The snow was deep, nearly reaching Lucian's knees with every labored step. Around him, citizens had stopped in their tracks, bewildered by the sight of it all. Snow like this simply did not happen here. The sun saw to that.
Lucian had never experienced snow before, the capital having never seen a single flake, so making his way back to the inn was no easy task. Yet he found he didn't mind it much. His life was no longer truly his own. He was little more than livestock being fattened for slaughter, and the only thing worth doing now was growing stronger so that slaughter would come later rather than sooner. Though if he was being honest with himself, the thought of redemption was a sweet one. As long as Sorin was waiting for him in the sun.
Lucian had become slightly drunk, a warm buzz settling through his mind and pulling at his eyelids. Lucky for him, he managed to navigate his way back without toppling over or passing out face-first in the snow.
Through the tight corridors of the inn, he moved as if in a trance, the events of the evening feeling more like a dream than anything real. He knocked on the door to his room.
Roderic opened it, looking him over with a sour expression. "I see you drank without me. You really are a boring one," he snarled. Lucian glanced past him to where Fraden lay sleeping soundly on his bed, and without a word or a second thought, simply dropped himself onto the floor, asleep before he could think another thought.
The chirps of birds and the bells rang once more, ringing through his head and waking him up. He looked around, seeing Roderic still asleep, not reacting to the bells from the church.
Fraden, on the other hand, woke up without issue. "Good morning, sir," he greeted Lucian. Lucian greeted him back as he looked around, realizing the goal he'd set himself yesterday. He immediately kicked Roderic off the bed.
"Hey, Roderic, let's fight!" Roderic slumbered on the floor as he rose from the ground, his head in slight pain. He shook it off before rising at high speed once more, similar to yesterday.
"You bastard! Why did you do that!? I did nothing this time. You didn't even give me time to fully awaken!" Roderic screamed as he realized what Lucian commanded from him.
"Fight?" He stroked his chin as he asked, "Why would we do that?"
"Because I need to grow stronger, you vile bastard!" Lucian spat as Roderic became even more confused.
"What got you so mad?" Roderic questioned as he thought back, realizing what he did yesterday. "Oh, wait, are you still mad because I didn't help you? PFFFF!" Roderic laughed. "No way you're still mad about that, haha!" He clasped his hand over his mouth as he fell back onto the bed. Lucian's anger boiled over as he swung his sword towards Roderic's head, deciding he would fight him now instead.
Roderic didn't move as the blade struck his ice armor, not really doing too much.
"Come on, you know you don't have a chance. Give up now for the betterment of yourself." He sat up as the blade was still stuck in his ice.
Fraden immediately started getting scared as he didn't like infighting, so he ran out of the room.
"Aw, you got Fraden scared. Now that's quite shitty of you," Roderic said as he grabbed Lucian's blade, pulling it away from him.
Lucian held on tight as he followed Roderic's grip, now fully ignoring all but Roderic's actions. As he followed along, he managed to punch Roderic's arm, shattering the first layer. He managed to pull away his sword, jumping back before readying himself in a stance.
Roderic looked toward his now repaired ice, wondering how in the hell Lucian managed to do that. It was beyond what a normal person should be able to do—both shattering the ice and pulling away from Roderic's immense strength needed power equivalent to mages.
Lucian jumped forward as Roderic shot ice shards towards him, wanting to test Lucian's limits without putting him in danger.
Lucian hit the shards with his blade, slicing right through. He managed to slice each ice shard shot towards him as he closed in once more. Roderic, in slight shock, accidentally used too much force as he shot forth a massive ice shard, hitting Lucian and pushing him upward.
The shard sliced through Lucian's skin, but at the same time, Lucian grabbed onto the ice shard, managing to avoid it from going through his torso.
He pushed himself off it, his eyes starting to become red from not blinking. He landed and sprang towards Roderic.
Roderic reacted by shooting ice pillars strong enough to break the floor and ceiling of the room. But to Roderic's surprise, Lucian was slicing through the pillars without much effort, advancing towards him at frightening speeds.
Roderic had already managed to piece together that Lucian's strength was abnormal, wondering what in the hell happened overnight.
Lucian once more closed in, slicing towards Roderic's head.
Roderic felt fear as he immediately grabbed his chain, hitting Lucian with an ice pillar the size of the entire building, crashing through the entire inn.
Lucian, shocked by the size of the ice pillar, struck his sword into it, flying along with it. He saw many robed men outside with red and white masks.
Barrels surrounded the entire inn.
The one in front signaled for another to strike his flint and steel. The barrels immediately exploded, killing the robed man in front. The entire inn went up in flames. "What in Sorin's name!" Lucian screamed as he looked around, fires consuming everything.
Suddenly a giant wave of ice consumed everything, blocking the entire explosion out with repeating waves of ice.
Every single person in the inn was fully encased in ice.
As the explosion fell silent, Roderic looked around, removing the ice to find how many survived.
He found Fraden, scared out of his mind, as Lucian jumped down beside Roderic. "What was that?" Lucian asked.
"How would I know? But first of all, I need to know what is going on with your body. Why are you so unbelievably strong without being a mage?" Roderic asked as he shifted his focus away from the blast.
"How would I know? But we have more important things to check." Lucian said as he felt something warm around his abdomen. Looking down, he saw a giant puncture through his left side, only going around four centimeters in. He immediately held his hand on the wound as blood seeped out.
