Coming across the remnants of a cave that used to belong to a powerful hydra and which was now wiped off the map was certainly not what Cirrus had been expecting to see so early in the morning. It was completely incinerated, and the cave must've had at least a half mile radius. But the rocks were all crumbled into little bits on top of each other, and the hydra's form had been entirely turned to ash upon further inspection of what was leftover. There were a few scales that looked to have been spared here and there, but the moment Cirrus had his guard try and pick one up, it crumbled to dust in his hands.
"Well… that miracle worker certainly killed the damn thing, I guess," the gruff man spat, standing up with the ash in his palm, lifting it towards Cirrus' amber eyes for him to get a closer look. Jayce was a sturdy man with a fairly muscular build, his skin a dark olive with messy, unkempt waves of short brown hair atop his head. He was average height and was covered in scars, his most visible one being a large gash on his left cheek, which made him look rather intimidating to most people. His earthy tones were only intensified by his eyes, which were such a vibrant shade of nature's green you wouldn't expect it from such a rough person.
And Cirrus slowly moved one hand to his eyepatch, his eye already starting to tingle underneath it as he began using his concept of the all-knowing eye. He removed the cover and stared intently at the ash piled up in Jayce's hand, its status and cause of death all filtering into his mind like clockwork. "...it was blasted to death in a heated energy wave that only lasted two seconds," he remarked simply, his three companions all turning to give him incredulous stares while Jayce could do nothing but gape.
"You're kidding! I felt that shockwave from miles away, and you're telling me the blast itself was only two seconds long?!" the man snapped irritably, clearly finding that knowledge to be hard to believe, before a small, petite woman tapped his shoulder and garnered his attention. She had short, bobbed hair that was as soft and white as snow, her pale skin blending in with the color, and her eyes were so blue they resembled ice when it melts. She was often compared to snow itself, and smiled kindly at her companion while she raised a finger towards him.
"I don't think it's too hard to believe. Consider everything else we've heard about this miracle man. Surely he's done more impressive things than this, right? No reason to get so worked up," Eve supplied sensibly, Jayce glaring at her with a subtle growl building up in his throat before he was interrupted again. This time by a tall, muscular woman with skin the color of charcoal and thick, coarse burgundy hair that flowed stiffly down her sides. Her eyes were the color of moss, and she was by far the one who intimidated people the most out of their small group of four... even more than Cirrus, despite him being the crown prince of one of the most powerful planetary nations.
But she was very logical and far more composed than people assumed at first glance, the strong woman nodding with crossed arms as she began reciting all the information they'd gathered to get to where they were now. "That's right. We know that this miracle worker has immense power, and according to our sources, this isn't the first time he's blown something up to this degree. After all, we know that he got rid of an entire section of an ocean in one world and relocated it and then completely reshaped the terrain... we know that he's defeated the Queen of the Dragons, one of the strongest figureheads of our time... and we know that he tends to follow rumors and likes to help people whenever he hears about something amiss. It's only natural his concepts will be strong. We already knew this."
It was silent for a moment as Jayce brewed with this information, Achitha and Eve smiling at each other while Cirrus began to ponder. The mission he'd been given by his grandmother was simple… find this elusive miracle worker and recruit him into the Central Domain Alliance that his mother was the leader of. Reality was breaking, no one knew why, and they needed all of the strength they could acquire in order to protect themselves and find a way to mend the cracks of space and time itself. His grandmother, who had developed a strong concept of prophecy ever since she was a young girl, had given him this mission of finding this powerful, miraculous man, and she had described it as his most important mission yet.
Pessimistic people like Jayce hadn't believed this rumored miracle worker existed until his grandmother confirmed it. Realistic people like Achitha, who led with evidence and logic, found it hard to believe someone could wield so many different concepts the way this rumored miracle worker was said to. The most concepts a single person had ever harnessed all at once was six, and anything more than that was too much for a person's brain to handle. It was unheard of for someone to effortlessly accomplish so many acts with a seemingly multitude of concepts. Cirrus had tried bringing this point up to his grandmother, inquiring on how such a thing was possible, and yet…
"Isn't that sense of him making the impossible possible exactly why we need to recruit him?" the kind woman had smiled, reaching out to lay three fingers atop his eyepatch as she pressed herself against his all-knowing eye.
She was a small, small woman... she barely reached his waist, in fact, and he always had to kneel down to be on her level... but she was incredibly, incredibly wise. She had short, thin black hair and smooth, warm brown skin the same color as his, though for some reason, he had never once seen her eyes. They were always hidden behind a large green blindfold the color of moss, and no one knew why she never took it off, not even her own daughter.
