"Minor Arcana..."
"This thing again, when will you learn?" asked Ysabeau, shaking her head.
She then stood rooted on the ground, preparing to use the Last Moon of Cascada. But as she figured another way out, she decided to withhold her spell. The boy felt something change and promptly withhold his own as well.
"Well, at least before you use that, could you answer some things for me?" asked Ysabeau as she retracted her Water spells.
The boy blinked in confusion before nodding. Of all the battles he had gone through, this was the first to suddenly turn a battle into a conversation. And since he couldn't close the gap, a surprise attack won't be effective, he agreed to do so.
"I know I'm gonna die anyway, so I might as well answer your questions. What do you want to know about?" asked the boy, still holding onto the cards.
"I know how you died. I am well aware, I helped bury you. I couldn't recognize it at first, since Bahamuts can choose to store memories away by choice. But once Gab mentioned that you are related to him, I dragged out another incident which had Quadruplets."
"If my guess is correct, you are Gab's younger brother, right? The Four Minions of the Old Chapel. You did know how you four died, right?"
"Yes, I am. I know how I died."
"Are you sure? Because there is no way to put you back together," said Ysabeau, staring at him.
That's why his eyes are black. They weren't black, they were empty. He had no eyes. He had been fighting without the Five Human Senses. This explains why he would only move when the impacts harm him physically, like getting punched but not to the boiling water.
That's why he didn't flinch even when scalding water hit him, or lack the time to react to Ysabeau's first attacks. He was able to do so only based on instincts. In his vision, he sees everything using Elemental Energy and Aura. And Humans appear as white figures.
Solid objects appear as grey fuzzes.
"What do you mean, put back together? Didn't you bury him?" asked Gab, finally getting back into the ring.
"That's precisely it, I buried them. So I saw what condition was their bodies in. And there was no way to put your bodies back together. The explosion had literally segregated your body parts everywhere. By the time I got there, Mavislin had collected all your parts."
"She tried to ask me if there was any way to put you guys back together, like some sort of puzzle. Like, if a Bahamut lost an arm, we could still put it back by using a Healing Stitch. But Human bodies are not Bahamuts so it was impossible."
A Healing Stitch is a spell that manipulates the cells and flesh of a being to work together to heal the wound up. It is powerful enough to put lost limbs back together but if the being can't handle the rate of cell regrowth, the entire thing will fail. The being will die.
"Do you know how much time had passed?" asked Ysabeau, facing her opponent once more.
"Time? What is that?" asked the boy.
"What is the earliest thing you can recall?"
The boy paused as he searched the furthest memory he could find.
"It was with my siblings. Someone was talking to all four of us. And the only thing I know is to obey his commands."
"What was your mission?"
"To search for more experiments. For more girls, that's all he said before asking us to split up. But I heard, just from earlier, that they reset our memories when we enter back into our pods. However, they don't touch our battle logs."
Hang on, why is he giving out such confidential information? If his commander is that strict, shouldn't he be a bit more secretive? Gab was conflicted. But then, he glanced at Ysabeau, who was holding a single piece of paper.
"One of Akhantenian's spells, Writings of Truth. A spell that causes the chosen victim's mind to be relaxed, allowing the victim to give out all the secrets they have. Use it wisely, since it is quite weak to counterattacks. You need to use it when you know you have the enemy compromised."
Those instructions were being passed down from Gillian to his wife. He was trying to find a mini gift since Ysabeau was going off on her first mission in a long time. This spell was small though.
"It has been nearly two decades since your death. Do you not recall that?" asked Ysabeau, with a very serious and stern expression.
She wasn't playing around as the boy got very confused and agitated. The spell was starting to lose its effect fast.