Secre Swallowtail hadn’t known many people during her life as a human. Although she had been a noble, her magic hadn’t been thought a good thing to pass on to the next generation. So her number of suitors was rather low. It didn’t help that her short stature and lack of a figure made most people mistake her for a twelve-year-old girl, either.
So, the few people she did know relatively well, she remembered with absolute clarity.
Licht hadn’t been Secre’s friend. He had been the friend of her prince, a man that Lumiere had gotten to know after an incident involving his sister and some wild mana that Licht had helped save her from. The fact that they both had four leaf clovers on their grimoires made them become curious with each other. Although, the way Secre understood it, it was her prince’s sister Tetia getting knocked up by the elven leader that forged a lasting connection between them upon which their shared ideals were exchanged over time.
And then, it all came to an end when the magical device she and her prince had created went missing. Only to be found later, at the sight of the elven massacre, where Licht’s people had been wiped out.
The man standing above her looked like Licht...mostly. He didn’t have the ears. But that wasn’t the only anomaly in the fraud’s appearance. While Licht had possessed a four leaf clover, his magical attributes had revolved around swords, not light. To top it all off, while the mana the light mage possessed was certainly impressive, the leader of the elf tribe had much more at his disposal before his death.
After the attack, the group of knights stood almost shoulder to shoulder, with Sunset being the odd woman out of the left. Gauche let Marie hide behind him while Yuno focused on the man, as did Asta and Noelle. As for their prisoners, they both sat up against the wall, behind the teenagers.
For his part, ‘Licht’ blinked as Secre spoke and accused him of lying while another mage came out of the spatial portal and stood behind him as it closed. “Um...did that bird just-” was as far as he got before Sunset dropped her satchel full of children before moving at light speed to reappear in front of him and slammed her fist into his jaw.
Secre blinked at the redhead’s stupid move. That idiot!
The man calling himself Licht didn’t even seem to be phased by the blow. “Oh my, you must be new to your grimoire,” he said before a sword made of light appeared in his hand that he used to jam into Sunset’s gut until it went out the other end of her body. “Otherwise, you would have known that enhancement magic doesn’t offer us light mages very much in the way of physical offense.”
The redhead coughed out a splatter of blood that ended up on the fake Licht’s robe before the sword disappeared. Without the blade holding her up, Sunset fell from where she had been a moment ago to crash on the ground below. As she did, the bubbles of force encasing the three grimoires she sealed with her magic popped and dropped to the ground.
“Well, time to die,” Licht said before his grimoire lit up again. “Light Magic: Light Swords of Conviction!” The spell spawned half a dozen weapons that looked like the same five-bladed lances from before and sent them at the girl a moment later.
Secre could feel Yuno tense as he looked down at his grimoire for an instant. It was a move several young mages did when they knew they didn’t have a spell capable of stopping what they were seeing, but looked anyway out of desperation.
“Water Creation Magic: Sea Dragon’s Cradle!”
Noelle’s spell sprung to life around Sunset an instant before it was too late, knocking the barrage aside as the girl winced from the effort of blocking the attack. “I’ll take care of defense. You guys handle the rest!”
“NOW’S OUR CHANCE NEIGE!” the larger kidnapper shouted as Secre heard him move. She had enough time to turn her head towards the man and see him grab Marie with one arm before lifting her up to wrap his fat fingers around the little girl’s neck.
Gauche turned around and tensed before a square shaped mirror appeared next to him, different from the round ones he usually created. “MARIE!”
As the rest of the knights froze, Secre turned and looked back at the fake Licht. If he attacked now...she blinked. Even the human claiming to be an elf had a tense look on his face as he watched the larger man laugh while he and the smaller kidnapper inched closer to their books.
“Now now, one little word from any of you, and I pop off this little one’s head,” the man threatened when Asta looked as if he was going to try moving. “Just because I don’t have my grimoire doesn’t mean I can’t enhance myself enough to kill her.”
“I want to get out of here, Baro,” the younger man whined as they reached the table that their grimoires sat on.
The man snorted. “Are you kidding me? Now that the tables have turned, we can suck all the magic out of these kids and a bunch of magic knights!” he said with a laugh before looking up at the non-elf. “Hey you! I expect to be paid extra for all this dangerous work!”
As Licht continued to look down at the man with a hard expression, Gauche leaned in close to Yuno. “Hey wind boy, can you do something to that guy with a raw burst of mana? If you can break his hold on her, I can get Marie away from those guys.”
“Are you saying that little girl you’re holding was one of the people you were going to drain of their magic?” Licht asked evenly.
Baro let out a laugh. “That’s right! She’s just oozing with magic, too!” he told the man floating above him enthusiastically before looking back at the knights. “And they’ve got a ton more kids as well. That redhead used some kind of compression magic so that they could carry them in those bags on their sides. But we’ve got about seventy kids, all ready to have their magic sucked up for ya! Starting with this little gem!”
After a few seconds of silence, Licht frowned. “I see. It would appear that my plans were a bit too reckless in their haste. I will have to be more mindful of my actions in the future,” he said before disappearing in a flash of light. When he reappeared, he was behind Barro and created a sword in his hand to swipe it across the back of the man’s neck.
“Wha-?” Baro managed to say before a line of red formed at his neck and he started to collapse.
As he did, Gauche’s mirror rose up. “Mirror Magic: Mirror Shift.” Marie disappeared from the arms of the falling corpse, only to reappear next to her brother before the body hit the ground, and its severed head rolled a few feet before coming to a stop.
The surprise action stunned even Secre, leaving her immobile while the kidnapper in white let out a scream. “BARO! You...I’LL MAKE YOU PAY FOR THAT!” he yelled frantically while calling up his grimoire.
“Doubtful,” the light mage replied before throwing out his hand. A light sword shot forward and struck the young man with the gray hair in his forehead, dropping him dead a second later. “Disgusting creatures, willing to sell off the future of children for money.”
Snapping out of his daze, Asta took a step forward. “SAYS THE GUY WHO WAS BANKING THEM!” he shouted. “You’re paying guys to steal magic from children, and now you’re feeling bad about it? WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR DEAL?”
The man calling himself Licht looked over to Asta with a frown. “I don’t want to hear such words from trash like you,” he told the boy evenly. “Save for a very few, every man, woman, and child in the Clover Kingdom will die for their sins. I will make you all suffer and scream as you die in agony. Every last one of you will pay for what you did!”
As the man ranted, Asta leapt at him, his grimoire following behind him in easy reach. More than halfway there, he reached in and started to pull out the larger of his swords before landing and completing the movement to take a swing at Licht, who flew black in a blur of motion just in time. “You kill your own men to save a kid, then you go on and on about how you’re going to kill everyone?” Asta yelled as he pointed his sword up at the man. “Buddy, YOU’RE NUTS!”
Licht’s eyes widened when Asta pointed his sword at him. “Where did you get that weapon? And that grimoire?” he demanded as his face became a frown. “They don’t belong to you, boy! Give them back!”
What? Secre asked as a shiver passed down her spine.
Asta pulled out his shorter weapon and ducked behind his blade before Licht raised his grimoire. “Light Magic: Light Swords of Conviction!” the mage cried out as he launched a dozen of the magical weapons towards Asta, who actually managed to keep most of his body from being struck by using his larger sword as cover while his smaller one kept his exposed areas from being hit.
“Sylph, curve the shots.” Yuno said as he raised his hand. “Wind Magic: Swift White Bow.” As the large longbow made of wind took shape to create half a dozen arrows with drilling tornadoes, the little pixie flew in front of him.
“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” Sylph shouted before taking a deep breath and blowing on each of the wind projectiles, sending them towards Licht. The man flew up into the air to avoid them. Which turned out to be a wrong move, as the attack turned slightly to head towards the other Midnight Sun member who had been keeping back.
Licht turned and noticed what was going on too late for him to move and intercept the attacks. “VALTOS!” he screamed before the barrage impacted the tunnel where the man was standing.
Although Secre couldn’t be certain of the man’s defeat, her mana sense did detect a huge drop in magical power coming from his location, but not a complete dissipation of his mana. If he was still there, he was either unconscious, or too injured to do anything.
The wind around Secre swirled, and she had to jump back and off of the boy’s shoulder as he flew up into the air. “Keep attacking and keep him off balance!” Yuno shouted as he looked over to Gauche. “Don’t give him time to cast!”
“Don’t tell me what to do, golden boy!” Gauche yelled back at the man before bringing up his grimoire. “Mirror Magic: Reflect Refrain.” After he was done casting, a dozen different mirrors appeared around Licht. Although it looked like only one of them fired a magical blast, the mirrors were positioned so that each one could catch the beam and send it to the next, making slight alterations as they did to change the course of the attack.
Noelle looked over to the girl standing behind Gauche. “Marie, maybe you should come over here with me?” she offered the girl.
With his mirrors going off on their own, Gauche faced Noelle with a frown. “Marie stays with me!”
Apparently still casting his strangely shaped swords spell, Licht sent out a pair of blades to intercept the beam between two of the mirrors and flew out of the collection of mirrors before raising his hand. “Light Creation Magic: Light Whip of Judgement!” he cast before a long strand of light shot out from his hand that he grabbed onto before pulling back with his arm and flailing it around as the light continued to expand in length. A second later, the whip widely lashed about, destroying all of Gauche's mirrors as well as a good deal of the ground beneath the fake Licht that knocked up a good bit of dust.
“Oh dear,” he said before canceling the spell and turning back a page in his grimoire. “That was a lot bigger than I had expected. Having the three of you here really does make this difficult.”
Yuno flew up above the mage and positioned himself on the opposite side of the cave from the rest of the group. “Good to know we’re not making this easy for you! Wind Creation Magic: Wind Blade Shower!” he cast at close range. A flurry of white blades that looked somewhat akin to feathers shot at the light mage, who might as well have teleported out of the way he moved so fast to avoid them. “ASTA!”
Down on the ground, the boy with no magic let out a surprised yelp as Yuno’s attack headed straight for him. Instead of using his sword for cover, Asta took it in both hands and swatted most of the barrage away in a different direction a split second before Licht appeared in front of them to take several blades to his chest and abdomen. Which also struck with enough force to knock the man claiming to be Licht back into the wall and keep him there in the grooves of the stone.
He sat up there for a moment, his face full of shock. “Y-You actually managed to...h-hit me,” he said before coughing up blood while his body trembled. “H-How?”