"You've always been a capable boy, my dear, so I know you will take this quest seriously and execute it well," she smiled at him, her wisdom and many centuries of living coming across in her voice. "But, keep in mind… on this journey, you will meet someone important who you must recruit at all costs. The fate of the world may depend on this one."
"You mean besides the miracle worker?" Cirrus asked curiously, obediently closing his eyes under his elder's touch, despite the way his eye burned and welled with tears underneath the black padded cloth at feeling the hand of someone so ancient who held so many countless memories he was not yet able to comprehend.
But his grandmother just smiled, her face still as young as could be in a world where everyone was immortal. "I'll let you decide that for yourself."
"How will I know it's this person you're speaking of when I meet them?"
"Oh, hah… you'll know!" his grandmother laughed mockingly, moving her hand from his covered eye to lay on his silky black hair, gently stroking the top of his head while being careful not to mess up his braid. But all of a sudden, her hand stopped, and she leaned under him to catch a good look at that bright amber eye of his that contained all of his humanity. "You'll know, because he won't respect you at all. You will have to work hard to catch that one, and you'll know exactly what I mean once you meet him. Good luck to you, grandson."
She'd looked so sinister staring at him like that through her blindfold, speaking words of advice that sounded more akin to warnings... though Ruba had always been mysterious, even among her own family. It did make him somewhat nervous to venture further, knowing he might be meeting two incredibly powerful people on this journey who he needed to recruit, one of which would hold no respect for him. But, honestly, when he thought about it... why would that be? Cirrus liked to think of himself as a responsible and respectable person, by all counts. He had a bit of a tendency to people-please, and his older sibling always called him a goody-two-shoes, but those weren't exactly negative traits, were they? It just meant he followed the rules and was helpful! He did his job! Those were all good things, weren't they? It's not like he'd committed any crimes or had done anything to hurt other people…
Ah, but there was no point in dwelling on that now. He'd just figure it out as he went. Ruba had said that he would know when he met them, so it wouldn't help to think about it so hard too soon. He was able to find a little comfort in that, at least, before he turned to Achitha, his right-hand and second in command when it came to developing plans and strategies, and who was someone he could always rely on. "Where do you think we should head next, then? We know that this miracle worker often follows rumors and seeks out places that are in trouble, so have any rumors stood out to you so far? I heard there were multiple towns dealing with plague just a few leagues over, so maybe we should go over and check that out."
"Uh, Cirrus! We can't let you get so close to the sick! It'd be horrible if you caught a stupid plague too!" Jayce immediately countered, only for Eve to openly laugh while giving him a firm slap on the back.
"Why do you think I'm here, huh?" she snickered, ignoring the way Jayce glared at her as she pointed her thumb into her chest. "I have a very polished healing concept, you know. If our lovely prince gets sick, I'll be here to heal him, of course. You can count on me!"
"Like I'd count on you for anything," Jayce griped, only for Eve to reach up and smack the back of his head, Cirrus watching them with amusement.
"Well," he interrupted calmly, his companions pausing in their petty squabbling to face him, immediately receptive to his call. "Ruba said to follow the trail of rumors, and that it would lead us right to him. So unless there are any other rumors floating around, I don't think there's anywhere else to go," he smiled, Achitha nodding sensibly with crossed arms.
"That's right. I did a bit of scouting for rumors as well, and this new plague is being viewed as a pretty big deal around this part of the Udimeia. But I can give us all immunity to illness for a period of time, so we should be fine," she affirmed, Jayce looking slightly defeated looking between them, as if resigning himself to his fate.
And Cirrus thought the man was being rather silly, so he turned to smile at his guard and best friend, the man he'd been raised with since they'd been little children, and offered with a voice thickly sweet, "I think you're more worried about yourself than me, Jayce. Are you scared of getting sick, by any chance?"
"Uh… no, I'll be fine," his guard retorted stubbornly, avoiding eye contact with his master in a show of mock defiance while Eve continued to laugh at him and gave his back another harsh slap, which only made Jayce turn to growl at her.
"Well, that settles that, then," Cirrus announced, his voice taking on a more commanding tone as he looked over the remnants of the fallen cave for a final time. When he'd scanned over it with his left eye, the one that had been infused with his concept, it looked like someone had died in the center of the hydra's lair only seconds after the monster must've been killed as well, and yet that same body had been removed and completely disappeared without a trace a few hours afterwards. It felt odd, and he wanted to know more about this confusing phenomenon, but he couldn't find any other clues. There was a trail of footprints that had been covered up, so he couldn't see what their former sizes or shapes had been, and instead only knew that the dirt on top of them had been moved. But when he followed where the trail led, all he came across was a former campsite that looked to have been abandoned days ago and a fallen tree that appeared to have been struck with lightning of some kind.
