Using magic he had learned since becoming a magic knight, Yuno held himself and his three comrades aloft in a trio of connected tornadoes that was a bit more maneuverable than Klaus’s flying carriage, which could mean the difference between life and death in a place filled with traps. As per the guidance of Mimosa, they made a turn and ended up in a hallway over a large underground river that made Yuno look down.
All that water made him a little nervous. Being a poor kid in a landlocked village, he and Asta had never really learned to swim, despite the nearby streams and lake outside of the cabin the diamond mage had hidden in for a month.
Still, the hallway was wide enough to fit several buildings in and had a ceiling so high that he couldn’t see the top, despite the magical lighting that made it so that none of them needed torches. So there was plenty of room to maneuver. The walls though, aside from the occasional stone square, were nothing but waterfalls that flowed down slower than they should have.
“So...your sister seems nice!” Mimosa finally said after nearly five minutes of silence.
Klaus pushed his glasses up onto his face. “I thought you said you were an orphan.”
Despite how much he hated to remind himself of the truth of things, Yuno took in a breath before speaking. “She’s not technically my sister,” he told Klaus while still looking ahead. “We met when she came to Hage at the age of fourteen and was taken into the orphanage. So, we think of each other as family.”
Which didn’t actually stop his body from betraying him, of course.
Even though he was glad he met Sunset, there were times when he wished she had never appeared. Most of them were when she clinged onto the boy or just went completely naked in front of him.
Rebecca had been too young for his teenage interest to be peaked over and Sister Lilly, despite her obvious attractiveness, had been his mom. Sunset was not only neither, she was quite possibly the most beautiful woman that Yuno had ever seen. A life of comfort meant that her skin lacked a single blemish or callas, and a good diet gave her a perfect figure that plenty of exercise via chores kept in good shape. It didn’t help that she was nice most of the time, kind, helpful and extremely intelligent. Plus, the fact that she could strip naked without batting an eye and tended to prefer having her body pressed up against his since they left Hage made an already hard battle outright impossible.
But...SHE WAS HIS SISTER!
Yuno wasn’t supposed to feel that way about his sister!
“Feh,” Klaus replied. “Thoughts are nothing but empty air. The truth is the two of you have no relation at all.”
As Yuno’s eyes twitched, Mimosa let out a laugh Yuno had come to learn was her very nice way of covering up an uncomfortable groan. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Mimosa told him. “Noelle and I may just be cousins, but I think of her as my sister. She was always so nice to me when we were little and stayed over at our estate a lot. We even slept in the same bed most of the time. She liked it so much, her brother and sister had to drag her away kicking and screaming sometimes.”
Another sigh came from Klaus. “You shouldn’t do such a thing, it only helps spread those horrid rumors about the nobles and royals.”
“What rumors?” Yuno asked as he looked back at Mimosa.
The girl’s face turned red and she looked down. “Um...well...when it comes to marriage in the higher classes, it’s expected that the woman be pure and untouched,” she said. “But...women have...needs and so...a lot of people think that the nobility...practices with each other. For marriage.”
Yuno nearly lost his grip on his spell. “You mean you and that other girl-”
“It was just a few kisses!” Mimosa insisted very strongly. “We were thirteen and curious, so we shared a few kisses. On the lips, the ones on our faces and only two of them had tongue, and that was it!”
While Klaus’s mouth dropped and he stammered, Yuno pointed something out to Mimosa. “I think that’s called practicing.”
Mimosa’s face turned red before taking on a bit more angry tint. “Okay, let’s talk about you and me. Your sister talked about you and me, so we’re going to talk about you and me!” she suddenly said. “You want to make babies with me Yuno? Because my mother and father want me to make babies one day in the next five years, and your sister seems to approve of us. So, what to make a baby, or three?”
Fighting to keep his composure as he did his best not to picture a nude Mimosa with her giant breasts and wide hips, Yuno quickly turned back to face the direction they were going. “I would rather we keep our relationship as comrades and friends intact, seeing as how we’re coworkers,” he told her. “Besides...I’m trying to become the Wizard King.”
“First I’ve heard of that,” she deadpanned.
Klaus cleared his throat. “A commoner, the Wizard King? Preposterous,” he said.
Then, as the silence returned, Klaus leaned over to Mimosa. “So uh...there’s also some rumors about the middle two Silva siblings,” he mumbled to her. “Have you...heard anything about them? Seeing as how you’re so close to their younger sister.”
“Oh yeah, those two silver-hairs are absolutely gaming the throne,” she replied.
Not having any clue what the conversation was about now, Yuno let them talk as he guided his spell to the end of the corridor, where a large double door that was taller than most buildings was waiting for them. Just half of it was as wide as the church had been.
Mimosa let out a gasp. “Oh my.”
“Pfft, some dungeon that was,” Klaus said as Yuno set them down and canceled out his spell while the man with the silver-gray hair looked around. “Well, I don’t see the Black Bulls around. I guess they really were all flash and no substance.”
Annoyance leaked into Yuno’s features. “If Sunset and Asta wanted to beat us here, they would have.”
Mimosa tapped her chin. “She did seem rather fast,” the girl mumbled to herself.
Of course, they didn’t know the half of it. Yuno almost expected the girl to suddenly appear in front of them in a big flash of light just to declare victory, as if what they had been doing was some kind of race.
“So, how do we get in?” Yuno asked.
Mimosa walked up to the door. “Well, it looks like some kind of locking spell. The whole door is made of magic. We might need to decode a phrase written on it, or solve some kind of puzzle.”
The explanation made Yuno blink. Monsters that appeared out of nowhere, traps that didn’t seem to have a creator, and now, a door to a vault that would open if some kind of puzzle was solved. Whoever created these dungeon places must have been some kind of weirdo.
Right as Yuno got ready to sit down and let the people who had read a lot more books than him get to work, there was an odd sensation from the tunnel behind him, followed by movement from inside Yuno’s hood as Secre poked her head out. “Get down!”
Yuno’s mana sense flared and he detected another source of power that just seemed to appear much too close behind him before a strange sound he hadn’t heard before reached his ears. While Yuno dodged to the side, Mimosa just blinked and looked over at him in confusion.
“Who said-” was as far as she got before a mass of crystals grew along the ground in less than a second to slam into her, shredding the red cloak that hung beneath her Golden Dawn robe. Mimosa hit the floor a moment later, her magical protective cape in taters, and her blood staining both the ground and dripping off of some of the sharp crystals that had just about skewered her.
“MIMOSA!” Klaus yelled before rushing over to the girl and examining her.
Yuno turned and readied his grimoire while spacing himself out from the other two knights. Now that the attacker’s mana had been unleashed, he could sense it easily. Had the man been hiding it somehow up until now?
With his steps becoming audible, Yuno frowned as the man came into view. Although the man in white didn’t wear any diamonds on his clothes, the gems on his body were clue enough to his origins as he walked down a path created by crystals that were shaped from mana beneath him.
“Declare yourself villain!” Klaus demanded of the stranger as he took out his steel magic grimoire.
The stranger didn’t stop walking towards them as he raised a hand. “My name is Mars,” he told them before another wave of crystal was sent their way.
Since his defensive magic was next to nil, Yuno had the winds take him up into the air in order to dodge and hopefully not have to worry about another such attack while Klaus’s grimoire turned through several pages before he began casting. “Steel Creation Magic: Full Metal Fortress!” the man shouted before a wall of metal erupted into existence in front of him and Mimosa, stopping the growing avalanche.
In the ensuing seconds, Mimosa got her grimoire working and raised it to her face. “Plant Recovery Magic: Dream Healing Flower Cradle.” A second later, vines spun into existence around the girl, encapsulating her in a sphere that quickly filled with flower petals to the point only her head was visible.
“Tch! I thought you said you could sense mana, Yuno,” Klaus demanded as he pushed his glasses up onto his face.
Mimosa let out a groan. “He did warn us sir, I was just too slow to dodge.”
Completely ignoring the damsel that came to his rescue, Klaus frowned without taking his eyes off of the enemy. “Just focus on your recovery. I’ll deal with this ruffian,” Klaus told her. “Yuno, you must try breaking into the treasure vault! There will probably be a great deal of gold, but the main treasure will probably be on a pedestal. Grab it and go.”
Another wave of rock came at them and Yuno countered with a quick blast of mana focused wind in the shape of a crescent moon. This may be a problem, he told himself as he glared at the mage who had yet to use a single spell from his grimoire. His mana hadn’t decreased either, which was extremely odd.
Then, there were the orders he was just given. Klaus, he didn’t have much of a problem leaving behind. The man had been a jerk to him since day one and went out of his way to make Yuno’s life harder than any other member of the Golden Dawn. But Mimosa…
“I like Mimosa,” Sunset had said.
Which...only mildly influenced his opinion of the girl. Since coming to the Golden Dawn, she had shown him nothing but kindness and understanding. She was a bit dim, but that only seemed to add to her charm, along with her incredible honesty.
Only, a tiny part of his mind thought that there was a chance that Klaus didn’t quite know what he was asking for. The man was rather stupid. “You’re no match for this guy,” Yuno told him. Then, before the noble’s pride could bite back, he drove the point he was making home. “You’ll die if you fight him.”
