A ship was sailing aimlessly in the dry desert. Its last landmark, the fallen fortress, was long gone. Only a flat horizon stretched all around.
Mighty clouds rolled above, turning the day heavy and dull. I was on the deck, at the bow. Looking at the flowing landscape. I should have been working at the smelter, on my armor, but was unable to concentrate.
So Nasse had to work alone. That lizard monster never tired, never complained. Almost never.
And the human?
The human was flying.
In this dead realm he had unlocked magical wings that potruded in two pairs from its back and let him soar as high as he wished. I was not sure I could even keep track of him but at times he would emerge downward before returning to the azure above.
So we erred happily in the immensity with no destination in sight.
"What would you do if all humans were dead?" I wondered aloud.
A mocking voice rose from below. The massive skull of the wyvern emerged four dozen meters away. The bone of its wing barely visible in front.
"A lion without gazelles may as well shed its mane and grow horns. A dungeon without monsters is but a pond." It let a short, quiet laugh. "Worry not for me, dear friend. With the ilk gone, the gift will wane. Mana will abound and the realm will start anew."
I thought he meant that as a good thing. His tone quickly proved me wrong.
"Another will be crowned, and enslave and rule. Another will incur the drake's wrath. When that time comes, I suspect, my bones will itch for a new hunt."
"I thought you hated humans." I pointed out.
Hate. Yes. Maybe it was so simple. A mix of jealousy and frustration. Such a genuine feeling, so natural, to hate. I thought it was hate that simmered.
The wyvern's skull was flowing through the dry desert, warping rocks while leaving no trail. Out of this realm.
It had stood silent for a few seconds.
"To hate them would be to loathe the realm. Humans are, in the end, nothing but monsters. Our agenda is the same as theirs. I hate not what they are, but that they won."
And it chuckled once more. "To feel inferior, to envy the strong, to claw our way to the top and then, gaze at the vanquished. The realm demands a victor and so, my hate will never subside."
"Until it is your turn." I remarked. "You are."
I stopped. Someone was watching us. Some monster had cast a spell to gauge our ship and now was preparing to strike.
The wyvern had felt it too, the sudden change of pressure, the first swirls of a ritual.
"Nasse!"
I was rushing for the bridge. The lizard came out from the hatch, turned and saw the lone silhouette so far away as to be but a wisp in the distance.
We were going to veer away from that threat. Or we would but the skeletal wyvern pushed us toward it. He wasn't wrong, the odds actually weighed heavily in our favor. Still, I didn't like this at all.
That foe was bound to know our strength and more annoyingly, the human was still alone in the clouds.
We would not reach that silhouette before she finished her ritual.
It was a bird, clad in priestess garnments, standing on two legs and with two arms swinging her scepter with bells at its end. I could even recognize her small beak. A tame beasts with feathers of many colors.
She had traded her gloves for ribbons at her wrists, placed wards on her eyes but other than that, Nadjal had not changed.
What kind of mirage had brought her in the middle of nowhere?
Her scepter hit the ground. Ritual finished. Four massive weights made of lead fell from the clouds, all around us, and stopped short of slamming the rock. It still felt like an earthquake! a crushing force that made the ship's wood crack and the ropes snap free.
In an instant the Parao went to a full stop.
The wyvern burst out of the ground in turn, shook mad before being hammered by that force and crushed as well. Yet it still kept moving, crawling out of this spell with indomitable power.
In answer the bird brought her scepter to her chest and start to mutter another chant. Magic rose from her to take shape, the massive form of a harpy that walked toward us.
Both beasts, the skeleton and the spirit, clashed just out of the weighing spell.
I was still struggling just to move! My whole clay body was being pushed down with enough force that standing took all I had - and what I had left I used to alleviate the lizard's own agony. What kind of freak can cast such high-level spells, even with a ritual, even with the human's aura?!
What kind of freak could escape it!?
The wyvern got the better of his foe. That spirit had talons for hands that seared on the beast's bones and a wild beak but when the skeletal maw closed on its shoulder, all it could do was shriek.
Yet despite being outmatched, even faced with anti-magic that ate at its very nature, that elemental held on. And meanwhile that bird was still chanting, accompanied by her scepter's bells.
She was casting skyfall.
Okay, back up, she could not possibly be casting skyfall. Not while maintaining a cage and an elemental on top! I had to be misreading it, my senses had to be scrambled but here it was, a piece of the cosmic ceiling emerging from the sky, slowly crashing on us.
Basically we were dead.
The wyvern had seen it too and while still fighting with the harpy spirit he tried to disengage. Any second spent under that mass ensured annihilation. Yet his enemy held tight, keeping him locked in place. Even when the beast ripped its arm and down to the waist that magical being held on.
