The wind on the mountain crest was cutting. It wasn't the lazy, fresh wind of Magnolia, the kind that played with the bells and carried the scent of freshly baked strawberry cake. No. This was a wind with teeth, a sharp, insistent cold, as if the very air were filled with invisible, particularly grumpy micro-blades, trying to flay my face out of pure and simple topographical sadism. Absolutely lovely weather for a ghosts' picnic or a casual suicide, depending on your level of optimism.
I was running along the train tracks. Each of my steps resounded with a lonely, metallic clang on that iron path that projected over dizzying precipices, a scar of civility amidst the savagery of the mountains. Ahead, a dark shape cut through the pale blue sky, an unholy smudge, looking like an annoying insect buzzing too close to my ear, spoiling the landscape.
Erigor. The name still made me want to roll my eyes so hard I risked dislocating an eyeball. It sounded like something a thirteen-year-old goth, with a passion for bad poetry, would choose for their first character in a tabletop role-playing game, along with a crumpled black velvet cloak, heavy makeup, and a diary full of dramatic notes about the deep, misunderstood pain of existence and the cruelty of their parents for not letting them stay out late to go to gigs for bands with unpronounceable names. Pathetic.
[Target in sight, Azra'il,] Eos's voice sounded in my mind, as calm and aseptic as a surgeon announcing the start of a routine amputation. Her lack of emotion was, at times, a comforting counterpoint to my own internal chaos and chronic boredom; other times, it was just irritating. Today, it was the latter. [Distance: 812 metres and closing. Target's Ethernano levels indicate preparation for an area-of-effect spell, likely of a flashy nature and with an overly dramatic sound design.]
"No need to narrate the chase as if it were a horse race, darling. Unless there are bets involved, which would make it all much more interesting. And I can see the pretentious wind curtain he's casting," I grumbled, my eyes fixed on the growing whirlwind of dirty air forming around the tracks further ahead. He wasn't just fleeing. He was setting the stage, arranging the lighting, probably rehearsing his final monologue. Typical of a villain who confuses screen time with plot relevance.
I picked up the pace, the solid, ancient wood of the tracks vibrating slightly under the speed of my run. But the path ahead stretched out like a promise of boredom, and the distance between me and my melodramatic target wasn't closing as quickly as my already-frayed patience demanded. I needed a... shortcut. Something more efficient.
My gaze shifted to the side, to the immense and inviting rock face of the mountain that flanked the tracks. An uneven surface, full of cracks, ledges, and opportunities, a vertical playground for someone with a bit of imagination, a lot of experience, and a healthy, well-founded disrespect for the laws of physics and gravity, which, frankly, are more like suggestions than unbreakable rules.
Without slowing down, I changed my trajectory in an instant. With a light, almost silent leap, I left the tracks and their tedious linearity behind and landed softly on the face of the mountain, my feet finding purchase on the near-vertical rock. And I began to run. Horizontally. Across the stone wall, defying gravity as if it were just an inconvenient suggestion from some minor god with whom I'd had a particularly long and unsatisfying conversation in another life.
"Hmm. A little more... impulse, I think," I murmured to myself, as I felt the cold, potent Ethernano flow from my Dantian into the muscles of my legs, tensing them like the springs of a cosmic mechanism about to be fired.
A good few hundred metres ahead, I saw Erigor turn his head for an instant, probably feeling the vibration of my steps on the mountain, and an expression of pure, absolute disbelief and shock formed in his eyes when he saw me. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, probably trying to process the image of a white-haired girl running sideways on a cliff face. That small pause, that brief short-circuit in his villainous brain, was all I needed.
My feet found a firmer ledge on the rock, a perfect point of purchase. And then, with a force that was but a tiny whisper of what I truly possessed, I pushed. Hard.
*KRA-KOOOM!*
The entire mountain groaned in protest, like an ancient creature being awakened from a millennia-long slumber. The rock face where my feet had been moments before exploded inwards, a crater forming as if a meteor had given the rock a violent, passionate kiss. Shards the size of small cars flew into the abyss, falling in a silence that stretched for seconds, and a shockwave reverberated through the air, shaking the tracks and making the entire structure groan.
