forget me not

Over time, teasing the insolent boy stopped being funny to Ryuzu. Pax’s mind was completely open to him with just the slightest bit of effort, but Ryuzu found himself looking at the same few images on repeat. Really, he couldn’t feel anything but pity for the child.

Since leaving everyone behind, Pax had been suffering from insomnia most nights. This was partly due to the fact that he lacked proper sleeping conditions and partly due to the constant pain he forced upon himself as a by-product of the rapid-aging magic. Of course, Pax could have forcefully pumped melatonin into his body if he really wanted to sleep, but if something had attacked him in the middle of the night then he would be dead. At least that was what the justification he used.

Truthfully, this was just another means of self torture for himself. Another way to fabricate madness for the boy who believed he didn’t deserve anything more.

Ryuzu watched as Pax dozed off into an uneasy sleep. In the boy’s dreams, he was walking in a field of flowers with the girl he loved. They were small five-petaled bright blue flowers with yellow centers, and they fluttered beautifully when the wind passed by.

Then Raya laid down on the forget-me-nots, pulling Pax into her embrace as she did so. Her arms found their way to his fragile back. Tighter and tighter she hugged, until Pax became unable to breathe. Pax smiled as he looked into her emerald eyes. Her hands had moved further upwards now. Raya smiled back as her hands wrapped around his slender neck and squeezed.

Ryuzu was used to seeing Pax torture himself in this way. But this time he noticed something strange: Raya in the dream was slightly shorter than she should have been. Her deep-blue hair was slightly longer than she had ever let it grow in life, and the position of the beauty mark on her face was too low. When Ryuzu looked closely, there were all sorts of inconsistencies between the real Raya and the one now present in Pax’s dream.

Whether Pax wanted to admit it or not, he was forgetting things about Raya.

If she spoke, would her voice even sound like Raya’s?

The human memory was not infallible, but even Ryuzu was scared of what would happen if Pax forgot any more than he already had.

In the first place, Raya hated flowers.

- - - - - - -

Alexander Telantra splashed a bit of water on his face as he prepared to greet his guests. He was dressed in a tailored suit made from the wool of a Oceanian Dove-goat. It had costed more than a small mansion in the south would’ve.

Even so, it was worth it. This is the suit I’ll be dying in, after all.

He looked at his chest in the mirror as he straightened his tie. There was no pulse in the heart beneath these expensive clothes.

If you consider the current me alive, that is.

He had fully become one of the sentry’s mannequins by this point, but that fact didn’t bother him. He narrowed his fox-like eyes as he surveyed himself in the mirror. He clenched his fist around a small amount of his own blood. Perhaps, in this state he could finally peer into his own Fate.

His eyes glowed a brilliant blue as nearly half his mana burned away in an instant.

His heart, drenched in the primordial ink.

The blood in his fist dissolved into blackness and the Count nearly fell to the ground. Catching himself on edge of the sink, he chuckled inwardly and spit out the blood in his mouth.

He hadn’t even seen a single image when peering into his own Fate, but those few words were more than enough for him. They were confirmation that his death would be interesting, if nothing more.

Smiling a toothy smile, he brushed his hair back.

“It’s showtime.”

With that, he left the bathroom, letting blood that would never be replaced flow down the drain.

- - - - - - -

Derrick watched as the shadow bumped into the side of a shack, knocking the entire thing over. A man emerged and cursed loudly, before noticing the shadow and quietly slipping away.

“She's hard to get used to.”

“hmm” nodded Ivy in agreement.

“And while she's around, we can't have Sakura.”

“Right.”

The shadow tripped on a stick and face-planted into the ground.

“Are you sure that there is no way we can get Sakura back?” asked Derrick.

“You've known her longer than us. Probably,” Interrupted a melancholic voice. “Shouldn’t you know? What did you do the last time this happened?”

Derrick looked back towards Djyn, who had inserted himself into the conversation between Derrick and Ivy. He seemed to be slowly getting better after what had happened to Eris (and after the following incident with Pax), which made Derrick happy. But talking to the guy was still as tiring as ever.

“Last time, huh….”

Derrick stared into the distance as he reminisced of those times that felt a lifetime ago.

