A black boot struck the ground, catching sunlight from above after rising from a darkened fissure parting the earth beneath two buildings that had collapsed onto one another.
Long white hair tipped into light next, followed by a black dress and gloved hands. Each footfall silent against the ground.
Alfia walked out onto the surface with controlled footsteps, her arms hanging casually at her sides.
From her left, the intense vibration of something sliding across debris shattered the windows of those buildings behind her.
A long, green, headless creature tore toward her. Its sheer weight compressed the earth inward, cracks erupting in a serpentine line beneath its dragging bulk.
A Viscum.
Alfia didn't even glance at it. She only whispered a single word.
"Gospel."
Nothing happened.
The Viscum continued. Thirty meters. Twenty. Ten. Its body flattened three adjacent streets, bricks launching skyward in its wake.
Sound arrived.
A vibration slammed into the Viscum. Its entire body froze, as if it had struck a colossal wall.
Patches of green skin and root-tendrils tore across its frame, erupting backward into the air. Still, the Viscum flexed from tail to crown, committing its whole body to a charge.
The sound seeped inside it next. Every cell in its body vibrated at a single pitch, and the sound matched it, note for note, then inverted.
Its cells no longer agreed on what solid meant.
The creature was still struggling when it simply stopped being a thing. Its mass became mist, roots crumbling into dust. The Viscum's entire body came apart in less than a heartbeat, sound moving through its tissues faster than they could register pain.
Green vapour hung in the shape of that creature for one perfect instant, a ghost of roots, mid-charge, tail extended, body still coiled.
Then physics reasserted itself, and the shape collapsed into a formless cloud that dispersed on a breeze.
For a hundred meter in every direction, air hung cleaner, dust particulates stripped, moisture displaced, the ambient noise of Daedalus silenced in a perfect sphere around the kill zone.
A window that had survived the charge cracked three seconds later, the shock finally catching up to it.
Through it all, not even a speck of dirt touched Alfia's dress.
She continued on her way.
...
..
.
Twilight Manor.
"So lemme get this straight," Loki said, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised so high it nearly left her face. "Some giant snake-plant thing is tearing up Daedalus Street, half the district's already rubble, and somewhere in all that mess is little Bell?"
"That's the report, yes." Finn said, already strapping his forearm guard tight.
Bete went rigid, his fingers freezing halfway through buckling his knee guards. He spat under his breath.
"Somewhere in that mess? That lunatic is the mess."
Riveria stood fully geared up nearby, smoothing out the creases in her white cloak with one hand, her other wrapped securely around her Magna Alf. "Little? How do you think he'd react if he heard you call him that, Loki?"
Loki's smirk faltered for a second before snapping back into place, even wider than before. "What are you talking about, Mama? Bell and I are best friends, he won't mind... probably."
Tiona was shifting on her toes, practically vibrating in place with Urga slung over one shoulder like it weighed nothing. "A giant snake-plant thing? The Ghost of Sparta? Do they both breathe fire? Please tell me they breathe fire."
"They don't need to breathe fire, idiot," Tione snapped, already three steps ahead toward the door. "They're apparently strong enough to level buildings just by existing near them."
"Even better!"
"That is not better—"
"Can we hurry?" Ais was already halfway out the door, Snowflake clutched to her chest, fingers white-knuckled around its hilt.
Finn, mid-strap on his other guard, glanced up at her once.
"... Ais." Riveria looked at Ais and sighed, a hand rising to clutch her forehead. Then she turned to her left. "Gareth."
"Already up," Gareth grunted, axe resting on his shoulder, though he did pause to glance sideways at Loki. "You coming, or you gonna stand there making faces at the ceiling?"
Loki brought both hands to the back of her head, a little too delighted for the circumstances. "Obviously I'm coming. Front row seats to whatever's turning buildings into gravel? Wouldn't miss it for the world."
"You say that," Riveria said, not looking back, "right up until it's your building."
"It's never my building. That's half the fun."
Ais didn't hear them. She was already beyond the door, her steps quicker than usual.
Lefiya, who had been quietly staring in Ais' direction with gritted teeth the whole time, stepped forward and rushed out after her.
With a final click of his straps, Finn rose.
"Loki Familia... move out."
The room erupted in a surge of motion.
...
..
.
Back at Daedalus street.
A clawed, red-scaled hand rose from another fissure in the ground and shoved a mound of debris aside.
Clamping onto the lip of that fissure, a figure pulled itself upward and out, a tail swishing behind him.
Lyd.
The first thing he saw was the sky.
A vastness stretched above him, wider and deeper than anything he had ever known. Blue spilled across a boundless dome, white at the edges where it met the horizon, deepening to a gentle hue overhead that made his heart flutter.
"—Hu?"
A sound escaped his lips, stuck somewhere between confusion, childlike wonder, and disbelief. His mouth twitched upward halfway, then curled downward, then upward again, caught in a tangle of emotions.
His hands fell open on their own, tail swishing faster behind him now, whipping up a small gale with its intensity.
"Ha..."
A chuckle rumbled from his chest, low and unsure, the scales across his body standing on end like goosebumps.
"Haha..."
His lips finally settled, widening with each laugh until his smile split wide enough to form a crescent on his face. The tail behind him blurred, claws flexing in and out of their sockets unconsciously.
"Hahahahahaha!"
A blade of grass poked through the shattered marble near his feet. One thin blade, green against the gray debris.
"Hahahah—"
The laugh caught in his throat.
He'd seen green before, grass and leaves under the even glow of magic-stone. But Kesh had once told him it wouldn't be the same under a real sky.
He hadn't understood what that meant, didn't need to, not until now, watching sunlight fall crooked and warm across one small blade of grass.
The gale around his tail died all at once.
His claws, still flexing in and out, curled slowly around nothing.
"...Kesh."
That name came out smaller than anything he'd said all day.
The world tore down the middle of that single blade of grass.
To his right, the sky stood as it had a moment ago: vast, blue, endless. To his left, stone curved overhead in its place, a dull artificial glow of the Dungeon's ceiling pressing close, the way it always had, the way it always did.
His right foot rested in sunlight. His left foot rested in magic-stone light.
And beside him, where no one stood at all, Kesh crouched at the edge of a dungeon mound, tail curled around his feet, looking up at nothing but stone.
"When we get out," Kesh had said, "promise me we watch it together... The real sky. Not someone else's story of it."
"I promise."
Lyd had said, and meant it. He had never broken a promise, after all.
The stone side of the world flickered, and thinned, and was gone.
Only the sky remained, endless and indifferent above him.
Kesh had died three weeks later.
...
..
.
***
[300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[8 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
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[Authors Thoughts]
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