Klaus pushed his glasses up. “That, I am well aware of,” he said evenly. “But you hold a four leaf clover, and Mimosa is a royal. My life doesn’t matter much when stacked up against such things. I’ll give her time to heal enough to be moved. Get the treasure, then come back to fly her out of here.”
...Damnit, Yuno told himself with a frown.
“Hey Yuno, I was thinking, we don’t have any family, right? But we do have a lot of great friends, so I think we should take them and the ones we meet later, and make them our family.”
A minute ago, he could have left Klaus to die.
The man was an ass of a human being that looked down his nose at everything. But, in his last real act of a person, he did something that made Yuno admire him just enough so that the thought of him dying, like his family from the church, became unacceptable.
Yuno cut the magic from the wind under him and landed on the ground. For what he was about to do, he needed to focus all of his magical power.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU BRAT? I GAVE YOU AN ORDER!” the man yelled.
Yuno called up his grimoire. “Be quiet, I need to concentrate,” he told Klaus before focusing everything he had. “Wind Creation Magic: Swift White Hawk.” Then, as the air was still forming around him to create the likeness of the animal, he immediately had his grimoire turn to the next page. “And, Wind Blade Shower.”
The two spells being cast at once strained his mana making his legs shake a little as Yuno completed the dual casting. A Hawk larger than he was finished taking shape behind him while a torrent of blades appeared in front of him. The barrage knives would make dodging in such a tight space impossible and pierce through any defense, allowing the main attack to hit his opponent full force, even if he tried to block.
Klaus actually sputtered at the pinnacle of Yuno’s abilities. “H-How can a commoner from nowhere manage two spells at once?” he demanded.
“Goodbye, diamond mage,” Yuno said before he raised his hand and let loose his attack, the hawk flying past him a mere seconds after the dozens of knives went cutting through the sky. “It will be the three of us, the Golden Dawn, who through into the treasure room, together!”
The effort left him panting and barely able to stand, but the combination of magic was absolutely unstoppable.
There was a surge of mana from the other man before his grimoire flew up in front of him. It was an ugly-looking thing, with two colors that was bound together by stitches and a diamond on the front. “Crystal Creation Magic: Laevateinn,” the other mage cast before he held out a hand.
Right before the wind blades could strike him, a giant sword big enough to cut down a house sprang into being in front of him. It tilted slightly and blocked the knives at an angle before Mars threw out his hand right and it swung half a second before the hawk came in, slicking off its head and causing the wind magic to rip itself apart right as he cast another spell that covered most his his body in a skin-tight crystal armor that protected most of his vital points, save the head.
Across the massive hallway, the diamond mage continued to stare at him with eyes that seemed cold and dead as he moved his arm, the giant sword responding to the physical command and turning as it rose up with far too much speed for a weapon that would have looked at home in the hands of a fifty-foot giant. “Now die.”
Sunset groaned as she slowly got back on her feet. Her legs were really aching from the excess flow of mana that her body had been channeling and screamed in protest. “What the hell do you mean, other guy?” she demanded of the cheery blonde standing in front of her.
After a moment of looking up in thought, or maybe using his mana sense, Luck responded. “There’s another guy out there, way stronger than the one we just fought. He’s...let’s see...about two thousand feet...that way.”
“THEN LET’S GO GET HIM!” Asta yelled.
Sunset blinked and followed the direction Luck was pointing, then ran the image of the map that she remembered through her memory. Based on the scale of the thing and the room they were in, that would have put him somewhere close to the center of the dungeon.
Isn’t that supposed to be the treasure room? Sunset asked herself before looking back at Luck. “Can you sense another team of mages? Besides the ones we just fought, I mean.”
“Oh yeah!” Luck said. “They’re really close to the other guy. Wait, now I think they’re fighting.” As everyone gathered around him, Luck nodded. “Yep, definitely fighting, I think one of them just died.”
The stomach dropped out from Sunset. “What?”
Asta was more optimistic. “Yuno killed the guy that attacked his team? That’s a little harsh.”
“Oh no,” Luck said as he raised a finger. “The fight’s going on. The person who’s mana just went down was on the team that got attacked.”
All three of the other Black Bulls stood silent for a moment, then Noelle ran up to grab the lightning boy. “What is Mimosa? Please tell me it wasn’t Mimosa!” she yelled at him desperately.
Luck didn’t seem to notice the shaking as Noelle practically threw him back and forth. “Who’s Mimosa?” he asked before blinking. “Oh wait, I was wrong. Number three’s alive, but the signal is really weak. He’s probably hurt.”
“Sunset!” Noelle yelled at her. “Get your...thing working again and get us to the center of this stupid maze! We need to help them.”
After taking a second to do the math, Sunset looked down at the ground. “It’ll take me forty seconds to get there, I could do it, but…” Her body would be too ravaged by the mana zone to move around much after that.
Asta cringed a little. “But what?”
There was also a faster way to get there, and if the mage Yuno was up against was anything like the other one. Then all they would have to do is bluff their way past him.
Well, I guess I couldn’t keep this hidden forever, Sunset told herself before she gathered her mana. “Shut your grimoires everyone, but hold onto them and get ready to open them the second we arrive,” she ordered. “Don’t attack though. All we need to do is look menacing to win.”
“If that guy hurt Mimosa, I’m breaking his legs,” Noelle told her before moving in close and wrapping her arms around Sunset.
Then, another thought entered the redhead’s mind. She needed to warn the first timers. “Oh, and don’t throw up on me. These are new boots.”
A second later, the world disappeared in a flash of light.
As his life was soon coming to an end, Klaus had to wonder how things had gone so wrong.
The Golden Dawn wasn’t like the other magic knight squads. Unlike the Crimson Lions or the Silver Eagles, who were full of nobles and royals, the members of the Dawn put some effort into what they did, rather than sit around and get by on their natural talent alone. The captain was an inspirational figure that had led them to the top of the rankings in such a short time since they had been founded and because of that, they went on more missions than anyone else, thus increasing the pace at which their people developed.
When the call came out for an experienced knight to mentor any newcomers that might join the Dawn, Klaus had eagerly done his duty and volunteered. To prepare, he read up on the squad’s basic tactics and prepared a harsh training schedule to get the nobles Captain Vangence would choose to join their squad up to speed. There were no layabouts in the Dawn, after all.
Calling who he was saddled with a disappointment was like saying Summer was hot.
Everything about Yuno infuriated Klaus. The boy wasn’t a noble, royal, and even calling him a commoner was a complement. Yuno hailed from the Forsaken Realm, where only the worst of the Clover Kingdom’s people lived. On top of which, he was a bastard, a living stain on the sanctity of the nobility that had been brought into being by what Klaus could only assume was commoner trickery or dark magic. He knew what kind of things that were sold in the Forest of Witches, after all.
What made things even worse was that he had someone been mistakenly endowed by a four leaf grimoire. By some stumble from God, the boy received a book even Captain Vangence was unable to obtain. Because of that, he was lucky. Meaning that success came to him without any effort at all!
The boy was obstinate, rude, foolish, disobedient and all kinds of other things. He disobeyed orders, called the tactics Klaus taught him a foolish waste of time, said that the training schedule the noble had crafted didn’t do enough to push his abilities, and worst of all, treated those who stood above him as equals.
To try and save the squad from such a creature, Klaus had tried to make him quit the first day. But such efforts had been brought to a halt by Mimosa, who probably thought of him as a mangy stray to take in. That girl was much too sweet and generous for her own good. But, such was to be expected of royalty, those who stood above the nobility were expected to have the purest souls.
While the boy had talent that Klaus couldn’t deny, talent which far surpassed his own, it was the one redeeming quality in a mass of horrid filth that would have otherwise made Yuno a complete disgrace as a magic knight.
But, it was with great reluctance that Klaus had admitted that talent would better serve Clover in the future than his own and threw himself upon a proverbial sword in a heroic act of bravery to keep the overgrown child alive. Only to have him disobey orders again and show off a level skill Klaus didn’t know he had up until that point.
It was a shame the whole thing turned out to be a waste of time, and their lives.
What a pathetic thing I have become, in the end, he told himself. The ally I was supposed to support and guide to greatness has already fallen and a commoner is protecting me.
Then, as the man called Mars raised his hand, the giant sword spell responding to the command to strike Yuno down, there was a bright flash of light between the two of them that actually blinded Klaus for an instant.
When he was able to look again, four new magic knights stood in the room and…
“DID YOU SERIOUSLY HAVE TO USE THAT SPELL?” Asta yelled before falling back onto his rear.
Noelle, the only half-decent mage among them, doubled over on her knees and promptly threw up.
Some blonde boy laughed like a madman as he stumbled around for several seconds in a circle. “HAHAHAHAHA! That was fun!” he said before casting a spell that surrounded his arms and legs in lightning and getting on all fours. “Wish the world would stop spinning though.”
“Shut it Asta!” Sunset yelled back at him as she tumbled forward, her knees hitting the ground while her arms failed to catch and she ended up showing everyone behind her what she was wearing beneath her skirt as he rear stuck into the air. “Ugh...just let me...catch my equilibrium.”
...left Klaus with a feeling that they were even more doomed than before.