I was launched forward, a light-blue and white blur against the sky, breaking the sound barrier with a sharp, cutting whistle. The wind of my passage was a wall, the world around me transforming into lines of colour and light. In the blink of an eye, I surpassed Erigor's position, who was left suspended in the air, mouth agape, his pathetic storm of wind momentarily forgotten, as he watched me pass like a silent comet.
I landed a good fifty metres ahead of him. Not with a dull thud, not with an explosion. With a controlled, elegant slide that ended with the soles of my boots digging into the metal tracks, making them screech and buckle under the impact, the friction tearing off sparks of incandescent iron. The subtle vapour from my own speed dissipated around me. I raised my head slowly, my white hair falling over my shoulders. My black oak jian rested lightly on my shoulder. The wind Erigor was conjuring finally reached me, whipping my hair and my hanfu, but it was too late. The hunter had become the cornered prey.
I saw the mix of shock and panic in his eyes as he finally processed that I was there, just a few metres away, standing with an expression of absolute boredom, as if I had been waiting for him for hours and was starting to get impatient.
"I-impossible..." he stammered, the knuckles of his fingers white from gripping the handle of his ridiculously large, impractical, and honestly, rather tacky scythe. "How... how did you get here so fast...? No one is that fast..."
I tilted my head slightly, and a slow, cold smile, entirely devoid of any human warmth or sympathy, appeared on my lips. It was the kind of smile that, in other lives, had made megalomaniacal emperors tremble on their golden thrones and reconsider their careers.
"You know, Erigor, I've always thought that wind mages, by definition, should be... well, fast. It's sort of a prerequisite of the profession, isn't it? It's in the name. You fly around using wind magic and yet, you're slower than me, a simple, humble... walker, running through the mountains like any peasant on her way to the market. Doesn't that give you a shred of professional shame? Your 'Beginner's Guide to Malevolent Flight' instructors must be turning in their unholy graves from sheer disappointment."
The expression on his face was one of pure shock and humiliation, as if my words had been a physical punch to his gut. The ego, such a fragile, inflated, and deliciously easy thing to puncture with the right needles.
"You... you can't have passed through my wind barrier! My Storm Shred! It repels everything! EVERYTHING!" he shouted, more to convince himself of his own competence than to threaten me, raising the scythe with hands that, I noted with a cold satisfaction, were now trembling slightly.
I took a slow step forward, the sound of my boot on the metal rail echoing like the announcement of an inevitable sentence.
"Really, Erigor? Are we really going to stand here, in the middle of nowhere, on a precarious bridge, arguing about what 'can't' happen, while the living, annoyed, and slightly bored proof to the contrary is right in front of you, about to give you a painful, practical lesson on the vast limits of your mediocre magic and your limited imagination?" I smiled, and my blue eyes, previously calm, narrowed, gaining a predatory glint.
"I have just passed through that pathetic wall of air and dust of yours as one would pass through a bead curtain in a cheap esoteric shop with an unbearable smell of expired patchouli incense. If that doesn't tell you anything about the chasm of power that exists between us... well, then I will have the immense and rare pleasure of explaining it to you personally. In detail. And, perhaps, with a bit of educational violence, just to help the lesson sink into your thick head."
He took a step back in the air out of sheer reflex, like a startled animal before a larger predator. But quickly, fury and wounded pride took the place of fear. He lifted his chin, a pathetic attempt to regain his composure, and the whirlwind around him grew, becoming more intense, more violent, as if he wanted to swallow me with his anger. The wind blades, now visible as sharp distortions in the air, began to slice through the iron rails that still remained between us, the metal fragmenting and being hurled into the abyss as if it were made of cheap cardboard. An impressive spectacle, if you're a fan of large-scale vandalism and aren't worried about the repair bill.
"I will kill you, you insolent wolf!" he roared, his voice laden with hatred and wounded pride. "I will tear you apart, piece by piece, and scatter your remains across these desolate mountains! Your name will be forgotten by history!"
I raised my wooden jian slowly, the smile on my lips widening like a poison spreading slowly through the universe's bloodstream.
"Four acts."
Erigor frowned, a momentary confusion breaking his facade of blind fury amidst his storm of rage and cutting winds. "What...?"
"I will defeat you in four acts," I explained calmly, with the tone of someone reading a theatre programme to a particularly slow child with concentration difficulties.
"It's a classic structure, you should know, if you'd read any books beyond 'Villainy for Beginners' manuals. Every good tragedy, and yours, my dear boy, promises to be a particularly mediocre one, follows this line. Act One: The Opening, where I, the protagonist, establish my dominance in an elegant, casual, and rather humiliating way for the supporting character. Act Two: The Breaking of Rhythm, where I, with surgical precision, methodically dismantle your small, pathetic hopes of victory. Act Three: The Disintegration, the moment when your power and, more importantly, your precious, fragile dignity, crumble to dust in the wind. And finally, my personal favourite, the grand finale, the climax of our little play: the Fourth Act. The Silence."
His eyes widened, his anger turning into an incandescent, almost childish fury.
"YOU DARE...!" he roared, his voice breaking with pure, absolute indignation. "YOU DARE TO UNDERESTIMATE ME TO THIS EXTENT?! DO YOU THINK I'M A CHARACTER IN ONE OF YOUR STORIES?! I AM ERIGOR, THE REAPER!"
"No, no, Erigor," I tilted my head, observing the wind blades dance around him with an almost clinical admiration, like an entomologist studying the flight patterns of a particularly noisy insect.
"I'm not underestimating you in the slightest. I am merely giving you the honour, the rare courtesy, of knowing the script of your own, inevitable tragic play ahead of time. Consider it a... professional courtesy. A little kindness before the end, which, I must warn you, will certainly be bloody and, for you, rather unpleasant."
I took another slow step towards him, and the wind from his barrier whipped against my face like sharp knives, but it didn't stop me for an instant. I felt his eyes on me, sizing me up, desperately searching for some weakness, some hesitation. Poor, poor sod. He still thought this was a duel between equals. He still hadn't understood. I felt the weight of his arrogance and his desperation in the way he advanced, his giant scythe raised in a pose that, undoubtedly, he had rehearsed in front of a mirror for hours on end, seeking the perfect angle to look threatening.
"You think you can intimidate me with words?" he sneered, spinning the weapon. The whirlwind exploded outwards, forming a corridor of wind blades around me, designed to slice me into small, easy-to-sweep-up pieces. "I am the Reaper! The very storm is under my command!"
The wind blades began to come from all directions, cutting through everything in their path with a sharp, hissing sound. The iron rails that still remained behind me were torn apart as if they were made of tissue paper, shards of metal flying into the abyss with a sharp, metallic sound. The noise was deafening, a cacophony of rampant destruction. But I continued to advance, one slow, deliberate step at a time, directly into the heart of his fury. I dodged each cutting blow with a minimal shrug of my shoulder, a slight tilt of my head. I blocked others, the more direct ones, with an almost casual touch of my wooden jian. His storm was noisy, yes. But it was also… slow. Clumsy. Predictable.
Erigor, the Reaper, laughed when he saw me intercept one of his most powerful attacks with such disdainful ease. He truly believed he was pressuring me. How cute. How tragically, pathetically, cute. And how immensely, deeply, sad.
"Is that all you have?" I asked, raising my sword with an exasperating calm and letting a particularly furious and concentrated wind blade ricochet off the edge of the jian. The sound of the impact echoed like a muffled thunderclap, but the wood wasn't even scratched. "If this is your 'great storm', Erigor, then you are nothing more than a weak wind that rattles the window and scares the stray cats. Frankly, I'm deeply disappointed. I was hoping for a bit more drama, a bit more... style. And, who knows, a real challenge."
Erigor gritted his teeth, and I could see the now-visible sweat on his forehead, shining in the cold mountain light. Humiliation, that slow, corrosive poison, was beginning to undermine his concentration, to shake the foundations of his confidence. He released a second whirlwind, larger and fiercer than the first, the pressure of the wind finally managing to tear the rails from where they were fixed and send them flying as if they were metal ribbons in a hurricane.
"You're so... noisy," I said, still advancing, my voice calm and steady amidst the hurricane of his creation. "And so... predictably, terribly, slow."
And then, without any warning, without any sign, I propelled myself forward. The stone ground beneath my feet exploded with the sheer force of my movement, the air splitting with a sonic boom that made the mountains echo. And in less than the blink of an eye, in a fraction of a second that for him must have felt like a frozen eternity, I was in front of him. So close that he could, undoubtedly, feel my icy breath on his sweaty skin. So close that he could see the reflection of his own terror in my blue eyes, as cold and indifferent as the void between the stars.
The tip of my wooden jian rested lightly, almost fondly, on the pulsing artery in his neck.
He froze. Completely. His eyes wide with pure, absolute terror, his pupils dilated, his body locked in the air by his own wind magic, which now trembled and wavered along with him, like a frightened dog that has found its master.
"How...?!" he gasped, his voice hoarse, a strangled sound caught in his throat. "How are you... so... fast...?"
I smiled slowly, a smile that didn't reach my eyes, tilting my face so he would look at me directly, forcing him to see the ancestral indifference that stared back at him, the boredom of ages.
"It's not that I'm particularly fast, Erigor the Reaper. It's that, to me, to my perception, you're barely moving. Your existence, your speed, your fury... all of it, to me, is terribly irrelevant."
I moved the blade from his neck, but only to make room for the real show. With an elegant, almost lazy movement, the flourish of a bored artist, I spun my jian and opened a shallow but incredibly precise cut on his shoulder. Blood flew in a perfect arc, a hot, living crimson jet that stained the transparent currents of his protective wind, making them visible and red for a fleeting instant. A single, beautiful brushstroke of colour in his dull, monochrome storm.
"Act one," I whispered, my gaze fixed on his, watching the shock and pain begin to register in his brain. "The Opening."
Erigor roared, an explosion of sound that was far more inflated, wounded pride than actual physical pain. "Your wretched insolence will cost you your life!" he shouted, spinning his scythe in a frenzy of fury and desperation. A vertical hurricane, a drill of pure destruction, was born around us, a whirlwind of wind blades that split the remaining rails, the mountain stones, the very air we breathed, trying to suck me into its centre and turn me to dust. "DIE, YOU BASTARD!"
The gale was so intense that I could have been torn from there and thrown into the abyss below without the slightest chance. A normal being would have been. But instead… I danced. As I had danced in a thousand other storms, in a thousand other hells.
Every wind blade he launched, every cut that hissed in my direction with the intent to slice me, was intercepted with a precise touch of my jian's tip, deflected with a minimal step, a fluid twist of my wrists. The sharp, metallic sound of the Ethernano-imbued wood colliding with wind magic was like music to my ears, a cacophonous symphony of his growing frustration, of his dwindling hope. I moved with a calm smile on my face, in no hurry at all, letting him exhaust himself, letting him tire, letting him believe for a moment that he had cornered me in his pathetic vortex of destruction.
"The wind always howls loudest when it's desperate," I murmured to myself, dodging with a dip of my head a particularly furious gust that split one of the bridge's steel pillars in half as if it were a simple dry twig. "But in the end... no matter how much it screams, no matter how much it thrashes, silence is always the victor. Silence is inevitable. And absolute."
With a calm that bordered on insulting, I advanced through his desperate dance of blades. A single, swift cut from my jian, a movement he barely saw, sliced through his defensive whirlwind, tearing a rift in the hurricane of blades as if ripping a silk curtain. And in an instant, I was inside his guard, in the eye of his private storm. My jian, with a speed he couldn't follow, pierced the flesh of his thigh, and the sharp cry of pain he let out echoed like a shrill, dissonant note in his own symphony of destruction.
"Act two," I said, pushing the blade a little deeper into his flesh, feeling the bone give with a nauseating crack that made me smile. "The Breaking of Rhythm."
He tried to hit me with the handle of his scythe, a desperate, clumsy move from a wounded animal. But I caught the weapon's bare blade with my free hand and, with a strength that made him gasp in surprise, I twisted it. The scythe's metal, imbued with his wind magic, groaned in protest, and with a sharp, final snap, the weapon that was the symbol of his power, the instrument of his title 'the Reaper', broke in two.
"No..." he gasped, the sweat, dust, and blood now mixed on his face, the disbelief in his eyes turning into pure, absolute despair. He was disarmed. Wounded. And at the mercy of a monster he didn't understand.
I brought my face close to his, keeping him pinned by the wound in his leg, forcing him to look at me, to see the truth in my eyes. "Act three, Erigor, the scythe-less Reaper," I said quietly, savouring every word, feeling him shudder with anger, pain, and finally, with abject fear. "The Disintegration. Of your power. Of your weapon. Of your dignity."
I pushed him back with a calculated kick to his wounded chest, wrenching the jian from his thigh in a sharp, efficient movement that sprayed more of his crimson blood into the air, staining the iron rails. He staggered, crying out in pain, but he didn't fall. Not yet. His eyes, now wild with fury and panic, burned, and for an instant, the wind around him seemed to change, to become denser, more dangerous.
"YOU... YOU WILL DIE HERE, YOU BASTARD!" he roared, channelling all the magic he had left into a final, desperate act of self-preservation.
The air around his body spun violently, faster, denser, until it became an almost invisible barrier of whirling blades, an armour of wind and fury. Every inch of him was now protected by a deadly miniature storm. Even the rocky ground beneath his feet, and the metal rails, began to be torn like paper by his own out-of-control magic.
"My Impenetrable Wind Armour!" he shouted, with a last shred of pride and hope in his voice. "Not even the sharpest blade in the world, not even the most powerful god, can touch me now! And you, with that pathetic little twig of yours, are nothing!"
I smiled. A cold, slow smile, full of a pity that was almost an insult. "Impenetrable... what an absolutist, smug, and frankly, boring word. I've always found there's a peculiar, unique pleasure in breaking things that claim to be perfect, indestructible. It brings a healthy, necessary balance to the universe, don't you think?"
Erigor advanced with a final roar, the storm cutting through everything in its path. Rails, rocks, the bridge's steel pillars... everything was shattered, turned to dust, a final demonstration of his power. But I advanced too, calm and inexorable, directly towards the heart of his fury, of his final defence.
I let the wind blades, sharp as razors, crash against me. My hanfu, that beautiful, expensive suit of blue and white silk that I so cherished, was torn in dozens of places, the delicate fabric shredding like old paper, revealing the pale skin beneath. The sound of the fabric ripping in my ears was louder, more irritating, than any pain he could realistically cause me. Not a single wind blade, no matter how fast or sharp, even managed to scratch the surface of my skin. My own subtle aura of Ethernano, like a second skin, deflected them.
"Is that all you have?" I asked, advancing one step, then another, my feet moving with a calm that defied the storm around me. His eyes widened in pure, absolute terror as he saw me walk through his 'impenetrable' storm without retreating an inch, without showing a single scratch. "All this noisy spectacle... all this dramatic wind... and you can't even scratch the surface of my skin. What an immense, what a profound, what a total... disappointment."
Erigor, in a panic, tried to redouble the strength of his wind armour, increasing the speed of the blades, shouting incomprehensible spells. But it was useless. Too late. I advanced once more. One step. Two. And the rage in his eyes, once so intense, wavered, broke, and finally gave way to the first and last spark of a genuine, absolute fear. The fear of the prey before the predator.
"You wanted to be the storm, didn't you, Erigor?" I murmured, my voice calm and clear amidst the hurricane, the wooden jian raised, glowing with a faint, pale light. "But you are not the storm. You're just wind. Wind trapped in your own, pathetic illusion of strength. And the wind... always dissipates."