“Our big sister liked to play around a lot with light magic back in our home village,” Yuno said. “She also liked to show off her intelligence and brag about how it worked. Like how the human brain isn’t fast enough to comprehend moving at that speed very well. You can move fast, but it’s only in one direction, only for an instant, and only to a destination you would have had to select ahead of time. So all I had to do was throw a wide enough barrage to make you dodge, with a few of my knives in Asta’s direction.”
Taking his name as a cue, Asta raised his big sword to point it at Licht. “THEN I JUST READ YOUR KI TO FIGURE OUT WHERE YOU WERE GOING!”
Licht chuckled lightly and looked back to the tall boy. “Who are you, anyway? I can feel your mana, but you don’t look familiar to me at all,” he said.
Yuno raised an eyebrow. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked before frowning. “Now surrender, you’ll bleed out if you continue fighting.”
“Right,” Licht said with a sigh. “I suppose you wouldn’t know. Well then. Light Recovery Magic: Healing Light Particles.”
“OH COME ON!” Asta shouted as a sphere of sparkling light surrounded the man and lessened his wounds as the wind knives were pushed out of his body. “He can heal himself too?”
Floating next to Yuno, Sylph let out an aggravated cry. “Next time, let me blast him when he’s down!”
Yuno brought up his grimoire. “Wind Creation Magic: Swift White Hawk!” he cast before sending a bird the size of his chest at the light mage before Licht disappeared in a flash of light. The hawk turned and circled around as Licht brought up his grimoire to cast another sword spell and send it towards the molded mass of wind mana to destroy it before moving away from his previous position in the blink of an eye when Gauche fired a series of blasts at him.
After he had gotten out of the crossfire of Yuno and Gauche’s spells, Licht recast his healing magic and kept his distance. “I do apologize, but it looks like I will have to cause a few of you some injury,” he said as he finished healing and brought up his grimoire again. “Light Magic: Light Swords of Conviction!”
Seeing where this was going, Secre took cover behind a stalagmite before looking over to Noelle as the fake Licht was still prepping his attack. “Get behind cover!”
While Yuno was able to call up a wind that altered the course of some of the blades enough for Asta to knock the remainers that were still close enough to hit them away, Licht’s attacks that flew past them took Gauche in the shoulders and one of his legs, while Noelle moved just enough to avoid the sword going for her head, but she still took blades in one of her legs and her stomach.
“Big Brother!” Marie exclaimed as she moved to check on Gauche while Secre flew over to take a look at Noelle.
“Can you move?” she asked before glancing over to Gauche and frowning. The number blades sent towards him was nowhere near what Noelle received. Did Licht think her higher level of mana made her more of a threat for some reason? It didn’t make much sense, as all Noelle had done is send out a single defensive spell.
The girl let out a tiny cry. “T-This really hurts!” she replied through gritted teeth as the light weapons dissipated to reveal burn marks. It looked like the royal’s obscene amount of mana had kept her from taking severe damage. But she wouldn’t be walking any time soon.
“NOELLE!” Asta shouted before he turned around and ran towards her.
Yuno’s eyes went wide before he flew up into the air for more mobility and brought up his grimoire. However, he wasn’t fast enough to stop two of the light blades from striking the back of Asta’s legs, bringing him down to the ground right as he pulled off his spell. “Wind Magic: Towering Tornado!” he cast, focing the light mage to retreat as Yuno increased the size of his spell to create a veritable wall between Licht and the others that took up half the cavern.
“I don’t suppose anyone has a magical item that can disable a mage’s ability to cast in their pockets?” Secre asked the assembled humans.
After letting out a snort, Noelle looked over at the bird with a frown. “Lady, all I have on me is a bunch of kids everyone saddled me with because I’m the defensive mage, and a communicator...my...brother forgot to take back,” she said with wide eyes before she grabbed her wand. “Yuno! Thow Asta over here!”
The boy with the black hair threw out a hand and a moment later, Asta was flying through the air with his grimoire behind him, despite the fact that both of his swords were still on the ground before the tornado dissipated and Yuno moved out of his previous position.
“Yuno, follow me lead!” Sylph called out before she actually led the boy through the air rather than passively observing like usual as they dodged several of Licht’s swords.
Once the boy with the gray hair was close enough, Noelle raised her wand. “Water Creation Magic: Sea Dragon’s Cradle!” she cast before wrapping herself and everyone around her in another dome of water. Then, she reached into her satchel to pull out the silver communicator and turned it on before bringing it up to her mouth. “Hello? Big Brother? Are you there? Stupid thing, connect me to Nozel Silva!”
Despite the heaviness of his robe and everything else he was wearing, Nozel still felt the cold as his silver eagle soared through the night sky. An annoying beeping drew the man’s attention to his pack, and he reached down into it to pull out the communicator, wondering who would be calling him this late at night.
As far as everyone knew, he was supposed to be asleep.
“This is Captain Nozel,” he answered.
“Big Brother!” the voice of his youngest sister replied, making the man frown.
“Noelle, how did you get a-” he stopped remembering the spare communicator she had been given a month ago, but was unable to recall taking it back. “Never mind. Get off this frequency and-”
“Someone’s trying to kill us!” she quickly said before Nozel could finish, making his blood run cold. “He says he’s the leader of the men who attacked the capital and right now, I believe him. Three of us are already injured and Yuno isn’t doing much better. We need help!”
Nozel quickly brought his eagle to a stop. “Where are you?” he asked before trying to remember which spatial magic mage was on call at this hour.
“We’re in a mine a little north of Nairn. I don’t know where exactly, but the entrance was on the ground, but was followed by a steep incline,” she said.
Before the girl was finished talking, Nozel had already turned around.
It was the old dream, come again.
The same dream she had been having every night since she died.
Or...having every night a week after she died?
It was...hard to think of the time before she had been pulled out of the garbage heap, so close to death.
Again.
Everything was muted and a little blurry, like she was looking through a fog. The corners of her vision faded to black.
She did her best to remember the details, but...it was so hard.
Even her name couldn’t be recalled.
It was the day of the wedding. Everyone was happy and wearing their best robe. The bride had asked if any of them wanted a dress, but all the ladies in the village had refused passionately. Dresses were just so...confining. And the corsets that came with them were absolute hell.
Although...they certainly looked pretty. Maybe, after everyone was family, she could ask Tetia if she knew a way to wear them while still being able to breathe.
Licht was surrounded by well-wishers, while the little boy that followed him everywhere stood not too far off, a scowl covered the child’s face. She never understood why the child was so attached to their leader, and jealousy so at that.
“Ah, Fana, good to see you,” Licht said when she got closer to him. “I was worried you might not come.”
She blinked.
Fana? Had that been her name?
It was so hard to think, sometimes.
She remembered being called Fana by someone.
But that was in her old life, before she became...Fana...again?
Confused thoughts were swept aside as the dream continued to play out. “Where else would I be?” she asked.
The conversation ended. There should have been more, but everything rushed through in the blink of an eye, and the next thing Fana knew, she was standing with the others as they looked up at the gazebo where Licht was and…
For a brief moment, Fana frowned at the image her mind presented her with. This isn’t right…
But then, the scene changed again. A red tint colored the world and a magic circle appeared above the clearing where they had gathered for the wedding. Magical shards of light fell from the circle, striking everyone they could as the barrage increased the number of attacks on the outer edge as some of the people tried to run.
One of the partygoers raised his hand to try and form a shield. But...nothing happened. “My magic! WHAT HAPPENED TO MY MAGIC?” he shouted before a blade of light struck him down.
All around, Fana saw her friends being killed by the ambush.
“HE DID THIS!” another one of her tribe shouted. “IT WAS ALL A TRICK!”
“DAMN HUMANS!”
Fana felt herself get stabbed and fell down, like she always did. She fell down onto the ground, her life’s blood flowing out of her as the darkness closed in.
Still, there was something...something she needed to see.
With her vision fading, Fana looked up to the sky, past the magic circle that was sending out waves of attacks that were killing everyone. Above it was a sphere, some kind of magical item that was absorbing everyone’s mana and sending it to...to…
Fana fought to stay conscious, stay in the dream as she followed the mana. Up on a cliff overlooking the village, a group of humans stood, laughing at them as they died. They wore crowns and fancy clothes and… There was...something...else.
The human on the left. He...had something...in his arms…
But as much as she tried to focus on it, the dream wouldn’t let her.
And then...the dream ended as something whispered into her ear.
“HAtE tHeM. DEsPisE THEm. KiLl tHEm aLL.”
-.......-
“Hey, Fana, wake up!”
The calling of her name roused Fana from her sleep. She opened her eyes and picked herself up to look over at the door to the room she used to sleep in. The man with the black hair with white splotches and red mark beneath his left eye was barely familiar to her for an instant, then she remembered. His hair was wrong, and the marking shouldn’t have been there. The robes he was wearing were wrong too, both in color and type.
The markings. They were important. Fana knew that much.
But...why?
“Hello Raia,” she replied in an even tone before bending her head to the side until it touched her shoulder. Everyone said that it was hard for them to know what she was feeling, because her voice was always the same. She didn’t understand, everyone’s voices were always the same. But if she moved differently when she spoke, that seemed to help cover for the inability for other people to understand her tone. “What do you want?”
The taller man pressed his lips together. “Did you sleep in your clothes again?” he said before reaching up to run his hand through his hair. “I swear, if I have to become your nanny, it’s going to be such a pain.”
“You want me to take off my clothes?” she asked before reaching up to start undoing her top.
Raia held up his hands. “No!” he said before coming closer and giving her a considering frown. “I swear, I think that gem in your head is affecting your brain. Maybe we should just pluck it out-”
A flash of panic shot through Fana’s mind. “NO!” she shouted as she reached up to grab the man’s wrist before she could touch the pink crystal that had been implanted in her skull.
On the nightstand next to her bed, a new light began to glow, followed by a growl. It made Raia give a nervous smile as he pulled back and held up his hands. “Okay, no need to sick your little lizard on me,” he said before his expression became more serious. “There was some problem with the last mana delivery and Licht went to go see what was up. But we haven’t heard back from him yet, and Sally was pretty beaten up when she came back through Valtos’s portal. If he doesn’t come back soon, we’ll have to go check on him.”
Four minutes.