Yuno slumped a little bit. “Thanks for giving me even more people to worry about guys. Really, I mean it,” he deadpanned.
“Ugh...what was that?” Noelle asked as she looked up to Sunset and took note of their surroundings. “That was spatial magic. Did you just use spatial magic?” Then, she turned her head to see the girl wrapped in the large flower basket. “Oh God, Mimosa!” Then, the girl took a single step and fell to the ground.
Mimosa blinked from inside her flower cradle. “Uh...are you okay, No-oh no! Everyone look out!”
Klaus looked up through eyes that were still seeing a few stars to catch the sight of Mars. The man had recovered from his blindness faster and was moving his sword in tandem with his sword again.
“WHAT THE HELL?” Asta yelled as his grimoire flew over to him, allowing the boy to draw out that ridiculously oversized sword before he stood up and...stumbled back, forcing him to use the sword as a cane. “Okay, yeah...might have a problem here.”
A crescent shaped blast of wind flew from Yuno before striking the diamond mage an instant later. All to no effect. The man’s armor would stop any non-creation level attack from getting through with little difficulty.
The laughing blond boy leapt into action a second later before speeding past his target, missing him by over two feet. “Hahahaha! This is going to make fighting interesting,” he said before latching onto some of the crystal bridge a moment later to...wobble a bit.
With enemies on two sides, Mars hesitated for a moment before bringing up his grimoire. “Crystal Creation Magic: Crystal Clone Swarm.” Moments later, a mass of crystals grown at the man’s feet spawned two dozen different copies of the diamond mage, composed entirely of the mineral he controlled with his magic.
And just like that, our advantages of numbers and multiple points of attack have disappeared, Klaus told himself while trying to think of a way out of this. The diamond mage cutting down the Black Bulls would give Mimosa time to recover and Yuno a bit of a breather. If they were any sort of servants of the Clover Kingdom, they would throw themselves in front of the sword to keep Noelle alive, then maybe Klaus could get her and escape with the rest of the Dawn after claiming the treasure.
“Noelle, shields up!” Sunset yelled as she rolled over onto her side right as the army of crystal duplicates began to advance.
“...huh?” the royal asked, as she sat back up.
Sunset groaned. “CAST YOUR GOD DAMN PROTECTION SPELL!” she yelled before looking back past the mage. “Luck, get your ass in here!”
The furious yell of the redhead made the royal flinch. “Oh! Right!” she said before calling up her grimoire.
“But-”
“DO IT NOW, DAMNIT!” Sunset said before he could finish.
Luck, who with a great deal of trepidation, Klaus remembered from the selection exam several years ago as the candidate that nearly beat his opponent to death, leaped over and around the two clones approaching him, narrowly avoiding the sword despite his obvious movement advantage.
The second he was past them, Noelle raised a wand to point it at the sky. “Water Creation Magic: Sea Dragon’s Cradle!” A dome of water surrounded the lot of them, its currents swirling around them at an incredible speed, originating from a whirlpool on top. When one of the clones touched the edge to try and force its way through, the two magics collided and it was swept away to be thrown back out and shattered.
“How long is this spell going to last?” Yuno asked her.
Noelle looked around as two more clones attacked and were swept away. “Um...maybe thirty seconds.”
Then, the giant sword came down on top of the dome, making Noelle flinch.
“...or less,” she corrected.
Sunset groaned. “I’m going to need at least two minutes,” she said as she lay down onto her side.
Seeing that this group needed a leader, Klaus stepped forward, his age and experience making him the only logical candidate. “Alright then, we should attack him in waves with a delaying strategy until we can get the treasure chamber open and retrieve the most valuable artifacts. Then, the survivors can cut through the clones and escape. If we’re lucky, this man will be buried when the dungeon collapses on top of him.” Dungeons like this one always fell apart after the treasure was taken.
“Did you seriously just tell us to go die while you run away and get rich?” Sunset asked in disbelief.
Something clipped Klaus in the back of his legs, and he found the world spinning as the ground came out from underneath him before that brat Asta’s voice reached his ears. “YOU SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN!” the boy yelled before he once again stumbled from the odd malady that was affecting the Black Bulls. “THE REAL HEROES ARE TALKING!”
Up above them, the sword stuck again.
“Maybe ten seconds!” Noelle told them with a grunt.
Yuno stepped forward. “If Asta can still hold onto his sword and stand up for two seconds, he and I can deal with the sword spell.”
Simply accepting the statement as fact, the redhead nodded at him. “I’ll deal with most of the mob, then. Just because I can’t aim straight isn’t going to matter if I don’t need to.” Sunset told them before looking over to the other three magic knights. “Glasses, you grab Luck and Noelle, then bring them close to Mimosa so they’re out of the way and she can put up a smaller shield spell to protect her.”
“Hey, I still want to fight too!” Luck said.
Sunset looked over to him. “I know you’ve got long range attack spells from all that crap you pull with Magna. You and Four Eyes are going to protect Noelle to keep her secondary shield spell from being too damaged,” she told the boy very quickly. “Attack any of the clones that don’t get caught in my spell’s area of effect.”
“Noelle,” she said. “Once Mimosa has recovered, have her see if she can do anything about your dizziness. It probably has something to do with damage to the tympanic membrane.”
Noelle blinked. “The what?”
Both Asta and Yuno sighed. “The ear,” they said at the exact same time.
The defensive spell collapsed, and everyone broke into action. As much as Klaus hated to admit it, the commoner had come up with a good plan, using everyone’s abilities to their fullest with the exception of his own...which she didn’t know about. He decided to give her a bit of leeway there.
“LET’S GO YUNO!” Asta shouted before he raised his sword, then let out a cry of surprise when a tornado formed underneath him and enveloped the boy from the waist up, sending him into the air at a spin that twisted his body around so fast it made it seem as if the giant sword he was wielding was actually one big ring of metal. “THIS ISN’T WHAT I HAD IN MIND!”
Yuno grunted. “Just keep your arms out and hold on,” he told Asta before the boy’s black sword connected with the giant one...and somehow cut it in two.
The sight made Klaus freeze. “H-How is that even possible? That boy has so little magic power, I can’t even sense it from here!”
“Get back, Klaus, sir!” Yuno shouted before a large gust of wind picked him up along with the girl and boy next to him to send them flying over towards Mimosa.
As the three of them were knocked back, Sunset raised her hands. “Just because I can’t see straight right now doesn’t mean I can’t just hit all of you at once!” she yelled before a large burst of flame that was so impossibly powerful to be a simple expulsion of mana shot out from around her, turning blue as it consumed the numerous number of clones that had halfway surrounded their staging area in a single strike.
Had she opened a portal to a volcano, or something?
Klaus knew from encounters with the luientiet that spatial magic could be used for offense as well as defense to devastating capacity, but his methods were far different.
Noelle groaned before raising her wand up again to create another water barrier around the three debilitated fighters. Its smaller size meant that she didn’t have to spread her mana out as much, probably making it a bit more resilient. Once the protection spell was up, she addressed the senior magic knight. “Actually, Asta doesn’t have any magic power at all, and not even a drop of mana to fuel it,” she told him before looking back at the battle.
From the looks of things going on between Yuno, the Black Bull boy and the diamond mage, Mars had used the moment Yuno had been distracted to create a flying platform of crystal to increase his mobility and avoid that devastating black sword.
Klaus grit his teeth. “No mana at all? That’s not even possible!” he exclaimed. The words may have come from a royal, but they were so insane that he couldn’t believe them.
“But because of that, Asta can wield anti-magic, a power that lets him nullify any spell that touches his sword,” Luck went on as he sat up and looked over to Mimosa. “Hey uh...can you fix my ears? Sunset says there’s something wrong with them.”
The royal blinked, then nodded as she reached outside her healing basket with one hand, forcing the commoner to crawl over to her and receive her gift of healing. “Huh...there is a little damage. Let me see if I can do anything about it with my natural ability.”
Out on the battlefield, Yuno sent a blast of wind towards Mars. The attack didn’t hurt him, but it did slow the young man down enough for the tornado-diven commoner to come up from behind him and hit the man with that devastating weapon.
The armor protecting Mars shattered before he was sent into the wall hard enough for the impact to cause the stone to fall from the force of the impact. Both it and he fell into the river that ran beneath the platform the rest of them were standing on, in front of the door.
As the boy was brought back down to stand next to the other commoner for half a second before the Black Bull began to stumble around like crazy, Klaus snorted. “So, he’s just another lucky nobody that got handed a power too good for someone such as him.” Just like the lad Klaus had been saddled with.
“Don’t you dare say that!” Noelle yelled at him, turning Klaus’s attention back to the royal.
Behind him, he could hear a short conversation between the boys, one of whom fell to the ground with an audible thud.
“YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO SPIN ME AROUND JUST BECAUSE I SAVED YOUR SORRY BUTT!”
Yuno snorted. “Considering that you wouldn’t have lasted ten seconds in the state you’re in, it’s more like I saved you.”
“Asta has worked harder than anyone I’ve ever known to get where he is today,” Noelle told him.
“Jeeze! YOU MADE ME THROW UP ON MY SHIRT!”
