Chapitre 76: Chapter 76 - Meanwhile, in the other side of the coin
{A/N: This chapter is the first being republished in the final day of 2022! So yeah, nothing more great than starting this day with a new Volume and also seeing what is happening in the other side~ Hope that y'all enjoy!}
[Lady Nezera(?) POV]
It was a calm and peaceful day, I had just gotten out of my bed, wearing only light white clothes, like pajamas. Walking to my closet, I grabbed my work robes and went to the bathroom, humming in my shower until I finished and dressed myself completely.
"Yaw..." I gave a little yawn coming out of the bathroom and combing my long hair.
After that, I started walking around my house, until I reached a mini bar that was in the kitchen, taking some bottles of drinks and mixing their contents in a glass cup. I took a long sip of the contents while looking around the kitchen.
"Why.... Why am I feeling this way today...?"
I'm sad? Why? Why did I start to feel so blue? No, that's not all... I also started to feel a strange emptiness.
Luckily, that emptiness seemed to disappear after three glasses of liquor. "Ergh... I hope my work today isn't so annoying-... Wait.. Work.. What day is it?" I said looking at the calendar and getting wide-eyed.
"Oh no... It's today... Why did I forget about that!" I put my hand on my face, slapping my cheek to wake up for good. "I promised her I'd get there early today! Damn it!" I took a fruit from the fruit bowl and started to eat it while I went to a specific room in my house.
"Let's go..." I finished eating that fruit and took a deep breath, returning to my more common expression.
Then, I activated one of the tempus warp that was in that room and entered the portal created. I ended up going out in a hidden area of a garden, it was beautiful, with several decorations of flowers with cold colors and a small pond. One of the maids at the place ended up seeing me and bowing to me.
"No need to do that. Could you let them know I arrived?" with my speech, the maid got up and walked to the mansion there.
Meanwhile, I started walking to the front door, having a few thoughts in my mind, no...not just thoughts, but also some flashbacks to a simpler time. A time when people didn't respect me in a grandiose way, for the simple fact that I wasn't known.
I saw the door opening, and I ended up observing three well-known people, one of them was a young woman, who had just reached adulthood, giving me a warm hug. While the other two were men, one of them with a serious and judgmental look in the girl's direction, and the other that kept a friendly smile.
"Caera... Pull yourself together. I know you're so glad she came right after your birthday. But that's also another reason to behave." Corbett made the comment, causing the girl to let go of me almost instantly and bend over a little. "I'm sorry about that, Scythe Seris. She's been behaving like this lately." He continued to speak as I looked at my disciple.
"No problem, Corbett of the Highblood Denoir. Some might not believe it, but I was excited like that in my younger days." I replied to Caera's adoptive father, but then looked at her adoptive brother, Sevren. "And good morning, young lunatic scientist. Is the arena ready?"
"The training arena has always been ready since the days before your scheduled visits, Oh..Grand Scythe Seris!" He responded by bowing comically, which made Corbett give a judgmental look at his biological son too.
"I still don't understand where the friendship between you two came from." He said, stepping out of the front door and walking towards some hallways.
"We started acting this way because we always have casual conversations while watching Caera train. I already answered that the last time you asked." I commented and we walked to the arena, where, shortly after that, Corbett decided to walk away to do his errands while Sevren stayed with us.
"Can we start, Scythe Seris?" my disciple asked as she took her sword, with a long thin red blade.
"Sevren?" I asked the young scientist, who put a device on the floor and locked the door.
"Okay. The aura shield has been put on. You can go all out." He answered me and Caera soon deactivated an artifact of hers, revealing her horns.
It was always good to be cautious. From the level of intimacy Sevren had with Caera, he was the only one besides me who knew about the awakening of his foster sister's Vritra blood. And it's best to stay that way, after all, I wouldn't like to see my disciple being turned into an experiment for Agrona.
"Okay, we can start now." I said, pulling out my dimensional ring two daggers, meanwhile, I saw Caera with a calmer smile, having imbued soulfire in her blade.
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It was already past 7 pm. Sevren had to leave a while ago. Because he had to take the containment artifact with him, Caera went back to training techniques without using her decay-mana, using the special artifact that made her keep her horns hidden.