Sunset learned that was how much time it took to repair a kidney that had been cut in half with her phoenix magic. Holes in her body were easy. Bisected organs, not so much. It was only through rote memorization brought about by constant practice that Sunset had been able to cast the spell at all, her first real taste of pain telling Sunset she needed a better means of fighting through it than just bearing with it.
Dimly, she was aware of the other mana sources in the cavern while performing her healing spell. Everyone was alive, with the possible exception of Asta. Him not having magic was really annoying.
Still, the healing had given her body the rest it needed from her last intake of mana, and Sunset focused her defenses before drawing the surrounding mana in around herself and altering it for her personal use. Just because it wasn’t how humans normally did a mana zone didn’t mean it was any worse.
But, just because she was in fighting shape again didn’t mean she was going to be stupid about it. With her mana still configured for fire, Sunset recloaked herself in a phoenix robe and blinked when she saw the effect her mana zone had on it. Instead of just a single wing, a pair of them sprouted from the fiery aura, forming something much more akin to actual wings than the strand of fire that had been there before.
Sunset approached the water barrier that was still surrounding her and frowned. “Right. Water magic,” she told herself before making a fist and surrounding it with her usual offensive fire spell before punching forward and moving out into the cavern before taking to the air and getting a sense of what was going on.
Another one of Noelle’s defensive spells was swirling around close to a wall, where Sunset could feel everyone’s mana inside the watery cocoon. Except for Yuno’s, he was flying around the cave on the back of a hawk big enough to double as a boat and exchanging flying blade spells with Licht. Asta’s swords just laying on the ground were a concern, but there was nothing Sunset could do about them. She knew what happened when someone other than Asta touched those things.
The dead bodies of the kidnappers were also pretty creepy, but Sunset found that she wasn’t as affected by them as much as her memory said she should have been. Unfortunately, she didn’t have time to be disturbed by that fact or think about it as she took note of where all the unconscious children that had been drained were before flying up to hover alongside Yuno.
“You’re still...where did you copy that spell from, girl?” Licht demanded with a frown.
Sunset snorted. “Tch. Why is it everybody’s always asking me that stupid question?” she replied before looking over to Yuno. “How are you holding up?”
After sucking in a deep breath, Yuno let it out and kept his eye straight ahead. “I’ll manage,” he replied before frowning a little. “You?”
It took a moment for Sunset to take stock of herself. Like someone who had gotten their second wind after a few minutes rest, she was finding her body didn’t like being put through its paces with having to channel a great deal of mana so soon. “I’ll manage,” she told him. “So, since you’re the long range guy. I’ll get in close and try to create an opening or pin him down. You hang back, catch your breath. Hit him when I trip him up.”
“Sounds good,” Yuno said.
Which made Sunset rather worried. Yuno didn’t like taking the back seat. He must have been a lot more tired than she originally thought.
Sunset went through the motion of crouching in the air before her flaming wings spread out above her in preparation to flap despite there not being a conscious decision to move them. A combined motion from her legs and wings sent the girl flying forward towards the man with the five too many braids. “Fire Magic: Caldarius Brachium!”
“You must be joking,” Licht said before he popped out of Sunset’s line of sight, to fly upwards according to her mana sense, before a barrage of oddly-shaped light daggers fell towards her.
Which Sunset responded to by launching herself at them with one of her hands extended. The power of her offensive spell knocked away the light swords that would have hit her dead on, and the ones that managed to nick her caused wounds that were quickly repaired by the defensive healing spell Sunset had wrapped herself in. She closed in on the light mage, but met only rock when he flashed away again.
The same second he landed, Sunset turned and punched towards the man, sending a concentrated stream of fire at him that hit the location he was standing at far too late before Licht reappeared and fired off another barrage of light swords that were easily dealt with as she swatted the closer ones away before moving after Licht again.
As the dance continued, Sunset was starting to realize a major problem. While the light mage couldn’t do any real damage to her, she was always one step behind. With the time limit of her mana zone, her body would most likely give out before his magic did. Which meant she couldn’t keep dancing around until Licht made a mistake.
Unfortunately, there was no pattern to his movements, so trying to back him into a corner and open up with a wide attack wasn’t an option. On top of which, for whatever reason, he didn’t fly in close or open up with a larger spell when she did have to stop and change her trajectory.
There was also something else that bothered her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Something about the man was...off, somehow. Like he had a strange odor that Sunset didn’t like, but couldn’t quite place.
Yuno stayed out of the fight, watching everything from a place in front of the drained children. It cut off a part of the cave from being used as a point for Licht’s flashy escapes, but didn’t cause too much of a problem for the light mage’s dodges. The fact that Yuno wasn’t throwing mana around was worrisome, though. He must have burned through a lot of it and was holding back for something he knew would hit.
I need to think of something, Sunset told herself before throwing a concentrated beam of fire at the man, who simply strafed to the side in order to avoid it. A large area attack would be too obvious and open her up before she even finished launching it, which would probably get her killed. If he even bothered to take advantage of the opening, that is.
Trying to bring down the ceiling on top of him was...a bad idea. Even if Sunset hadn’t calculated the size of the mountain to figure out that they were only a few feet from what had to be open air above, which giving him access to would end her chances of cornering him, the dust knocked up by such a move would choke the kids that were laying on the ground to death.
Teleportation...was a stupid idea. The mana field surrounding Licht would have forced her to appear fifteen feet away, and so dazed that she wouldn’t be able to aim. Even if she got in close and used a wide area attack to the point she didn’t need to aim, he was fast enough to dodge it unless she could pin him down.
“You know, I think I just realized something,” he said as he floated in the air across from her. “No grimoire, multiple magical attributes, mana-infused body...you may have taken human form, but you’re an outsider, aren’t you?”
Sunset frowned. Talking was a waste of time, but...burning through mana would only limit the amount of time she could run around fast enough. “That’s right,” she replied before reaching out to grab a hold of the nearby stalactite. If she hung onto it, flying wasn’t necessary.
Licht let out a small laugh. “Well then, we have no reason to fight. I don’t know what lies these people have told you, but-”
Sunset didn’t let him finish. “You’re an elf that was brought back from the dead through the use of forbidden magic involving a set of magic stones after all of your buddies got killed during a wedding between you and the local princess of the Clover Kingdom,” she said before blinking. Wait a minute...the Tree of Life, and a man who should be dead right in front of me…
Except...what Secre had said...Sunset had the feeling she was missing a key ingredient to what was going on. If they had already been reincarnated, then why bother with a ritual involving the Tree of Life?
“...oh, you...know about that,” Licht replied in surprise before blinking a few times. “That’s...convenient.” After regaining his composure, the man smiled. “Then you have seen the evils of this kingdom, their hypocrisy. Some live on the verge of starving to death, while others discard food they cannot finish. Citizens ranks are supposedly determined by magic power. Yet some are met with discrimination despite the strength of their magic, because of their low birth. Others are persecuted for the simple crime of being born in a different land. Join with me, and we will build a new kingdom, a shining city on the mountain from which a new utopia will be made!”
Sunset sneered at the man. “You want to talk about how evil people are when I’m in the sight of a pile of magically crippled children?” she asked. Keep him talking, she told herself. The oddity of his little origin story didn’t matter for the moment. The more he talked, the more time Sunset had to think.
Since the man could dodge everything Sunset could throw, she needed to figure out a way to pin him down. But the magical aura he had surrounded himself with made using telekinesis on him impossible.
The verbal jab got a rise out of Licht. “If you know who I am, then you know that everything they have is built on a legacy of taint that must be washed clean!” he yelled back at her. “Everything they have is dirty. And every lost one of them must pay for their sins!”
With his previous moral argument giving way to this new one, Sunset found herself being drawn into the argument for a moment. “So now, even the people who are starving and get turned down for all the good jobs are evil too, huh?” Sunset went on with half-lidded eyes. “The crap you’re mad about happened over a hundred years ago. If you have a problem with the way things went back then, go dig up the corpses of all the dead people and bring it up with them. Because from where I’m standing, the only people who are evil here are the ones going on about past crimes that happened a lifetime ago as they going around committing murder and trying to burn cities to the ground!”
Idiot you weren’t supposed to argue with him, Sunset told herself. The whole point of taking a moment to rest was to get the guy monologuing and then come up with a plan for her to take him out!
She could try switching back to light magic…
But that hadn’t worked out for her the first time around at all.
Licht sighed. “Well then, if you aren’t on the side of justice, then you are also an evil that needs to die in the fires of retribution,” he said. “Pitty, that even one such as you would side with the humans instead of us.”
Yuno snorted as he cut into the conversation. “The fact that you thought anyone would help you after what we’ve seen here is laughable.”
The sudden addition of Yuno to the conversation made Sunset blink. With everything that had been going on, she had forgotten that he was there. The reminder of which gave Sunset the perfect idea for dealing with the light mage. “Yuno, close your book and cut your mana,” Sunset ordered.
While the confused look on Yuno’s face said that he didn’t understand what was going on, he did as asked and began to drop from the sky.
Licht blinked at the action “Hm? Decided to surrender, then? All things considered, I’m willing to let you leave with your friends. To be honest, this little side project has caused me some embarrassment and I need to restructure it a bit,” he said before looking over to Noelle’s water shield. “Consider it an apology.”
There was a loud pop as Yuno blinked out of sight.
“Why would I bother doing that?” Sunset asked as Yuno reappeared fifteen feet in the air away from Licht. The unexpected move made the man look down for a fraction of a second, letting Sunset cast another spell. “WHEN I JUST CAUGHT YOU?”
Licht flashed out of his previous location and ran into the fully transparent shield bubble that Sunset had surrounded a good quarter of the cavern with. A second later, his mana surged and dozens of the odd light weapons he tended to conjure appeared around him to begin pounding cracks in Sunset’s reverse defensive spell. But it was already too late. He looked back to Yuno and his partner as she popped out of his hood and froze after raising his hand instead of launching an attack. “Oh dear.”
Sylph, a creature with a body that had been crafted by another magical being to be much more durable than a fragile human one. She didn’t have any problems flying in front of the boy and looking right at the cornered mage. “Dodge this,” she said before taking in a deep breath as Yuno’s mana flared.
“Wind Spirit Magic: Sylph’s Breath!”