Though gathering that much information with his eye always gave him a headache, Cirrus quickly moving his eyepatch back around his face to block out all of the knowledge that came flooding towards him from his surroundings. He was in his early five hundreds, and yet he still hadn't mastered that special concept as much as he would've liked. Ruba had prophesied he'd be one of the few to wield six concepts by the time he was at his peak, and while Cirrus did look forward to that, he knew he still had a long way to go. He was deemed to be the future leader of the Central Domain Alliance because of how much weight his prophecy had given him, the chosen one who'd been foretold to stop the coming apocalypse and save reality from shattering. Although, if he were truly honest…
Cirrus wasn't so sure he believed in that prophecy anymore. A part of it had already ended up not being true, after all. In the prophecy Ruba had given him, it had been declared that he would one day rule the Udimeia side-by-side with his fiancée, princess Arcadia, who had already died a tragic death before he could even come to love her. It weighed on him, knowing that she was the one who had been prophesied to love and guide him at his lowest, but who was no longer there to do that. Of course, he didn't feel as if he were at a low point in the current moment, but… what of the future? What of all these burdens that were now falling on his shoulders alone? Cirrus would never run from his responsibilities, but in turn, would they crush him? He feared sometimes they would. That was why, before Arcadia had died, he'd always greeted her eagerly, looking forward to the day he'd fall in love with her and make that prophecy of companionship come true.
But death is death, no matter how you look at it. Arcadia was not here anymore. But even though he'd finished grieving over her centuries ago, it still somehow felt like the space in his life he'd once been saving for her was now empty and hollow. Honestly, looking back, had he ever truly fallen in love with her in the first place? Probably not. He'd never known her very well, either. He had visited the girl every once in a while, but she'd always been sickly and was confined to her father's estate because of her poor health. All he really knew was that her favorite game had been chess and she always beat him no matter how he tried to outsmart her, as she was an incredibly smart and intelligent woman. And whenever her father, the King of Salaven and previous leader of the Central Domain Alliance, allowed her to come to official meetings and sit by Cirrus' side, she always looked cold and demeaning, like she was judging everyone around her. She'd even been nicknamed the Ice Princess because of her cold glare that was said could freeze over hell…
People didn't know how to talk to her because of it, which Cirrus thought was sad. She had always held a certain air of strength about her, but he also saw something that was incredibly fragile behind her facade. In nearly all of his memories of her, she'd always looked so miserable underneath her mask of apathy, and out of all the many years he'd known her, he could never remember a single moment where she'd smiled. For a time, he'd been determined to try and make that smile appear himself, but he'd never succeeded. And after hearing about that sad, fragile girl's death… it hurt him more than he could bear. And it also led him to doubt the rest of Ruba's prophecies, even though she'd never been wrong before then…
His grandmother had said he would become many things, and that he would carry many burdens. But the only reason he'd so readily agreed to all of those expectations was because he'd been promised to have someone by his side who would love and support him throughout it all. Now that he was by himself, alone in such a grand and massive prophecy, he didn't want his role in it at all. He would do his best to carry his burdens for as long as he could, but in the end, his only motivation to do so was because he didn't want to let everyone down. They were all counting on him… if he ever decided to give up or run away, he would most certainly be hated by the entire world… even if it hadn't been his choice to be in the prophecy in the first place.
No one else knew these selfish thoughts of his. He was stronger than anyone else his age, and he was talented and always praised for his leadership and intellect, but it led him to wonder… was he really going to be enough? When facing the collapse of reality, would he really be able to stop that all on his own? Even if he succeeded, would he make it through alive? Would he be okay with dying for a purpose he had never wanted?
Cirrus didn't know the answers to those questions. And yet more questions only filled his mind the more he thought about them. If Arcadia had never died, would he have fallen in love with her? Would he have received the kind of lifelong companion that would've been able to match him and stand beside him as his equal? Why had the prophecy gone wrong in the first place?
In all honesty, even though it was a very foolish desire, Cirrus found himself hoping that this new miracle worker he was searching for could fill that hole inside him. He wasn't necessarily looking for love anymore, as that didn't matter much, but… just a companion to share his burden. An equal to have by his side. That was all he wanted. Yet even that felt like too much to ask, because, well... if he really was going to go down by the end of his hopeless war between the immortals and reality itself… Cirrus didn't want to bring anyone else down with him.