I was watching my disciple making intense cuts in the air. Clearly I would need to go back to training with her in terms of speed. But my thoughts were interrupted by one of the maids who ended up calling our attention near the entrance to the training arena.
Caera stopped her training by digging her sword into the ground as I looked at the maid, asking. "Did something happen?"
"I'm sorry to interrupt you, Scythe Seris.. But we received an emergency news" She said bowing to me and continued to speak. "We weren't told what an emergency it was, but The High Sovereign is calling you to his residence."
It made me confused, even though I was one of the strongest Scythers, Agrona never called me into an emergency situation and I couldn't imagine what that would be about. "It's okay. I'm leaving right now." I spoke to the maid and then looked at Caera she was wide-eyed to hear who had called me. "I'll have to go now, see you later."
"Alright, Scythe Seris." Caera bowed too, and I started toward the tempus warp I left in the garden of the Highblood Denoir estate.
Using my signature mana, I activated the portal, returning again to my house, inside the room with my other tempus warps set up. I went towards one of them and again another portal opened, when I passed through it, I appeared near the entrance to Taegrin Caelum, the great spiral tower, seen as the center of all Alacrya, both symbolically and physically, for being located in the middle of the Central Dominion.
The night landscape there was, to say the least, majestic. The lack of several points of light exposed in the nearby areas, made the vision of the stars perfect. I started to take a few steps, entering the spiral tower and being greeted by some guards. Even though I am a Scythe, they decided to guide me to where Agrona wanted me to go.
"Hm....What do you think it was this time?" I heard a familiar voice, looking back, I saw my purple haired colleague, Scythe Viessa.
"I don't know. I was called while training my disciple. What about you?" I asked her to ease any tension that might exist.
"Just my ordinary duties in Truacia. Besides, of course, I've been preparing in advance for the training of our 'future guest'." She said without showing any expression, with her porcelain face and dark eyes being the most characteristic thing about her.
"I see. Ah, Caera told me to say 'hi' if I saw you for now." No, Caera never asked for that, I just said it because I know Viessa always kept an eye on her when she goes to Sehz-Clar, the domain I work on.
"Oh! She's a really lovely disciple. Are you really planning for her to be your retainer?" I just sighed, not wanting to look at her face, after all, I honestly sometimes feel humiliated by her height... Seriously, she's already much taller than me, and on top of that she likes to wear high boots....?
"Perhaps she still has a lot to learn and there hasn't been any awakening of vritra blood in her yet, which would be a great help." I replied.
"Okay. I can see your point." Viessa commented.
We soon stopped the conversation as we arrived in front of the door to the Agrona meeting hall. In front of us, there were two guards working as security in that area, they bowed when they saw the presence of us and opened the doors for us to pass. Inside, I could see Agrona, sitting in a chair, worthy of a megalomaniac, in front of a table. Seated in chairs farther away were Scythes Cadell and Melzri.
Viessa and I walked into the room and bowed to him. "It's an honor to be called, High Sovereign." We said at the same time and we sat down in some of the chairs next to our colleagues.
"Fine... Our meeting will be quick, I could have just sent orders to you through representatives... But at times like these, I feel it's best to do it personally." He said being quite serious, if it was something of that level, some intense unforeseen happened.
"It's about... A little thorn in my shoe that I never realized was there." He continued to speak and soon placed an artifact in front of him.
When activating that artifact, a holographic panel appeared and there began to play a video. It looked like it was being filmed on someone's clothes and the person was in the midst of plants, along with some other mages.
"Excuse the question, but where did this video come from?" Melzri asked as nothing much happened on the screen.
"It's a prototype created by some scientists, this is the first time using it outside of Alacrya to receive images in real time. So if there was a problem, the team also received other artifacts to record the voice." Agrona replied without any feeling in his voice, just speaking facts.
"Okay folks, don't forget the High Sovereign is watching this, so don't mess things up." Said a male voice, possibly the person carrying the filming device.
They started to introduce themselves respectfully, talking about their roles in the group, their names and what they were doing there. From their names, I was able to identify that a few of them were from Highbloods famous for their conquests in the relictombs.