Thanks to a lack of air travel abilities and the need of someone to track the mana sources of the other knights Theresa said had gone to the mountain, Fuegoleon needed to rouse Randall from his slumber before heading out of the base. And with the spatial mages he had all needing to sleep through the night in order to recover their strength thanks to all the work they did moving the Crimson Lions during the day after leaving the jamming field and retrieving them, they had to take his second-in-command’s sky barge. Which...looked more like a flying rowboat than an actual ship.
The full moon made it easy to see the land stretched out in front of him, which was a blessing. Too dark a night would have limited their speed and made any search for the mines Theresa spoke of a nightmarish task.
He looked over to the man with the goatee and scar covering the upper right half of his forehead as his messy hair whipped around in the wind and his square jaw opened to let out a yawn. “Are you sure you’re awake enough for this?” Fuegoleon asked. “We have brooms.”
“I doubt the Sister can fly even half as fast as my ship. You said you needed an investigator, and I have conducted several such operations,” Randall replied as he rubbed his eyes. “Besides, those mines are a maze. You’d never find them without someone to-hm?”
Sitting at the back of the boat, Theresa held her arms close and frowned at the man. “I’d like to see how well you hold up to freezing winds at my age.”
The man looked back and slowed the pace of his skiff with a frown. “Who in the world is that?”
Fuegoleon looked to their right, and blinked at what he saw before his mana senses picked up the approach. A large eagle made of liquid metal flew through the air at a breakneck speed towards the town of Nairn. “What’s Nozel doing here again?”
From her place sitting on the little boat behind him, Theresa snorted. “Heh. He probably forgot something. That silly little boy would leave his head behind if it wasn’t attached to his neck.”
While he would have just let the old woman’s jab go in one ear and out the other, an oddity tugged at his mind. Nozel hadn’t gone to the village. He stayed in camp while waiting for Fuegoleon to finish going through the latest batch of reports.
“Link up with him,” Fuegoleon commanded as he got a better footing in the boat to brace himself for the increase in speed. Not that the man could catch Nozel, but when the Silver Eagles captain saw Fuegoleon approaching, he would stop to talk.
Which made the fact that Nozel looked in their direction for a moment before pushing forward a little disconcerting.
Theresa let out a disquiet groan as she looked out towards Nozel. “Oh dear. I think something might have gone terribly wrong during the rescue mission.”
“What do you mean?” Fuegoleon asked, the slight Silva had given him forgotten for the moment.
After taking a breath, the woman turned her attention back to Fuegoleon. “One of the magic knights involved with the rescue was the spitting image of Acier Silva. If it wasn’t for the Black Bulls robe she was wearing, I would have thought she was the woman’s daughter instead of a bastard child from the Silva line,” the nun told him before snorting. “Looks like little Nozel isn’t as proper as he pretends to be.”
Fuegoleon frowned at the accusation. “Nozel’s baby sister had a falling out with the family and joined the Black Bulls instead of the Eagles because of it,” he said.
There was a good deal more to it than that, but basic manners stopped Fuegoleon from looking into it more. It wasn’t just that the girl’s magic was a disastrous wreck waiting to happen, Nozel would have just confined her to their estates were that the case. Knowing Nozel as he did, the girl had probably insisted on joining a magic knight squad, and he had caved to her demands.
“Increase your speed and head to Nairn, we’ll link up with Nozel and move out from there,” he ordered.
Randall obeyed, but the pace they set still lagged behind the Silver Eagle’s captain. By the time they arrived in the village, Nozel had already landed in the square and was looking down at a pair of knights dressed in robes like his own.
Like Theresa had warned Fuegoleon, it looked as if every parent in the village had come out into the snowy streets, which had turned into a slushy mess. Whatever magic had conjured the snow was gone, and only the fact that it was still night time allowed what was left to keep from becoming water completely.
“Is that another captain?” one of the villagers asked, making the crowd that Nozel’s underlings had been dealing with even more talkative as they tried in vain to get the Silva’s attention. “What in the world is going on?”
Nozel ignored them all as he looked down to his men. The first of which Fuegoleon recognized as Rob Vitesse. He was a tall, thin man with gray hair and a scar running down his left cheek that ranked rather highly in the Magic Knights. The other man, a short, almost comically fat mage with thick glasses and dirty blonde hair, Fuegoleon didn’t know. “Report!”
Both of the men took a moment to salute, which only seemed to agitate Nozel. The sight of his rival openly showing stress disturbed Fuegoleon even more than he had been when Nozel blew him off. The man was as close to panic as Fuegoleon had ever seen him.
Rob floated up into the air on a small tornado and handed Nozel a document of some kind as his captain tossed him the satchel full of the reports Fuegoleon had prepared. “Sir. There’s a medical team waiting on standby, and I performed a quick reconnaissance of the area after arriving via Franklin’s spatial magic. From what I can tell, the knights you sent us to find-”
Before the man could finish, there was a loud rumbling from the mountain a short distance away from the town that drew everyone’s attention. A giant mass of wind magic that looked big enough to swallow a building tore through the rock and caused an avalanche as it rose up into the sky.
“-are right over there,” Rob finished, despite Nozel having turned his attention away from the man.
After seeing Licht take the hit from Yuno’s attack, Noelle dropped her protection spell and ran over to where Sunset was slowly floating herself and Yuno down to the ground as the other man landed with a hard thud that likely broke a couple of bones. Asta had mostly recovered from being shot in the legs, although he still had the burn marks from where the magic had struck him and stumbled a little bit every few steps.
Still, it was better than the guy in white who had a hole in his head, or the other kidnapper that was missing his.
The moonlight streaming in from outside made it easy to see everything, which didn’t give Noelle a reason to brighten up. Yuno was still walking, but the way his eyes looked told Noelle that he might as well have been dead on his feet, while Sunset landed before her whole body spasmed and she fell to the ground.
“My everything hurts,” the redhead complained.
Gauche got up with little trouble and told Marie to stay put while he set the satchel he was carrying that was still full of the children Sunset had passed off to him down to begin walking over towards Licht. Judging by the sounds that were coming from the inside of the ones everyone had left in her care, the spell that held all the kids in a trance had worn off.
Once he collected his swords, Asta hurried to catch up with Noelle as she stood over the light mage and kicked his grimoire away from him before pointing her wand at the man. As close as she was, even her attacks wouldn’t miss. “It’s over for you,” she told him simply while Gauche and Yuno came up behind her.
Licht completely ignored her as his eyes moved to look at Yuno for a moment before focusing on his grimoire. “Wind magic, and a four leaf clover,” he breathed. “So that’s who you are. To think that you are here as well...tainted child, I should have killed you instead of staying my hand.”
“SHUT YOUR TRAP, YOU WEIRDO!” Asta shouted.
The loud boy made everyone around him wince before Licht glared at him. “And you,” he forced out through gritted teeth. “I’m going to kill you too, you stinking thief.”
“NOBODY’S KILLING ANYBODY!” Noelle shouted before looking to Gauche. “Now, hurry up and use your binding magic to hold him down before-”
A shadow falling across the room made Noelle tense up before she looked above. Something big was coming down through the hole in the cavern’s roof. It looked like a giant bird, but light reflected off of the edges and made her have to shield her eyes from the glare before a trio of men dropped from the sky, with two of them falling much sooner than the third.
As the creature disappeared, Noelle blinked in surprise when she saw her elder brother and Fuegoleon landing in the cavern, followed shortly by a large man in a Silver Eagle’s robe that fell onto his face more than landed on his feet. As glad as she was to see Nozel, the man’s timing made her eye twitch. “YOU SHOW UP NOW?” the younger royal yelled.
Nozel looked over at her with a frown. “After the urgency of your message, I expected to find you dead,” he said before looking back at Licht. “This is the man you claim to be the leader of the Eye of the Midnight Sun?”
“What?” Fuegoleon exclaimed before looking at the downed mage as Nozel’s magic covered the man in a liquid, silvery metal that bound his entire body beneath it before shaping itself into a cocoon. “What’s going on Nozel?”
The other royal let out a loud sigh while another ball of liquid mercury came into being to surround the light mage’s book and form into a bird cage. “I received a call of distress from Noelle on a communicator that she stole.”
Noelle’s mouth dropped before she frowned. “I didn’t steal it! YOU LEFT IT WITH ME!” she yelled at him while pointing a finger at the man. Then, she realized what she was doing and tensed when Nozel actually looked over at her.
I...I can’t believe I just did that, Noelle thought to herself.
Nozel turned back to Fuegoleon. “She claimed to be under attack from the Eye of the Midnight Sun, by its leader, no less. So, I turned around and headed towards the location she told me before calling back to headquarters for assistance,” he said. “Obviously, she had overestimated her opponent and panicked.”
“Hey,” Sunset called out from where she was laying on the floor while waving an arm in the air. “Can someone give me a hand here? My body is ridiculously sore at the moment, and I still need to examine that machine. Also, they’ve got a spatial magic mage buried behind those rocks over there. Someone should probably get him before he dies or...escapes.”
The only light in the chamber aside from Fana’s magic was coming from the large tube in front of her and the glowing green light it gave off. Inside was what Sally called a biomass, whatever that was. It looked like a giant lump of flesh with some silver hair instead of what she claimed it would eventually become.
As for the creator of the object, she was laying on the operating table, having been brought into her room by two of the underlings crawling about Gravito Stone. Burning them all to death would have been preferable to Fana, but Licht said that they were needed for something important.
So, she had to endure them, and heal them when they came back broken like Sally had.
The detestable creature on the table let out a low moan, getting the attention of the other two people in the room. One of them was Raia, who didn’t do much other than yawn as he continued to sit in the corner. The other person was a large beast of a man, with a towering stature and muscles to match. Like Raia and Fana, he also sported a crimson mark on his face, a line going across the bridge of his nose to the ends of both eyes. “We’ll make them pay for doing this to Sally,” the giant said, showing his sharp teeth as he spoke.
Fana blinked, not understanding the reason for Vetto’s anger. Sally wasn’t one of them, not really. The world would be better off with her dead. In fact, Fana didn’t understand why she wasn’t just killing the woman herself, right now.
She reached out towards the woman’s neck. Strangulation, that was a good death. Full of fear and panic. That was how Sally should die.
“BWA!” Sally yelled as she suddenly sat up with a loud scream, making Fana lower her head in disappointment. “Wha-What happened? Where am I?” she felt around frantically. “Where’s my glasses?”
