[TBATE] -More Than One Godspell-

Seris Vritra

"For those of you who do not believe me," A blade of dark mana manifested in my hand as I spoke. "We can change the narrative of our lives. We can make the Sovereigns bleed!"

My sword flashed, and the shield vanished when Orlaeth's remaining head tumbled across the floor.

I focused my gaze on the Legacy's as the ghostly flames rushed to her hand. Despite feeling cornered as if in a checkmate position, I dismissed the feeling and instead continued to gather my mana.

The Legacy thrust herself towards me with all her power. However, in the moment before my mana could flare to trigger the tempus warp to pull me away as planned, the world underwent an abrupt transformation before me. Colors drained from my vision as the air became alive with tiny sparks of energy that swirled and danced like purple fireflies, making me wonder if my eyes were playing tricks on me.

Those particles emitted a soft amethyst glow, captivating me with their enchanting beauty. Gradually, one by one, their hue shifts from a royal purple to a resplendent gold. Soon, they all began to shake and tremble, as if they were about to pop, until a dazzling burst of light detonated from those particles, finally engulfing my entire field of vision with its brightness.

After my vision cleared, a brisk gust of icy wind swept across my skin, sending shivers of cold down my spine. I blinked away the disorientation before surveying my surroundings, only to find myself suspended in the air above a vast underground city that was engulfed in chaos.

Vildorial...

"What is happening...?!" I muttered, grappling to comprehend the events that had just happened before me, until a loud, sudden blast, along with a conspicuous surge of mana emanating from a far distant point, seized my attention.

Reacting on instinct, I immediately propelled myself through the air, flying head first towards the source of the resounding explosion.

***

Caera Denoir

"That was unexpected..." Barry exclaimed behind me. Startled, I turned on my heels, my eyes widening as I quickly took in the sight of him leaning himself against the wall, his face contorted in pain yet still determined to approach me despite being visibly covered with injuries.

"Barry!" Without a second thought, I instinctively rushed over to him, intending to put his arm around my shoulders to help him walk.

But, for some reason, he gently pulled his arm away from my shoulder. "No, no, no. I'm fine. I'm fine. I can simply enhance my body, so I'll be alright." He exuded unwavering calm and confidence, assuring me with every word he spoke.

"Stop acting tough! Can't you see you're still bleeding?" I berated him, pointing a finger towards the blood stain seeping through his shirt.

Barry glanced down, letting out a small chuckle. "It'll soon dry. No big deal," he replied with a reassuring grin.

"HAHAHAHA— I told you guys that little sh*t would lose! He even lost against a woman!" A hoarse voice echoed above us, prompting me to redirect my gaze upward towards the roof of a nearby building. There, I inadvertently locked eyes with a tall man of a fairly muscular build, sporting a pale greyish complexion and a pair of horns that had been torn off, accentuating his disgustingly horrifying appearance. Notably, his physique was quite weird. His upper torso, arms, and legs boasted extreme muscularity, contrasting sharply with an unusually slender waist.

Beside him, behind him, and even on the roofs of other buildings that surround us, were scattered numerous others, each bearing a pair of horns that had been torn off similar to his own.

I cast a swift and appraising glance over all of them, scanning each one of them, and couldn't find a single one among them that appeared to be normal. They resemble more like mutated mana beasts than anything else I could think of.

"AHHH HAHAHAHAHA"

"GAHHHH HAHAHAHAHAHA"

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA"

They joined in laughter, shouts, and boos along with that disgustingly horrifying man like a bunch of animals as the amalgamation of both men's and women's voices blended together, forming a harmonious yet chaotic symphony.

The Wraiths? No. There should be only five of them.

I could distinctly sense the distinct instability and significant leakage in their mana signature, leading me to a blunt assessment that they're undeniably weak. Was it because they had their horns torn off?

A lot of them then started to vault off the roofs, and instantly, they advanced straight towards us.

Overwhelming us with their sheer numbers, we soon found ourselves quickly surrounded by them, as they had now turned the whole city street into a battlefield where all the Soul Fire, Void Wind, and Black Spikes attacks converged relentlessly upon us, leaving us with no option but to fight back.

And as we continued to fight and kill one after another, each life taken by us became a fleeting moment, for with every adversary we killed, another would show up to fill their stead.

Rivulets of sweat trickled down my skin, and I could feel the gears turning as my brain and eyes scrambled in an attempt to come up with a scenario or a strategy to navigate this dire predicament. However, the conclusion it reached was disheartening.

There was no way out...

The air itself seemed to pulse because of the strain of our conjured magic, a tangible presence in the atmosphere. Soon, I became aware of the depletion not just within my own mana core but also in Barry's due to our abuse of magic.

