How the hell did they manage to escape?
—There are three ways —Miguel explained, raising three coarse fingers in front of the boy's face—. The first is by deploying a conditional Imaginary. They are conceptually designed to counteract the domain ones. And unless you have one hidden up your sleeve...
Zein simply shook his head, swallowing hard.
—The second is to abide by and resolve the rules of the Imaginary. And the last one... is that we somehow find the nucleus and manage to smash it from the inside.
—Fuck —Zein declared, burying his face in his hands.
—Come on, don't flip out on me now —Miguel muttered with a smile—. I assure you we will get out of this.
A brutal crash tore through the silence of the void, forcing them onto their guard instantly. The colossal wood trembled beneath their feet.
It was Sora. The imperial general had grown tired of waiting and materialized on a higher branch, observing them with eyes devoid of any trace of humanity. The bloodlust emanating from his armored body was suffocating.
—Why are you doing this? —Zein shouted at him—. Why do you strive so hard to massacre people who only want to defend themselves?
—I just follow orders —Sora replied, his voice lacking emotion.
—Before you, I met an assassin who used that same stupid excuse. It didn't end very well for her —Zein challenged, forcing his hands to close to summon his wind sword.
—So it was you... —Sora murmured. A spark of pure murderous fury ignited his gaze, and he immediately flexed his legs, adopting a lethal hunting posture.
The attack began without warning.
From the gloom of the gigantic trunks, dozens of sharp branches sprouted like living spears, seeking to impale the intruders from multiple directions. Zein and Miguel reacted in unison. With agile acrobatics, both dodged the first wave, leaping from one bark to another as the wood exploded behind them.
However, the ground beneath them came to life.
Sora emerged directly from the textured wood of a main branch, taking the initiative with a savage ferocity. Before Miguel could take a step forward, a thick and dense network of reinforced roots sprouted at an absurd speed, wrapping around the veteran's body and exploding around him until burying him in a prison of solid wood.
Miguel roared, tensing his muscles and unleashing brutal punches from the inside; the bark creaked and cracked under his knuckles, but the roots regenerated and multiplied at the same rate he destroyed them, trapping him completely.
Sora let out a laugh that resonated throughout the entire forest.
—Don't waste your strength, old man —Sora mocked, materializing a few meters away while fixing his eyes on Zein—. This place responds to mana. You won't be able to get out of there unless you use magic... and we all know your body is incapable of channeling a single drop. Stay there and watch.
Immediately, the imperial general launched himself at Zein with a relentless offensive. Sora dragged the youth into a suffocating combat, forcing him to run from one side to another over the gigantic leaves. Zein, desperate, unleashed his entire repertoire: he combined air gusts to deflect Sora's blows, used blazes of fire to try to calcine the wood that pursued him, and used his sword seeking clean cuts.
Nothing worked. Each cut on Sora's body closed before the blood could even gush out.
Driven to the limit and seeing that Miguel was still trapped, Zein gritted his teeth and concentrated all his energy into the edge of his weapon. He remembered the exact moment he defeated Patoshe and channeled that very same technique: the magic of the exploding star. A violent and incandescent flash exploded right in Sora's chest, shattering half of his torso in an explosion of light.
Sora's body went flying, but as he fell toward a trunk, the wood absorbed him as if it were water. He disappeared completely.
Zein looked everywhere with his sword raised, sweat running down his forehead as he tried to devise a way to break Miguel's prison. The silence of the Imaginary grew dense.
—You were looking for this, right? —Sora's voice whispered right behind his ear.
Before Zein could turn around, a root sprouted from the trunk and shoved him with a colossal force, dragging him along the wooden floor until leaving him on his knees, right in front of the block of roots where Miguel was still held back. Sora emerged from nothingness, stomping on Zein's back with brutality to pin him against the ground and disarming him with a quick twist of the wrist.
—So you used that same bright spark to murder Patoshe? —Sora hissed, his face twisted into a sadistic smile as he forced Zein to raise the sword, seizing him by the wrists with an immense and irresistible physical strength.
—Let me go! —Zein roared, trying to resist, but his muscles were no match for the general's grip.
Sora forced Zein's body forward, making him point the tip of the blade directly toward the exposed chest of Miguel, who watched the scene with gritted teeth from his prison.
—Come on, killer. You already took the life of one of our own, what difference does one more make? —Sora whispered in Zein's ear, enjoying the young man's panic—. Kill him. Drive the steel into him just like you did with Patoshe. Release that monster you carry inside. Do it!
With a violent movement and against Zein's will, Sora pushed the boy's arms.
Zein's hands trembled upon the hilt. The terror of becoming once again the executioner of someone he cared about compressed his chest, transforming into pure and desperate adrenaline.