During the Northern War, Vincent, Sakura, and Derrick had also been together. In those days, all three of them had been young and inexperienced rookies fighting for what they each believed in. Sakura had been especially naive back then. Though, surprisingly, she was probably the only one who still held on to her ideals.

Derrick had emerged from that war a broken man, and, in Derrick’s eyes, Vincent never left that bloody battlefield.

It took Derrick a moment to realize that his mind had wandered off on its own, and it made him feel like an old man trying to relive his glory days.

“Right, Lily…” He thought for a moment. “Back then, the way she appeared had been quite different actually…”

- - - - - - -

His right hand trembled and finally dropped the broken sword. Through heavy breaths, he bared his fangs at the soldier standing atop another soldier’s corpse. Smoke rose in the distance as the sounds of clashing swords sung the chaotic symphony of war.

But in this tiny bubble, there were only two souls that mattered.

The eyes of the enemy soldier trembled with fear, but he yelled out in fury as he leapt towards Derrick.

Time seemed to slow down as Derrick augmented his senses and focus far beyond their limits. In this state, he could predict the movements of the enemy almost flawlessly.

He slipped beneath the man’s axe and slashed their throat with his claws. Blood flew and splatted atop a nearby rock. Derrick could clearly see the surging of fear in the man’s eyes as they realized that they would be dying soon. But in his final moments, rage took precedence.

The axe fell to the ground as the soldier’s arms wrapped themselves around Derrick. The man’s muscles bulged to over double their normal size. He squeezed so tightly that Derrick saw stars for a moment.

Then the man leaned forwards and fell onto the ground, crushing Derrick beneath him. He multiplied his own weight by several times with his magic. Then he did so again and again. Burning all the mana he had left alongside his own soul, the soldier increased his own weight to over several tons –heavier than that of an elephant.

Derrick’s eyesight vanished when oxygen couldn’t find its way to his head, but his augmented senses still felt the soldier’s warm blood drip steadily onto his face. He groaned as he felt his ribs crack beneath the intense pressure, but all he could do was endure.

Endure until the soldier fully died.

With that single thought, he managed to last until the soldier’s heart beat fully stopped. Luckily, it had only taken a few seconds for the soldier to die. That meant Derrick would survive another day in this hellish landscape.

Derrick managed to get the soldier’s body off of him with great effort, but found himself unable to stand up. So he simply stared at the bright sky for a while, trying to focus on something other than what was happening all around him and the fact that someone could easily find him and kill him in the state that he was.

It was because he was staring up at the sky that Derrick noticed when the world started getting inexplicably darker. The shadows around him suddenly became much deeper and the colors of the world suddenly lost their saturation. Even the normally vibrant crimson of blood became dull and muted to Derrick’s augmented eyes.

The sounds of battle were replaced with screams of fear in Derrick’s augmented ears. He could hear the thumping of hundreds of scared footsteps running away from the battle. A black tendril slithered its way towards Derrick until it was hovering a few feet in front of his face.

An bulging eye popped out the shadowy tendril’s end and seemed to survey him for a moment.

[--Friend--]

Somehow the tendril had spoken without a mouth. The shadows beneath him stirred and lifted Derrick off the ground. He would have resisted, but for some reason the tendril’s voice and scent felt familiar, so he let it carry him away.

Elevated from the ground he could see the shadows as they consumed the world– But not much else because he soon passed out from blood loss.

- - - - - - -

“So what was the moral of that story, old man?” asked Ivy. She and Djyn had patiently listened to Derrick’s entire story, only for it to end without answering their questions.

“Yeah, how did you end up bringing Sakura back? or something,” added Djyn.

“ah, well… I have no idea actually. Vincent apparently went out and did something back then. That shadow, Lily, didn't really stick around that long after the battle.”

Indeed, Derrick's perspective was almost completely useless to Djyn and Ivy, but even with the limited information he could provide, there were several conclusions that the pair could come to. Conclusions that couldn't be said out loud.

Of course, Djyn didn't really care about that:

“So why is Vincent keeping Lily around instead of Sakura? Don't we need a healer more than another tactical-level magician?”

Derrick, exasperated, answered, “That's what I'm confused about too.”

“Huh? Isn't it obvious?” said Ivy incredulously. “He obviously plans to get Pax back. That way we won't be down a healer.”