Another minute before the ceiling would wipe us out but I could already feel its effect. It was simple, it was the void, tearing out every last bit of our essence. The air was boiling around us. Within seconds the Parao would be a torch.
And when I thought I had seen everything, the skeletal monster stopped fighting.
The realm bent and swirled all around, dizzying. All four lead weights shattered and fell in pieces. The spirit just vanished in the instant. That piece of sky started to degrade, void to dust, cracked in pieces that veered off and lost themselves into nothingness.
He could use the void. He could use the void this whole time, he could have wiped us out at will, he had been toying with us!
The wyvern's tail whipped around. He fell back to the ground, opened his maw and let a mist out. On the other side of the field the bird simply lowered her scepter behind her back.
He charged her.
He crawled to her with such speed as to take her unprepared, plunged his claws in her body and met a shield that stayed impervious. White beams lashed out of his body to strike it and failed to even dent that magical protection.
I had rushed to Nasse, helped the lizard get up. He was fine, only let out a grunt.
What was there to say even? Two titans clashed in the distance.
He was striking madly at the shield, hard enough to make the ground crack and turn into a crater, with peaks jutting out, eroding under the shockwaves.
She was facing him calmly from under the brimming, sizzling barrier, with only sweat on her feathers. One swing of her scepter slashed the ribs, breaking one clean. He put his claws on the magical sphere and pressed, causing cracks.
Why didn't he use his void magic again? That fight would be over in a second!
Another swing, more bones shattered and he fell back, attacked again and got caught in a new spell. Healing! His right leg, his neck, his skull, half of his body burst into cold blue flames that consumed the bones into dust.
Then, the human striked!
Well, he didn't actually attack but the teenager landed between the two combatants, forcing that bird to leap away a fair distance.
The human turned and asked: "Calisle, are you okay?"
The wounded beast was already regenerating. Its bones growing back in the crackle of blue, sicklish magic. He did not answer him but turned to me and brought his only wing to bear.
"That vulture's only trade is theft. It siphons magic and borrows our power against us. Is it one of your toys? That dress reeks of your craft."
In other words, it looked human and he was curious.
But borrowing power? That was like tracing, that was the stuff of legends. The same bird that could not even get a sacrifice right was now casually imitating the humans' best? No!
"Calisle." The bird said with a cold high-pitched voice. "Magic itself reviles you. Return to the depths in peace or perish."
"Wait!" The teenager yelled. "There is no need to fight! We are not hostile!"
"And you." Her warded eyes turned to him. "Min-Seok. The realm has already decided your fate. Give me your magic and be gone."
"You don't understand, we are trying to save the world!"
She kept one hand on the scepter behind her back, held like a spear while bringing the other like a fist against her chest.
"There is nothing to save."
I stopped listening to that boy arguing to the contrary. Her words had shaken me and the wyvern alike. They held a truth any monster would hear.
Was it how nothing could stop the mana drain? Or was it something more abstract, the idea that none deserved to be saved? That monsters were made to linger and decay.
That this was how the realm was meant to be.
She incanted again. Three totems cracked free from the ground while patterns extended from her feet all around in ever larger circles.
The wyvern opened its maw, let a massive ball of blue, fiendish light build inside it.
Over their accumulating strength the clouds erupted in lightning, turned grey and let the first drizzle of a storm fall on the desert.
He would shoot first, naturally. His attack had turned into a burning sun. The skull reared, then lunged and at the last moment veered away to spit it far off into the land where it exploded in a blast that shook even the Parao.
I got back up and saw all three recover from the deflagration. The human shook off, the wyvern silent. Before them that bird reprised her ritual.
She had deployed four stelae in her back. Four black slabs covered in inscriptions floating peacefully behind her.
That had convinced the beast to hold back?
No. No way. That could only mean one thing.
"Nadjal!" I yelled from all the way back on the ship. "Don't you dare!"
When the mana drain appeared and humans went extinct, they assembled in the temple of Hashal to devise a way to save themselves. The best and brightest had crafted there what had become the humans' haven. Earth.
Those were the records from Hashal. That bird held the records from Hashal.
She knew where Earth was!
Already the wyvern had brought his wing forth to talk.
"Give it to me." He rumbled, his mockery all gone.
Behind the bird monster a wall of mist had appeared, rolling over. And now I understood. She was outmatched and retreating, and the only way for her to do so was to ensure no one would break her way out. Those stelae were her safe-conduct.
"Run, vulture." The beast rumbled. "Run fast and hide deep. I will be coming for you."
She offered no smile, struck the ground with her scepter to stabilize the fog and leapt back into it. The fog vanished, the totems crumbled.
The raging storm served as the wyvern's scream.