Chapter 17

We were running through the eerily empty halls of the station mall as we were chased by the undead horde of Apostles. The entire setting was like that of a classic horror movie. I was trying my best to read over the complicated spell that Ichiro had given me, making sure I understood the intricacies that went into it. While most spells are simple and can be cast with a chant or incantation. Even more complicated ones have simple meanings and understanding. You want to cast a fireball? Just think of something hot. Water and ice, the opposite. Those are considered simple. But once you add things like forming the ice into a shape, adding pressure to the water, or the level of heat to the flame, you start making it more complicated and more intense on mana use. On top of that, once you start leaving things of basic elements and physics, it takes a strong and creative mage to really use these spells. This particular one that Ichiro had created for me to use was one of those spells that was considered unnatural.

“Ryuki!! Use that spell already! These zombies are creeping me out! PLEASE!” Tsuki started to wail. She wasn’t even running; she had clung herself to my back and wrapped her legs around my waist and her arms tightly around my neck, strangling me at times.

“I’m trying to understand it, but you aren’t exactly helping with the situation! Can’t you just slice them up until I’m ready?”

“No wayyy! They’d just grab me and touch me and grope me and bite me and hurt me!” She cried out.

“What do you think the undead do to people?” Marie said, voice emotionless.

“Everything bad! It doesn’t matter if I cut them into a million little pieces or remove their hearts or cut off their toes and feet and legs! They’ll do terrible, terrible things to me! KILL THEM RYUKI!”

“You are one messed up girl.” Ichiro chimed over the earpiece.

“Shut up Ichiro you hair freak.” Tsuki said in a completely serious tone that was a total opposite of how she was just acting.

“Fine. Marie, can you try to distract them for just a little while? I need to understand this spell.”

Maire said nothing and just nodded confidently. She pulled out a pistol that was hidden in the waist band of her pants and started to fire at the shambling Apostles. She ran toward them as I stopped running to focus on the parchment in my hand.

“How long did she have that in her pants?!” Tsuki said, pointing at Marie. I took this opportunity to grab her arm and toss her off my back. She made a horrible sound as she hit the ground, but it wasn’t a sound of pain. It was more like of complete betrayal.

“Sorry, Tsuki, but I need to focus, and you were getting heavy.”

“I am not heavy! You can just reinforce yourself! Waah!”

“I was reinforcing myself.”

I hid behind one of the benches and studied the parchment. The symbols and crests and words all explicitly laid out what the spell was supposed to do, but visualizing and manifesting the actual power of it was something else. I couldn’t fathom how Ichiro, a human with no magical talent, could create spells like this, let alone one to reanimate corpses. I closed my eyes and started to envision what I thought Ichiro imagined for this spell. I knew it wasn’t impossible, that these spells weren’t powerless, as someone in the Secular had already used his reanimation spell. Someone had the power and skill to bring these to reality from somewhere that never existed. From another world.

Just then, it clicked. As if a chill went down my spine and traveled through my nerves, I felt something ‘unlock’ inside me. I couldn’t explain what happened properly if I tried, but I could just feel that I knew what Ichiro sees when he develops these kinds of spells. He wants to bring in something that doesn’t exist. He is purposely breaking established magical knowledge, as if someone were to break physics. And so that’s what I needed to do.

I stood out from behind the bench and Marie had just run by me. She said nothing and simply looked at me. I nodded in silence and she nodded back, her eyes narrowing. She sprinted over to Tsuki, who was still crawling on the ground and throwing a tantrum, and rolled her onto her back and sprinted off. For how slim and small Marie was, it was always impressive to see the feats of strength she could pull off without magical enhancements. I looked at the shambling corpses heading toward me as I reached out my hand. Several of them were full of bullet holes, others missing chunks of their body as if they were hit by a grenade, but they were slowly regenerating. It seemed like Tsuki was right that cutting them up would be useless. I steadied my breathing and started to chant.

“Void, eclipse this world, take back what you hath given, take back what we have stole.” Swirls of complete darkness started to leak out of my fingertips toward the palm of my hand. The sensation felt like my own stamina was being drained. “Remove from here the essence of your world, obliterate those who seek to abuse you.” My vision was starting to blur as my eyelids fluttered. I felt my own essence being put into this spell, as if it required life to power it. But I pressed on, determined to fulfill Ichiro’s wish and to save my comrades. “Drain and purge this land, reclaim your powerful gift of mana.” My body felt light. My sense of direction was gone. Up was down, down was left and right was backwards. I could barely see, but I knew I could finish it. “Prithee reclaim it...” My body went numb.

“Abyss.”

The orb of pure black in my hand shot out like a shotgun, spreading wide and latching like a black web to any surface it could as it traveled forward. I was launched backward and slid across the smooth floor. The shadowy web moved forward like an eldritch creature stalking its prey, web-like tendrils reaching out and decaying everything it touched. Plants instantly withered and died, metal rusted, brick and marble cracked. The eeriest part of it all was it felt like the world became muted. I couldn’t tell if it was the blow back of the spell or if sound waves too were being consumed by the black mass. I watched through lidded eyes as the wall of darkness finally impacted the Apostles. What I expected to happen was for the corpses to fall over and die, having the mana removed from them. But what happened was far more gruesome than I could ever imagine. As the wall passed through them, the Apostles did stop moving, but they didn’t fall. It was like they were frozen in time. Then their robes disintegrated into a black shadow. And then the casual clothes of the people underneath vanished too. And then their skin. And then their muscles. And then that too got stripped away, leaving bones and the nervous system and blood vessels. And finally, it all disintegrated into shadowy nothingness. One after the other, they all died like this. Rather, they were all removed from existence.

“What a horrifying thing to create...” I whispered out.

I could barely feel myself. Everything was numb. I couldn’t move and I couldn’t hear anything. I hadn’t even realized that my head was now resting in someone's lap. I couldn’t tell if their thighs were soft or comfortable or warm. I only knew I was resting on them as when I looked up, I saw a mischievous face with golden eyes shrouded in pink bangs looking down at me. Tsuki flashed me a toothy grin; one like a demon would have as she moved her hand through my hair. At least, that’s what I think she was doing. As I looked up at her, I noticed a new accessory that she had gotten that I hadn’t seen earlier. She had three small metal ear cuffs on the upper part of her left ear. I wearily reached a hand up to touch them but only managed to slightly brush her cheek.

“Those cuffs... look nice... on...”

Then, my vision went black.