As the realization sank in, a wave of desperation mixed with exhaustion washed over me, while an eerie black mist that seemed to materialize out of nowhere began to weave its way through the battlefield and envelope everything, reducing our visibility and adding a layer of uncertainty to our already perilous situation.

After the mist has completely descended upon the entire battlefield like a shroud, the once vivid sounds of the field dull to a muffled echo, and the world around me becomes gloomy and disorienting. I tightened my grip on my sword, fearing that those deranged Vritras would take advantage of the mist to sneakily attack me.

"What is this...?" I muttered, glancing around to assess the situation. Beside me, Barry seemed equally perplexed while his eyes were scanning the shrouded, misty surroundings.

"Barry, stay close!" I called out, trying to keep my voice steady amidst the growing unease.

Abruptly, within the thick veil of mist, a series of agonized screams and the clash of weapons began to reverberate, which startled us into immediate alertness. The reverberations of those dreadful sounds continue to persist, echoing relentlessly until the final, piercing scream of a feminine voice fades into silence, casting a deadly stillness over everything.

A pallor swept across my face, and I could feel my blood run cold, draining me of color as we stood still like statues, not daring to breathe too loudly.

Eventually, the mist is gradually dissipating, unveiling a macabre scene of corpses scattered everywhere behind the mist, sending a shudder that rippled all the way down my spine. Once the remaining vestiges of the mist had dispersed, a woman emerged, adorned with remarkably long, snowy white hair that flew in the air like strands of iridescent pearls, standing amongst the lifeless corpses strewn around her.

I advanced with a single, purposeful step. In a moment, the familiarity of her presence sent a blend of relief and astonishment that swept all over the entirety of my being, leading me to a profound realization of who she is.

"Scythe Seris..."

"A Scythe!!!" The words burst out from Barry's lips in a mix of shock and fear as he instinctively shrank back.

"She's on our side! She won't harm you, I promise!" In swift response, I hurriedly reassured him, hoping that he would trust my words despite our brief acquaintance of just a short week.

Like a pair of captivating golden orbs, Barry's gaze bore into mine as if searching for any trace of deceit within me. Despite the semblance of calm that he had managed to regain, a flicker of doubt and fear was still lingering within the depths of those gilded eyes of his. "Alright," he uttered, his tone tinged with a hint of uncertainty.

"Please, Barry, just wait here." I let out a reliable yet gentle authority in my tone as I instructed before making my way towards Scythe Seris.

"..."

Without bothering to wipe away the clinging blood on her face, Seris approaches me, casually treading upon the scattered corpses littering the ground beneath her feet.

"Scythe Seris, What led you to come here?" I asked once she had arrived in front of me. She didn't seem surprised to see me, not even in the slightest.

"I don't know. I'm not even entirely sure how I ended up here. But I would like to demand an answer as to what's going on here, Caera." she articulated, questioning me in return with the question of her own.

"Wolfrum betrayed us," I began, attempting to assemble all the sequence of events that had brought me to this moment. "He and the Redwaters were never our allies. Agrona sent him here with these deranged people to reclaim what belonged to him, which I think is the weird core Scythe Nico gave me. And I believe these deranged individuals were merely a distraction for the Lances and other soldiers here, so that Wolfrum could easily reach me. That's all I know."

"The weird core Scythe Nico gave you?" She repeated as the typically emotionless look on her face shattered, replaced not just by mere curiosity but also by a profound severity, something that I had never seen from her before.

"I-It's just an empty mana core. Apart from its size, which is larger than the norm, there's nothing special about it. Scythe Nico handed it over to me before retreating with the Legacy." I responded hastily, averting my gaze by dropping my gaze down slightly, only to escape the pressure of her stare.

"And you decided to keep this from me until now." She uttered the words loud and clear yet slowly, as if she wanted to make sure I'd fully comprehended.

"I'm... I'm sorry."

"..." The air between us grew heavy with an unspoken tension when she fell into silence. It wasn't simply because of her lack of words but also because of the contemplative hush of disappointment boiling within her.

"-ÆAAGGHHHH!!!" The tranquility of the moment was abruptly shattered without a warning by a roar of such thunderous intensity that it swallowed the concurrent detonations, reducing them to mere whispers in its overwhelming resonance.

My eyes darted towards the source of the roar that filled the air. Buildings collapse, triggering the next one to fall and crash into each other. Amongst the chaos, I could glimpse numerous dwarven civilians trapped within these collapsing buildings, screaming for help as the destruction continued to spread.

