Witness (3)

“Caw!”

“Nyehhh!”

How fast was this thing going? 80 kilometers per hour? 49.7097 miles per hour? (Those are both the same speeds.)

“Hee hee. Hold on tight, Primot!”

“Wahhh!”

I was hugging Annabelle as tightly as I could. This was like riding a shitty motorcycle… a feathered, two-taloned turkey taxi that was twice the size of a car and thrice as fast as a galloping horse.

But like… how was she not scared by this? We were going so fast, I had no idea how the hell this giant bird was managing to avoid all the trees. The forest was dense and showing no signs of clearing up, plus she didn’t have a proper saddle or anything of the sort—she was simply rawdogging it by clinging onto the feathers of the bird while it weaved from side to side. Most questionably, Annabelle looked… ecstatic?

“Cacaw!”

“She’s saying it’s getting louder now!” Annabelle yelled.

“This thing is a girl?!”

“What’s wrong with that? Oh— Look ahead, Primot!”

Ahead of us was still a forest, but with one key difference—there were felled trees every now and then, the pattern repeating indiscriminately. There was no mistaking it, even with my head bobbing up and down violently: these were signs of a recent battle between powerful individuals.

Soren.

Quickly, the sun grew brighter as the canopy thinned, and the forest looked more and more like a logging camp as signs of damage increased. Eventually, we ran into a clearing split cleanly down the middle into two sides by a stream. Cockie, as Annabelle had named her, screeched to a halt.

“Caw!”

On one side of the clearing, there was us—surrounded by a litter of casualties and a backdrop of stumps where imposing oaks had once been. Six, seven… eight men, clad in various extents of mercenary gear were strewn around the field, alongside swords and lances. One of them was dressed completely in robes—a mage. It wasn’t clear if they were dead or just unconscious. On the other side, even with the sun threatening to blind me…

“Stand down,” the Paladin says, his voice distorted. “You are defeated.”

…was most definitely Soren and the girl fighting someone.

He was pointing his sword at a mystery woman, his blade coated in a navy blue aura—and the familiar golden emblem of a three headed lion gleamed in the sunlight. Standing a few meters behind him was the juvenile Saint Alicia with a seemingly indifferent posture. She briefly looked at us… or maybe I just imagined it, because she went back to checking her nails.

The other person facing off against them, however, didn’t seem to be doing so hot. A woman with purple hair in a rogue’s outfit, she was clutching an injured shoulder that was bleeding profusely—enough to stain the brown cloak that she was wearing. In her other hand was a rune knife, and her body heaved up and down with every breath. Soren seemed to be toying with her.

I suddenly felt a pang of disappointment. Oh… is this it? This is what I had to hype myself up for?

All of that, just to walk in on Soren killing everyone for me?

When am I going to be useful?

Annabelle prodded me with her elbow. “What should we do? Should I go help them?” she pointed to the men lying around the stream, spread around the grass. On closer inspection, it seemed none of them were dead, just incapacitated.

“...Let’s just watch for now.”

Annabelle nodded. “Get us as close as you can without them noticing, Cockie.”

“Caw.”

On the other side of the clearing, the purple haired woman was still heaving in agony—but her expression didn’t seem resigned. “G-good job, Templar, you win. A bit overkill to threaten a poor girl like myself, but you win. So how about letting me go? You can interrogate those idiots instead.”

“You are the leader of these men, are you not?” said Soren. “Cowardice stains a warrior’s honour. Stand down and state your master’s name, and you may yet leave with your crimes forgiven.”

“No thanks, I have salvation at home.”

“Then I am afraid I will have to strike you down.”

“Aha. Anything but that,” she smirked.

Out of a sudden, her demeanour changed—where she was once playing possum, gripping onto her bleeding shoulder, she suddenly held her off hand at the ready. The weight of her feet shifted slightly, spreading out in an athletic stance, hiding the glint of her rune knife in the shadow of her body. Her hands were stained with blood.

“Sorry, hun—but I have places I need to be.”

Throwing up her cloak, she revealed an arm beset with purple jewels—jewels that were grafted directly onto grey, rotting skin. Pendulums. But they’re not meant to be physical implants, not in any world of Quanta TCG I knew.

Soren gripped his sword tighter. Annabelle’s body tensed up.

That is fucking disgusting.

“Enjoy this parting gift from my god!”

For a split second, there was a blinding glow of purple—then I reflexively blinked, and the entirety of the battlefield was plunged into black smoke in an instant.

I stared dumbly at the phenomenon. “What the…”

Our vision of Soren and the girl was abruptly cut. Even our mount’s body had tensed up with anxiety. Every second, the smog spread further and further out from its epicenter, threatening to swallow up the entire forest—it crossed the running stream of water with no difficulty, submerging even men that were supposedly on her side with the mindless indifference of a natural disaster. More importantly, it was approaching us.

“W-we need to go,” Annabelle said.

I knew what spell this was, but I had no idea it would have been this powerful—or even entertained the idea I would be meeting anyone who could cast something as powerful as that so soon. More importantly… where was the magic circle?

Oblivion’s Maw

4 Death Quanta

Spell

Slow Speed

On your end step, destroy all non-Death creatures on the field.

“Primot, we can’t wait any longer! I’m going to run back into the forest!”

“R-right,” I stammered.

Annabelle turned our Cockatrice around, and it quickly started trotting out of the way. I turned around to continue watching our flank, and at that moment, I saw a figure jumping out of the black fog.

…Soren?

Unfortunately not. It was the woman with the decaying arm. This time, her rune knife was glowing in a vicious hue of red as she prepared to cast a spell in the sky—aimed not at her opponent, but directly into the ground below.