Raia got up and walked over to her. “Easy there, girl. You need to tell us what happened. Catherine said something about you all being attacked?”
After squinting at the three of them with her horrid eyes, the woman let out a groan. “Well, this awful girl cast a weird spatial magic spell, and then everything got all wobbly, then everything went boom and...uh...it gets a little blurry after that.”
Ten minutes into her looking at the magic draining machine that had left the children it was used on comatose, and Sunset knew that she had no idea what she was doing. While she could learn magical spells from Clover and had decoded an ancient trap spell in the dungeon, this new type of mana machine was just too forgien to her. The technology added an X-factor she couldn’t compensate for.
“Perhaps we should bring in some mages who specialize in magic items from the capital,” Fuegoleon said as he stood over her. “It will be dawn in a few hours. They can take it from there.”
Sunset sucked in a breath and looked back at the cavern. That fat spatial mage had left with Gauche a few minutes ago, carrying the kids back to town along with his sister. Asta was sitting on the ground in front of the magic-drained children not too far off from where Yuno was doing the same as he leaned up against the wall while Sylph fussed over him. Sometime after the fight, Secre had gone back to sitting on Asta’s head, but she was giving that Licht guy a death glare, like she was trying to will him out of existence.
There was something Secre really didn’t like about the guy. But with the two captains around, Sunset couldn’t ask her what was going through her tiny little mind.
The sound of a spatial tunnel opening made Sunset look back to see that the fat guy was back from his delivery. “All the children have been returned to their parents,” the man said before his gate closed. Then, he looked over to the ones the knights had leaned up against the wall. “Well, except for them.”
From his place in the middle of the cavern, with his magic holding both Licht and the other mage they had captured, Nozel crossed his arms. “In that case, we should send the others to headquarters and see to all of your wounds,” he said before looking over to Noelle as she sat on the table, kicking her legs in the air.
“You just want us to abandon these kids?” Noelle asked before giving a start at her own words.
Nozel frowned at her. “I want you to get your wounds treated. Fuegoleon will insure that nothing happens to the stored mana.”
For the fraction of a second, Fuegoleon gave a tiny frown at Nozel, but turned his attention to Noelle. “There is no need to try and prove something by remaining here, girl. Do not worry, I will ensure that this villainous deed can be undone,” he promised before looking over to the man in Nozel’s magic. “Stealing the magic of children. Have none of you any shame?”
“You have no idea how stupid that sounds, coming from a royal,” Licht replied evenly before he blinked and smiled. “And I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere with you trash.”
There was a sudden surge of magical power in the center of the room before a black spatial portal opened up halfway to the ceiling. The appearance of the portal and feel of the magic was so similar to Valtos’s magic that Sunset had to double check that he was still bound in Nozel’s liquid mercury.
As Nozel took his prisoners and leaped back, and before anyone could make their way out of the opening, Sunset looked over to the boy with the Black Bulls headband. “Asta, cut the gate!” she shouted.
Although Sunset wasn’t sure what effect that would have on the people traveling the spatial tunnel between both ends, anything was better than more guys showing up. The captains could probably turn them into paste, but Sunset didn’t feel very good about the chances of those in her group. Yuno could barely move, and she wasn’t much better off.
Despite the injury to his legs, Asta rushed forward and drew out his smaller sword to throw it at the floating spatial portal. Only, a few seconds before it could nullify the spell, three people dropped down and landed in the center of the room. Then, the anti-magic sword struck the swirling mass of black to pop it like a balloon before landing on the other side of the chamber.
One of the men that appeared looked up at the destroyed spell in surprise before yawning and turning his attention back to the group of people in front of them while Fuegoleon and Nozel repositioned themselves in front of the machinery where the younger knights were gathered. “Oh man. Sally didn’t say anything about this,” he said while looking around. “They get the jump on you too, Licht?”
All three of them were wearing a slightly more stylized version of the three eye symbol Licht had on his robe, but none of them followed the same dress code. The largest of the three didn’t even have a shirt to hide his ridiculously hairy chest. While the other guy in the group looked like he tried to wear a white robe, then got bored with the idea and really half-assed it. The third member of the trio was a girl with pink hair that fell down to her shoulders in waves and sea-green eyes that had an almost vacant expression, dressed in a white robe the same size as Sunset’s over a red fuzzy coat and very short shorts while toeless, knee-length boots covered her feet. But what really got Sunset’s attention about the girl was the purple gem sticking out of her skull that was surrounded by crimson markings.
All three of them had impressive amounts of mana. Equal to either of the captains standing in front of her. And with everyone else in her group next to useless… This is bad, she thought.
Sunset focused her magic and frowned as all three of them flared their mana before bringing up their grimoires. Meaning that she couldn’t just move two of them ten miles away or disarm them before the battle could even start. So much for getting the jump on them, she told herself.
“Franklin, open a portal to squad headquarters,” Nozel commanded before both of his prisoners were tossed towards the large mage.
As a spatial portal appeared in front of the fat man, the guy who yawned earlier raised his hand. “Can’t let you do that,” the he man said before Sunset felt a surge of spatial magic right on top of the open portal.
During the passing of the previous month, Sunset had made a study of Finral’s grimoire with the promise of going out on a date, come the next time they got a day off. While the magic still eluded her, mostly because it was just so different than teleportation, she had learned a few things about it. Like how opening a spatial disturbance inside another spatial disturbance was a very bad idea.
The first spatial portal wavered before exploding right next to the large man, who went down screaming for several seconds. Then, the feel of his mana dissipated and Sunset knew he was dead.
In the ensuing confusion of the explosion, the yawner flashed forward in a blur of motion that was the trademark of light mages to grab onto the two masses of mercury before jumping back with both of them in tow at a much slower speed.
“I think not,” Nozel told him before reaching out with an open and and closing it into a fist.
Both Licht and Valtos let out screams and Sunset could see the metal begin to compact, threatening to crush them both.
“Crap,” Yawner grumbled before his grimoire rose up and Sunset felt a change in his mana. “Copy Magic: Invisible Traveling Companion.”
Licht vanished from view before the liquid mercury coffin compacted in on itself to the point where it became a floating sphere of metal that Nozel pulled back towards him right as Licht reappeared on the ground as Yawner repeated the process with Valtos.
“Was that...Captain Poizot’s spell?” Fuegoleon asked in disbelief.
“Girl, is he like you?” Nozel asked without taking his eyes off of the three newcomers.
Sunset worked herself back on her feet. Her muscles still hurt, but a ten minute breather combined with a little healing magic that was fed by her personal mana instead of the ambient kind had done wonders for her body. Not enough to dodge, but she at least stand and look cool. “Don’t insult me,” she replied before looking over to her little brother. “Break’s over Yuno.”
The older of her brothers snorted as he stood up on shaky legs. “Slave driver.”
“Thank you for coming,” Licht told them as he lay on the ground. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a bother.”
“Are you hurt?” the girl with the blank stare asked.
Licht moved a bit, but winced and collapsed when he tried to stand. “I’m better now that you’re here.”
The girl held out a hand as a book that looked like it had been stitched together from a red cover and a white one floated up in front of her. “Fire Recovery Magic: Phoenix Robe.”
As Licht was covered in very familiar healing flames that lifted him into the sky, Sunset’s eye twitched. Seriously? she asked herself before focusing on the girl who cast the spell and her frankenpony grimoire withe the diamond symbol on it.
“Offense or defense?” Fuegoleon asked.
Nozel snorted. “Are you forgetting who you’re talking to? I can handle both.” Behind him, a mass of liquid mercury came into being. It flowed around everyone standing near Nozel to form an incomplete orb before tendrils grew out of the edges to form the points of blades and a trio of kite shields without a single word from the captain.
“Insects!” the big man across from them shouted. “I’ll tear you limb from limb for what you did to Licht!”
“Considering what he did to those kids behind us, he deserves far worse,” Yuno said.
“I detest anybody who hurts Licht. You will all die,” the girl with the pink hair said in a monotone voice.
“WHO THE HELL ARE THESE WEIRDOS?” Asta yelled.
Licht gave a little laugh. “I’ll introduce you,” he said. “These three are the strongest members of the Eye of the Midnight Sun, the Third Eye. And each one of them is stronger than a magic knight captain.”
“I’ve heard such boasts from a number of poor fools I put in their graves,” Nozel replied evenly as his liquid mercury spread out behind and around him.
The comment only made Licht laugh a little. “Well, as I said, introductions. Your kingdom takes the clover as its symbol, with each leaf representing an ideal, none of which your kingdom truly embraces. So, to counter faith, hope and love, I have Raia the Disloyal, Vetto the Despair, and-”
Sunset sighed. “Fana, the Hateful, right?” With how her life was going, it seemed only natural that was who she had run into. Never being wrong really sucked, sometimes.
The two male mages blinked as one while Fana just stared ahead, and Licht let out a groan. “You really need to stop doing that. It’s annoying,” he told Sunset.
“Well, if you don’t like me stealing your lines, then this is really going to piss you off,” Sunset said as she used her magic to snatch Lichts grimoire from where it rested on the table. Most of the spells wouldn’t make sense to her without some study, but she had seen one of them enough times to get the gist of it that a quick glance at his grimoire quickly padded out her understanding of the spell. “Light Magic: Light Swords of Conviction!”
Raia raised a hand. “Hey, you’re stealing my act! Copy Magic: Light Swords of Conviction,” he cast before a barrage of light blades filled the air in opposition to the ones Sunset sent.
Nozel glanced over to Sunset. “You can still fight?”
“My mana reserves aren’t the problem. Just don’t expect me to jump around,” she told him as her arm started to hurt from holding it up to direct the spell.
“OKAY THEN, LET’S GET THEM!” Asta shouted before he was smacked in the back of the head by a tendril of liquid metal.
Nozel looked over to him for an instant. “Shut up and sit down inside my field of mercury. Someone like you will only be in the way,” he told Asta before moving his attention back to Sunset. “Continue to attack their leader. That will keep one of them on the defensive if just to keep him from being killed.”
“We’ll use this opportunity to make up for what happened in the capital,” Licht said. “Vetto retrieve the stone. Fana, kill them all and retrieve the grimoires that remain from the ashes.”
Veto leaped into the air. “WE’LL BE TAKING THAT GRIMOIRE BACK NOW! BEAST MAGIC: BEAR CLAW!” he shouted as he flew towards Fuegoleon with inhuman speed. As his spell manifested, the man’s arms became surrounded by an orange energy that looked somewhat like a bear’s appendage.
