Atop the World

The world looked up with awe.

Or so Soriko assumed.

It was barely possible to make out crowds of people from this height, let alone their expressions. But the sight of a massive ring of light spaning the sky, bright enough to be visible even in the daylight, had to be worthy of awe.

Add to that the sudden disappearance of the barrier, usually a very noticeable black sphere on the mountainside, and people were sure to be alight with awe and excitement. Or terror. Mostly terror, probably.

With so many people looking up, some were also bound to notice the small platform of earth hovering in the sky, but they probably wouldn’t see the pair standing atop it. Which was a shame, because they probably looked quite intimidating. Few would guess that, of their party, one didn’t remember who he was and the other was terrified out of her mind.

“I really don’t get any of it,” Hikara said in a half whisper, kneeling at the edge and peering down at the city.

Soriko turned to look at him, carefully taking a step closer to the edge. The valley was filled with skyscrapers and apartment blocks, it must be an alien world to someone like him.

“It’s just building techniques,” she did her best to explain without being condescending, “You’d be surprised how similar the insides are to traditional buildings,”

He glanced towards her, eyes betraying a hint of appreciation.

“Does it have to do with what you mentioned about magic coming a long way since my time?”

Soriko paused.

“Well, kind of. You could do all that without magic, though,”

“I can’t imagine how,”

Silence, save for the slight rustle of the wind.

Eventually Hikara spoke again.

“I can tell you’re right about the evolution of magic though. The disk was a pretty simple storage mechanism, but…”

He looked her dead in the eyes.

“Those eyes are just as alien to me as these buildings,”

Soriko immediately winced, closing her eyes.

Given the last hour of her life, it was a miracle she hadn’t done anything catastrophic. After all these years, maybe she simply had better control than she gave herself credit for. But that didn’t matter to her. She had decided she simply wouldn’t take that risk.

“Why are you closing them?” Hikara’s voice was closer now, “I just want to understand,”

“They’re dangerous,” she whispered.

“Even to me?”

“Maybe. I don’t know,” she hesitated for a second, “Can I please just explain without showing you?”

He didn’t respond, which she took as a yes.

“My eyes, or at least the magical force behind them, are what is called a curse. The technical definition is any magical construct that can adapt itself, but usually we also mean that it has some kind of volition of its own, and that it ties itself into knots that are almost impossible to decipher,”

“Magical construct…” he was mostly talking to himself, but she got the question.

“Right, that’s what makes modern magic so distinct from your time. Over the centuries we’ve made a science of creating magic that follows complicated processes and reacts to stimuli,”

“So on one hand, you get spells that construct these massive buildings, and on the other you get some that go out of control? It makes sense, given how many people would seem to be capable of experimenting,”

Well he certainly picked things up quickly.

“My eyes are a textbook example of when we’d consider something a curse. No one knows where exactly it started, but at some point it started bonding to people, giving them eyes like this. When its host dies it generally vanishes for a few years, then reincarnates on a newborn. Like a parasite finding a new host. There are countless similar curses, but mine is particularly famous thanks to an infamous psychopath that almost destroyed the world with them,”

“Can you show me?”

He really was relentless.

“Is that how you ask for something politely?” She asked with a sigh.

Silence. He was probably genuinely trying to remember, to him that wasn’t a rhetorical question.

“Oh. Could you please show me?”

And now she’d really backed herself into a corner. Hesitantly, she opened her eyes.

He was right in front of her. Like, right in front of her.

She instinctually stepped backwards, but he only pushed closer, his pale blue stare like a laser burning her eyes with curiosity.

“Just like I thought,” he mumbled, “it doesn’t really exist when your eyes are closed. It really is tied to your conscious, although I can tell it exists separately,”

It was the first time she’d seen him so expressive, and she was mostly sure that wasn’t just because he was so close.

“Um…”

“It’s completely impenetrable to me, but I can see how it would develop. The right kind of formulas…”

“H… Hikara?”

“Yes?”

“You’re… really close,”

He blinked, eyes wide.

“Sorry?” he stepped back, slightly confused, “Are you alright? Your face is a little red,”

Soriko squeezed her eyes shut.

“Y- yep. B- But that’s enough about me, you were wondering about yourself, right?”

He paused.

“That’s right,”

Silence for a moment.

“So…” he prompted, “What do you know?”

Soriko really did have a way of getting herself into predicaments.

“I… could you tell me what you remember first?”

He considered.

“Almost nothing. I’m remembering more and more about the duel, but not anything from before it. I have no idea why it happened or what I was like before,”

Soriko looked down. What would that be like? All she could do right now was answer as best she could.

“I don’t know how much we can trust the myths, but you stand alone in a lot of ways. People don’t talk about it often, but the other five Saints didn’t originally accept you. You had to fight your way into acceptance,”

He looked upwards ponderously.

“The others… I really don’t remember anything. Who was it I was fighting?”

Finally, an easy question.

“Kairou, the Patron Saint of the Visual Arts,”

His eyes widened ever so slightly.

“That almost…” he sighed, “I don’t know. But it does sound right. Why were we fighting?”

Soriko hesitated.

“There are a lot of different versions of the story. Some say that he just still didn’t accept you, some that it was over the future of magic, some that the argument is simply lost to time,”

He sighed, and Soriko breathed out in determination. There was something therapeutic about the process. No crazy priests. No battles. Just the two of them, safe up in the sky, working through his history.

“Well–”

The ground exploded underneath them.