A Hill To Die On (Part 2)

October 13th - Kimura Kiyomi 

“What are you going to do Kento? Put her soul in that pendant like she did with Yuto all those years ago?” My mother almost screamed those words and jumped up from the bench, I couldn't figure out why she was so angry about this. Kento in turn looked at her and smiled. He seemed unfazed by her outburst.

“Why are you against it Mirai? At least we can save her soul that way. She will die. Just like Yuto. You must realize this.” His calm way of speaking reminded me of Suzuki, but it felt a lot less like an act and more like he was actually calm and collected because he had a lot of experience with difficult situations.

“Why do you actually need to do this? Putting Yutos soul into this thing never accomplished anything. It was only make believe. Give the little girl a toy and she will forget about her friend dying. That's all it was.” My mother looked like I had never seen her before, even after Suzuki first appeared at our house. Her face was almost grotesque and I was almost scared of her.

“Mirai, I will explain everything later. But now we need to act quickly.” Kento was still totally calm and my mothers fighting spirit seemed to wane already and she sunk back onto the bench. Her face turned back to normal and I almost couldn't believe what had just happened. Now everyone turned their attention back to Sophia and it was obvious that she was not going to make it much longer.

“I'm going to do it now Sophia, alright?” Kento was holding her hand as he said that and Sophia smiled faintly at him and nodded ever so slightly. Kento took the pendulum and put it on Sophias chest, roughly where her heart was. Then it suddenly started to glow, in the same colour my Mana was glowing. And suddenly the crystal filled itself with a substance that made it look like fire or even the sun. As soon as the crystal was completely filled with the substance the glow of the mana stopped. At the same time I noticed that Sophia stopped breathing, she seemingly was dead. Then her body suddenly started to glow and at the same time seemed to slowly disappear. Her daughter was crying loudly now and I was close to tears as well even though I barely knew any of the people involved her. I looked at my mother and even though her face was still stoic, I could see some tears in her eyes. Even she seemed to be moved by Sophias death. Kento handed the pendant to my mother, who took it without saying a single word. Then Kento looked at me.

“Let's go Kimura, we need to help Suzuki.” That reminded me that we were actually in a battle right now and that Suzuki was struggling to keep the Eiskralle at bay. Kento and I ran to Suzuki, who seemed relived that we were finally back to help him.

“Sorry Suzuki, we needed to take care of that first. But now we will finish this,” Kento said with utter conviction that made me believe everything he said. In a sense his voice made me feel the same way Suzuzkis did, but it felt more natural? Hard to explain.

“Here's what we are going to do,” Kento continued. “I'm going to engage the Eiskralle alone. I can't do much without any Mana, but it will be enough to give you two the time to charge stronger attack.”

Suzuki and I nodded in agreement and so Kento went and engaged the Eiskralle, whilst Suzuki and I stood next to each other and put our palms together like we had done in training and I started to transfer Mana to him. “How much do you think we need?” I asked Suzuki.

“I really don't know. But I feel like we should go for as long as we can. The attack needs to be powerful enough to beat that thing or it's all worthless. If he only go hlafway we might end uf having not enough Mana to ready a second attack.” I agreed with his thinking, but last time we really cut it close and nearly messed up and this time other people were also involved, so we needed to get this right for sure. I kept channeling Mana to him and I was thinking I would do it until I felt like I'm fainting. Kento was able to hold back the beast for now so we had a little bit more time and just as I felt like I was getting really sleepy and exhausted I conjured the mental image needed to stop the flow of the Mana and it actually worked. I looked at Suzuki and he nodded as to signify that he felt like it worked. He slowly walked towards the beast and told Kento to get out of the way and he did as he was told. Suzuki postured in the same way he did on the roof when we were first fighting and even though it still looked pretty cool, I couldn't help but wonder whether he just did it to impress the bystanders. Then he launched his attack. This time he went for something different than the first time and I heard him yelling “Flammenschild” before the fire that shot from his hands formed a circular form in front of him, it looked a lot like a shield made of fire. And as soon as it had finished forming Suzuki moved forward and he and the shield slowly walked towards the Eiskralle. Apparently the idea was the crush the monster with the shield of fire and as the monster was still moving towards us it was soon hit with the wall of fire and it let out a gurgling scream that sent shivers down my spine, but the fire seemed to do it's job and only seconds later the whole monster was nothing more than a puddle of water. Suzuki collapsed onto his knees and Kento and I ran towards him, but he signaled us that he was fine and I was more relived than I expected.

After we defeated the monster Kento told us that we should head back to Sophias house and rest and talk about what we needed to do next and since my mother still wasn't really fully there, Kento drove her car back to Sophias house. I drove in the car with Kento and so did Reiko, whilst Suzuki went with his mother in their car. Our drive was very silent as we all felt tired and shaken by the events that had just taken place. To think that someone had just died was a hard pill to swallow considering it was my task to fight the monster alonside Suzuki. I had the feeling Sophia had planned what happened to her, but it didn't necessarily make it feel much better for me and Reiko held my hand the whole time until we arrived at the house.