Crap, they are after the rocks, Sunset thought to herself while Fuegoleon readied his own spell.
“Fire Creation Magic: Leo Rugiens,” Fuegoleon cast before fire swirled around him to form into a lion’s head that let out a roar before a beam of concentrated flames struck Vetto’s hands.
The beast man held the attack for a moment, before rolling backwards to land on his feet. As Fuegoleon readjusted his aim, Vetto crossed his arms and took a defensive stance. “Beast Magic: Rhinoceros Armor,” he cast, throwing up a shield of orange energy before the next attack completely engulfed him and didn’t let up.
“Don’t you know that just taking an attack from a fire magic user is the fastest way to lose a fight?” Fuegoleon called out.
On the other side of the battlefield, a strange and oversized lizard crawled up over Fana’s shoulder, which made Sylph let out an angry cry from where she sat on Yuno’s shoulder. “HEY! Salamander, you jerk! What are you doing with someone in my territory?” she demanded.
Say what? Sunset thought to herself as she focused on the little thing before Fana began to cast.
“Fire Spirit Magic: Salamander’s Breath,” the girl said in a monotone voice before the lizard exhaled a gout of flame right as Nozel brought up his mercury in front of everyone to block it.
As the metal began to turn red with heat and she saw the man grit his teeth, Sunset got a bad feeling about what was going on. “Your magic is weak against fire spells, isn’t it?”
Nozel grunted. “Be quiet!”
“Water Creation Magic,” Noelle called out from behind him. “Sea Dragon’s Cradle!”
As the sphere of water rose up to block the flame attack, Sunset looked back to where she could see the magic-damaged kids through a screen of water. “Okay, yeah...new plan,” she said before looking over to Yuno. “Can you pull off another one of those spirit spells again?”
Yuno tensed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Yuno’s way too tired for something like that!” Sylph told her.
Sunset groaned and reached over to grab Asta. “Okay, new new plan then,” she said before pulling him back out of the watery bubble that nearly scalded her skin from how hot it was as she passed through it. Once they were out, she clamped her hand over Asta’s mouth. “No screaming!”
The world disappeared in a blue flash as she teleported to the other side of the cavern with her baby brother, where Asta’s sword had fallen. After he picked it up, Sunset sent her magic into the sword’s mana well. It was only when she reappeared that Sunset noticed Licht’s grimoire wasn’t with her anymore. The thing must have still had some mana running through it, which meant he would have it back in his hands momentarily.
The vertigo hit her and she stumbled backwards into the wall as the world spun, making everything looked like it came in pairs of three. “Now blast him, moron!” Sunset said through gritted teeth as she looked at their leader and noticed something was off, aside from the fact there were now six people in white robes standing in front of her, all flying around in a circle and somewhat transparent. Where the hell did the other guy go?
Asta closed his eyes and leapt forward before he took a swing with his sword, sending out a blade of sparkling rainbow colors...at the wrong target.
“Dammit! You were supposed to blast the guy in the fire, not the girl throwing it!” Sunset yelled as the attack struck the girl from behind. But with all her defenses up, Sunset doubted something of that level would do much more than stagger Fana.
Which meant that it came as a big surprise when she stumbled forward after being impacted and cut the magic flowing to her spirit a second before the fires around Licht went out. Then, the young woman reached up and clutched her head.
After groaning from being dropped, Licht looked over to the girl. “F-Fana?”
Fana let out a scream and dropped to her knees before her mana flared all around her and Sunset picked up the same odd sensation that something was wrong she had gotten from Licht for a moment before Fana fell back onto the ground and began to roll back and forth. “IT BURNS!” she screamed frantically as she thrashed around. “STOP IT! GET IT OUT! GET IT OUT OF MEEEEEE!”
Fuegoleon poured more mana into his spell to keep burning away at his opponent. Even if the man’s defenses could hold out, the flames would consume the air around him and eventually, he would fall. He didn’t let the screams coming from across the cavern distract him. There was no need to. As when it was cast around him, Leo Rugiens created a layer of defense that would allow him to react to any attack sent his way.
Which was why Fuegoleon was caught off guard by the man Raia, when he suddenly appeared inside the creation magic of the captain’s spell. “What?” Fuegoleon said as he took a step back at the man who had gotten inside of his magical barrier.
“Hey there chief,” Raia told him as he reached forward with a hand wrapped in enhancement magic to grab the pendant hanging from Fuegoleon’s neck and pulled hard enough to break the cord. “Copy Magic: Invisible Scout.”
Blast it, I’m a fool, Fuegoleon told himself before he cut the power to his spell and leaped back before Raia could attack him from behind. If it was going to be two on one, he needed to keep moving and make precise strikes.
As the fires around Vetto faded, he dropped his protection magic and fell to his knees while panting heavily. “Dammit! What the hell did those humans do to Fana?” he yelled.
“We’re pulling back!” Licht called out. “Raia, get us out of here, NOW!”
As Vetto leaped across the room to grab the thrashing girl before striking her in the back of the neck to knock her unconscious. Then, he threw Fana up over his shoulder and moved to grab Licht as well, while Valtos’s unconscious body rose up on its own before Raia appeared underneath him to rapidly move close to the others.
Nozel brought up his grimoire. “As if any of you are going to be leaving now that your fire mage is down. Mercury Creation Magic: Silver Star of Execution,” he cast, sending out a web of liquid mercury throughout half of the cave that closed in around the two healthy mages and three injured ones to form a giant cage.
“Like that’s going to stop me,” Raia said as a spatial magic portal began to open up beneath them before it began to sputter and crackled before fading away. “Say what?”
Further down the cavern, Sunset held out a glowing hand, Fuegoleon could feel her mana flooding the area, interfering with the spatial magic as a translucent dome appeared around the cavern. “Whatever you’re doing, do it fast!”
As dozens of deadly spears formed from the mercury to fly at the collection of criminals, Raia pressed his hands against the stone beneath him. “Copy Magic: Bottomless Pit!” he cast before the ground fell out from underneath them before the fifty-plus sharp objects attempted to stab the Midnight Sun members based on their previous location.
“Crap! My ward stops at ground level!” Sunset cursed.
Nozel rushed over to the edge of the hole, casting as he went. “Mercury Magic: Rain of Silver!” the royal shouted before all of the liquid metal that had surrounded the men a moment ago broke apart to fly down the newly created shaft at a deadly velocity.
However, Fuegoleon’s mana sense told him that the lot of them had already escaped using spatial magic.
After Nozel’s attack had finished, the Crimson Lion captain made his way over to his rival, then saw the other redhead in the cavern stumble before falling down and thought it better to go and help her. As he made his way over, Fuegoleon saw Noelle running over to her older sibling while the Golden Dawn boy sat down where he was and the Wind Spirit flew around to check him over.
“Big Brother, are you okay?” Noelle called out before she even reached Nozel.
The other man turned and regarded her uneasily...for him, at least. Most other people probably just saw the man become stone faced. “I am unharmed,” he said before coughing into his fist. “I was unaware you had developed a spell in your grimoire.”
Noelle’s cheeks heated. “Um, well...it’s just the one...so far,” she said more like a normal person when they were uneasy.
“Then, you have a handle on your magic, now?” Nozel asked before turning to look down the hole the villains had escaped from. Fuegoleon could tell that he was just hiding his face from the girl and disguising it as a poor investigation attempt.
The question got a flinch from Noelle. “Um...I’m...getting there?”
Nozel was silent for several more seconds, probably mulling over what to say. “That’s...good,” he finished. “You should continue to improve, then.”
Turning away from the disgraceful example of kinsmanship, Fuegoleon moved to address the redhead and the short boy with the gray hair as he dry heaved on the ground and she held up a hand while orbs of water encased her ears. “Still don’t feel any less dizzy,” she grumbled as she sat on the ground.
The fact that she was using multiple elements didn’t matter to him all that much after having just witnessed another mage do the exact same thing. One of the captains could also perform such feats with slightly different methods.
“Are you alright?” Fuegoleon asked as the girl closed her eyes and rubbed her head before laying down on her side.
Sunset moaned. “Yeah, just...give me a second,” she told him.
A little unease entered Fuegoleon’s mind as he tried to bring up the right thing to say to her. Such things needed to be handled properly, especially after what happened during their last meeting. But, with Sunset in no mood to hear his praise at the moment, he looked down at the boy.
Asta...his weapon was certainly impressive. A single blow had gone right through the fire mage’s mana and cut her down. Fuegoleon had to wonder how it worked. A mental attack of some kind? It seemed a little odd, as his grimoire produced swords, but the unexpected was always a good weapon to have in battle. “You performed quite admirably,” he told the boy.
Certainly, better than Fuegoleon did, having lost the pendent that his family had passed down since there was a Clover Kingdom without doing more than making his opponent sweat. Nozel hadn’t fared much better, either.
“Heh,” the guy responded as he rolled onto his back and panted. “What can you expect, from a guy who’s going to be the Wizard King?”
Fuegoleon raised an eyebrow. Lofty goals were all well and good, but that seemed to be a bit much. “Yes well…” unable to ignore it any longer, he looked back and forth between the two people who were unable to stand. “What is wrong with the two of you, any?”
Sunset was the one who gave the explanation. “My teleportation spell puts a lot of stress on the body in all the wrong places. Because of that, there is a complete loss of equilibrium. The vertigo it causes can last a few minutes unless the body is kept still and allowed to adjust. Right now, I can’t even see straight.”
“And you did something like that in the middle of a battle?” Fuegoleon replied, his words becoming heated. “Foolish girl! Taking risks like that is the height of idiocy! What if your friend had missed? While there are always dangers involved in combat, you have to think things through and plan ahead while keeping a calm head! I have half a mind to drag you back to your mother so she can teach your proper battle strategy!”
For some reason, Sunset gave Fuegoleon a disbelieving look, which he soon found everyone in the cavern copying, including Nozel...if in a more served form. All of a sudden, the captain of the Crimson Lions felt as if he was missing something. “What?”
Nozel cleared his throat. “So...Mereoleona never got around to telling you she never had a child while she was at your camp, then?”
