[TBATE] -More Than One Godspell-

Cylrit

Damn it.

Hours had passed, and yet the scene remained unchanged. A thousand mages are still encircling the courtyard with unsheathed weapons and activated spells, cordoning off the portals ready to defend against those who dare enter this second floor—those who are loyal to Agrona.

The other mages had long finished setting up her artifacts. Everything is done and gone exactly as she intended, with no surprises or deviations in the way.

Sulla, standing beside me, had been silent for most of this. "It's been too long!" He spoke in a fearful tone, more to himself than to me. "Did she abandon us? She shouldn't—or did something happen to her? Oh Vritra, please—let nothing happen to her... or else we'll be doomed!"

"..."

Seris is, without a doubt, a woman of remarkable intellect. Even an arrogant tyrant such as Agrona had to acknowledge her intelligence more than once. There wasn't a plan of hers that hadn't been meticulously prepared and crafted out of precise logic.

Even this current plan is no exception.

I believed in her. From the moment she accepted me as her retainer, my faith in her had never wavered. As well as every single soul here. They believed that she could help them change the narrative of their lives, saving them from this cruel regime ruled by someone who's devoid both of empathy and humanity.

But Sulla, he wasn't wrong. If her plan fell apart, it wouldn't be just me. The elders, women, and children—none of them will have a chance to stay alive.

"—Please..." Nearby, I heard some soft murmurs. A huddle of women and younglings had gathered together, chanting the same prayers that I had heard countless times, regardless of the fact that they no longer had faith in their god. They still pray. Perhaps it's out of habit. People often seek solace in what they are familiar with, such as a culturally ingrained behavior like praying to the Vritra.

A creeping dread also began to gnaw at my chest, tightening with each second that stretched on longer than it should. Until something finally happened as one of the portals' surfaces started to tremble and melt away to allow a figure, a Scythe, to appear within it.

However...

"ATTACKKKK!!!"

That figure wasn't the Scythe we were hoping to see.

Shields, both magical and mundane, were all raised up with another shout. Different kinds of spells began to fly toward Titan of Vechor, lighting up the Relictomb in a blaze of color. Fiery bolts and sharp blades of wind hurled themselves against Dragoth's skin, only to dissipate into a dark, dusky smoke that faded away without doing any damage.

In that charged moment, a long black blade manifested itself in my grasp as mana roughly surged throughout my body. Once again being the first to react, I charge my weapon toward Dragoth.

"Oh, come on..." Dragoth grumbled in a mocking growl, casually letting me unleash all my slashes that were useless against the barrier of mana covering his skin. "I feel insulted. Shouldn't Seris be standing here, confronting me to protect you all herself?!"

I felt my chest tighten.

What can I do now?! What can I do in this situation?! Just how many can I possibly save?

Dragoth barely blinks. His expression remained infuriatingly unchanged—annoyed and impatient, almost bored at my stabs and slashes that could not touch his skin no matter how hard I've tried. I could only move around him as if I were moving around a literal rock.

"Enough!!!" In a blur of motion, Dragoth's gigantic form was able to appear right in front of me and instantly shattered my composure when his enormous presence eclipsed my entirety without effort.

I barely had time to do anything as I watched how fast he folded his hands and interlaced his fingers tightly together to merge his two fists into something like a mace. With a devastating blow, he struck me down like a mere insect, sending pain exploding through me as I spiraled to the ground.

"Arghh..." Blood sprayed from my throat as I struggled to crawl up, relying entirely on the flickering soul fires to regenerate my shattered body.

"Wakey wakey~" Dragoth sneered, approaching closer. He flipped me onto my back with a casual kick and pressed his foot firmly on my chest. Not enough to crush me—just enough to hold me pinned.

He doesn't want me dead yet...

Am I really going to die here...? Without saving anyone...?

I want to defeat Dragoth or at least somehow force him to retreat, but it felt impossible to accomplish such a thing. The gap between our strengths is far too great. 

I truly cannot imagine the prospect of my own victory in a viable way.

"Strange... looks like that woman really isn't here." He complained as his gaze drifted around. "Good for her, I suppose. If she were, I'd offer my apologize for underestimating her. I thought she wasn't as clever as she looked, considering that she chose you as her retainer over the rest. But she proved me wrong, didn't she? Outsmarted the high sovereign and then betrayed him for... whatever the reason was. Quite the feat, really."

"Grrrr—AGHHHHH...!!!" The mages' screams rumbled and blended together, growing stronger and building up more confidence as all of the strikers and shielders, one after another, advanced towards Dragoth with the best of their courage.

Dragoth glared at them. "You might want to cover your ears." He warned, spreading his arms out wide as his mana leaked out of them, boiling aggressively with a large quantity of power.

"NO! You fools!!" I thrashed beneath the Titan's foot, desperately trying to free myself out, but all I can do is shout, "STAY BACK ALL OF YOU!!! STAY BAC—"

My words died on my lips, vanished, and couldn't be finished by a sudden swell of power born the moment Dragoth slammed his hands together, sending out a ridiculously dominant vibration that can be seen spreading throughout the air like ripples, knocking all mages away along with their spells being snuffed out entirely.

"How sad..." He said, smoke hissing from his hands.

A cold dread twisted deep in my gut, churning like a storm, as Dragoth's dark, vertically slit pupil slid down to have a better look at me, at how utterly helpless I am now.

"You and your Scythe have my respect, Cylrit." He admitted. Each of the portals on the courtyard began to quiver, their flat surfaces rippling and trembling as if caught in an earthquake.

Soldiers happened to crash in right after—those who were blindly loyal to Agrona couldn't keep the hatred from their faces when they caught the sight of the people they considered traitors to the god they worshiped.