Yuno groaned. “That’s your fault for not laying on your stomach.”
“THIS IS A NEW SHIRT!”
“...really? Because those clothes look like the same thing you’ve always worn,” Yuno told him. “Just take it off if it’s so bad.”
Klaus groaned and turned to tell them to shut up since the real important people were talking. But when he did, the sight that greeted his eyes made him stop when the Black Bull tossed aside his top clothes. The boy Asta, his body was covered in a layer of impossibly defined muscles. Not even magic knights who engaged in close combat were so physically fit. The amount of work that it would have taken to develop his body to that point must have been mind boggling. Hours upon hours of exhausting exercise, day after all.
Mimosa looked over to the other royal as she finished treating Luck’s other ear. “Are you saying that boy has worked harder than you?” she asked, making Noelle look back at her in surprise, which got a blush from Mimosa. “Oh um...sorry. I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but I know that you used to practice with your magic nearly every day until you were covered in sweat to try and get a handle on it. Effort, real effort, is looked down on by nobles and royals, but the truth is...I really look up to you because of all your hard work, Noelle. You’ve always been so strong. I knew if our situations were reversed, I would have just given up.”
After a second, Noelle crawled closer to her for healing as Luck stood up on shaky legs. “Hey, this is way better! Still a bit off,” he said after a little wobble. “But better.”
Once Noelle got to her for healing, she looked down at the girl. “What brought that on?”
Mimosa blushed as she moved her hands over to both of Noelle’s ears. “Hey, I just about died a few minutes ago. Let a girl praise her hero a little bit, okay?”
“Hey!” Sunset yelled. “You morons hit that guy pretty hard, one of us should probably check to see if he’s drowning or something.”
Luck jumped to his feet. “I’ll go see if he wants to fight some more!”
This is insane, Klaus told himself. The four commoners are moving about, defeating the enemy and doing everything while the royals and the noble simply hide in a corner like frightened children! Everything Klaus knew to be true said that it should be the other way around!
“I found him!” Luck cried out happily as he emerged from the water, pulling the unconscious mage behind him. He dragged the man over to Sunset, and then let him drop before leaning over the diamond mage. “Uh...I don’t think he’s breathing.”
Sunset flinched. “Oh crap!” she said before her hands began to glow. The mana she emitted changed ever so slightly, and a few seconds later, the girl moved her hands over Mars’s chest. “Okay so...broken arm, lungs in the human body are here, muscles that push them here, so...maybe this?” She pressed down on his chest and Mars coughed up some water.
A second later, he began breathing deeply and looked to the redhead, still in a daze. “F-Fana?”
“Hey Luck, shock him.”
“Okay!” The cheerful berserker said before lightning shot out of his hands and made Mars spasm for a bit until he fell back into unconsciousness. “Uh...should I do it again?”
With the fight over, Klaus let out a sigh of relief. Then, the reality set in on him. During the battle, despite being fit and able for all of it, he had barely done a single thing. Meanwhile, a group of commoners displayed a good deal of ingenuity and tactical acumen worthy of...the Golden Dawn. Utterly shameful, he told himself.
A second later, Noelle stood back up, followed by Mimosa. She ran over to Asta and Yuno to perform healing on the shorter boy, then the redhead. Once they were all up and moving, Luck fished the diamond mage’s book out of the river and Sunset took custody of it after Klaus sealed Mars in a metal coffin that would hold him until they got back to the capital.
With all of the problems dealt with aside from the commoner’s clothes, Klaus turned to the assembled knights and pressed his glasses up onto his face before looking up at the group, blinking when Yuno’s pet flew out of his hood to land on the short boy’s head without any protest from Asta. “Are you sure that binding spell is going to be enough?”
“Are you questioning my magical ability?” he demanded.
Sunset looked up from the grimoire she had been leafing through. “Considering what we just saw during combat? I think it’s a valid concern,” she said before looking back down at the grimoire to frown, completely ignoring Klaus as she mumbled to herself. “Huh, so it’s not just the cover that’s different, spells for the fire affinity have been mixed in too. But, do new spells continue to appear, or is he stuck with just three? And how does he use them?”
Before Klaus could demand to know what she was mumbling about, Asta held up some plant that he had fished out of the knapsack he was wearing. “Okay, chill. Have something to eat.”
The offer made Klaus take a step back. “I refuse to eat unprepared greens like some kind of farm animal!”
Ever the peacemaker, Mimosa stepped between the two. “Okay now, after everything that’s happened, I think we should try to get along.”
“Are you sure you’re okay to be moving up and around already?” Noelle asked the other royal.
Mimosa turned to her and smiled. “It’s okay. Because you protected me, I had plenty of time to recover. I’m still a bit sore, but it’ll pass.”
The complement made Noelle blush, and Klaus found himself wondering if kissing had been all they did together as children. “I-I didn’t do anything special!” she said before turning her head away. “I just couldn’t leave a dimwit like you to fend for herself. And Asta, find some clothes to put on!”
“Why’re you embarrassed? I’m the one that’s half naked,” he told her.
Which only served to deepen Noelle’s blush. “N-NAKED?” she yelled as she began to turn all the way around.
Sunset looked up from the book. “Yeah, you’re doing your own laundry this time.”
“HEY! YUNO’S THE ONE THAT MADE ME PUKE!”
“...they make you do your own laundry?” he asked with half-lidded eyes.
Putting all this foolishness to an end, Klaus cleared his throat. “Well, as I was certain we would. We arrived here first, this victory belongs to the Golden Dawn.”
Everyone in the Black Bulls stared at him blankly. “...wait, WE WERE RACING?” he demanded in surprise.
Noelle snorted before she tossed her hair. “Oh please, I think it’s obvious we could have arrived much sooner...if...wait,” she said before looking over to their rather poor spatial magic mage with a building look of confusion.
The scrutiny had Sunset looking away and whistling innocently.
Before he could lose control of the situation again, Klaus spoke. “Nevertheless, I am willing to acknowledge your aid and allow you to accompany us into the treasure hall,” he said before walking forward and examining the door. “Now, we just need to get inside.”
Which would probably take hours, if not days, if they couldn’t break through the door like Klaus had told Yuno to do earlier. Which...was probably impossible. Such magics were made to prevent entry by any means other than the allowed method.
They might even need to send for reinforcements skilled in such things, like a mage scholar. These treasure chambers we sealed with the most ingenious locking systems that even the greatest scholars had a hard time figuring out their way through. Perhaps, they would need to send for the Wizard King himself!
“Oh!” Sunset said before she practically skipped over to the thing and past the frowning Noelle. “I can do that! That’s easy, and completely explainable!”
“Your other girl saw her blow something up, didn’t she?” Yuno asked evenly.
“Yep,” Asta replied.
Yuno snorted. “That’s why I kept my team in the dark when I ran into you guys.”
Sunset touched the door and sent a burst of mana through it, causing some sort of image to appear before her. “The mana that makes up the barrier has a certain renaissance frequency that, after hearing for a few minutes, I noticed an obvious flaw. After that, it was easy to deconstruct the spell,” she said before stepping back. “Still, the array around the door...that’s new. I haven’t actually seen magic like that in Clover. It looks like a whole new layer of instructions for the basic spell matrix. Although, the second spell looks a bit confusing. It’s just a repeating pattern of mana that steadily grows shorter after each cycle, with no way to deactivate it. Weird.”
“...did anybody understand any of that?” Mimosa asked.
Yuno sighed and hung his head. “Only a bit.”
The door shook, and then Klaus had to fight to keep his jaw from dropping as it slid open before them. Such things were supposed to be the most challenging conundrums of their time. Sunset couldn’t just...solve it as if it were a child’s puzzle box!
Completely ignorant of what they had just witnessed, the peasant Asta and Mimosa continued on into the treasure room, with Sunset on their heels along with Luck, while Yuno stood outside for a moment with the royal who had at least the knowledge to give the redhead a scrutinizing glare.
“How…” Unable to stop himself, Klaus looked over to the commoner next to him. “Not that I am one to question the captain, but how exactly did someone like her not make it into the Golden Dawn, and end up with the Black Bulls?”
Yuno blinked and looked over to the other man. “From what I remember, the other captains made Captain Yami take her, rather than offering her a spot on another squad. With Captain Vangence saying it wouldn’t be fair for him to have the both of us.”
The answer made Klaus nod. “Yes, the captain is famous for his sense of fair play,” he said before walking into the room to observe absolute bedlam.
The treasure room was an impressive sight. He doubted any noble or royal in the kingdom had a vault with half as much gold, and nowhere near as many gems. The several piles that were larger than wagons also had dozens upon dozens of artifacts sticking out of them, some with magical auras, others holding immense value.
Unfortunately, the children that had come in ahead of him didn’t seem to appreciate any of it.
“OWOWOWOW! Okay! Fine, I’ll follow you!” Asta yelled before he disappeared off into a corner, chasing after Yuno’s bird after she pecked him in the head.
Mimosa had a sparkling cloth wrapped around her body, obviously imaging the thing as a replacement to her destroyed Cloak of Protection. “I think this may give double the defensive power of my last one!”
The crazy boy Luck was...digging through things with a look of disappointment. “Awww, come on! Shouldn’t be me some kind of final monster that’s the boss of all the others, just hiding under the treasure or something?”