From the information given, they were there to analyze the structure of one of Dicathen's most prestigious academies, for an attack that was being planned for one to two years from now. The recording continued with them still walking through the trees and bushes of what I imagined was the academy's garden.
"Hm... They seem to have a lot of trees and stuff to give the students a more natural landscape... We should take that idea and put it in the Central Acade-" Viessa tried to make a comment, as nothing important was happening yet, but soon she stopped for some reason.
I also felt what that reason was... There was some strange presence next to us, it made everyone stand up, but Agrona started to speak when he saw our reaction. "The presence you're feeling isn't here... It's in the holographic recording."
I could see Cadell raise an eyebrow at that information and then spoke up. "How did a presence get recorded like that?"
"I think you'll understand by the end of the recording." Agrona replied and we looked at the hologram again.
"Ohoho! Interesting, are they having a party or something?" Said a woman on the recording, making the owner of the artifact go to see the situation, showing a scenario a little far, where there were students on a kind of dance floor made of snow and ice.
"Using their 'all-in-one' magic for this...? How stupid..." Cadell commented as we felt that strange presence closer.
"Wait... It looks like they are getting closer to the source of this presence..." I said, wanting to pay attention to the video and after only 10 seconds, we felt that strong presence increase around 100 times, but among us, only Viessa seemed to have had some reaction, getting gasped.
In the video, a dark haired boy started to leave that area of said party and walk away, after a few steps, strangely he looked towards us, towards the artifact. This action flinched me and the mages in the record.
"Wait... Does that boy know we're here?" Another mage asked in a low voice.
As the artifact turned towards the speaker, a kind of glow erupted from the ground, creating a sudden pillar of flame covering his entire body. They all seemed to hold back the urge to react and started running away from that area.
"Can anyone remind me why our spies are on the run?" Melzri asked.
"Their mission is to analyze the region we are going to attack. If they fought there, the whole plan would go down the drain." I answered the obvious, causing Viessa to chuckle lightly.
After a few minutes of running in one direction, the trees strangely began to move and form a dense wall of leaves around them, as if they were being cornered. And as they turned around, we saw something that made us all bewildered.
That same boy was there, with a sadistic smile on his face, two swords in hand and... He had...
"Are those horns...?" I ended up externalizing the question I had in my mind.
They were horns, to be exact, they were a pair of horns just on the left side of the skull, and they were unlike anything I'd ever seen. Those horns were not black like those of a Vritra, or White like those of the dragons of the Asura clan Indrath. No... They were semi-transparent, with the purple color glowing inside them. That glow was minimally attractive.
The kid looked like just an ordinary teenager if I only looked at his face and clothes, but everything else about him made him look like an elite mage. I tried to follow the fight that was going on, but that glint in his horns always seemed to steal my attention.
Aside from the horns, the other impressive thing about him was the speed he seemed to cast multiple spells. His elemental typing seemed to focus only on fire and wind, but then that boy decided to mentally refute me in his next attack.
"Ice Wrath!" It was one of the few spells we could hear him doing through the recording artifact, and when he made a grabbing motion with one hand, 3 of our mages were impaled by spikes of ice that appeared behind them.
These spikes were slightly black, which made me think it was a form of decay mana art. But deciding not to think about it too much, after all, even though he had horns, I couldn't see any 'vritra' in him... I mean, even his horns are the wrong colors.
The recording was paused when four tornadoes appeared in the direction of our mages. Agrona looked in our direction again, as if asking for our opinion on what we saw.
"A child who can have such an intense presence that we can feel through a recording and leave one of us gasping... This kid is a danger." Melzri commented.
"I agree, though, he looked like he was working with someone, considering the direction of that last attack." I pointed out that detail and all my fellow Scythes agreed.
"Well, we already know from this and others that the person who helped him is the traitor who decided to create that academy." Agrona commented, standing up. "I mean, she's putting together a team to do her job... But how, before she betrayed us, we put a fatal curse whenever she talked about us specifically. There's a big chance they still don't know about our attack... Anyway, I want you to step up your decisions when choosing battalions and ascenders for the war that is coming. Just in case."
"High Sovereign... What are those horns of his? I'm really confused." Viessa commented.