Raia tried not to yawn as he watched the mad scientist of their little terrorist group poke and prod Fana’s unconscious body, her hands hovering over the magic item implanted in her head for a bit too long before she moved back down the nearly-naked girl’s form. Although, the sleepy man didn’t think they should put too much faith in Sally’s abilities after she bent down to lick Fana’s belly button.
“So, my diagnosis is…” she announced as she stood up straight and pointed a finger into the air before spinning around. “That I have no idea what’s wrong with her.”
From his place behind Raia, Vetto let out an angry growl. “WHAT?” he yelled while trying to move past Raia with little luck. “You useless nutjob! What do we keep you around for, if not to take care of things like this?”
Sally looked back at the big man with an even expression and slumped posture, showing her own irksome disappointment. “Well, maybe if you had bothered to get my grimoire, I could use some of my magic to examine her in a more complete way, but without that…” she spun around and poked the pink haired girl again, rousing Salamander and making it hiss at her. “All I can say is that there’s nothing physically wrong with her. So, about the only thing I can think to do is throw her in the healing tank and see if it fixes something I missed.”
As Vetto began to growl again, Raia noticed someone approaching them from behind and looked back to see Rades giving them a frown with his one visible eye. “Hey, don’t get mad at someone else because you all got beat up. I thought you were supposed to be our best fighters,” he told them.
Before Vetto could do more than turn around and glare at the man, Raia held up his hand. “Well, nothing to do about it now,” he said. “It’s really too bothersome to get all worked up about stuff we can’t fix. Now, we need to get to work on getting Sally her grimoire back, just in case Fana doesn’t wake up.”
“That little bastard! I’ll make him suffer for this!” Vetto promised. “Him, and everyone he knows! All of them! They’ll beg for death before I’m through!”
Ignoring the larger man while Sassy got the healing chamber ready, Raia frowned as he thought back to the fight. The weapon that kid was using... At first, he had thought it was just a coincidence that it looked like Licht’s demon-dweller sword, but he had used it to hold the magic of another mage.
Still, Raia couldn’t remember Licht ever canceling out another spell with his weapons. The fact that the sword existed at all should have been impossible. Just what the hell happened after we all died?
With all the fighting done, the cleaners came in quickly, with an investigation team and a pair of medical mage teams that treated everyone who was injured using some kind of compound magical field rather than a single mage doing everything like Mimosa. But then, Secre didn’t think any of the mages working on the wounded would have been able to join the Magic Knights based on mana capacity alone, either.
Because of injuries that amounted to having overtaxed her body, Sunset was confined to bed for a day of rest back at the church’s healing room alongside Yuno, despite the only thing he was suffering from was extreme mana exhaustion. Which left Asta to write the official report about what had happened in Nairn. Something Secre had a feeling everyone forced to read it would regret, as Asta mentioned everything he could since the day began until he started actually writing the report.
Noelle’s distress call to her brother had apparently made the rounds, because Klaus and Mimosa arrived half an hour after dawn at the battle site before they were directed over to the church. Once there, they visited Yuno in the treatment room and spent some time talking with him about what happened.
“We’ll relay your verbal report to the captain as soon as we return to base,” Klaus said as he reached up to adjust his glasses. “However, you’ll still need to file an official one. As they say, paperwork is the most unrelenting enemy of the Magic Knights.”
There was a shuffling of sheets as Yuno started to rise up. “I can head back with you,” he said before Sylph flew right into his face.
“HEY! You were told twenty-four hours mister, and not a moment less,” she said before turning to look at Mimosa with a considering frown. “In fact, you should probably be looked over again, now that a real healing mage is here.” She spun around to look at Yuno again. “Take off your clothes and let her check you out.”
The normally stoic teenager flinched as Mimosa turned red. “WHAT?” she shouted before beginning to stutter. “I can’t-that’s not...I...I don’t know enough about the human body to diagnose a person without my magic!”
Sylph didn’t look very deterred by the girl’s bashfulness. “Well, now’s a good time to learn. I’ve seen enough human bodies to have a good idea of how it all works. I’ll guide you through it.”
“I think we should let a professional handle it instead,” Mimosa said as she backtracked towards the door. “Let me go see if any of the nuns has experience with mundane healing.”
As Mimosa ran out of the room, Yuno gave Sylph a quizzical frown.
But, whatever he was going to say didn’t come, as Sunset let out a moan before opening her eyes and slowly sitting up. The blanket fell from her body to reveal a white bra, and Klaus flinched before turning around. “Ah, Lady Sunset. It is ah, good to see that you are well.”
Sunset looked around, then glanced down at herself before sighing and pulling up her sheets. “How long was I out?”
“Maybe eight hours,” Yuno told her as she looked around. “The captains left and took their men with them. Klaus and Mimosa showed up while you were sleeping. Asta’s been writing a report and that other guy went back to your squad’s base to inform your captain about everything that happened. And Noelle’s-”
“Oh for crying out loud Mimosa, you’re ten times bigger than her! Just...swat the little thing, or something,” the silver-haired royal said as she walked back into the room with a frown on her face, dragging the Vermillion girl with her by the hand. She blinked in surprise at seeing Sunset. “Well, glad to see you’re finally awake. Lazy, making me and Asta clean up everything.”
Sunset stared at her for several seconds before looking around the room until she saw Secre sitting on the window sill. Then, she fell back down on her pillow. “Sorry about that,” she mumbled.
The response wasn’t what Noelle had expected, because the girl immediately became concerned. “Uh, isn’t this where you snark back at me?”
“I’m...still a little tired,” Sunset replied softly. “Can I get some more rest?”
Noelle blushed. “Oh! Right, we...woke you up, didn’t we? Sorry about that,” she apologized before grabbing Klaus by the ear while still holding on to Mimosa’s hand. “Clear out everybody, recovering knights in need of rest! You too, tiny.”
Sylph gave Sunset a considering look before crossing her arms and landing on Yuno’s short bedpost. “Try it, and every wind you ever experience for the rest of your life will be blowing your skirt up for everyone to see your underwear.”
“She’s fine where she is,” Sunset said before waving Noelle off.
After giving Sylph a considering look, and being met by the fairy’s tiny tongue sticking out in the air, Noelle gave a high-class sniff before walking out the door.
As soon as the group of knights were gone, Sunset raised a hand and the air shimmered for a moment. “Okay, that should take care of anyone who might overhear us,” the girl said before she slowly sat back up and propped herself up with her elbows to look over to the bird. “Now, what’s going on? I thought you said Licht got turned into some kind of giant monster and was killed by the First Wizard King.”
Sylph blinked. “Oh, so that’s what happened back then? Well, that explains a lot,” she commented.
“Wait, the man you said was turned into a demon,” Yuno spoke up. “It was the same man we saw in the cave?”
Yuno’s question was met with an angry tweet from Secre. “That wasn’t Licht! It wasn’t even close,” the bird told them. “Licht’s magic and attitude are completely different than what you saw back in the cave!” And if it had been the elf, we’d all be dead, she told herself. Not that Secre would tell the adopted siblings that, they’d never stop arguing with her about it.
“I think I’m missing some of the backstory here,” Yuno said evenly.
After a few seconds of thinking things over, Secre let out a long sigh and gave him an even look. “I’m sure you’ve heard the legend about an evil group of monsters that wanted to steal all the magic from the world, since it goes hand and hand with the legend of the Wizard King. But what you need to understand is, that story is a lie. It has been twisted by years of word of mouth that was started by people who wrote history to fit their narrative,” she said before taking a deep breath for what Sunset knew was going to be a very long story.
“Five hundred years ago, in what is called the Forsaken Realm today, a nomadic tribe of demi-humans lived on the edge of human civilization. On average, their mana was much greater than the normal persons and they had longer lifespans, but because of a very low breeding rate, their numbers were vastly inferior to humanity. They were called elves,” she began. “During a tense moment between our two races was when Prince Lumiere met and befriended the leader of the elf tribe, a man named Licht. And...because it turned out that elven females only become fertile once every seven years, while males are virile year-round...Lumiere’s sister and Licht conceived a child together.”
Yuno raised an eyebrow. “That seems illogical.”
There was a long pause before Secre let out a tweet. “”Look, elves were much more...natural than humans. Some stories I heard about them said they didn’t even wear clothes before meeting our species. Even afterwards, all they’d put on is some loose fitting robes and togas,” she said with some discomfort. "Point is, Princess Tetia got knocked up and was going to marry Licht.”
“So...a man who had a child with a human is ranting about how he wants to destroy humanity?” Yuno asked.
Secre rolled her eyes. “And you see why I’m saying this man can’t be Licht. But, there’s more to it than that,” she said before continuing with her story. “Although it eventually became obvious that Tetia was pregnant, nobody was told who sired the child...although, looking back...the lack of any real investigation should have been a big clue that the king and Lumiere’s brother already knew what was going on.
“Since my Prince wasn’t next in line for the throne and rather socially awkward, he spent most of his time working on his magic item research with me. We wanted to create a world where everyone could use magic equally, and so our primary goal was focused on-”
A sudden change of expression on Sunset’s face made Secre wince as she saw the girl had figured out something she had only alluded to previously. “You created magic draining technology!” she accused the bird.
Secre hung her head. “Yes...as I said before...we were stupid, back then. We made things without thinking what they could be used for,” she replied.
“Not even thinking-what the hell did you think was going to happen in your perfect scenario then?” Sunset demanded. “That you would just walk up to someone who had more mana and suck it away until they were at the same level of a commoner? Do you have any idea how rare magically talented people are? Were you just going to go around, taking what other people were born with and giving it to others so that everyone could live a pathetic life of MEDIOCRITY?”
The livid girl got a frown. “Who are you to judge the Prin-”
“I’M ME!” Sunset roared back at her. “So, what would have happened if your precious prince had come across someone with too much magical power? Hell, he was a light mage, he probably had too much! Was he going to give up his power to justify stealing the magic of others?”
Secre flew up into the girl’s face. “Stop putting words in my mouth!” the bird yelled at her. “Nothing like that ever happened!”
“But, did he want it to?” Yuno asked, cutting into the conversation with a curious voice.
“No!” Secre said before she flew back around to land on the ledge. “We built the technology for the purpose of trying to transfer a renewable source of magical power to magic items. With those, the lives of commoners could have been made easier. That was all we wanted. We never imagined it could be used in the way it was. We never even considered what would happen if someone forcibly removed the magic. We were stupid and nieive.”