An incidental upward glance led my eyes to meet those of a little girl, her figure framed by a window on a high floor of a building that was disintegrating bit by bit. Her eyes, brimming with unshed tears, held a depth of fear and confusion while hugging an old pink stuffed toy in her wounded arm.

Paralyzed on the spot, I felt a sharp pang in my heart, knowing that there was nothing I could do but witness that little girl, along with the remnants of the buildings, be swallowed by a cloud of dust and smoke, leaving behind nothing but a moment that would haunt me forever.

"..."

Within the murky veil of dust and smoke, a soft, ethereal lavender glow began to seep through. Appeared from there, a figure with familiar blonde locks soared upwards from the ruins, relentlessly pursued by another horde of deranged individuals that followed beneath him.

"It's General Arthur!" Barry's voice cut through the cacophony of the collapsing structures and the feral screams of the approaching madness.

My eyes expanded in sheer awe as I watched Grey fly over us in a mere blur, ascending lower and lower until he finally landed.

From a far distance, I discerned his focused attention on an object, and in response, a cloud of shimmering particles rose up and hovered in the air before him, forming an opaque oval portal with an oily sheen to its surface and emitting a dim purple light.

Without casting a single backward glance, Grey simply stepped into the portal, his form melting away into the vast unknown.

In the very next heartbeat, Seris seized my wrist with a grip that was both firm and reassuring, before extending her other hand to grab Barry as well.

"Wah—"

With urgency propelling her, Seris surged ahead towards the portal as I allowed myself to be drawn along.

A wave of nausea surged through my insides, while the sensation of being pulled and twisted in different directions overwhelmed all of my senses as we went into the portal.

"Ow!" I blinked my eyes open once more to be greeted by a biting gust of icy wind lashing against my face, making it challenging to keep my eyes open.

"Get up and move away from the portal, Caera!!"

Startled by Seris's shouting command emanating from somewhere, I instinctively rose up to my feet and enhanced my body with every last drop of the remaining mana in my core as I sprinted away from the portal behind me.

Unfazed by the drastic change in scenery, where nothing was in my sight except an endless expanse of pristine snow and gigantic trees that loomed above, I halted my sprint once I deemed myself sufficiently distanced away from the portal.

Gasping for breath, my limbs weighed down by exhaustion, I whirled around to have a clear view of a deluge of deranged individuals flooding in through the portal like tainted water seeping from a rotting wooden barrel.

A violet flash burst illuminated the uppermost reaches of the sombre sky. When the light became dim and soft, unexpectedly, Regis descended straight down upon them with his aether blade, like an asteroid.

His body blazed with vibrant purple flames, morphing and expanding into a colossal, bestial form with hard, sharp angles, jagged fire, and menacing black spikes. His head broadened and flattened, revealing obsidian fangs protruding from his mouth. Wings sprouted from behind his arched shoulder blades, and then Regis lifted himself off the ground, emitting a deafening roar that rattled only a fraction of the deranged individuals.

He exhaled flames of pure destruction, turning a lot of them into burning halves as he wheeled through the air, high above the enemy.

"AGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

At the screams of one of them, spells began to fly towards Regis, filling the area with reds, blues, greens, and lots of other colors. Cutting rays and bursting missiles erupted around us like fireworks.

Another sudden burst of purple light cut through my sight, and in that moment I sank down to my knees, feeling like I was drowning deep under the ocean. Gasping for air, I found myself unable to breathe, while the air around me appeared determined to press in and crush my very being.

"Grey...?!" I wheezed, unable to tell what sort of expression he had concealed under those blond locks.

"For the sake of your own lives, both of you better have answers." He stood tall in his usual jet black and gold armor, adorned with scales and onyx horns curling down from the sides of his head and wielding his aether blade firmly in his hand as he threatened.

"Of course." Seris's calm and mature voice drifted behind me. I turned to see her frowning, visibly vexed because of Grey's suffocating aura.

It took him a while to decide to retract his aura, and only then was I able to breathe again. I couldn't help but desperately take in deep gulps of air and end up coughing.

High above, Regis's enormous bulk casts a dark shadow over us as he takes a moment to hover in midair, staring down at me and my mentor before landing heavily next to his wielder, Grey. The jagged flames of his mane trembled, his teeth pulled back from his deadly fangs, and he then shrank in on himself, losing his bestial features, until he once again returned to his form as a shadow wolf.

"..."

Seris brushed the snow off her black dress while continuously shifting her gaze around to search for something.

"Are you looking for something, Scythe Seris?" I asked, following her gaze with curiosity.

"I was just wondering where that boy you were with back then might be."

"Barry!!"