"I unfortunately can't talk... Seris, you can go now, according to your schedule, you have a lot to do today about the administration of the food your domain will provide, unlike the others. As for you all, I want to have a little chat regarding our 're-capture' plan." Agrona was answering Viessa, but soon after he gave us orders.
The 're-capture' plan was what we called the idea of bringing to Alacrya one of our spies who were left in Dicathen. Because this spy is young, but also powerful, Agrona looked like he was leaving a spot for him in our group as a Retainer, in addition to having two Scythes as mentors.
I got up and said goodbye to my companions, leaving that room and going back to my chores. But since I saw that video, I was still feeling that presence, even though I was far from the room, it was like a huge weight.
"Hm.. Guess I'll have to drink to calm down." I thought as I used my tempus warp to get back to my house, but as I set foot inside, a new thought popped up. "Wait... Dragoth wasn't there."
All the Scythes were called, even Cadell, who is Agrona's favorite, but why was Dragoth the only one who wasn't there with us...?
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[3rd person POV]
Amidst one of Alacrya's dense forests, a chase was taking place. A mother and her daughter, both were hiding inside a narrow cave, as they listened to their pursuers nearby, their footsteps were heavy and fast.
The mother was holding her daughter, who seemed to be crying with fear, but the crying was muffled by the mother's embrace. The state of both was deplorable and saddened in the eyes of kind people.
The mother had red -almost blond- hair, big ruby eyes and extremely pale skin. She wasn't wearing clothes to dress herself, she was using brown and beige fabrics sewn in a clumsy way, so she could hide some parts of her body. The daughter looked like an 8-year-old girl, with light brown -almost orange- hair, emerald eyes and skin not as pale as her mother's. She only wore a super simple dress with the main color being purple, and gray socks that were too big for her, going from her heels to just above her knees.
But, there was something impressive about the child, she seemed to have wings that came out of the area of her waist, such wings were around a little of the mother, as if she used that to hug her mother more for the fear she felt. Unlike the daughter, the mother didn't have wings... Or did, but at the moment, those wings didn't exist anymore, they had been ripped off.
"Calm down Aster...it's going to be okay...your mommy took you out of the bad guys' hands, okay?... L-let's go back home." The mother was whispering and trying to calm her daughter, gently caressing her face.
The daughter responded with a tighter hug on her "M-mom..." she could only say that, the rest was difficult to say, probably because of the fear that the child felt.
"We need to make you safe at all costs... Since after that experiment, they've been more focused on you... I have to find out what they did to you, my dear..." The mother thought, giving her a kiss on her daughter's forehead, as she went deeper into the cave to hide.
Walking a little further, they ended up finding a kind of rough wooden door, when opening, the mother saw that it was in the ruins of an old house, and how did she know that there was no one there? Simple, she didn't feel any heat there, not even the heat of a living being.
"Hmm...?" the girl soon got off her mother's lap when she saw that, the girl seemed to have one of her legs broken because of the way she walked, but even so, she was trying to walk alone through that abandoned place, but it seemed to bring a minimal sense of security.
"Aster... Don't make too much noise... I think we'll stay here until dawn." Mom said, closing the door.
Walking through that room made of raw materials, she ended up sitting on a kind of stone bench with wood in the seating area. The mother watched her daughter walking around that room until the little girl picked up some kind of strange device that was on top of another bench.
"Hm... A radio?" The daughter said, making one of her mother's eyebrows lift.
"Radio? What is it? Is it something... that was in their lab?" when the mother asked, the daughter suddenly seemed to cover her mouth with her own wings.
"You didn't want to remind me of that situation, did you?" the mother thought that was why the daughter had covered her mouth, the little girl only nodded agitatedly.
"Fufu.... You seem to be getting back to your habits. I'm glad for that." the mother was smiling at her daughter, but her eyes were still showing all the shock they had been through.
She was soon looking at her wrists while the little girl played silently, touching that object called "radio". On her wrists, there were kinds of thick and black handcuffs, they were made especially for asuras like her, if she tried to use mana, the handcuff would beep and prevent her from effectively using the mana, but it was only those details that the mother knew about that object.
Closing her eyes to finally get some rest, that's when she felt a strange mana close to her. But, she had analyzed the place before, was it someone close? No, it was in the same room as them, it was as if it had just appeared there out of nowhere.
