**Three years ago**
Jo:
Ever since that day, when I saved Nyx and saw GG on that hill on the way to my part time job, my life was never the same.
"You did that, didn't you?" He asked. I didn't know him yet, but all I knew was that he had an attractive face, and looked to be on the edgier side—not a goodie-two-shoes whatsoever. Dare I say… my type.
Fuck…
I remained silent to the question, glowering at him instead with a chin up, looking down at him from the higher part of the hill we were on. Attractive or not, why were you asking, if not to exploit me—or worse…
Though, judging by the way he looked, he didn't seem like the type to do either of that. His clothes were mainly black: a black jacket with a fur trimmed hood, white shirt underneath, black pants, boots… He definitely didn't look like W.M.A., nor was he a typical mage either. And why can't I sense any mana from him…? Was he suppressing it somehow? Why?
"Never mind. Don't answer that. It's shotty work anyway. An ice tree? Come on… at least make something cooler, you know what I mean?" he recklessly commented.
"You make something better then!" I shouted back, equally as reckless.
"Why you so defensive? Where you the one who did it?"
Fuck, he got me without even trying. I was too flustered with his looks that I let my guard down.
I felt my face heat, and I could barely look at him without turning even more red, so I looked away and remained silent.
"Names Greed," he said so steadily. "My captain's been teaching me proper manners, so forgive me for insulting the artist's work."
I didn't look at him. I couldn't look at him…
"Listen. The W.M.A. are coming to this town to investigate. If they find out who did this, they will try to exploit."
"That so? Then whoever did it should be worried."
"They should. Because if they do—when they do, they will take them away, and whatever peaceful life they were living will be gone."
"And where do you come into play in all of this?" I asked, finally turning to face him with my chin still held high, and with an expression I hoped he couldn't see through.
"I'm here to take them away before the W.M.A. does."
I responded with silence again, but my eye twitched—I think he saw that. He was keener than he looked, I could tell…
It was then that a large airship flew overhead past us, heading for Isberra.
When I saw the logo on the ship, it was the W.M.A.
So, he wasn't lying about them coming…
The W.M.A. were the last group I wanted to be taken away from. My sisters and I had barely escaped that day, and came here where the locals were kind and didn't judge us for our features. We were so lucky for a while… but because of me…
I had hardly realized my eyes had shifted to the ground. The grassy fields swayed in waves as he waited for my answer. The breeze drifted his bangs, revealing his edgy but smooth-looking face. His black eyes pierced into my emeralds like a void that could not be stopped.
"Will you help me help them?" he asked with a kind of gentleness I didn't see coming.
"How do I know I can trust you?" I replied, hoping to see something in him that would convince me.
"You don't," he said plainly. "I'm doing this selfishly—for me. If I can give others the chance I never had, that alone makes it worth it. But if you still refuse, no harm no foul. I'll just turn around and leave. Just know you may never get the opportunity again."
I didn't know there was a truer form of truth than what I was expecting to hear. He had effortlessly overdelivered. And he didn't even know it…
I had never met someone so raw before. So unafraid to put himself out there for a chance… He was also lucky he was cute. Keeper, what the fuck was I saying.
"Okay, I'll come."
He raised a brow. "So, it was you."
"Fuck off," I replied, once again falling into his word traps. "Just one condition."
He listened.
"If you take me, you take us all."
He nodded solemnly, and he followed near behind as we headed back to the church.
***
His name was Greed, huh? Fitting, I guess… It matched his rough demeanor. His straightforwardness. And his face… Keeper, his face…
"Fuck you, Jo…"
"Come again?" he asked, overhearing my inner conflict.
"Nothing."
Nyx had come out to introduce himself to Greed. He was genuinely in shock when he saw him; it was the first Spirit God he had ever personally met. Unlucky for him it was the baby Spirit God of Cold to be his first to behold.
"Sorry, he's not that impressive. I only picked him up yesterday, and I don't know what level he evolves, but he's also like 'a-hundred-fifty' or something like that, maybe I got the one with no evolutions, pretty lame regardless."
"ARE YOU TREATING ME LIKE SOME POCKET MONSTER!?" Nyx annoyingly retorted.
"He's got a short fuse too on top of being a shorty… I see what you mean. Bad combo…" Greed added, and Nyx whipped his head to him angrily in response.