With a heart-wrenching shout, Zein unleashed a savage burst of strength, forcing his own arms to turn the angle of the sword. Instead of driving the weapon in, he pulled it to the side with a violent, upward slash that severed the colossal roots imprisoning the veteran in one swift stroke.
The wooden prison fell apart into splinters.
Miguel, finally free, did not wait a single millisecond. Seizing the millimetric distance, he drove his left fist directly into Sora's stomach with the power of a shell. The dull impact sent the imperial general flying through the air, crashing through several gigantic leaves until getting lost in the thickness of the unreal forest, finally releasing Zein from his grip.
—You'd better stay back —Miguel said, without looking at the youth, keeping his breathing controlled with a noticeable effort—. Find a damn way to get us out of here while I distract him. We don't have much time left.
Before Zein could protest, Sora returned roaring from the thicket, unleashing a rain of wooden stakes. Miguel lunged forward, intercepting him dead in his tracks. The battle resumed with tremendous brutality, but this time the rhythm was different; the accumulated fatigue was beginning to take its toll on the veteran, making the exchange of blows with Sora become dangerously even.
Desperate to help, Zein ran from one branch to another planting his exploding star magic everywhere. The flashes of light enveloped the forest in a chain of deafening detonations that shattered the trunks in their path.
The explosions illuminated the void, but it was useless.
As soon as the fire dissipated, the wood of the Imaginary twisted and regenerated on its own in a matter of instances, returning to its original state as if nothing had happened. Zein gritted his teeth, frustrated, not knowing what else to try to break the environment.
At the front, Miguel dodged a wooden mallet summoned by Sora and, taking advantage of his body's balance, unleashed a monstrous right hand that impacted squarely on the general's torso. The blow was so clean and destructive that, once again, it disintegrated Sora's upper half, sending the remains backward.
Miguel leaped back, panting heavily, while Sora's lower half landed perfectly on a colossal branch, beginning to reconstruct immediately from the legs.
Zein ran toward the veteran, covering his back.
—Did you find a way out? —Miguel asked in a hoarse voice, without taking his eyes off the flesh that was regenerating in the distance.
Zein simply shook his head, helplessness reflected on his face.
Right at that moment, the dense, greenish atmosphere of the forest changed. A penetrating, rancid, and highly unpleasant odor flooded the nostrils of both. It was an unmistakable stench of rotten eggs that seemed to sprout from the wood itself. Both wrinkled their noses, bewildered by the sudden volatility of the environment.
In the distance, Sora's torso and head finished molding completely. The general stretched his neck, letting out a mocking laugh upon seeing how the two rebels tried to cover their faces.
—It doesn't matter if you cover your noses —Sora scoffed, adjusting his shoulders—. You've already been breathing it in for quite a while.
—What the hell are we smelling? —Zein demanded, keeping his guard up.
—What you smell... is sulfur —Sora responded with a smile of superiority.
Moments later, the unbearable stench vanished completely out of nowhere. The air felt strangely clean again, which bewildered the young swordsman even more. Miguel, however, widened his eyes upon noticing the absence of the odor and cursed under his breath, his face distorted by a sudden fury.
—I helped Naoko with a homework assignment about that gas once —Miguel commented, with a tone of sudden urgency—. When you stop smelling it, it doesn't mean it's gone. It means it has blocked your olfactory system because the concentration in the air is already extremely high. Broadly speaking, it blocks cellular respiration... it kills you in minutes. But it has another property. It is extremely flammable.
When Zein heard that last word, his mind lit up completely. He looked at the latent magic stars that still floated around him and then looked at Miguel, realizing that the veteran had come up with the exact same suicidal idea.
—Are you sure about this? —Zein asked, his voice trembling from the magnitude of what it implied.
—Yes, it's the only way —Miguel responded, clenching his fists—. Are you willing to do it?
—I don't see any other way we can make it out of here alive, so yes. I'm sure.
Then, Zein sheathed his magic-imbued sword as he began to weave a simple shield around Miguel with his last reserves. Sora, from the distance, looked at them with contempt.
—Hahaha, what do you intend to do? Nothing you do will save you —he declared.
But his words were interrupted when Zein extended both open hands, aiming directly toward the general's position.
—What...? —Sora managed to murmur, until he noticed at his side a star embedded in the bark of the branch, which was beginning to glow with a blinding intensity.
In turn, the dozens of other latent stars that Zein had strategically scattered throughout the forest began to light up in perfect synchrony, overloading the air.
—You are insane! —Sora bellowed. His expression of superiority transformed into pure terror as he desperately tried to summon a protective stone barrier, but the gas already enveloped him completely. He was not fast enough.
Before the general could close his defense, the stars detonated in unison, unleashing a spark that ignited the accumulated sulfide. An apocalyptic and uncontrollable chain reaction exploded in a blink, consuming the entire Imaginary in an absolute hell of fire and shrapnel.