Roderic immediately remembered that he'd sent an ice shard way too strong for Lucian to handle. Sweat formed on his forehead. "Oh no, that's bad. Wait, let me check if I can block off the bleeding with my ice!" Roderic said, wondering if the ice would work.
"Shit, our fight got too out of hand... This wound seems to be enough to make me bleed out... Fuck." Lucian cursed as he felt his knees go weak, as the loud screams of the people outside echoed throughout the entire street.
Roderic realized that guards would be coming. "Wait, oh no, I used my echo... That means they'll probably assume magic has been cast here. We need to move out now!" Roderic shouted at the bleeding Lucian. Lucian grinned. "No worries, just use your unnaturally fast speed to get us out of here. Hehe!" Lucian laughed as he spat out blood.
Roderic knew Fraden wouldn't be targeted for the attack or be accused of being a warlock, so he only picked up Lucian, jumping away before the area had time to be checked. He jumped over the entire building, landing on the river. He quickly realized he needed more power to handle walking on the river, so he grabbed his chain with his other hand, blasting ice pillar after ice pillar into the water to walk on. Luckily, most of the people around were more focused on the inn that had just gone up in a giant explosion to worry about the river.
As Roderic managed to climb over to the other side, he ran into the church. "Hey, priest! Do you know anyone who could heal my party member over here?"
The priest with his scorched-black hair looked over towards the bleeding Lucian and asked, "What happened to this poor soul?"
Roderic, a little scattered-brained, said, "He was stabbed. He needs immediate help."
The priest smiled as he walked over to Lucian with his long robe dragging on the ground, a massive illustration of the sun hanging on the back of the dragging part of his robe.
"Don't worry, I'm a specialist in the way of Sorin's blessings." He reached down, bright lights blasting into Lucian's wounds as the wounds slowly closed.
Blood poured out of Lucian's mouth almost like a fountain.
Roderic looked in confusion and asked, "What did you just do?"
The priest with his pitch-black eyes smiled. "I'm a true follower of Sorin's principles. Let's just settle it with that." Suddenly the priest said, "O holy sun, thy warmth doth bring us all happiness. We thank thee once more, Sorin, for thy holy light." The priest pressed his hands together as he prayed, walking back to the sanctuary where he started continuously praying, almost like what just happened never occurred.
Roderic, entirely confused, saw Lucian puking up even more blood, almost like his entire supply of blood had been replaced and was now pushing out the old blood.
"WhA—" Lucian continuously puked. "Fra-d—" The blood now pooled in a massive pool on the ground. Suddenly servants came, helping Lucian up as they started washing the blood away from the ground. Lucian finally felt everything was now back to normal. "Holy, I feel so much better. I must thank Sorin for this blessing." Lucian prayed as he quickly went back on topic.
"We need to get Fraden," Lucian said to Roderic.
"Yeah, I agree, but there will be a lot of commotion there and I don't really feel like being interrogated right now." Roderic sighed.
"Perhaps we should just leave," Roderic suggested. "So much is happening at once. I don't really know how to deal with it." He sighed.
"Well, I kind of agree..." Lucian replied. "I think we've become targets of those Bluebloods. If we were to leave now, maybe they would let us go." Lucian sighed as he pushed himself back on track. "But I sadly can't. I want the best for Fraden, and that is to kill off those Bluebloods. Now that they're tracking us, we can finally kill them. Perhaps we can use this to our advantage!" Lucian suggested.
"Well, yeah, but their leader is a mage and I really don't want to deal with a mage... I have a way to deal with him beyond my echo, but that sadly causes massive extreme bodily transformations towards me becoming a rend." Roderic tsked, as he felt himself wanting to leave.
"Well, hmm, let's think it over once we find Fraden," Lucian suggested, almost forgetting the hatred he'd set himself up to have towards Roderic. He was now slowly using him more like a tool, most of his frustration towards Roderic having been blown off when he'd attacked him.
They started their walk towards the door of the church as the priest suddenly finished off his prayer. "Well then, my sons of Sorin, let the dance begin!" Suddenly many Bluebloods burst forth, running up as the door in front locked.
"We've been looking for you two after that incident you caused, heh." The man in front said as he walked off the stage, walking out the door behind as many Blueblood brothers blocked off the back door.
Suddenly, from one of the doors of the church leading down to the basement, a man made purely of black sludge emerged. His body almost resembled a human still as he wore normal clothes, though his mask was strange. It had white on the bottom and red on top with four horizontal holes which were placed in a symmetrical pattern.
The clothes seemingly didn't absorb the sludge coming from the humanoid.
"Well, hello, my dear guests. Our fellow priest has blessed us once more, finding us such nice gifts like yourselves, heh." He walked up towards the sanctuary as he said, "Well, to be fair, you came to us, so we didn't even need to come to you. You sure are easy." Suddenly the mask split between the red and white as a mouth with sharp teeth spread out in a circle.
"Holy, you're far into your transformation..." Roderic said, looking at the sludge monster.
"Yes, you are correct, my fellow mage," he said, not really showing any expression or emotion as it was near impossible to discern.
"Hehe..." Roderic depressingly laughed as he realized how doomed they were and that the need for that power was now at hand. Their only hope for Roderic not to use it was if the almost fully transformed mage possessed an ability less suited for combat, unlike Roderic's.
Suddenly, the man ran towards the two. Lucian, entirely confused but not really having a choice, grabbed onto his sword, pulling it out of his scabbard and readying himself for battle.
"Well then, looks like we fell straight into the beast's den, huh? Though why did they heal me?" Lucian questioned.