I almost giggled, but I didn't. Hold yourself together, Jo.
"There it is," I said as we arrived back to the church.
I noticed Greed's expression change. It reminded me of Nyx's when he had first seen this place. Was it really that dull?
I swore Lanette's garden was pretty, to say the least… I'd never tell her that in person, but it had to be… right?
Ever since Greed saw it, he didn't say another word. It was like he was on the lookout for something, but for what?
We finally arrived to the wrought iron fences, letting ourselves in.
"My sisters should all still be home," I said as I opened the small gate. When it creaked, it sounded different than normal, like it had been rusted for a long time… "Lanette!" I called, knowing she was always in the garden, but there was no response. She normally just popped out from behind a rose bush as she always does…
Odd… Why had that been a thing? There were plenty of other bushes here, but it was always that same one.
"Maybe she's inside?" I said, speaking my thoughts.
I called her name again, proceeding to the double doors as Greed and Nyx followed slowly behind.
"Was this where you saw it?" I overheard Greed ask Nyx.
"It is," Nyx replied flatly.
"What are you two talking about?" I scowled, looking back at them. To which Greed flicked my nose in response.
"Hey! What was that for!?" My tail whipped in surprise as well.
He walked ahead of me, throwing his hands in his pockets, and I followed quickly after him, passing by and making it to the doors first.
They watched as I pushed them open, groaning like old stone. I felt a gust of wind blow over me from the other side.
"Huh?" I uttered as I saw inside our home…
I was filled with an unsettling feeling as I looked around. What was once a clean and put together sanctuary was now a rummaged and abandoned shithole.
"What happened here?" I asked, horror and confusion creeping slowly up on me.
The church was just put together before I had left, what happened while I was gone for only minutes?
"My… My sisters," I said to Greed and Nyx, back still facing them. "What happened to my sisters!?"
When I turned around to the garden, the flowers were dried up and dead. The roots were wet as if one had decided to water them long after their passing—of course, to no avail. Traces of seats and tables on the inside looked as if one had tried to tidy up but could still not do so fully.
The dust claimed this place. Weeds and vines occupied the insides, stretching up and climbing the pillars and walls like it did over a long period of time. There was even heavy damage on the walls—so much so that it tore through to the outside letting in the sunlight.
Though a moment ago everything was alive, pristine, and spotless. How it all looked now… it appeared it had been this way for a very long time—even before mine and my sisters' arrival.
"I don't understand," I said, voice on the verge of cracking.
It was then that Greed stepped up beside me. "I do."
Just as he did, a loud shrilling roar sounded from deeper within the abandoned church.
When I looked, something that was never there before had now become visible to me, as if spawning right before my eyes.
There upon the podium, unraveling itself as if it was awaking from a deep slumber, not anticipating visitors to come and worship at this hour, it fixed its one massive, yellow eye toward us and grinned with hideous, daggered teeth.
"So, that explains it," Greed uttered as he sauntered toward the monster, hands still in his pockets. "It was here all along."
I trembled at the sight of it. Not because I was afraid, but because I still did not know where my sisters were, and I wondered if this thing… was it powerful enough to take them all out? That can't be right… Grace… Victoria… Drisylla… Lanette… at least two of them were just as strong—if not stronger than me!
"If you're wondering what it is, it's a Grand Oculus Fiend. Regular ones are smaller—bigger than you and I still, but lankier, malnourished, and run in packs. Grand ones are like the kings of the bunch, and are no longer Grade 3 but rather Grade 1 beasts. They only get this large, when they've been fed way too many unfortunate souls who dare look them in the eye."
I didn't know what to think. My mind was racing with worry and despair. Why had this happened? And when I looked at everything around me—how everything had seemed to be dead for a while… was I—
"You said you had sisters?" Greed asked, still walking toward the Fiend. Even as it snarled and screeched—he was unwavering.
"Yes." My voice trembled.
He didn't respond, lowering his head—I believed his eyes were closed as well—as if he was praying. Completely disregarding of the monstrosity before him.
"I'm sorry" was all he said as he bolted too fast to see in my current state, making contact with the monster's one giant eye with nothing but a mere fist.
His speed alone was enough to implode the beast as it could do nothing in response to what just happened.
It disintegrated, shattering into chunks of monster meat that painted the walls of this abandoned church yellow. Some of it had even spattered on my face as I watched without so much as a flinch after impact.