As the bird hung her head, Sylph snorted. “In my experience, stupidity is much more destructive than the most intelligent evil genius could ever hope to be.”
“Do you know enough about magical technology to undo what happened to those kids?” Sunset asked evenly.
Secre went silent for several seconds. “...I don’t know. You have to understand, we never actually gave the designs to anyone, but enough was written down about them that other people were able to build their own siphoning machines just based on some of the conceptual theories that the Prince left. It’s been five-hundred years since then, but I could tell the technology as a whole hasn’t advanced much. Probably because they lacked certain resources the Prince possessed.”
After glaring at her for a few more seconds, Sunset let out a sigh before sitting back down on her bed. “Well, looks like I know what I’ll be doing the next couple of days.”
“Yes, what I helped create ended up inspiring what has become a plague on humanity,” the bird went on. “But the first time it was used was during Licht's wedding. The ruling class of humanity sealed away the magic of the elves and drained their mana, transferring it into themselves before killing the elves.”
Yuno cocked his head to the side. “That doesn’t explain how Licht, or...this man you claim isn’t Licht came back from the dead,” he said.
After taking in another deep breath, Secre nodded. “Well, saying that all the elves died in the attack is a mistake. Licht survived, and managed to hold onto his magic. In fact, I think he was purposely spared. Licht held a four leaf, same as you. But the extra power they have comes with a danger.”
“You’re talking about devil possession, right?” Sylph asked evenly.
The question had Yuno look over to his spirit partner. “What?”
Sylph looked back at the boy. “The four leaf, and other books like it from the other lands, comes with a danger,” she told him. “Should the holder of a four leaf ever succumb to despair and cast aside hope, their magic will be swallowed by darkness to be used by the netherworld for its purposes. To symbolize this change, a fifth leaf appears on the clover, and the magic within it becomes twisted.”
“Then...are you telling me that Asta…” Yuno looked at the fairy in horror as she floated down to land on his bed.
“I told you that you didn’t want to know,” Sylph said as she looked down at the sheets of Yuno’s bed. “But yes, Asta’s anti-magic, it’s the power of the devil that dwells within him. Which is also why he can’t use magic at all. The power of the devil within him nullifies mana. The whole point of him being sent to your hometown as a baby was probably to try and find the grimoire buried there.”
Yuno frowned. “Can something be done to remove it?” he asked Sylph, then looked up to Sunset and Secre.
As Secre avoided the boy’s eyes, Sunset gave an uncomfortable shrug, and Sylph sighed. “Even if I knew a way, it would be futile. You don’t understand,” she said before looking up at the boy. “The devil itself is the source of the anti-magic. Even if there was a spell to remove the creature, it’s like you’re asking me to pick up a burning coal with tongs made of ice.”
“Okay then...what about…” Yuno frowned before looking back to Sylph. “You said that the infection, the devil. It’s benign. That it can’t affect Asta. What could change that?”
Sylph shrugged. “No idea,” she said. “In the past instances of possession, humans had to work at strengthening the flow of the mana in their bodies so that the devil wouldn’t kill them just from manifesting.”
Nodding to herself, Sunset finished the explanation. “Asta doesn’t have any mana. In fact, his body has adapted to live without it in a world where everyone else does.”
“If the devil were to try manifesting in Asta’s body, it would very quickly kill its host,” Sylph assured Yuno. “Barring something that actually strengthens the ability to allow mana to course through his body, which is impossible since the devil nullifies all the mana he generates, Asta can’t be taken over by the devil inside of him.”
If not for the fact that Asta was left without magic thanks to his situation, Sunset would have laughed.
Yuno leaned back against the back of the wall the head of his bed bumped up against. “So...he’s not in any real danger,” the young man mumbled before he sighed. “There’s that, at least. Then, what happened when someone with mana is claimed by a devil?”
Taking that as a cue, Secre returned to her story. “Well, that’s not what I was talking about. We were speaking of grimoires,” she said. “It’s said that the happier a man is, the greater the depression when all of it is taken away. Seeing all of his friends and family slaughtered on the eve of what was to be the happiest day of his life...it was enough for Licht to become depressed enough so that his four leaf clover grew a fifth. But...things didn’t end for him there.
“The royal family had been taking advice from a soul that entered our world from The Netherrealm,” Secre went on. “It had whispered in their ear through a royal advisor, warning them that the elves were planning to take over the kingdom by using the child of Licht and Tetia to stake a claim on the throne. Because of their longer lifespans, they could afford to wait until he was old enough to take over while having the crown prince’s family removed slowly, over the years.”
Yuno frowned. “How did it get here?” he asked.
To which Secre shrugged, while Sylph sighed and shook her head. “Humans have been making deals with devils for years, sweetie. You can see the results of such bargains even today. Curse magic that’s passed down through a family line, for example,” she told him sadly. “It’s not like me and you. Our agreement is a simple exchange, power for the experience of living in this world. But devils...what they give marks their victims for generations.”
“By the time we arrived at the site of the wedding, all of the elves were dead, save one. Licht was holding Tetia’s body in his arms as the devil floated over him, taunting him about everything that happened. However, even thought Licht learned that everything had been through the manipulations of another, the devil still had a claim on his body,” Secre told them. “So Licht used the magic stones, a set of elven treasures that channeled the power of The Netherworld and made his body unfit for infernal habitation. It removed his sapient mind and turned him into something akin to an elemental of negative mana. Since devils can only possess thinking individuals, it made him immune to possession.”
Yuno nodded. “And that was the demon that the Wizard King killed,” he concluded before frowning. “But...what happened to the devil?”
The question got another sigh from Secre. “It was after the-wait...that’s what he is,” Secre whispered.
“Hm?” Sunset replied before becoming interested in the story. “What’re you going on about now?”
Secre frowned. “It was shortly after the battle between Lumiere and the monster that had been Licht concluded…”
-500 years ago-
“Prince Lumiere did it! He killed the monster!”
Secre did her best to ignore the cheers of the crowd that had gathered after the towering monstrosity Licht had become fell. As much as she hated to think about it, even if they had really known exactly what her prince had just done, they would have been cheering anyway.
The destruction to what Lumiere and Licht had planned to be a permanent settlement for the elves left the place a ruin and all the lands around it destroyed. The place was so tainted, it would take years before anything grew around the giant skull again, if at all.
The glint of something sparkling in the blue sky caught Secre’s eye, and she held out her hand to reach towards the falling gems with her magic when she realized what they were. There’s no end to the amount of trouble these things will be if they fall into the wrong hands, Secre told herself as she pulled the elven gems of the underworld to her as well as the pieces of jewelry that they were contained in before putting them in the book holster next to her grimoire.
A second later, Sere saw a mass of black and blue mana with what looked like a pair of sick eyes and twisted mouth float through the air towards her. The devil had no physical form, but she had seen how it could still imprison someone as powerful as Lumiere with it’s unnatural magic. “Ohohohohohoho! Well, so much for that little plan. Still, you all did give me something enjoyable to watch,” he said as if he was talking about the weather before looking around. “And I got a grimoire out of it! Now, where is that little book?”
Secre stared at the...she didn’t even know what to call it. Creature’s had bodies. The thing in front of her was just a mass of evil. “MONSTER!” she shouted at the devil.
It turned and looked at her, or...the things that comprised its face moved around to look at her. Just looking at it made her eyes hurt. The thing’s unnatural existence made her head hurt as Secre forced herself to concentrate on it.
“Hmm?” it asked in a bored tone. “And, who are you? Go away little girl. Your magic can’t harm me. Nothing from this world can.”
Secre blinked before reaching back into her grimoire’s case and pulled out the elven stones. “Well then, it’s a good thing that I’m accessorizing now.”
The devil seemed to shake with laughter. “Ohohohohohohoho! The magic stones? You must be joking,” it said before the thing’s twisted mouth widened into a grin. “Didn’t you see what happened to your pointy-eared friend? We’re standing on his skull, if you’ve forgotten. And you’re a mere human! If you use those things, the punishment will be quite severe. Give up and go home, girl.”
“Never!” Secre shouted before she took the gems up in her magic before calling up her grimoire. “Sealing Magic: Eternal Prison!”
A cube of containment formed around the devil’s spirit and for the first time since she had seen the awful thing, it’s mouth stopped smiling. “Hey, I know what you’re doing,” the monster said as Secre felt something poke its way out of two points on the side of her head. Still, she ignored the pain and continued on. “You little bitch. You think I’m going to just let this happen? The world obeys my commands, girl! Now, Come Here.”
Secre felt the stones rip away from her grasp as the cube holding the demon compacted until all that could be seen within it was the monster’s darkness. Which...should have been impossible. Even now, the demon was sealed away. “What’s going on? You shouldn’t be able to use magic at all!”
“Forbidden Magic: NoItAnrAcnieR!”
Secre forced the cube to compact again as she saw six layers of magic circles appear in the sky above her while down below, the elven souls were ripped from their bodies and brought into it, disappearing as they flew through the circle in the center of the matrix. However, she didn’t see a soul rise from the remains of the demon. Whatever had changed him had moved Licht beyond the devil’s reach.
“I’ll be sure to work more slowly in the background next time,” the devil told her as the cube he was contained in continued to grow smaller. “Not that anyone will even know of me. You’ll be long dead, and nobody will know to even try to stop me!”
Screaming in both anger at the creature and frustration at what was happening before her despite her attempts to stop it, Secre watched the devil’s dark spirit get pulled towards the giant set of magic circles before vanishing completely.
Panting from the effort of using such magic, Secre collapsed onto the ground. No...this isn’t fair. How can it all just end like this?
“Secre!”
The voice of Prince Lumiere made the girl suck in a breath before she picked herself up. The Prince would know what to do! He...he stumbled towards her, blood covering a good part of his clothing. “Oh no.”
-Present Day-
“And, you know the rest,” Secre told them with a solemn look. “I used the magic of the stones to turn Prince Lumiere to stone so that he could avoid dying, then was cursed to live as an anti-bird for my use of forbidden magic. Eventually, the Clover Kingdom’s forces did search the area, but only found a statue of the prince and the magic stones, which the crown eventually divided up amongst the nobles for one reason or another.”
Sunset frowned. “So, what you’re saying is…”
Taking a second to get another breath, the bird nodded. “Yes, that thing that’s walking around with Licht’s face. It’s the devil I failed to seal away, five-hundred years ago.”