Yuno promptly wandered off.
Meanwhile, Noelle had backed Sunset into a corner and was glaring at her for some reason as the redhead looked around nervously. “Spatial magic? What do you mean, spatial magic?” she asked nervously before looking around and grabbing a pair of golden bracers from the nearby pile of loot. “Look at all this cool stuff! Wouldn’t you rather try on some neat accessories?”
“You’re going to need those bracers to help defend you very soon if you don’t answer me,” Noelle growled to a very nervous Sunset as the redhead slipped the items in question on.
Klaus growled and pushed his glasses back up on his face. “ENOUGH!” he shouted. “Cease your fiddling! There could be priceless magical artifacts in here!”
The sound of magic and a brought light out of the corner of his eye made Klaus spin around to see Yuno holding open an ancient scroll of some sort that was glowing in tandem with his grimoire. When it stopped, Yuno looked over to him with an even expression. “In my defense, I was already picking it up when you started talking.”
“I’m gonna go over there now!” Sunset told Noelle before she rushed past the other girl and examined what Yuno had found. Then, she looked up to the taller boy. “Hey Yuno...check your book.”
To see just how much damage the commoner had caused Klaus stormed over to where the boy was standing in front of a small table. Right as he did, there was another surge of magical energies behind him, and he looked to see that Asta had retrieved something else from a golden receptacle on the wall.
“What’s a Demon-Dweller Sword?” the ignorant commoner was asking...his bird?
Klaus’s eye twitched as he looked at the boy holding a weapon that was distinctively different than the one he had used against Mars, mere moments ago. The sword was much smaller, and had some kind of indentation running along the inside of the blade.
Sunset looked over to the boy. “Wait, is that another anti-magic weapon? What the hell is something like that even doing here?”
The question that proved Sunset wasn’t as smart as she originally thought had Klaus smirking. “Heh, he obviously just learned a new sword spell is all.”
To which Sunset looked at the taller man with a glare before replying. “Uh, no, moron. The way Asta is, he can’t learn new spells,” she told him before looking back to the weapon Asta was taking test swings with while she muttered to herself. “Is that a mana well in the center? Wait, that still doesn’t answer the question of why a sword was here, or even how! Did the fifth leaf change the basic nature of the magic so the items can exist without a source of mana to hold them here?”
“Do not insult me, commoner!” Klaus told the redhead.
Then she looked over to Klaus. “Hold this,” she said before tossing the grimoire she had in her hand towards the steel magic mage, only to have it stop in midair and become surrounded by a field of mana before it flew out the door at an impossible speed.
Luck gave a jerk from atop the pile of gold he was standing on before turning with a smile on his face. “Hey, there back!” he cried out gleefully before his grimoire rose up in front of him to let him cast a pair of spells.
Smoke barreled into the room a moment later, with a mage that Klaus recognized from the field of battle. Lotus of the Abyss was a Diamond Kingdom mage who was known for his underhanded traps and tactics. His magic worked to quickly cover the floor in black mist as three other mages came up behind him.
“SERIOUSLY?” Asta yelled at the man before pointing his new sword in the mage’s direction. “YOU RAN LIKE A FREAKING PANSY IN THE LAST FIGHT. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU’LL DO ANY BETTER THIS TIME?”
Lotus smirked at them. “Because this time little boy, it’s not four on one, and you’re standing in my mana zone,” he said before rising into the air.
A second later, the man called Mars walked in through the door, his grimoire floating in front of him. “Fire Healing Magic: Phoenix Robe,” he cast before his body was engulfed in flames. Within seconds, the purple bruises and bulging area of his arm began to recover to the point where they were barely noticeable.
Klaus stood stunned. What he had just witnessed was utterly impossible! While there were many magical attributes in the world, each person could only possess one. Even if someone had something like mud, a mix of earth and water, it didn’t mean they could do anything but create mud-based spells!
Even if by some statistical improbability, this Mars character knew healing magic the man in front of him had just cast a fire spell when his previous attacks had all been based on crystal!
“HA!” Sunset ran over to the silver royal as she pointed to the group of mages excitedly. “See Noelle, he can use two types of mag-oh crap, they’re trying to hide their attacks with the smoke,” she said before raising her hand in a defensive gesture.
A second later, a wall of crystal erupted from the ground and struck an invisible wall as Sunset seemingly buckled under the weight of something. “Did you seriously block multiple attacks from this guy?” she asked the shocked Silva standing next to her.
“H-HOW ARE YOU EVEN DOING THAT?” the royal demanded as her shock started to wear off.
Luck laughed and leaped into the air, firing off multiple blasts of energy as he closed in on Lotus, who quickly dropped close to the ground before Asta came rushing past them all to slice through the wall of crystal that was blocking their view.
When he did, a barrage of spells from the other three mages that were in robes pushed him back before Mars cast another spell. “Crystal Creation Magic: Titan’s Heavy Armor.” A mass of crystals sprang up around him, forming into a giant, somewhat misshapen suit of armor at least ten feet tall and nearly as wide as the door they had just walked through.
As Luck closed in on him, the man created another giant crystal sword, albeit much smaller than the other one, and had his giant armor take a swipe at him, forcing the boy back while Luck fired a few shots to no effect on his way to the main group.
“Any ideas?” Yuno asked calmly.
Sunset snorted. “Well crap, if these guys are going to be cheating, I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” she said as a mana skin of white light surrounded her body.
The magic book in front of “Smoke Creation Magic: Prison of the Fallen-”
Sunset’s grimoire didn’t even move as she raised a hand at him before a sword of pure light went flying to strike the man in the stomach before he could finish his casting. “Oh right! Uh...sword creation magic...whatever.”
Her too? But...HOW? Klaus thought in disbelief. The young man, Mars...Klaus could understand him having some freakish powers. It was obvious those horrible experiments he heard of in the Diamond Kingdom had born some rather sinister fruit. But, Sunset’s book was from Clover, and she hadn’t even bothered with taking out her grimoire.
“Since when do you not need incantations?” Yuno asked.
Lotus dropped like a rock from the blow and his smoke was cleared from the floor not long after.
“It’s not as effective, but it’s much quicker on the draw. Now if you’ll excuse me, Sword Creation Magic: Divine Emperor’s Holy Sword!” Then Sunset sent a trio of flying blades in impossibly rapid succession at the piloted golem, only to watch them hit the crystal armor and be absorbed before the light was emitted harmlessly in a rainbow of colors. The resulting events had everyone in the room frozen for a minute.
Sunset’s eye twitched. “...ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” she shouted in anger. “How in the hell does opaque crystal break down light like a freaking prism?”
Beside the redhead, Noelle looked just about as irate. “Oh yeah, THAT’S WHAT’S WEIRD ABOUT THIS WHOLE THING!”
Mars and the other diamond mages recovered from their confusion and launched another attack with a multitude of small blades, which Asta jumped up and cut down. “CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS LATER?” he yelled before Yuno sent a blast of wind to knock two of the mages that had come in with Mars up against the wall when they tried to flank the magic knights.
Lotus groaned as he slowly rose to his feet. “Ugh, you little...wait a second, a brat with a black sword, a light mage, and a wind user...with a four leaf clover,” he said as he made his grimoire rise up in front of him, “You know, there’s a report about three kids matching your description going around. They say the three of you killed a Shining General in some nothing little village a couple of months back.”
Say what? Klaus thought to himself.
“If you mean the man who murdered our family,” Yuno said before his grimoire rose up to meet him as he gathered his mana for a powerful attack. “Then he got what he deserved. Now, let’s see what this new spell of mine can do. Wind Spirit Magic: Sylph’s Breath.”
There was an intense surge of mana, with the very air pouring power into Yuno’s grimoire, despite the claim that Lotus had created a mana zone in the room around them and Yuno’s inability to use such a technique. His grimoire glowed with a bright light as it reacted to the influx of mana until it was more like a mass of green energy shaped like a book than a book in and of itself.
Then, something rose up out of it. It was...a person. A small person, standing only about six inches, wearing a small, green dress and sporting a set of translucent wings that made the light going through them seem to burst into a multitude of colors. She seemed to float there for a moment before letting out a loud yawn, then stretched herself out like someone awakening from a long nap. Klaus could even hear little pops, as if her body had been at rest for far too long.
The creature finished stretching herself before looking around at the surprised group of people, then turning her attention to herself. “Oh wow! It’s been a long time since I was able to fully manifest on the first cast,” she said in a tiny voice before turning to Yuno with a smile Klaus would almost call sensual. “Mmmm, powerful, talented, and cute. I think you and I are going to get along great.”
Sunset groaned. “Okay. See, this is why I call bullshit on grimoires,” she said while throwing out a hand towards the sprite. “All that mana, and all you got was a wannabe breezie.”
“WHAT DID YOU CALL-” the little thing shouted as it turned towards Sunset and froze before frowning in thought. She made a slight gesture with her wrist and a large gust of wind blew Sunset’s skirt up to the point her underwear was showing. While several people in the group protested the move, the creature seemed transfixed on the tattoo Sunset sported that was half covered by her underwear. “Holy crap, you’re an Equestrian.”