He landed on the podium and took his sweet time to rise at last. The chunks of the monster and even the yellow splatters of its blood had begun to fade into the ethers, giving this rundown church its final ceremony, revealing, at last, this false home that I had long since occupied.
I shuddered my lips and gazed at him, repeating the last words he said before I blinked, and he had vanquished the monster in less than seconds.
I'm sorry.
My legs began to wobble, and my fingers trembled. I darted my eyes all over the room and began having memories from certain spots: the double door entry where I stood, thinking of me and Lanette, the pink Dragonkin, going back and forth about her favorite flowers. The scattered bench seating area—once fixed and centered where I would tell my older sister, Drisylla, the middle child, the blue Dragonkin, my mundane nuances at work. The halls on the side where the pillars separated the seating area where I would often argue with Victoria, the second eldest, the red Dragonkin. And the podium where Grace, my eldest sister, and the purple Dragonkin, would often devout herself in prayer.
All of it, though it was but an illusion, stemmed from similar memories before we were captured by the W.M.A. and enslaved by the Maven Lords.
I remembered it all now. I was the only one… who escaped.
My memories flooded me, recalling running through a dark corridor with my sisters near behind, and I, holding Lanette's hand without looking back—unaware that she had felt lighter than usual…
Unaware that when I looked back, it was only her arm that I had been holding the whole time. And Grace and the others, begging me to run as I witnessed them get devoured by an unholy thing—a Grade 0 beast that I had never seen before. A pet of the Maven Lords.
When I came here, I must have found refuge in this abandoned church, and in it resided that Grand Oculus Fiend, who by the Keeper's grace, had numbed the pain.
I fell to my knees with my eyes wide open, spaced out. Tears streamed down my face uncontrollably as I remembered it all. My heart ached like never before, tightening to the point where I thought I was going to shatter under death's impending grip.
I was such a fool. To be so consumed with distraught that I had believed the lies of that beast… that I had chosen to believe it.
As if the day had just happened, I wept. Oh, Keeper, I wept.
Silent tears froze on my face as my aura rose to a dangerous level. The walls froze over, and the weeds and vines shattered upon freezing—the place became still as time stopping. The frost on the ground began to spread inchingly from below me until it became a wave that engulfed everything.
Like how I felt just yesterday, when I had burst out in defiance to that other Spirit God of Ash, I felt as though I could create another crystal tree… this one, grander and more spectacular than the last.
The air froze at alarming rates, and my hair had fluttered above me like transcendence. My eyes became glowing emerald from the fury, and the frosted tears became more pronounced; water turned into spiked shards that rooted from my follicles.
I wondered then, just how far my power could go? I didn't care. Because I felt infinite in equal standing to the infinite pain in my heart.
And that's when I felt a grasp on my shoulder, and then another. And then at last, what felt like… a hug? I thought as though my rage had consumed me—welcomed me. But it felt warmer than that.
It was him. Greed.
He didn't say a word. And, to my surprise, he didn't freeze. It was as if he refused to by sheer will alone. He remained as he was, squeezing me tight, resting the side of his face on the corner of my head. Just who in the world were you?
How? I thought but could not speak. How?
It was a still silence as the frost flickered, and snow began to fall as if my power had begun to fade from his embrace.
And it was only then that I realized what I had attempted to do. I led my hands upward onto him, gripping the inners of his jacket and white shirt, all while pressing my forehead against his chest, weeping raucously like the child I was.
I think it was then, where others would have ran, and even fewer would have died attempting what he had succeeded in doing just now… I think it was then that I fell in love with…
***
**Present**
I had been holding tightly onto him, face buried in his chest, still—that same sensation.
A sense of calm overtook me as I sniffled, trying to wipe the tears from my face with the back of my nearby palm, his warm embrace still keeping me from turning this place into frozen woodlands.
"GG?" I voiced softly, anticipatingly.
But when I finally looked up, it was a much larger man. His yellow-orange slick back hair fluttered softly with the cold breeze, carrying with it the heavy tolling of his iron cuffs on both wrists. His eyes glowed a pleasant, light blue as his skin looked like it had just recovered from the most severe form of frostbite.
To be frank, he was the last one I had expected to see. But the fact that he felt so much like GG meant that his influence ran deeper than just with me.
"Not quite. But I appreciate the comparison," Nash said.