By the time there were enough soldiers, they had already arranged into their battle groups and formed a proper disciplined formation behind Dragoth.

"But what must be done needs to be done," the Titan murmured, his tone laced with obvious pity. "I hope... I hope you all will be remembered."

***

Arthur Leywin

'Seris seems distracted,' Regis remarked, 'and worried.'

I frowned. 'Why do you care?'

'Erm... I don't know—there's just something about it that pulls me, but not in a good way.'

Intrigued, I threw a quick glance over my left shoulder, catching Seris walking a few paces behind with Caera, who doesn't seem to be aware of her mentor's distant gaze. The calm, resolute expression Seris usually wore now had a slight furrow on her brow. She looked troubled. It wasn't a sight I expected to see on her so soon, even by chance.

It didn't take much insight to guess why. 

With some sort of problem that has to do with aether, her plan was ruined. Surely she was worried about the Alacryans that are waiting for her.

"..."

"We're almost there." Elysia announced as we approached the end of the corridor to where an aged and shabby wooden door stood in its frame, barely hanging onto its hinges. She pushed it, opening a small room cluttered with disarrayed papers that blanketed everywhere.

My gaze flickered from the disheveled bed shoved into a corner to a sad old figure with silvery white hair hunched over his desk, completely oblivious to our presence.

What stood out to me, however, was the unsettling absence of his mana core. There was no trace or a small flicker of that energy within him.

'Just a normal, weary old man. Maybe he'd done something reckless that cost him his core?' Regis mused in the back of my mind.

"Mr. Draven!" She called, stepping towards the old man across the confined space of the room. "Please, there are three people here you must meet!"

The old man named Draven finally looked at us. His weary gaze gradually became more alive when his eyes fell on the two women with Vritra horns on their heads. Yet the spark in his eyes didn't last long, and he soon went back as miserable as he was.

Ignoring us, he let out a heavy sigh. His attention was already somewhere else. "Is everyone back yet, Elysia?"

The woman looks between us and Draven for a few times. "O-oh... I-" Disappointment was clear in her voice. Perhaps she thought the old man would react more positively—the kind of awe those Ascenders out there have shown when standing before the presence of a Scythe.

"Yes." Elysia simply said, "But the number of people... it's gone down. A lot."

"...Thank you, Elysia." Draven's voice dropped lower, as though speaking those words took more out of him than it should have. "Now, please go get some rest."

Without another word, Elysia hurried out, her footsteps growing fainter until the door clicked shut behind her, leaving us alone with Draven in the room.

The old man sluggishly reached out to his side to grab something. A creaking sound was heard when he moved himself away from the desk, revealing a worn, rickety wheelchair beneath him.

"Well, so, um, if I remember correctly," Draven began to wheel himself closer, pausing before Seris. "You must be Scythe Seris Vritra of the... the Sehz-Clar Dominion. Yes! It is a pleasure to meet you, Scythe Seris!"

The Scythe said nothing in return.

Draven paused for a breath, rotating his wheelchair slightly to face Caera and me. "And who might you two be?"

"Caera of Highblood Denoir."

I hesitated and didn't answer right away. I was torn between whether I should go with the name Arthur or Grey. No one has recognized who I was since my arrival, which shows that these Alacryans might at least have been stuck here since before the Victoriad, so to avoid unwanted attention, going with the name Grey would be a good choice.

The last thing I needed was for them to figure out that I'm Arthur Leywin, who was responsible for thousands of Alacryan soldiers' deaths during the war.

"My name is Grey." I answered. Then I give myself permission to ask him. "This zone. People say you've been stuck here longer than anyone. If that's true, then you must know how to get out, right?"

Draven shook his head. "I'm... I'm so sorry. I don't know." He replied, and with that sorrow, he turned back to his desk, making a few stray items tumble to the floor so he could pull out a handful of rolled-up paper scrolls under the mess.

Ignoring the mess, he coughed a bit before taking some breath to be able to speak. "Look. These are maps I drew when I trying to find my way out of the damn place." He handed a few to each of us. "Can you tell what's wrong with them?"

"..."

"These are different maps..." Caera answered his question.

"Different, yes. A-and what they have in common is that the—the mountain we are using as our shelter is at the center of each one. I did this because I found out a few things around this mountain change randomly, from terrain, wind direction, light conditions, temperature, and more." I listened to him carefully as he explained. 

"At first, I-I thought a portal or a relic had to be somewhere on or inside, or maybe under this mountain, so I tried everything I could to search for it, but there was no luck, unfortunately. It-it was as if this mountain was trying to hide it form me." Draven added.

"Have you ever tried leaving the mountain to look for it?" Seris asked, her tone carefully probing.

"Yes I have, Scythe Seris." Draven answered. "But now, the only reason to step outside is to scavenge for food. Because, please understand—I don't doubt your strength, Scythe Seris. You're a Scythe, so of curse you're strong, but to be able to survive out there?" He shook his head, his expression darkening. "You won't last three days more or... or less out there. It really does matter. Time works differently here. You can say that its only purpose here is to drive you to the edge of your sanity, to make you want to—" His voice broke slightly, but he pressed on. "To make you give up for good." 

He paused, then continued, his voice low and intense. "And please don't underestimate the creatures out there. Most of them are deadly in ways you can't imagine. Plus, healing spells on runes and artifacts—none of them works here. We'll have to use a magical water from ponds, if we want to have a quick heal but we'll have to be careful or else your reflection will walk out of the pond and try to kill you."

"Is that's all?" I asked.

"Y-yes, Grey. That's... all I know." Draven looked at me confused.

"Great!" I replied with a trace of satisfaction. It was a relief that Draven wasn't like one of those murderous thugs in the blood zone.

And I didn't expect to gain this much useful information that just makes things a bit easier for me.