For some reason, being outed as a person who rode horses made Sunset flinch more than her underwear being shown off to everyone. Not that Klaus understood why. As a noble, he rode horses all the time. It was one of the true pleasures of life was putting a mare through her paces until she was covered in a nice, glistening sheen.
“Um,” Mimosa spoke up nervously. “So, are we going to do anything about-why aren’t they moving?” She pointed towards the diamond mages. “In fact, why isn’t anything moving?”
Klaus turned his attention to the enemy mages and found himself completely perplexed. Mimosa was correct, it looked like that aside from the area around their group, everything had been frozen in time at the moment Yuno cast his spell. Even the lighting looked wrong.
The pixie blinked and looked over to Mimosa. “Ugh, obviously, opening a portal to my realm long enough for me to create a body in this one required me to make a temporal pocket where time passes the same way it does where I’m from,” she replied, as if the answer was obvious. “You humans don’t just think slow, your temporal speed is the worst.”
“So...are you actually going to do something or…” Sunset let the question unanswered.
Instead of snapping at her like she did with Mimosa, the fairy gave a start. “Oh! Right, sorry, got distracted by all the unexpected stuff!” she said before turning towards the enemy mages as time began to start again.
“Oh God, is that one of the Four Great Spirits?” one of the diamond mages shouted in terror.
“RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!” one of the others yelled.
The pixie took in a deep breath. Klaus would have laughed at the comical nature of the thing, the only problem was that she didn’t give him a chance to. When the little thing exhaled her breath, it turned into a tornado that was turned on its side, with a piercing spiral cone at the end that drilled through anything in its path. Even the crystal mage’s giant defensive armor shattered from its touch, whereas before his magic had held up to two of Yuno’s combined attacks.
All of the mages were thrown out of the room and into the water below the entrance platform.
The magic power that little thing had must have been immense.
Wait, they called it...the Wind Spirit, Klaus remembered before old lessons on magic ran through his head.
In the world, there were four great elemental powers that were said to be summoned from another realm once per generation. While they were not affiliated with any one country, the four beings usually kept their manifestations to a particular geographical location, with Heart being the home of the Water Spirit, Diamond the domain of the Fire Spirit, Spade holding onto the Earth Spirit, and Clover being the country where the Wind Spirit manifested the most. However, much of anything else known about them was a mystery, as they rarely spoke of what had to be a near infinite well of knowledge.
Yuno frowned at her a little. “Are they dead?”
“Nah, I just knocked them around a bit. They’ll come to their senses and swim to the surface in a second. Which is good, because we’ve got about half a minute before this place starts going under,” the pixie explained.
After snapping her fingers, Sunset got a slightly excited look. “That’s what that other spell is! It’s a…” she paused as her face became worried. “It’s a timer for this place’s self-destruct system.”
“WHAT?” Asta yelled before looking to Sunset. “Can’t you...undo it, or something? Like with the door?”
Sunset raised her hands. “Not in the time we’ve got left.”
Klaus pushed his glasses back up on his face and took charge of the situation. “Well, things could certainly be better, but we do have someone with spatial magic, so I would suggest we beat a hasty escape.”
“Yeah,” Noelle said as she crossed her arms and frowned at Sunset. “Spatial magic.”
Yuno closed his grimoire with an oddly sick look on his face. “I think I’d rather stay here and be crushed.”
Some unknown force grabbed the lot of the group and pulled them in tight. “If anyone throws up on me, I still have time to send you back down here.”
“OH CRAP, I LEFT MY CLOTHES OUT THERE!”
And then, the world disappeared in a flash of light.
Sunset felt miserable, and only about half of it was because half of her innards had tried to crawl their way out of her throat along with her breakfast that was laying in a puddle, just a few feet away. Noelle was glaring at her, and told Mimosa not to heal her just yet, but by the grace of God, there was someone else taking up all the attention of everyone around.
The place she had teleported them to was on the edge of the forest that surrounded the dungeon, so she had something sturdy to lean up against as her butt rested on the soft grass.
“I’m Sylph, the Wind Spirit,” the pixie told them proudly before doing a little pirouette in the air. “And you are?”
Yuno looked a little uncomfortable at the little thing that looked to be giving him bedroom eyes. “Yuno.”
“Oh, Yuno, that’s a wonderful name,” she said before flying up in his face. “Usually, I’ve to go wait for whoever finds my spell to grow a bit before they can even see me and even more than that before other people can too, but you’ve got some real good mana detection and control. I just know we’re going to be a great team!”
Asta let out a snicker.
“Hey!” Sylph spat. “What’s so funny, shorty?”
After recovering from his short lived laughter, Asta looked up at the spirit with a frown. “Who are you calling short, tiny?”
Sylph groaned and rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, real original,” she said before indicating herself with a hand. “I’ll have you know, this body is just a puppet in which I manifest a splintered essence of my consciousness through a human medium. Do you honestly think that the elemental force of wind looks anything like something your tiny brain can even comprehend?”
Her curiosity peaked, Sunset looked past the frowning girl that was glaring at her and making Sunset feel more and more like her life was over. She needed something else to think about. “So, why are you here, then?”
Sylph brightened at the question and flew over to Sunset with a smile to land on one of her knees. “Because humans are fun, of course!” she said happily. “Why’d you come to this realm if not to play with them too?”
“I’m sorry, what?” Noelle said, making Sunset tense. “What to mean, realm? She-she’s like you?”
The little elemental goddess looked back at Noelle, then to Sunset, and after studying the not-unicorn’s frozen expression of abject horror for a second, winced. “Oh...you um...you never told them you’re not human, did you?”
“SAY WHAT?” Asta yelled. “I THOUGHT YOU WERE JUST FROM A FAR OFF COUNTRY OR SOMETHING!”
“...makes sense,” Yuno said after a moment.
Sunset’s eye twitched as she looked at the little thing she could strange with one finger. “Well, I don’t have to now.”
After looking back down at the ground, Sunset felt the world fall out from under her as annoyance faded to was replaced by a dread that had been lurking at the back of her mind for over the past two years. Her secret was out, not all of it, but more than enough of it to take away everything she had built since coming to the Clover Kingdom.
They would lock her up, dissect her, force her to do...stuff.
She wasn’t sure what kind of stuff, but it would be bad.
“What’re you getting so bent out of shape for?” Sylph asked in a slightly annoyed tone.
Sunset looked back up at the spirit to glare. “Are you kidding me?” she demanded as the world spun, making her take a moment to steady herself despite the fact that she was already sitting down. “Humans can’t even get along with themselves! And you want to add a complete stranger to the mix?”
Taking offense at the statement, Noelle crossed her arms and frowned down at her. “And just what are you implying?” she asked with an annoyed look. “I just wanted to know how you could use all those kinds of different magic, which um...I take is because you’re a...w-what did you call it?”
“Technically, Sunset only uses one type of magic, but because it’s Harmonic-based instead of-you know what? I’m gonna keep my mouth shut about anything else involving her,” the pixie said. “You want to know, you ask the...you ask her.”
Sunset began to feel even more uncomfortable, with a pressure building her head. This was going to end so badly. “Gee, thanks for creating a mess and abandoning me.”
The comment made Sylph visibly flinch, and Sunset saw her expression become one of instant regret that lasted for several seconds before she finally let out a long sigh. “Okay fine,” she grumbled. “You got a point there. I really hate having to get all serious, but...hey you!”
Klaus, who had been standing off to the side and observing the whole thing while thinking who knew what to himself flinched. Then, after readjusting his glasses, he looked down at the little creature as it flew up into the air to meet him eye to eye. “Excuse me?”
“You’re the senior magic knight here, so as the Wind Spirit, I’m invoking the Accords of Spirits and Man,” she told him. “Which means you’re going to take me, my partner, and that little girl over there straight to the highest authority in your kingdom. You know, the Magic Emper-oh wait, you guys call him the Wizard King these days.” After shaking off the side comment, Sylph clapped her hands. “Now, let’s get going, chop-chop.”
After a few seconds of quiet, Noelle sputtered. “Hey, wait a second! You can’t just leave me behind when it comes to something like this. I’m royalty!”
Noelle sat in the back of some sort of magical contraption that Klaus had created that looked something akin to a chariot with a luxurious back seat that he stood at the head of since all the room was being taken up by Asta, Noelle, and Sunset. Luck was flying under his own power, while Mimosa and Yuno were making do with brooms they had brought along, despite the fact that one of their mages had a group transit spell.
Since her origins had been revealed, the redhead had been looking rather dejected. Which she should be, Noelle told herself as sympathy and worry about what was going on in her best friend’s mind cropped up. Needing to stamp it out, the royal focused on her anger. She could have told me the truth about herself at least!
She looked over to Sunset, intent on asking a question. However, Asta beat Noelle to it.
“So, are you really like a big scary lizard that’s over a thousand feet tall, with wings and three heads that shoot lightning?” he asked excitedly.
Sunset looked up from the floor of the carriage with a dumbfounded expression as she looked at the idiot sitting next to her. “Huh?”
A second later, Luck had landed on the back of the carriage. “No way, she’s probably a giant monster that’s this giant mass of tentacles, with a big mouth at the center that can devour a whole country!” he said. “That’d be really cool to fight!”