Looking around, focusing more on where that strange mana was, she noticed a dusty decoration on the wall. Approaching it, she ran her hand over that object, revealing that it was connected to some structure imbedded in the wall itself. It didn't take long to get all the dust off, and as she took steps back, she came to realize what it really was.
"A portal..." she whispered to herself, being happy for a few seconds, but then a look of regret appeared, this was no ordinary portal, it was a portal to enter what alacryans call relictombs or to be more specific...
"A portal to the 'fortress' of the Djinns... I can't believe I bumped into this... So... Was this place owned by a Djinn?.. Or by some ascendant who had a private portal and ended up leaving the place?" she ended up externalizing her thoughts, making her daughter listen to that.
"Djinns...? Awe they bad?..." the daughter seemed to be tongue-tied, it would be cute to see if it weren't for the current situation.
"No, dear Aster... They were excellent mages... Which unfortunately went extinct... You know... Mom worked for a very bad man... Who caused their extinction.." The mother said looking at the daughter as she approached her.
"Is Mommy bad?" at this question from her daughter, the woman gave a sigh of pure regret and picked her up.
"No.. Mommy had to work with him, otherwise you wouldn't be with me..." She said giving her daughter another kiss on the forehead, until some pebbles fell from the ceiling, as if someone was stepping hard above them.
"W-what?!.." The mother thought, starting to hear the laughter of the one who had been chasing her this whole time. "Lesser Dragoth...." She got a desperate look and looked towards the portal beside her, having had an idea she would regret for all eternity if it went wrong.
Putting her daughter on the floor next to the portal, she began to firmly touch the structure of it, channeling mana into the portal itself, while the handcuff on her wrist began to beep, this caused fear in the little girl. But even so, the mother's other hand was resting on top of the girl's head, giving her a light pat while she also channeled mana to her daughter, making the other handcuff beep loudly.
"Aster.. The djinns.. They believed in something called karma... And a feature in our world, called Fate." The mother started to say, as the footsteps above them grew louder. "Fate... It's a conscious thing so to speak.... And the djinns said... That if you were someone good... Good things would happen... And Fate itself would try its best to put you in favorable situations..."
The girl's body began to glow, making her look at her hands and then at her mother. The mother's face wore a smile, but tears streamed down her cheeks and her eyes looked dead. "M-mom?" the girl returned to crying.
"As this is the only possible way to escape.. I believe it is the best option... Goodbye my dear... Maybe... We can see each other again. I love you..." the mother spoke as the portal was finally activated.
The daughter gave her mother a strong hug before being pushed by her into the portal. At that exact moment, she stopped channeling mana through her hands and the portal was deactivated, but the high-pitched noise continued, the woman finally realized how those devices would make it difficult to use her mana.
Looking back, she saw Scythe Dragoth kicking open the door, and decided to run towards him. The Scythe's eyes widened and he activated a defense spell.
Before the woman could even touch her stalker, the artifacts on her wrist caused a loud explosion, causing that abandoned room to crumble with both of them below. It was a blast mostly coming from Decay-mana, but there was a little Aether in between.
Meanwhile, Aster ended up stumbling after going through the portal, falling to a floor full of green grass. Different from the place she was before, it seemed to be during the day, with a bright blue sky, but when she looked at the sky, she got scared, seeing several floating islands around.
Unfortunately, she couldn't think straight at the moment, because of the shock of what had happened, without her realizing it, a sphere appeared around her like a shield, and it started to shrink little by little.
"I'm really unlucky.." Said Aster with a tone and accent that wasnt normal for herself. "I had finally had a real mother... And now... She sacrificed herself for me..."
Tears streamed from her eyes as her wings disappeared the more the barrier closed. "All this because I'm curious... All this because I'm seen as strong....."
"All this because I'm selfish... Why did I come to this world...? Are the gods sadistic and want to torture me more?" the girl said crying and kneeling on the grass, the barrier decreasing even more.
"I should have run...b-but they had him. They had him arrested... And I didn't want to kill you..." that barrier was getting dense and around it the grass seemed to grow along with flowers.
"....I don't know how many times I said that in my head..." her vision was getting blurry.
"I'm sorry...Grey..."
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone