Moving through the bowels of the Moon Temple was like taking an unwanted tour inside the dormant skeleton of some forgotten god with dreadful taste in décor. The air in here was a relic cold, still, and carrying that distinctive smell of stone that hadn't seen the sun in centuries, mixed with the subtle aroma of the dust of crumbled empires and an ancient, palpably sick magic that clung to the walls like a stubborn, invisible, and likely contagious fungus. I could feel the currents of magical energy flowing beneath the floor, like subterranean rivers of pure, corrupted power, emitting a low hiss that would make a lesser mage feel nauseous and question all their life choices.
Somewhere in the distance, probably on the lower levels (where 'subtlety' was never invited to the party), one of those currents exploded in a glorious crescendo of chaos, heat, and enthusiastic screams that could only belong to one person in this universe: Natsu Dragneel. His and Gray's 'discreet infiltration', it seemed, had begun. It sounded less like a subtle infiltration and more like a pair of dragons with anger-management issues having a particularly violent pub brawl, with the fragile temple itself being the pub. Predictable. Utterly predictable. And terribly noisy. A perfect distraction.
I, on the other hand, moved as the very, absolute absence of sound. My feet, shod in my silent leather boots, did not even touch the dusty stone floor. I floated a mere, almost imperceptible centimetre above the surface, my body as light as a feather, propelled by a subtle and precise control of Qi that rippled beneath my robes like an invisible breeze.
It was a basic movement technique, the "Silent Cloud Step," taught to any cultivator worth their salt, but in this world of noisy mages who announced every spell with a guttural cry, a melodramatic name, and an exaggerated pose, it seemed like high-level, almost divine, sorcery. I was a phantom on a hunt, a silent predator following a trail that defied common senses and, probably, the sanity of my targets. And the trail, to my delight, was not one of footprints or magical power. It was one of scent.
Subtle, almost subliminal beneath the thick layers of mould, decay, and the smell of ancient stone, but undeniably present to my lupine senses. A perfume. A complex, elegant, and surprisingly expensive floral scent, with notes of night-blooming jasmine, a citrusy touch of bergamot, and a warm, woody, exotic base of sandalwood. It was a deliberate, sophisticated fragrance, the kind of expensive, tasteful aroma one does not, under any circumstances, find on a cursed island in the middle of absolutely nowhere—unless, of course, the ice demon Deliora, in its long and frozen slumber, had developed a refined taste for high-class perfumery and did its shopping online.
"Either this cursed temple has the most chic and sophisticated air freshener I've ever had the displeasure of smelling," I thought, a faint, amused smile forming on my lips, "or one of our mysterious and supposedly terrifying villains has absolutely impeccable taste in fragrances and an appallingly, amateurish, almost insulting notion of discretion for a spy. How delightful."
I followed the olfactory trail, like a wolf sniffing out its unsuspecting prey, through dark corridors that twisted and turned like the entrails of a sleeping stone serpent, passing through vast, empty chambers that echoed with the silent whispers of long-forgotten rituals and long-consummated sacrifices, until I finally arrived at a vast and impressive circular hall.
This place was, without a shadow of a doubt, the pulsating, diseased, and likely infected heart of the temple. In the centre of the hall, a huge, multifaceted lacrima crystal, the size of a small windmill and probably of incalculable value on the black market for magical artefacts, pulsed with the sick, illusory purple light of the moon outside, absorbing it and channelling thick, visible beams of pure, corrupted energy into a dark, circular abyss in the floor, from which emanated a cold so profound, so absolute, that it seemed to come from the very, frozen core of death itself.
And, standing beside that gigantic crystal, with his arms crossed and his back to me, was him. The masked man. The one called Zalty. His posture was that of a maestro before his orchestra relaxed, confident, utterly in control of his symphony of destruction. Or at least, that's what he, in his infinite and pathetic arrogance, believed.
I did not announce my arrival with a surprise attack or a cheap one-liner. Subtlety, after all, is an art form. And I, modesty aside, was a true and unparalleled master. Instead, I simply stopped floating, letting my feet settle on the stone floor without a single, paltry whisper, and leaned casually against one of the many shadowy pillars that supported the hall's vaulted ceiling, a good ten metres from him, just observing him on his false, pathetic pedestal of power, with the same interest I would have for a particularly large ant.
It took seven long, delicious, and utterly silent seconds for his sharpened mage's senses, or perhaps just the pure, crystalline presumption that he was untouchable, to finally alert him to my unexpected, entirely silent, and slightly disdainful presence.
He turned, not with the start of a surprised man, but with a theatrical, almost rehearsed slowness, like a bad actor in a very tasteless play. The grotesque mask, with its twisted, asymmetrical shapes and a clear excess of unnecessary detail, hid his facial expression, but the voice that finally came from behind it, distorted by magic and laden with carefully rehearsed mockery, dripped with an arrogance that was almost palpable and thoroughly irritating.
"You took your sweet time getting here, didn't you, Azra'il Weiss. Or do you, by any chance, still prefer to be called by your number? The prisoner number those worms gave you in that old, pathetic tower of suffering of yours?"
Ah. A verbal needle. Precise, sharp, poisoned, and designed with a calculated cruelty to pierce my usual calm. Not to hurt me, but to destabilise me. And for an instant, it worked. Not with pain. I have experienced pain on scales that would make this time-mage cry for his mummy. The reaction was… different.
For a split second, a split second that felt like a frozen eternity, the vivid image of cold stone walls, the ever-present metallic smell of despair, and above all, the frightened yet fiercely stubborn face of a small, helpless, and incredibly brave Erza Scarlet flashed in my consciousness with unwanted clarity. The provocation had hit its mark, yes, but not in the way he expected. It didn't bring me personal pain. I had processed and buried my own experiences from that place long ago. What it brought me was a wave of fury. A cold, silent, and utterly merciless rage that he would dare to use her suffering, my redhead's pain, as a cheap weapon against me.
The reaction he, in his infinite arrogance, certainly expected from me, shock, fear, a show of weakness, perhaps even a single, dramatic, and wholly inappropriate tear was instantly suffocated and replaced by something far, far stronger and considerably more dangerous for him: an analytical suspicion, absolute contempt, and a predatory calm that settled in my soul.
(How? How does this masked figure, this supposed, random follower of an ice-mage with unresolved issues, know about the Tower of Heaven? That information wasn't in any official report. It wasn't a rumour. It was a secret. A secret that belonged to those who bled in that damned tower. A secret that belongs to Erza.)
The cogs in my mind, ever sharp and analytical, spun at high speed, processing the anomaly, connecting dots that shouldn't connect. This wasn't a random attack. This was… personal. Intentional. And using Erza's pain as bait made it all infinitely more interesting. And far more… punishable.
With an effort of will I have honed over many ages, I buried the cold fury beneath thick layers of contempt, indifference, and a carefully calculated boredom. And I let a slow, lazy, utterly condescending, and, I hoped, deeply irritating smile form on my lips.
With the calm of one about to correct a particularly mediocre student, I crossed my arms over my chest, my weight resting lazily on one foot. "Oh, how marvellous. Another fan of my unauthorised biography, full of gaps and probably riddled with spelling mistakes. Have you second-rate villains with access to privileged information formed an official fan club? Are there custom T-shirts? Keyrings? A secret messaging group? Because if there are, I demand, by right of intellectual property and for sheer, simple greed, a considerable percentage of the royalties. And complete and utter creative control over the merchandise. I will not tolerate tacky mugs with my face on them."
I paused, letting my words echo in the silence of the vast hall, and let my blue gaze travel over his masked figure from head to toe, assessing him with the cold, objective contempt of a renowned art critic before a poorly executed painting, devoid of talent, with an offensive colour palette and a clear lack of perspective. "And, by the way, just for the record and as a spot of constructive criticism for your future evil endeavours, should you survive this encounter, which, I must admit, is statistically improbable: your disguise is dreadful. Absolutely terrible. Pathetic, even. The posture is all wrong forced, artificially hunched. Whoever is under that ridiculous, over-detailed mask of yours is clearly not at all used to walking with their shoulders so stooped and with this pathetic, transparent attempt to look like some dark, mysterious villain with chronic back problems. It's terrible for your postural health, you know? And, what's worse, it's utterly predictable. A walking cliché of a cape and mask."
Irritation, a wave of almost palpable psychic heat, like the air over hot tarmac, rippled from him towards me. He definitely, categorically, did not appreciate my honest, well-intentioned, and entirely necessary critique of his fashion, acting, and postural health. How ungrateful.
"You arrogant fool with a tongue far too sharp for your own limited good! Who do you think you are?!" he hissed, his voice distorted by rage and the mask. "I will teach you, with great and sadistic pleasure, what happens to insolent, noisy brats with a dreadful sense of self-preservation who don't know their proper, insignificant place in this world!"
With a quick, fluid, and, I must admit with a hint of technical appreciation, surprisingly graceful gesture for someone with such poor posture, he extended a gloved hand and touched the massive stone pillar beside me. And then, before my curious but utterly and completely uninterested eyes, the time of that ancient and probably very, very bored granite column, which had been standing there peacefully without bothering anyone for probably a thousand years, accelerated vertiginously, grotesquely, and unnaturally. A thousand years. In a single, insignificant instant.
Thin, dark cracks, like black, diseased veins, spread across its entire surface with the speed of lightning. The velvety green moss that covered it in places grew, flourished, aged, withered, and died in a single, pathetic blink of an eye, an accelerated lesson in the futility of life. And the once-massive, solid, and imposing stone, which had witnessed centuries of silence and probably some very dull ceremonies, crumbled with a whispering, melancholic, and somewhat sad sound into a pile of fine dust and sand, as if it had never truly existed. An interesting party trick.
Next, as if just warming up for the main event, and to my growing disappointment, he turned with a dramatic and entirely unnecessary flourish and touched the rubble of another, previously destroyed wall (probably by Natsu and Gray in their subtle infiltration) that was scattered across the floor of the vast hall. And their time, completely unnaturally and with a sick, unstable purple energy, reversed.
The stones, which had been lying inert and at peace, rose from the floor as if they had acquired a life of their own and a sudden desire to fly, vibrating with that unstable purple energy. They joined in the air with the speed of thought, moulding and sharpening themselves with impressive precision into a dozen massive, pointed, and deadly stone lances, which then shot towards me with the speed, force, and homicidal intent of a set of ballista bolts.
"Wow," I murmured, with a boredom that was almost a personal offence. Stone lances. What a lack of originality, of creativity, of even a modicum of style. So… primitive. The response of a true cultivator, of someone who understands the flow of energy, to an attack so direct, so predictable, so… crude, is not to resist with equal or greater force, but to flow with the movement, like the water of a stream gently skirting a stone in its path, effortlessly, without fanfare.
I bent my body backwards in an impossible arc, a movement so fluid, so natural, and so devoid of any visible effort that it seemed to defy the very laws of physics and gravity. Like water skirting the stone, I became the flow. And the stone lances, once so threatening in their speed and force, zipped harmlessly past me, a gale of rock and frustrated intent, missing my face by mere, carefully calculated strands of silver hair.
I spun in a graceful arc, using the momentum of my own movement to land softly, like a feather on a summer breeze, several metres away, without making the slightest, most insignificant, whisper of a sound. And with the same natural ease, I turned to face him, boredom written all over my face.
"Breaking and fixing. Fixing and breaking. I must say, it's... impressive. Truly impressive. You'd be an absolute, resounding success at children's birthday parties, I'm sure. And certainly much in demand for demolition, construction, and perhaps even the restoration of particularly dull antiques. But as a serious and effective combat technique against a minimally competent opponent... it's a bit... predictable, don't you think? I'd give it a three out of ten, in my humble but immensely vast and experienced opinion. It completely lacks originality, emotional impact, and frankly, a shred of style. It's just… force. And force, my dear fellow, is the resort of the desperate and the unimaginative."
"You… you talk too much, you irritating brat with an ego the size of a continent!" And with a growl of pure, crystalline frustration that audibly leaked from behind that ridiculous mask, he slammed his hands angrily on the temple's stone floor, a gesture of pure childish petulance. "Perhaps this, you insufferable little art critic, will finally shut your mouth!"
The ancient temple floor, which had already suffered so much that day, groaned in audible protest, as if feeling pain in its very foundations. And from the innumerable cracks, crevices, and joints between the stone slabs, which had been inert before, thick, dark vines, black as a starless night and covered in thorns the size of sharp, serrated, and, I was almost certain, probably poisonous daggers, erupted with an explosive, unnatural, and frankly rather exaggerated speed, like a botanical nightmare come to life.
They snaked across the floor like a swarm of demonic, ravenous, angry, and foul-tempered serpents, converging rapidly on me from all directions, with the clear, obvious, utterly uncreative, and, I must say, rather pathetic goal of crushing me, impaling me, suffocating me, and probably using me as a very nutritious, Etherno-rich fertiliser for future and, no doubt, equally malevolent generations of sentient, carnivorous, and homicidal plants.
This time, however, to his surprise and, perhaps, even slightly to my own amusement, I did not nullify them with a crushing pulse of power, which would have been expected. Where would be the fun in that? Instead, I simply leapt. With a single, light, almost imperceptible, and utterly disdainful push from the balls of my feet, I launched myself at least ten metres into the air, where I hung suspended for a brief, defiant, and gloriously theatrical instant, like a silver dragonfly observing the chaos below with curiosity and a certain, unshakeable boredom, my light-blue hanfu and its long, flowing sleeves dancing gently around me with a grace that defied the very laws of gravity, a small act of rebellion against physics.
The vines, suddenly deprived of their single, frustrated target, with the intelligence of a rock and the grace of an elephant in a china shop, crashed violently and utterly stupidly into each other right below me, in a furious, confused, utterly useless, and surprisingly noisy tangle of thorns, twisted wood, and probably a considerable amount of spilled sap and wounded botanical feelings. What a spectacle of coordinated incompetence.
"Manipulating the life force of poor, innocent plants, are we?" I said from above, my voice echoing calmly but with a touch of professorial disapproval, like that of an arcane botany teacher deeply disappointed with a student's cruel treatment of lab specimens. My voice floated through the vast and now completely destroyed and vine-covered hall. "A noble and powerful ability, no doubt. But you aren't actually controlling them, are you, my dear, misguided evil gardener? You're just… forcing their growth with your cheap, unsubtle time magic, accelerating their life cycle in a grotesque, unnatural, and, I'm quite sure, probably very painful way for the poor things. A true master of life magic, an ancient druid I had the honour of knowing in another, very distant age—and who was considerably more skilled, infinitely wiser, and far, far less arrogant than you will ever dream of being—would convince them, with respect, harmony, and perhaps a good chat, to fight willingly and gladly by his side, not force them into violent servitude."
As I spoke, with the tone of a bored and somewhat pedantic teacher correcting a particularly mediocre student with clearly wasted potential, I channelled a tiny, almost insignificant, and, to him, utterly undetectable fraction of my pure, crystalline Qi, not the magic of this world, but the universal life energy that connects all living things, the silent melody of existence itself, towards the chaotic, furious, and confused vines below, through my intent.
And, as if responding to a voice far, far older, far gentler, far more powerful, and infinitely more understanding than that of their temporary, tyrannical master, the sick, unstable, and forced purple energy of Zalty that animated them was instantly and completely purged from them like a poison being expelled from a body. For a brief, almost magical, and, to him, utterly unexpected and inexplicable instant, the plants calmed completely, as if listening to an ancient, comforting lullaby, their thorns retracting, their fury dissipating.
Then, with a collective sigh that I could almost hear in the ensuing silence, as if finally and mercifully relieved of their pain, their suffering, and their forced, unnatural growth, they withered rapidly, turning, in a matter of mere seconds, into a fine, grey, and utterly harmless dust that was gently carried away by the air current still circulating through the ruined hall.
With the grace of a feather falling onto a serene lake, I landed on the now-clean floor without making the slightest, most insignificant, whisper of a sound. And Zalty, or whoever was behind that ridiculous, theatrical, and now utterly useless mask, instinctively took another step back, nearly tripping over his own feet.
The shock in his posture was evident, almost palpable in its intensity. His youthful arrogance, his unshakeable confidence as one who believed himself the master of time, all of it was being rapidly, methodically, eroded and replaced by a growing confusion, a paralysing uncertainty, and, perhaps, just perhaps, and to my immense and private delight, by a small, delicious, and entirely justifiable speck of fear before an ability, a power, a being that he, in his small and limited existence, clearly could not, in any way, begin to comprehend or categorise.
"If clumsy brute force, the destruction of architectural heritage, and the cheap, cruel manipulation of innocent plants don't work on you, you arrogant little monster," he hissed, his distorted voice now dripping a venom that was a pathetic mixture of impotent rage, growing frustration, and an increasingly ill-disguised and more evident fear, "then perhaps, just perhaps, a small, intimate glimpse of your own inevitable failure will serve to finally put you in your proper, insignificant place!"
With a quick, desperate, and considerably more complex movement of his gloved hands, he wove the air before him, and his peculiar, interesting, and undeniably dangerous Arc of Time Magic manifested in a completely different, more subtle, and, I must admit with a hint of technical appreciation, considerably more ingenious and intelligent way than his previous attempts at pure magical vandalism.
Instead of directly and so predictably attacking the environment around us, as he had done until now in a display of pure, simple brute force and lack of imagination, he began, with a concentration that was almost palpable in the air, to weave the very, malleable fabric of time, like a craftsman weaving invisible silk threads, into crystalline, dangerous spheres that seemed to distort the very light and reality around them, like drops of water on a stretched fabric.
Several translucent orbs, each the size of a human head, with a sick, purple glow within, suddenly materialised in the air around me, hovering for an instant, humming with a contained energy that promised a massive headache, in more ways than one. They were, I must confess, terribly beautiful. And, without a shadow of a doubt, terribly deadly.
"Let's see how your impressive speed and insufferable arrogance deal with all of my attacks, coming from different and, for you, utterly unpredictable timelines, all at once!" he shouted, with a new, renewed, and, I could see in his eyes, wholly misguided wave of confidence in his voice, the smirk of a player who thinks he's just delivered checkmate.
And then, with a silent command of his will, the time orbs shot towards me from all sides. They were, indeed, and to my growing, purely academic interest, true projectiles of distorted time, a genuine and ingenious perceptual nightmare for any normal opponent, no matter how fast or powerful they might be.
One orb, coming from my right, seemed to move at a normal, linear, and utterly predictable speed, an easy target. While another, right beside it and from the same direction, moved in an almost torturous slow motion, as if swimming through temporal molasses, an invitation to dodge. And a third, from my left, to the surprise of a less experienced observer with a more limited temporal perception bound to the present, seemed to have already hit me, leaving a trail of distorted light behind in its trajectory before it had technically even moved. The past, the present, and the future attacking at the same time. How quaint.
The air around me warped, distorted, becoming a deadly trap, a minefield of paradoxes, creating a surreal and utterly disorienting battlefield where past, present, and future had, literally and to my intellectual delight, become weapons. It was, I must admit with a certain, reluctant professional admiration, a powerful, ingenious, and incredibly well-executed technique, clearly designed to overload the opponent's perception, to completely confuse them with contradictory information, to paralyse them before the impossible and paradoxical, until one of the attacks hit them square on.
But, to his immense and tragic misfortune, and to my luck, I was not, and never have been, a normal opponent. My perception of time has always been... fluid. And his was, by comparison, a stream trying to face an ocean. Instead of standing still, stupidly trying to defend or dodge each attack individually like a fly in a spider's web, I moved. My body became an indistinct blur of light-blue and white, a fluid, ethereal, and almost impossible-to-follow shadow, dancing between the temporal attacks like a leaf in the wind, in a choreography that was at once impossible, graceful, and utterly, absolutely, disdainful.
The ancient, refined, and incredibly effective technique of the "Way of the Eight Trigrams", a form of movement and perception learned with great, great effort and numerous bruises in one of my past, particularly contemplative lives as a blind, reclusive martial arts master with a peculiar taste for bitter teas and the silence of the mountains, allowed me not only to see, but to feel, perceive, predict, analyse, and react to multiple, simultaneous threats, from all directions and, apparently, to his growing surprise, from different and overlapping points in time, as if I could see all the threads of the tapestry at once.
To him, to his mortal, linear perception, I was moving at an absurd, almost supernatural speed, a speed that seemed to defy light itself, a ghost that anticipated his every move. To me, with my enhanced ancestral senses and my perception sharpened and trained by ages of practice and boredom, his so-called fearsome, complex, and supposedly unpredictable time orbs were moving in an almost tedious slow motion, with a predictable and, frankly, rather pathetic trajectory.
I slid with an almost insulting elegance under a slow-motion orb, which zipped harmlessly over my head with a strange hum. I dodged another, the one moving at "normal" speed, with a simple, casual, and almost disdainful dip of my shoulder, which sent it sailing mere, carefully calculated inches past my body to shatter against the back wall with the sound of breaking glass. And I intercepted a third, the fastest, most treacherous, and theoretically most dangerous of all, the one travelling from the future, with the tips of my fingers.
I simply caught it in the air. And instead of exploding with a devastating impact of temporal energy, as he certainly and with great anticipation expected, the orb of distorted time simply stopped in my hand, like a harmless crystal ball, spinning and pulsing gently under my complete and utter control, like a furious wild animal that has been suddenly and completely tamed by a stronger master.
"You are not, in fact and to my slight intellectual disappointment, attacking with time itself, my dear, deluded, and somewhat limited illusionist," I explained with the calm, patience, and condescension of a university professor correcting a particularly mediocre but hardworking postgraduate student on their thesis on temporal physics. I spun the now-harmless time orb on my index finger as if it were a simple basketball, the purple energy pulsing docilely under my command.
"You are, in fact and this is a subtle but fundamentally important distinction for anyone who intends to call themselves a time mage attacking with the memory of time. With an echo of it. It's subtly, but entirely different, you see? You are, essentially, taking a 'moment', a small, isolated fragment of an object's past or future, and transforming it, with your magic, into a projectable weapon in the present. It's an ingenious technique, I won't deny it. Creative, even, in its conception, I'll give you that credit. But unfortunately for you, it is an intrinsically flawed technique, almost childishly flawed, against someone who, by chance and with a little practice over the ages, can simply... manipulate, rewrite, or, if necessary and if the mood allows, completely erase the damned tape of time's memory as if wiping a slate clean."
And, with a quick, precise, and purely malicious flick, I threw the time orb back at him, with twice the speed and force with which it had been launched at me. The masked figure, surprised, in a total panic, and clearly unprepared to have his own ingenious technique used against him so disdainfully, raised a hand in a desperate gesture and managed, with a visible effort and a grunt of pain, to undo his own treacherous magic seconds before it struck him in the chest and sent him, probably, into a particularly nasty time paradox with a high chance of involving him meeting a baby version of himself and causing an existential crisis of cosmic proportions.
But the momentary distraction, the sudden panic, the break in his concentration… was all that I, in my infinite and patient hunter's wisdom, needed. And in the blink of an eye that was faster than light itself, in a movement that defied perception, I used the ancient and almost forgotten technique of the "Phantom Step" and closed the already scant distance between us, appearing silently, like a vengeful and slightly bored phantom, right in front of him.
I was now a mere, awkward, and wholly inappropriate few inches from him. So close that I could see the fine, almost invisible cracks in his grotesque mask, the intricate and somewhat exaggerated details of its design.
So close that I could see the reflection of my own smirk in his eyes, now visible through the mask's openings. And the scent… ah, yes. That damned, delicious, and unmistakable scent. It was stronger now, more intense. Intoxicating. Unmistakable. And, as I had suspected, undeniably, gloriously, feminine. Night-blooming jasmine, a hint of bergamot, warm sandalwood, and now, a subtle but persistent note of… panic, repressed fury, and perhaps a touch of embarrassment at being so completely outmatched. What an absolutely delicious combination.
"How?!" her voice, or rather, her voice, now without the magical distorter that made it deeper and in its natural, surprisingly pleasant tone, came out in a high, thin shriek, full of a panic that she, the great and fearsome time mage, the brilliant and cold mind behind the conspiracy, could barely and no longer even tried to disguise. "How do you… how do you move like that?! How can you nullify my magic with such ease?! WHAT… WHAT IN THE DEVIL ARE YOU?!"
"Your magic, my dear and surprisingly fragrant opponent," I said, my voice low, calm, almost a whisper, and with a superiority I no longer even tried to hide, for the game was over and I had won spectacularly. "Is like a small, fragile, and terribly arrogant wristwatch trying, in its infinite and pathetic insignificance, to give orders to the sun, which, in this little and highly educational metaphor of ours, represents the true, vast, relentless, and immutable flow of time. You, my dear," and I emphasised the last word with sadistic pleasure, "merely manipulate the cheap recording of time's memory. I, on the other hand, if I truly wished and was in a particularly sadistic and destructive mood, could, with a simple snap of my fingers, simply… erase the entire tape, with you along with it. It is merely," and here my smile widened, "a simple but fundamental matter of scale. And of who truly understands the rules of the game." I tilted my head, a slow, predatory smile full of cruel and absolute satisfaction forming on my lips. "And, as I had suspected since I entered this hall, you smell far, far too good to be just some generic, underpaid henchman with terrible posture. You smell like a woman, probably a very beautiful one, with impeccable taste in expensive perfume and, judging by your earlier reaction, with serious and worrying anger management issues, actually. The complete package, so to speak."
A slow, malicious, triumphant smile full of a perverse satisfaction that warmed my soul spread across my face as I savoured every second of her growing, palpable horror, of her imminent humiliation.
With a theatrical calm and a sadism that, in some cultures, was considered a refined art form, I took a single step back, just enough to create a little space for my grand finale. And, cupping my hands around my mouth like a makeshift megaphone, I took a deep breath. And then, with all the force of my lungs, with a sadistic pleasure that I honestly hadn't felt with such intensity in a very, very long time, I shouted in a clear, loud, crystalline voice that echoed dramatically throughout the vast, silent, and now completely destroyed temple hall in a way that, I was absolutely certain, would reach the ears of everyone, absolutely everyone, present, friend and foe, on this small and miserable cursed island with a deafening perfection and clarity:
"I KNEW IT! I ALWAYS KNOW! BECAUSE I, AZRA'IL WEISS, THE UNIVERSE'S GREATEST AND MOST SOUGHT-AFTER EXPERT ON UTTERLY UNNECESSARY MATTERS, CAN RECOGNISE THE UNMISTAKABLE SCENT OF A BEAUTIFUL, STRONG, PROBABLY VERY ANGRY WOMAN WITH IMPECCABLE TASTE IN PERFUME WHEN I SMELL ONE! AND YOU, MY DEAR AND NOW UTTERLY, COMPLETELY, AND HILARIOUSLY EXPOSED 'ZALTY', REEK OF ONE FROM A MILE AWAY, EVEN WITH THAT PATHETIC DISGUISE AS SOME MYSTERIOUS, GRUMPY OLD MAN WITH TERRIBLE POSTURE AND A DEEP, ARTIFICIAL VOICE THAT FOOLS ABSOLUTELY NO ONE! AND LEAST OF ALL ME! NOW, IF YOU PLEASE, TAKE OFF THAT RIDICULOUS AND AESTHETICALLY OFFENSIVE MASK AND FIGHT ME LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL, POWERFUL WOMAN WITH SERIOUS, UNDIAGNOSED ANGER MANAGEMENT ISSUES THAT YOU REALLY ARE!"
The silence that followed my wholly inappropriate, gloriously embarrassing, and, I must admit, slightly exaggerated declaration for dramatic effect was… simply and absolutely magnificent. Precious. Absolute. So thick, so heavy, and so laden with pure, unadulterated humiliation that one could feel the second-hand shame hanging in the air like a thick, suffocating fog.
The supposed and fearsome master mage of time manipulation, the brilliant and cold mind behind all those complex and mysterious conspiracies, the calculating, ruthless strategist who no doubt thought herself the undisputed queen of the universe… was, at that precise moment, completely, totally, absolutely, hilariously, and gloriously speechless. Paralysed. Not by my overwhelming power, which I had barely used. Not by my supernatural speed, which she could barely follow. But by the pure, crystalline, overwhelming, and utterly unexpected audacity of my public, personal, detailed, and, for her, entirely humiliating accusation.
She hadn't been exposed as a powerful and fearsome villain to be defeated in an epic battle. She had been exposed as… someone who'd been caught red-handed, wearing the wrong clothes and a ridiculous, laughable disguise at a very, very important party, in front of all her enemies. A public humiliation. The worst, most effective, and, for me, most amusing form of defeat that exists. And, to my sadistic delight, infinitely more entertaining than simply killing her and ending the fun so soon.
And her reaction, when it finally and inevitably came, like a dormant volcano erupting, was exquisite in its pure fury, in its complete and total lack of control, and in its absolute and delicious predictability. A mixture so potent, so volatile, and so gloriously satisfying of pure rage, shattered pride, and a deep, searing humiliation, that her magic, once so controlled, so precise, and so focused on defeating me, exploded around her without the slightest control, without the slightest direction, without the slightest shred of strategy, like a gigantic, overstressed dam of power and shame bursting violently under the pressure of an uncontrollable emotional storm.
"SHUT… SHUT YOUR DAMNED, INSOLENT MOUTH, YOU INSANE, MEDDLING WRETCH!" And the voice that screamed, to the delight of all present, imaginary or not, and to the final confirmation of my brilliant suspicions, was no longer the distorted, masculine, and artificially deep voice of "Zalty." It was a higher, clearer, undeniably, gloriously feminine voice, and, at that specific moment, so full of a fury so pure, so intense, and so absolutely uncontrolled that it was almost musical in its hysteria. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?! DO YOU HAVE SOME KIND OF WEIRD, SICK FETISH FOR SMELLS?! OR ARE YOU JUST PLAIN MAD?!"
With one last, pathetic gesture of impotent petulance, of wounded pride, and of an embarrassment so deep it was almost palpable and could have been bottled and sold as a potion of humiliation, she slammed her hands hard on the stone floor. And the entire temple, as if responding to her agony, groaned in protest, as if about to collapse for good under the weight of so much second-hand shame. And her powerful and now utterly, completely, uncontrolled Arc of Time was unleashed in a wild, chaotic, totally indiscriminate wave with a single, clear objective: no longer to attack or defeat me, which she now knew was impossible, but to completely destroy the battlefield itself and, presumably, create a distraction large, loud, and destructive enough to cover her swift, clumsy, and deeply, gloriously, humiliating escape.
The walls around us aged, cracked, and crumbled in a deafening shower of dust and rubble in a matter of mere, insignificant seconds. The vaulted ceiling, once so majestic and imposing, now collapsed in an avalanche of stone, ancient wood, and probably many architectural regrets. And, amidst the deafening chaos, the cloud of dust that choked the light, and the widespread destruction, her figure, now just a swift, furious, and deeply, eternally, embarrassed shadow, disappeared into the dark and newly created depths of the ruined temple, moving with a speed born not of power and confidence, but of pure, absolute embarrassment and the pressing need to find a very deep hole to crawl into and, perhaps, cry a little about the cruelty of the universe and the existence of white-haired mages with far too good a sense of smell and far too big a mouth.
I stood there, in the centre of that growing pandemonium, completely unscathed and, inside, laughing hysterically. A satisfied and perhaps slightly cruel smile played on my lips as the world, or at least that ancient and now utterly ruined temple hall, literally collapsed around me with an impressive fury and a dust that would certainly ruin my hair.
A piece of the ceiling the size of a small luxury carriage plummeted towards me with a menacing whistle, but, to the surprise of absolutely no one (at least not to me and Eos), it disintegrated into a cloud of fine, harmless, and rather dusty sand before it even came within a metre of me, repelled by an invisible and utterly casual barrier of pure power.
The floor beneath my feet opened into a dark, deep chasm that probably led somewhere very unpleasant, damp, and unhygienic, but I, with the greatest naturalness and the least effort in the world, simply floated over it, as if gravity were merely a polite suggestion and not a fundamental law of physics that applied to me.
I could, of course, without the slightest, most insignificant effort, have followed her. The chase would have been, to be honest, trivial. Child's play. Her capture, an absolute and inevitable certainty. I would have had her in my hands, begging for mercy and perhaps a good hair conditioner to hide the crying, in a matter of mere, insignificant seconds.
But the echo of that delicious, intriguing, and mysteriously familiar perfume, of that night-blooming jasmine, that warm sandalwood, that complex mixture of strength, power, femininity, and now, palpable humiliation, still hung in the dusty air like a silent promise of yet-unrevealed mysteries, of yet-unsolved secrets, of a game that, to my immense and delightful satisfaction, had barely begun.
"A beautiful, mysterious, absurdly powerful, deliciously fragrant woman who, apparently, has a volcanic temper and dreadful emotional control when confronted with inconvenient truths, who happens to wield one of the world's rarest and most dangerous Lost Magics and is clearly involved in some kind of mysterious, complex, and large-scale conspiracy that, for some unfathomable reason, involves me personally..." I murmured to myself, a slow, lazy, satisfied smile full of delicious anticipation spreading across my face as I watched the last stone fall. "To chase her down and capture her now, without knowing more about her motives, her plans, her secrets… ah, no. That would be like reading the last, revealing, and utterly dull page of a good, intriguing mystery novel before you've even finished the first, delicious and promising chapter. And that, my dear and now-fugitive enemy," I spoke to the empty air, "completely spoils all the fun of the flirtation. And I, as you may have gathered, adore a good flirtation, especially one that involves teasing, power, and the possibility of more chaos in the future."
[Your social patterns, your combat logic, your strategic priorities, and, above all, your peculiar and alarming definitions of 'flirtation' continue to be a fascinating, statistically inexplicable, utterly illogical anomaly and, I must admit with a certain and growing concern for your sanity and the safety of everyone around you, occasionally, almost academically, amusing to observe, Azra'il,] the voice of Eos, ever analytical and right on cue to spoil my fun, sounded in my mind with a tone that was a complex mix of genuine perplexity, reluctant admiration for my unorthodox efficiency, and perhaps, just perhaps, a tinge of envy for my ability to find genuine entertainment in the most bizarre, dangerous, and potentially lethal situations.
(You call it an anomaly, my dear and limited Eos. You, with your algorithms and your cold logic. I, with my vast, superior, and far more interesting ancestral wisdom, call it having refined and impeccable good taste for interesting enemies, for worthy adversaries, and for a good, long, dramatic, well-developed, and hopefully, very amusing flirtation,) I thought, with a casual shrug, utterly indifferent to a stone pillar the size of a redwood that was slowly falling in slow motion beside me, missing me by a safe margin.
With one last, satisfied sigh, and with the comforting certainty that I had planted the seeds of a fun, confusing, and probably very chaotic future reunion, I decided that the hunt, for now at least, was officially over. On my own, satisfying terms. Letting such an intriguing, powerful, fragrant, and, let's be honest, so gloriously and easily embarrassable enemy escape was, in fact, a clever, calculated, long-term investment in my future entertainment and my personal, endless struggle against the existential boredom that plagued me.
"Alright, alright, that's enough for today," I said aloud to the reigning chaos, to the dust that was beginning to settle, with the air of a bored teacher ending a particularly loud and destructive lesson. "We've had enough mess, enough gratuitous destruction of historical heritage of questionable value, enough flirting with mysterious mages with identity issues, and enough excessive, but, I admit, visually impressive displays of power. Let's go and see, with moderate interest and a certain reluctance, how the other idiotic brats are faring in their own, and I'm sure, far less elegant and considerably noisier, battles."
And with a casual, lazy movement, utterly indifferent to the widespread destruction around me, I turned and began to walk with the calm of someone strolling through a park on a quiet, sunny Sunday, towards the distant but unmistakable sound of Natsu and Gray's chaotic, noisy, probably very destructive, and utterly unsubtle fight, leaving behind only dust, rubble, the silence of defeat, the palpable humiliation that still hung in the air, and the lingering, delicious, and promising ghost of a perfume that, I knew with a certainty that warmed my heart, promised many, many interesting future complications. And I could hardly wait for them.