Her confusion building, Sunset’s head fell to the side a little bit. “W-What’re you guys doing?”
“We’re trying to guess what you really look like. Which, I’m going to take as a no to my idea,” Asta said before crossing his arms and sitting back in his seat with a frown. “Now I have to wait until everyone else gets a turn until I can guess again.”
Yuno flew over next to her. “Considering everything we know, I’m going to say you're some sort of mass of magical energy given consciousness,” he said before looking over to Sylph. “Since she isn’t giving me any help.”
The little creature began to look more uncomfortable “Oh come on! I said I wasn’t going to talk about it anymore!”
For some reason, Sunset seemed to get even more nervous from all the questions. “Um...why?”
“Eh, just passing time,” Luck told her.
Yuno rubbed his chin. “Well, there are a lot of questions this brings up,” he said before looking at Sunset. “Is what you told us about where you came from even remotely true!”
The question made Sunset wince as if struck. “E-Everything I told you was true, I just...left off the part about my species and my homeland’s actual location.”
“So, the place you come from does have a similar hierarchy to ours,” Noelle reasoned before she thought back to what happened in the dungeon. “And that mark, the Wind Spirit took one look at you, or your magic, and then lifted your skirt for confirmation.”
“OH YEAH!” Asta yelled, which got him a glare from everyone sitting and floating around him. “That mark Gray couldn’t duplicate. That’s going to be important, right? I thought it was just some kind of magic ink, but now…”
Sunset groaned. “It’s uh...well...it’s kind of like…” The usually brash girl blushed and pulled in on herself. “It’s kind of...complicated.”
Sylph flew into the center of the conversation circle a second later. “It’s basically their version of a grimoire.”
All of the real humans present blinked and Noelle found her mouth trying to twitch upward. “Wait…” She held back a snicker. “You carry your magic around...on your ass?” the royal finished before covering her mouth. Luckily nothing substantial came out.
“Hey!” Sunset practically whined.
Yuno let out a tiny snort. “And you always griped about me pulling spells out of my rear. Hypocrite.”
“THAT IS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT THING!” Sunset yelled at him.
The sight of the redhead getting back to her normal self brought a wave of relief to Noelle. Then, Sunset looked over at her, and Noelle remembered that she was still supposed to be mad. So, the girl crossed her arms and looked away when Sunset met her eyes.
When she could practically feel Sunset flinch, Noelle rolled her eyes and cleared her throat. Since it looked like Sunny would need a little prodding... “Apologize.”
“...huh?” the redhead asked.
“I said apologize!” Noelle told her before looking back to see Sunset had become withdrawn again. She had wanted the girl to feel a little bad, but not something like what she was going through.“You lied to me, you lied to all of us. So...apologize.”
Sunset blinked. “But, you all would have thought I was crazy or something if I had told you anything even remotely like we aren’t the same species.”
Then, Asta just had to butt in. “Oh come on, Noelle, it’s not that big a deal-”
“THAT’S NOT THE POINT!” Noelle yelled as she jumped up to glare at both of them before sitting back down to stare at her knees. Maybe Sunset had a point. “It’s...I just...need to hear it.”
After looking at her for a few seconds, Sunset took in a breath. “I-I’m sorry. For not...t-telling you.”
“Good.” With that out of the way, Noelle looked back at the girl. When the stupid guessing game started, it had run through the back of her mind, with Noelle subconsciously playing back every moment they had been together, compiling the important facts about the girl before coming to the perfect conclusion to Sunset’s real species. “And...are you a mermaid?”
Asta looked over to Noelle. “Where did that come from?”
The boy questioning the obvious made Noelle snort. “Oh please,” she said before counting off all the points that proved what Sunset’s true species was. “The only meats she eats are fish and boar, and I can tell she’s only been eating boar for a short time. She doesn’t like bras because gravity works differently underwater, and the curtain doesn’t match the drapes. So, that would mean she would have had a golden mermaid’s tail. And we know she had some kind of society. Ergo, Sunset is really a mermaid from a dimension that’s filled with water.”
“Except that her main magic of choice is fire,” Yuno pointed out.
Noelle snorted and rolled her eyes at the four leaf commoner. “Well, yeah. She’s never seen fire before. It’s new and cool. I’ll bet she’s got a ton more water magic to use.”
When I have a sun for a cutie mark? Sunset mentally asked.
For some reason, the boys from Hage shared an uneasy look before looking back to the royal. It was the boy on the broom who presented the rebuttal. “You do know that Sunset can’t swim, right?”
The large that had just been poked in her theory made Noelle stammer. “W-Well that’s just because she doesn’t have her golden fish tail and needs to breathe!”
“I’m not a-wait,” Sunset said, her anger giving way to confusion as she looked around at the assembled people, her eye twitching. “Don’t any of you even care that I’m not really human?”
The collective of humans looked at her before trading looks between each other for a few seconds, then turned back to her as one to say, “not really.”
As Sunset sat dumbfounded at the answer, Mimosa floated down to her. “Should we?” she asked before tapping a finger to her chin in thought. “And I’m going to guess...you’re really a treant.”
“So, under article seven, subsection five of the Accord, I’m acting as witness to this creature,” Sylph said as she floated in the air above the Wizard King’s desk while the man in question looked at her with tired, yet somehow excited eyes. “She is a true Outsider and not a danger to the people of this realm. As such, I am demanding that she be given sanctuary and allowed to live her life freely, however she sees fit.”
Sunset fidgeted in her seat as the sounds of a summer night continued outside the windows of the Wizard King’s office.
Despite the odd revelation that had happened on the way to the capital, with her friends not even seeming to care that she wasn’t actually a person, the relief Sunset had felt upon learning that wasn’t even something they had considered an issue had drained away to be replaced by a building dread in the back of her mind. Somehow, the Wizard King had already been awake when they arrived in the palace and wearing his robes of office, despite it being nearly the middle of the night. The man with the blue hair that Sunset had seen the first time she met the king, Marx had been there as well, although they needed to retrieve a set of ancient scrolls that he now had unrolled and was reading through. So, it wasn’t as if the tall blonde man was omniscient or something of the like.
Maybe he had just been up late, working. Someone like him probably had tons of paperwork.
Her friends, and Klaus, stood off to the side, with Luck looking bored as he rocked back on his feet, while Asta was obviously straining to hold something in. Yuno looked about equally as unsettled, but Sunset doubted anyone else noticed.
The man named Marx looked up from the paper. “It’s...all right here, Sir,” he said before holding up the papers that had been reportedly written by the Third Wizard King. Which, according to Sylph, was just an update of an earlier agreement that predated the Clover Kingdom itself. “But, there are some stipulations, it seems. We’re allowed to ask what she’s doing here and demand a human witness vouch for her character.”
“I’LL DO THAT!” Asta yelled as he raised a hand. “Uh...W-Wizard King, sir. Your Highness...Majesty...guy.”
The Wizard King gave a good natured laugh before signaling the boy to lower his hand. “We’ll get to that in due time,” he said before looking down at the girl. “Now, Sunset...Shimmer, was it? Odd name, that. Would you mind telling me your story?”
Sunset shifted in her seat, then looked back at the assembled group of people before turning her head to face Julius again. “D-Do I have to?” she asked.
“The rules clearly stipulate-”
The Wizard King spoke, cutting the other man off. “No, you don’t. The rules clearly state that we can ask, but nothing about you answering. So if you don’t want to answer, we can move on to the next part,” he told her before taking in a deep breath and glancing over to the other people. “But something tells me, you want to get it off your chest.”
After several seconds, Sunset took in a deep breath. “To know what I’m doing here, I guess you need to know about everything that happened to me there,” she began.
“The realm I’m from is a lot like this world. A lot like this country, in fact. We use much of the same social structures, currency-based trading, and a million other things that if I were to list, we’d be here all night. I’m saying this because aside from a few basic technological differences, our worlds are nearly the same. Although, we are united under a single ruler instead of split up into different factions.
“And like the people of Clover, we gain a mystical power upon a certain coming of age. It signifies who we are and what we’re supposed to do, guide us to who we’re supposed to be. I got mine when I was six.
“I never actually knew where I really come from, I was left on the steps of an orphanage when I was just a newborn, according to the records I was allowed to see. Princess Celestia, the ruler of the country I lived in, took notice of me during an entrance test at her magic school when I was six. I hatched a phoenix egg, which takes a good deal of magical power and a certain flare. While she technically ran the school for gifted magical studies, she didn’t teach there but for one hour a week, and they were usually classes for...children. I was her only real full-time student that lived in her palace, and those studies were mostly a list of assignments to read through I would receive through a magical book that would become a copy of its twin after a message was written down in it. We spent time together, of course, but never more than thirty minutes here and there. Maybe an hour a day, tops.”
The Wizard King nodded. “So, she raised you, then.”
The question made Sunset pause. A mere month ago, she might have agreed with the assessment, albeit reluctantly. But now...her outlook on things had changed. “No,” Sunset said before sucking in a breath. Thinking about it...didn’t hurt as much as she thought it should have. “Celestia was my teacher, nothing more. She might have fancied herself as something more, but...the things she did were like someone going through the motions of what were supposed to be done rather than what should. And that was her entire approach to everything she did. And in her mind, everyone was supposed to obey and never question Celestia.