With a single, simple blow, a movement that was neither fast nor slow, but simply... final, I cut. The sound was a muffled, almost imperceptible crack. My black oak jian passed through his Wind Armour as if it were made of smoke, of broken dreams. The barrier dissolved into useless, pathetic eddies that dissipated into the cold mountain air. He gasped, trying to react, trying to flee, but it was already too late. Far too late. I was already there. I rested the tip of the jian on his chest, over his wildly beating heart, piercing the skin slowly, with a precision that was almost gentle.
"Fourth act, Erigor the Reaper," I whispered, my voice almost soft, intimate, amidst the settling silence. "The Silence."
And then, I pushed the sword.
The jian passed through his chest with a dry, nauseating crack, tearing through skin, muscle, ribs, and finally, his heart, as if they were made of old cloth and rotten wood. I felt the resistance of his sternum give way under the wood of my sword. I heard the muffled, wet sound of his heart being pierced.
His eyes widened in a final shock, in one last, silent question. His mouth opened in a sigh that was never completed. Blood exploded from his chest, hot and alive, a crimson jet that spattered my face and my now-torn hanfu, staining the remaining fabric.
"Feel it, Erigor," I murmured, and with a cruel movement, I twisted the blade inside his chest, feeling the heart muscle tear. "This... is your final note. Your requiem."
A hoarse, wet, horrible sound escaped his lips as I pulled the sword out in a clean movement, opening a cut that probably split his heart in two. The wind magic that held him in the air extinguished instantly. The silence that followed was so deep, so absolute, that I could hear the drops of his blood dripping onto the iron rail below, each drip a full stop to his pathetic story.
I knelt down to his face, watching the light of life fade from his eyes, the arrogance being replaced by nothingness. "You wanted to be the Reaper, didn't you? But in the end... you were just the bland prelude to my performance."
I let go of his body. It fell onto the tracks with a dull thud, his eyes open, glassy, reflecting the grey, indifferent sky, his story finished.
"What a mediocre spectacle. And what a mess," I murmured to the wind.
I wiped the bloody wooden jian on what was left of my torn cloak. "And to think I ran so far for this... I didn't even get a proper warm-up." I looked at the body and yawned, boredom settling back in like an old, unwanted friend. "I sincerely hope the others are already finishing cleaning up the mess back at the station. Because, honestly, I really need a good, strong cup of tea now."
I crouched down and, while searching his body with a practiced efficiency, I found it, tucked into his belt. The Lullaby flute. The three-eyed skull carving stared at me with a silent, malicious smile. The cold wood seemed to pulse in my hand as if it had its own evil heart, hungry and full of an ancient malice.
"So this was what it was all about," I murmured, a cold, joyless smile on my lips. "All this waste of time, all this destruction, all this shouting. For you." I stared at the flute. "I sincerely hope it was worth it for you, Erigor."
The cold mountain wind passed by, whistling between the rocks, the only sound in that silent vastness. That's when I heard it. A whisper. Faint, but unmistakable. Not from the wind, but from within my own mind. Or perhaps from the flute in my hand.
"...Play me..."
I frowned, the unexpected sound catching me by surprise. The whisper returned, more insistent, seductive:
"...Play me... release me..."
I felt the pulse of the artefact in my hand intensify, vibrating in harmony with the whisper. I sighed, a long, tired sigh of pure exasperation.
"Oh, of course. That's all I needed. A cursed, demonic flute with apocalyptic powers... that's also needy," I muttered to the void, sarcasm returning with full force. "It's exactly what I needed today to complete my day. Perfect."
The flute vibrated in response, the whisper echoing once more in my mind, now almost pleading, almost promising:
"...Play me..."
I stood there for a long moment, alone on that destroyed iron bridge, with a corpse at my feet, staring at the smiling, carved skull on the end of the cursed flute, letting the cold, oppressive silence of the mountains envelop me. And the wind, it seemed to watch, silent, waiting. Waiting to see if I, Azra'il Weiss, would answer the call of that song of destruction.