Multicasting.

“You fucking cocky Templar! Strike me down? Do you even know who I am?! Fuck you!”

A red magic circle appeared—a Fire spell. It was massive—more gigantic than anything Annabelle had ever demonstrated for me. The area of it was bigger than even the woman casting it herself, and it began to look like there was a second sun in the sky.

“What does a woman have to do to get respect around these parts?!”

Is… is she going to set all of this smoke on fire?

“Annabelle, listen to me right now, you need to get this turkey running as fast as you can.”

“B-but Paladin Soren—”

“Move! We need to move!”

What should I do? Get her to cast something? There’s literally nothing she can do. A counterspell, maybe? Can we even counterspell from this distance? No, what am I thinking—Life can’t counterspell. How about some sort of defensive spell? What kind of fucking defensive spell am I asking her to make with 1 Quanta? Should I get her to try and snipe the woman out of the sky?

No, it’s pointless. Annabelle can’t do anything here.

Let alone me.

My mind raced with thoughts, but this wasn’t that bad, right? As long as we ran away, maybe we could avoid the initial explosion. There would be a forest fire, sure, but this Cockatrice would keep us out of trouble by being able to run away quickly, and any injuries we’d sustained could be healed away. Of course, Soren and the girl would probably die, but—

There was a tiny sound—almost like a pin dropping.

Huh?

“Was that you, Primot?” Annabelle asked.

“No, didn’t you—”

Instantly, there was a massive gust of wind that blew in our direction. Trees rustled with ferocity, branches and leaves started sweeping up from the undergrowth and pelted us indiscriminately, even our mount threatened to be pulled up from the ground if not for the fact it beaked down on a nearby oak. My eyes watered, and I gripped on Annabelle as hard as I could.

“Ahh!” she screamed.

My armour rattled incessantly, Annabelle’s robes were fluttering noisily, our mount was screaming. The trees were howling, and massive chunks of wood from felled birches began flying dangerously in all directions, splitting viciously in the wind. A tempest had been born out of thin air.

Then abruptly, the wind stopped as quickly as it’d been born, like a supernova had passed. When I opened my eyes, all of the smoke was gone. It was at that moment I realised something—it wasn’t just our direction, the gust blew in all directions. The other half of the forest beyond the clearing was now stumps as well. And its source, of course, was the masked azure knight, calmly brandishing his sword. His posture was straight—rigid, unchanging, effortless—and his sword glistened like pure steel.

Standing behind him was the girl, her hood still intact. She boredly glanced at her fingernails.

One… One swing?

“What the— Ah, I don’t give a fuck! Die!”

The woman redirected her rune knife towards them, and the gigantic ruby magic circle fractured. In an instant, a torrent of fire poured out viciously from her knife, taking the form of a gigantic oriental dragon. It shot out at a menacing speed towards Soren, and the recoil of her magic sent her flying back even further into the sky.

Dragon’s Breath (3 Fire): Deal 6 magic damage to a target. Consume a Smoke token to deal 10 instead. If the target were to die, Exile it instead.

The ferocity of that spell was unlike anything I’d ever seen Annabelle cast. It was psyche shattering. It was nothing like the videos of explosions or bombs I’d watched, and I imagined the heat of it would have been far worse than anything I’d ever experienced if I was standing closer. The air crackled with orange, and you could hear the heat.

The colour of the sky changed. One of the two suns had broken apart, and now, there was blood on the horizon. Soren was just standing there, pointing his sword at the spell without making an effort to dodge. The girl stood with him in solidarity, watching silently.

Vomit welled up at the back of my throat.

Then—there was a collision.

The dragon’s maw struck Soren’s blade like a meteor meeting a mountainside. For a moment, all I could see was an explosion of fiery orange—the dragon’s body, a lattice of molten scales and spiraling embers, splintered against the steel and quickly engulfed him.

But as moments passed and the air became clearer and clearer, one thing was certain—despite the impact, there was no gust of wind, no big explosion, no smoke. Even the grass that Soren stood on seemed immune to the flames. Did he counter with a spell of his own? But there was no battle for supremacy, no magical aura competing with the orange flames. Then as I squinted harder, I realised something—where the dragon had touched Soren’s blade, it didn’t simply dissipate on contact with a stronger force—his sword was drinking it up.

Soon, the dragon didn’t exist anymore. It was now a navy blue coating that wrapped around his blade. In another precise swing, an impossibly large torrent of azure energy fired out from his blade and pierced the sky. In the brief moments it existed, it looked like a monument of a forgotten age, a bridge meant to touch heaven.

The sound was deafening.

The clouds parted, and the horizon was back to its usual colour. The smell of ozone lingered in the air.

“What the fuck…”

But the woman was still alive. Soren had missed on purpose. She landed on the ground with a practised landing, and stared at the masked knight in disbelief. I couldn’t tell if it was fear or dumb shock. If I looked into a mirror, I’d probably see a similar expression on my own face.

“Wha— What happened..?” Annabelle asked. In the seconds she had spent turning away, riding Cockie away from the scene of battle, she had missed a sight that would’ve struck fear even into the hearts of gods, or put faith into an atheist.

Soon after, clouds seemed to gather impossibly fast, and the weather became overcast with grey.

“Do you yield?” Soren asked.

“What the… are you… really human..?”

“Hm.”

He held up his non-sword hand. His gauntlet glowed, and so did a navy blue magic circle—then a chunk of ice flew out like a bullet and hit the woman in the head. She fell to the floor, unmoving, and then the knight turned to us.