The Beast

Sand swirled through Limbo, counting each life lost under the harsh glare of the sun. The blood said to paint its surface peeled away like dead skin and filled the skies with a crimson haze.

A beast with skin darker than its golden eyes wandered through limbo. Its silver hair drifted along its shoulders, swaying with the wind, only to be peppered with steel-tainted blood. Unlike anything said to “live” in Limbo, the beast didn’t eat, like a rabid animal, or even eat at all. Instead, it wandered like a child forced to collect information.

Its mind was devoid of everything except voices, yet the beast couldn’t comprehend them. They were closer to static, burning its ears and cutting at whatever sense of self it even had.

“It’s interesting. I never thought I’d see one all the way out here, Tara.”

Akihiko looked through the lime-tinted lenses of high-tech scope, viewing the beast from afar like a lion observing potential prey to sink its fangs into. It was mesmerizing, watching the way the beast’s form changed, bubbling and sprouting new limbs to imitate its surroundings.

A cold crunch filled Akihiko’s ears, withdrawing him from his trance. Tara looked into the distance beyond the sandy blonde locks of her hair only to scoff, thinking about how much time they wasted tracking this one insignificant thing for so long.

“Is that so? You get interested in anything with the capacity to mold even a small amount of reiju, Akihiko,” Tara replied with a cold sigh.

“Correction, something that might give me a good fight… or worth teaching,” Akihiko said.

Tara withdrew the mask from her face, allowing her long blonde hair to return to its original form and with it the rest of her. Tara's skin crawled from the sensation of her reiju. It felt like a piece of her was ripped away with each usage. As if every time marked a return to his cursed reality.

“I doubt there’s much of a difference, to you,” he said, turning his aquamarine gaze onto Akihiko. “Just try not to do that when we fight together it does way more harm to me than good.”

Akihiko smirked in protest. The quest of a teacher never ends, but the moment the image of the beast blurred, his smirk faded. One thing their reports failed to have was how ineffective technology can be in Limbo.

“It’s broken again,” he muttered.

The two peered into the distance, both unable to see. Even then, Tara was vaguely interested, kneeling over near Akihiko, and snatching the device away to see what this thing even was.

“My tech anyway,” he muttered, adjusting the range with the reiju frequency the beast had, and restoring the image. It appeared damaged, yet clung to its sense of self, regardless.

“So human, yet also not. I can feel it’s reiju from here.”

“I told you it’s interesting~!” Akihiko said.

“As if—why don’t you go off and find some more people to ‘teach’ while I analyze this thing?”

Akihiko smirked and released some of his reiju and for a moment; Tara swore the beast shifted its golden gaze toward the two. The air around it was familiar but negligible. He didn’t want to think about that man.

Tara could feel, not only hear, the shock waves from whatever battle Akihiko got himself into. Usually, he’d be worried, but obviously, the young man would be fine; it was Akihiko after all. Instead, he turned his attention to the beast and the way its body warped and slithered around the landscape, only taking moments to adopt the forms of what it saw.

“What is this thing, anyway? Feels like a user of the Envy Curse Series, but I can barely feel its reiju from here,” he muttered to himself, falling into the same trance as Akihiko just watching it and thinking.

The beast was unlike anything to roam Limbo. While the sun dared to burn things to a crisp or suffocate with its humidity, this beast appeared anything but hostile. It avoided areas where combat occurred and, on the rare chance it was close, it curled up like a scared child having a nightmare.

Even the beast wished for the hellish trial to end like anyone else in Limbo.

Eight hours had passed, and only a few students remained, with others gathering into groups for survival.

Tara doubted that any had even awakened their Anima in such a condition. Even he hadn’t been able to in this place. As disappointing as it was, those old legends were unsurprisingly untrue, at least this thing he witnessed was interesting as much as he hated to admit it.

“So my theory is Zephyr sent it out here, kind of like a way to artificially cull the class size to find us, some kind of Anima-based organism,” Akihiko said.

Tara jumped slightly, less at the idea of it, but instead hearing Akihiko’s smooth voice shine along his ears like the sun above them that dared to kill if someone stared at it too long.

“You don’t think him and that show-off of an Exousia with him didn’t do the trick, promising people power if they just survived this place?”

“It did. This thing might be more of a direct measure to find us like that boy—Emerys was his name, I think.”

It wasn’t a bad idea but one that Tara couldn’t accept so easily, even Zephyr couldn’t create something like this and Anima only can exist where reiju doesn’t infect with its power. He scoffed at the enormous amount of reiju radiating from within the beast.

“I barely heard you return—how was the fight?”

“I snapped six necks!” Akihiko said, with a hint of pride. A lion did the equivalent of snapping six baby birds in half and was proud of it.

“Though this thing can’t be someone’s Anima. I can practically feel the thing’s reiju all the way from here and the visor can still track it.”