“Then, I got older and started to question why I should obey her and...I never got a real answer, only that I should,” Sunset said. It wasn’t just the mirror, it had been everything that Celestia told her to do without saying why, without telling her the reasoning behind anything, and her lectures on the importance of friendship boiled down to ‘it’s important because I say it is’ that might have done the job with five and eight-year old fillies, but not mares on the edge of adulthood. “So I went looking for answers myself and what I found was…”
The Wizard King raised an eyebrow at the girl. “Yes?”
Sunset stopped and sighed, realizing something that should have been said earlier. “Before I go on, there’s something I should say. Celestia extends her lifespan using an outside source of mana. Our differing anatomies allow creatures like her to stay young forever if they can maintain their grip on that source of power and she has been around for over one-thousand years.”
“One thousand, one hundred and twenty-two,” the fairy suddenly said. “By my last count before I came here. Although, with the differentiation of the alternating timeflows between realms and how wonky her’s is because it’s an offshoot, rather than rooted to the main body of the tree, that could be a different number by the end of next week.”
As everyone in the room stared at Sylph in confusion, Sunset turned to the little sprite. “Wait, is that the Ygrassil Theory of Multiversal Cohesion? Because that sounds a lot like the Ygrassil Theory,” she said before realizing something else. “And how do you know Celestia’s age?”
As the Wizard King’s eyes lit up upon hearing the start of such a discussion, Sylph seemed to get a little hot under the collar and practically bit her tongue after realizing what she just said. “H-Hey! Quite trying to make me look like a nerd! And I only know that brat’s age because I needed to check on the binding before I came here for a few decades!”
Yuno blinked, then looked at the pixie. “You’re calling someone over one-thousand a brat? Just how old are you?”
Not even a second later, Sylph was in Yuno’s face and holding up a finger. “Okay look. There are three things you’re not allowed to do in this relationship. Ask me about my age, talk about how tiny my boobs are, or date unapproved girls. I get that you humans have needs and babies are cute. So in five years or so, I’ll let you get married. But until then, you’re mine.”
Asta laughed as he pointed at the distressed Golden Dawn member with the black hair. “HAHAHA! It sounds like you’ve already got a wife, lady killer!”
“What?” Yuno asked as a little distress started to show on his face.
Sylph rolled her eyes. “Pff, calling the bond me and my darling Yuno share makes some simple breeding agreement pale in comparison.”
Yuno became even more distressed, actually looking like a normal person’s level of anxious. “...w-what?”
“Oh!” Julias said as he smashed a fist into an open palm, as if finally figuring out some ancient puzzle. “That’s why the people who have wielded wind spirit magic have always been attractive young men.”
After giving Yuno’s new wife a cautious look, Sunset turned back to the Wizard King. “So uh...anyway…” she began again, giving one last glance at the Wind Spirit as she landed on Yuno’s shoulder while he continued to stand as stiff as stone. “I’m not saying I was perfect back home either, I was arrogant and a bit of a brat. My ego gave me an inflated opinion of where my life should have been going and I went looking into a library of forbidden knowledge while seeking answers to questions Celestia said I wasn’t ready to hear. But then, I learned something about Celestia, about the entire nation that cast things in a new light. When she found out, she banished me from her sight, but...I realized that was just a ploy to buy herself a little time in order to deal with me properly. Anyone else knowing what I found out would have completely undermined everything her authority is built on. So, knowing that she was going to get rid of me, I escaped through a mirror that another powerful mage had created before Celestia was even around.” If not, Sunset was more sure than ever that her statue would have been decorating the garden beneath Celestia’s window.
“What was the secret?” Julius asked as he rubbed his chin.
Sunset licked her lips, unsure if the humans would understand it. “My people believe more than anything in a thing called destiny. We believe that everyone is put on this earth for a purpose. We believe that everyone has a gift, and in that gift, lies their destiny. It was believed that Celestia was granted power to rule over everyone forever, because it was her destiny, she was just born to do it,” Sunset said before thinking of another little alicorn who hadn’t been born to do anything. She just got lucky. “And that is the lie. She wasn’t born into anything. She used a magic item to transform herself into something she was never supposed to be, and if the population of my country knew the truth, her entire powerbase would crumble overnight. So, rather than be silenced, I ran away. And now I’m here.”
“Ah yes, the divine right to rule,” Marx practically spat. “We have that here, too.”
After taking a deep breath, Sunset licked her lips. “I’m not here to do anything, and in all honesty, after everything that’s happened to me, destiny is looking less like a sure thing and more like some cosmic joke,” she said just as her brain conjured up the impossibility of Asta finding another anti-magic sword in an underground death trip.
Sunset promptly told her brain to shut up. “I just want to live the best life I can with my friends, and my-well, my real family, here in the Clover Kingdom.”
After several seconds of silence, the Wizard King nodded. “I see,” he said before looking over to the assembled people. “Klaus, what do you think of this girl?”
“WHAT?” Asta yelled. “YOU’RE ASKING HIM?”
Yuno stepped forward. “With all due respect, Wizard King, sir. We’ve known Sunset the longest, if anyone could tell you about her character, it’s us.”
Julius nodded. “Yes, and I’m sure the two of you will give me a very biased opinion of your adopted sister,” he said before looking back to the only magic knight in the room that probably wanted her to fail. “Now, what do you think of her?”
All the hope that Sunset believed that she had built up over the course of the meeting plummeted through the floor, crashing down the bottom of the mountain as her odds of remaining in Clover fell into the toilet.
The arrogant prick stepped forward as he pushed up his glasses with a smug smile. “I believe…”
So, what happens to me now? she asked herself. Since there were rules to these things, Sunset doubted that she would be strung up, but...if Four Eyes was to be her character witness, this whole thing was over before it had even begun.
“...that she is an exemplary magic knight,” he continued, making the entire room fall silent. “Her level of power and control is quite amazing, as is her means of adapting spells to serve her particular type of magic. However, I am also impressed with her ability to lead others in a combat situation, and show mercy to the enemy.”
...huh? Sunset managed to think as the man continued.
“In fact, all of those youths from Hage were extraordinary in the mission today,” he went on before bowing his head. “While I was next to useless, they fought an enemy that could have pressed Captain Vangence himself, very hard. But, I foolishly thought less of them because of where they had come from and the title of commoner placed over their head. They still need some refinement, and could use a bit more tact in their interactions, but I know that not only Sunset, but all three of them will be among the best of us in the years to come.”
After raising his head, he looked back to the three as best he could. “I am ashamed of my actions, and apologize profusely.”
Julius clapped his hands and laughed. “Haha, excellent!” he said before looking over to his assistant. “Marx, have a copy of the Accords in relation to a new outsider settling in Clover drawn up so that Sunset understands how the law works in her case. Also, I’ll want you to keep your status as an outsider under wraps for a few years if you don’t mind, at least until your power finishes maturing. Diamond or Spade might try to snatch you up, should they learn of your existence before you’ve come into your own. Although, I suppose Yami will have to be informed, as well as Damnatio.”
Both Mimosa and Noelle flinched at the name, but while the flower girl stayed silent, Noelle raised a cautious hand. “Are you sure that informing the head of the Magic Parliament is a...um, sane thing to do?”
“It’s required,” Julius told them simply before giving the group a little smile and waving away their worries. “I wouldn’t be too concerned. As long as Sunset abides by the Accords, the punishment for doing anything against her that violates the agreements set down would spell the doom of every man, woman and child in Clover within a matter of hours.”
The atmosphere turned extremely tense at the revelation, and Sunset gulped before finding her voice. “What the hell?”
Sylph crossed her arms and snorted. “I told you I didn’t want to get all serious.”
“AHEM!” the Wizard King cleared his throat, getting everyone’s attention again. “No need to worry, there have been other travelers passing through this world throughout its history, and the human race is still here. I’m sure things will work out.
“Now...there is one other important matter that must be discussed,” he said in a very serious tone before he practically leapt over his desk and picked Sunset up by her shoulders. The man’s eyes seemed to sparkle as he looked at her with gleeful joy. “Tell me about your magic! An entirely new system of magic! I can’t even begin to describe how excited I am by the idea. And you can copy spells? How does that work? Can you show me? Show me! Showmeshowmeshowmeshowmeshowmeshowmeshowmeshowmeeeeeeeeeee!”
As Sunset found herself assaulted by the man’s interest, Marx let out an embarrassed groan. “Well, I guess I should be impressed he held out this long.”
After finding her footing, Sunset managed to begin her explanation. “Well, uh...it’s not that I copy magic, it’s that I use my own magic to make an approximation of the spell using my system of magic instead of yours. Like writing something down I read from a grimoire in another language.” Of course, it wasn’t that simple, but it was the best way she could think to describe things.
“You can read grimoires?” the Wizard King asked, even more interested before an odd grimoire without a cover that looked like a giant rolodex suddenly appeared behind him and stopped before Sunset found her vision nothing but the page with the arcane formula written on it. “Quick, what does this say?”
The group of magic knights didn’t leave the man’s office until well past dawn.