Akihiko chuckled, still working out how to see the beast without getting too close, silently cursing the fact they only brought a single visor out even if he didn’t want to waste energy learning how to use it.

“It’s coming closer, that’s why you can feel its reiju more, dummy. Though it isn’t a student. Unless it suddenly started creating elements out of nowhere or getting unnaturally strong, then you can’t even say it's Pride or Wrath User,” Akihiko said.

Even if he tried to mask it, Tara could hear the disappointment in the young man’s voice despite the good analysis. A beast capable of wielding a force as unnatural as reiju can be, but also incapable of any other forms of sensory.

It was unsurprisingly a waste of time.

His cold gaze already mapped out the prime way to kill a beast like this and the beast could feel it, closer to the omniscient eye, to lull him to death like the whispers beyond the static in his mind rather than something else.

Despite walking along the harsh sands of Limbo, it couldn’t feel a thing. Its gaze was dull, its body was numb, and its mind was static.

Voices clung together, only to create an unnatural sound that rang within the beast’s ears. The only sense of calmness it could gather was from the occasional shock wave of reiju that silenced the voices in the distance.

Battle was the one thing that could calm its intrigue as it curled up once more to hear its call. It never even knew what it was, neither did it understand what it meant to fight, but the occasional thing the beast gathered from the voices in its mind when the calm of foreign reiju couldn’t sustain it was through battle it could achieve some sense of comfort within the splintered chaos of its mind.

The beast thirsted for that answer and focused on the next shock wave through the raging static of its mind. It could imagine the feeling, the warm sensation of reiju filling the cracks within it only for a moment before it drifted away like fireflies in the night sky. The chime reiju had was unlike any sound it had heard, unlike the yells or whispers it was closer to a calm hum that lulled it closer to safety and security.

Without the embrace of reiju, the beast may die.

Akihiko and Tara had shared the device, both looking through a scope, eagerly watching the beast’s next move.

“Yep, the more I think about it, definitely a trap,” Tara muttered, only to steal the device from Akihiko once more to continue watching.

“Usually, I’d think about taking it out, but it’ll be better to see how the other two handle this, plus me, and you can lock onto its reiju frequency at this point.”

Akihiko let go of the device and sat on the burning earth. It felt quite toasty. His brown hair trailed behind him as air swung it around like a wild toy. He finally focused his mind on what they had to do.

The black diamond mark on his palm ached when he thought about the boy they saw on their airship. There was something about his gaze that he couldn’t shake. He met the Deadly Sin of Greed only a few times in his life and spoke to him once.

Never would he think there was someone that could look so similar to a Deadly Sin other than a blood descendant. Something about that forced his excitement to rise like the flames in his heart.

“They really are both out here. I don’t know whether to be nervous or excited. Two others just like us,” Akihiko muttered.

Tara scowled at the thought of people like that. Especially two that knew his mother as well as they were said to. He placed a mask over his face, letting his curly blonde hair glow bright green and grow back to the length from before. His boyish tone grew cold beneath his mask and for a moment, he felt a hint of comfort.

“I couldn’t care less. I’m more disappointed Lord Lucifer thought that his grandson and I couldn’t handle a conspiracy against him like this.”

“Gramps said we were free to do what we wanted, maybe that Invidian Pride of yours couldn’t help but want to crush whatever plan the nobility had cooked up. Though, I wonder if those two got their marks yet?” Akihiko said, watching the wind die down but unconsciously tracking the beast’s movements.

It grew closer with each minute, but not towards them, instead to something else.

“Wrath might’ve gotten hers, but I don’t even think I’ve ever seen Lord Mammon’s successor, let alone met the brat he chose,” Tara replied, only to change the subject. “If this thing’s a trap, then why aren’t we taking it out?”

Akihiko smirked.

Tara recognized that look on his face. No matter what the young man was going to say, it was going to be brilliant or worthless for what they needed to do. No matter what it was, Akihiko would be completely resolved with what he declared.

“It’ll be a test for them.”

“We’ve been tracking Zephyr’s supposed trap to catch us for nearly three hours and your bright idea is to test them ⸺ why??”

Akihiko turned to Tara, changing the look on his face to imitate something familiar to them.

“I consider myself a teacher, Tara,” he followed his words up with a chuckle.

“More like a teacher of how to run blindly into danger for people who don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I’ll give you points for that impression of those Superbian tutors we had at least,” he said.

Akihiko sighed at Tara despite hearing the warmth laced within his bitter words.

“Maybe, but it’s only natural that a prince like me would care for his people. We’ve had more than enough Deadly Sins who barely care about the world.”

Tara nodded. The young man’s words weren’t as disagreeable especially when he pictured the sight of Leviathan. His blood ran cold, but he quickly returned to normal when the beast’s reiju seemed to flare.

“It’s chasing something,” he said.

“Then in that case… we’ll follow it, Tara.”