Chapter 6
In Kyro's dream, he stood in a black abyss as if floating in outer space without planets. In any direction he tried to look, pure black surrounded him. Indistinct whispers called to him from all around, and covering his ears did nothing to reduce the sound. He couldn't smell, feel, or taste anything.
Then grey mists appeared from thin air, swirling around him. He had no sense of distance in his environment, but somehow saw silhouettes of three hooded humanoids behind the mist. They towered over him by dozens of feet, taller than the mountain the hag's cave was beneath.
"The time has come," a hoarse voice said, coming from the silhouettes. Their words sent vibrations and chills down his spine as if a blizzard and an earthquake were teaming up on Kyro. They sounded old and hoarse like an elderly woman on her deathbed.
"He is the one." The voice sounded exactly the same as before, but Kyro somehow got the feeling one of the other silhouettes said it. How? He couldn't tell.
"This shall be great fun," said the third silhouette.
Kyro wondered if they were talking about him. Then he realized how stupid that thought was. He was the only one there…wherever he was.
Fear crept into his thoughts, but his curiosity got the better of him. "Who are you?" he shouted.
For a moment, there was a pause. Then they rhythmically spoke in turn, as if reading a poem:
"We are the beginning and the end."
"We are life and death."
"We are the light and the dark."
"We are the known and the unknown."
"We are all and nothing."
"We are the Fates."
"And you are our Godchosen."
Suddenly, Kyro's right hand burned as if a molten rod was being pressed against it. He looked at the back of it while trying not to scream. A symbol glowed fiery red: three equilaterals pointing up. The bottom corners of two adjacent ones touched while the third triangle's top corner touched from beneath.
Next, his head suddenly felt uncomfortable. It was if something punched his brain out or it rapidly expanded in size like a balloon being filled with air. It didn't hurt, but it sure wasn't a nice feeling.
Then when that was done, an energy Kyro could only describe as adrenaline entered through his forehead and melted down through his body, infusing every inch with the sensation. It wasn't as though he felt he could sprint for miles without stopping, but rather he could cast a spell like Shadow Travel and maintain it for much longer than a few minutes max. Did his mana pool grow?
He tried to ask what the Fates—or so they called themselves—meant by everything, but when he looked back up, the entire setting had changed in an instant. Now he was in a field of dead grass beneath the moon and star-filled sky. The air smelled and felt familiar…nostalgic even. As he looked around, he spotted a settlement of some sort far off in the distance. As he squinted, he realized with a chill he recognized the palisade walls, with their sharpened tips pointing towards the sky. It was Meadow Village. He was in the grasslands south of his home, perhaps two to three miles off.
Kyro's jaw dropped. He looked around once more to look for other landmarks he could recognize. And now a few feet south of where he stood were two figures facing each other.
The first was a beautiful female angel in a sleeveless white dress and papyrus sandals. Her entire eight-foot body radiated light like a firefly. Both of her four-foot wings, as white as a dove's, curled around her body defensively. Her eyes glowed white with no pupils or irises. A halo glimmered a few inches above her long blond hair, and jeweled sword was gripped tight in her right hand.
The second creature had Kyro frozen in absolute fear: a skeleton unlike he had ever seen before. The ten-foot rust-colored monster wore red silk robes with gold trimming. Curled bull horns sprouting from where one's ears should've been pointed towards the sky. Its skull contained a round-cut ruby lodged into the middle of its forehead with detailed carvings around, appearing as a sun. An orb of fire burned behind each eye socket, flickering furiously. Its bony fingers clenched onto an ivory staff as tall as the monster itself. The skull of a human sat on top of the staff, emanating a cyan glow.
It was as if Kyro's brain was falling asleep in short intervals. For one second, they were there. In the next, they were in combat so intense, Kyro knew he would've been dead if his body was actually there. The angel now radiated as bright as the sun, lighting up everything as far as the walls of Meadow Village. Her sword clanked against the skeleton's staff so hard, tinnitus took over Kyro's hearing. Winds ripped through the grass beneath them, exposing the sod beneath, as the grass all around them rippled ferociously. He noticed the angel moving her lips and could recognize the Mana-speak, but had no idea what she was saying.
Every other second, they were somewhere else on the grass field like they were teleporting. Twenty feet to Kyro's west. A mile to his north. An arm's length away to his southeast. And each time, something about the two creatures changed. The color of the angel's dress, skin, wings, hair, and eyes changed: chocolate skin with ruby-red hair, eyes, wings, and dress; pale skin, black hair and wings, pink eyes, and moss-green dress. The skeleton went from having a sphere of blood around him to pink missile-like arrowheads homing at the angel and to skeleton hands rising thrusting their hands out of the ground around him.
The terrain changed throughout the fight. Over there was now a patch of healthy green grass with an apple tree. Over there was now a smoldering crater the size of the village. Over there was now mud, its surface rippling as hard as the grass with droplets flying everywhere. Blood rained from the sky for one second before rain replaced it. Ugly wailing ghosts flew out of dark portals, their stretched fingers reaching towards the angel. Then they turned into pixies, turning around and charging at the skeleton before they blew up into pixie dust.
The pandemonium lasted for dozens of seconds until finally a pained scream echoed into the air. Right where they started, the angel's foot was being sucked into a blood-colored crystal ball as if it was a black hole. All of her except her skin shimmered with every color Kyro saw. It was if she was the embodiment of the northern lights, constantly fading colors from red to green to blue to pink and so on. Her skin also constantly faded colors but stayed within human skin colors, fromas white as snow to as brown as mud. She tried to pull herself out from it, but soon her other foot was sucked into the sphere. Her image shrunk as it was swallowed little by little. A giant, two-handed sword that looked like her sword from before was lobbed into the skeleton's ribcage. Golden veins spread from the sword throughout the skeletal body like roots spreading out into soil.
Yet although it looked like the skeleton was dying, it raised its mouth towards the air and boomed with laughter. "Finally!" it bellowed with a deep male voice. The skeleton's mouth didn't move as it spoke again. "With your death, I shall soon be the Overlord of Acera! Even the gods won't be able to stop me!"
The angel narrowed her eyes as she glared at the skeleton. Half of her body was now gone, her hands and arms now slipping into the sphere. "I wouldn't be too sure. Nothing in life is guaranteed."
The skeleton chuckled as it looked at the golden veins spreading up to his face. "Fair point. But riddle me this: who can stop me now?"
The angel smirked as the sphere now pulled in her neck. Kyro sensed if the skeleton could frown, it would have. "Someone," she answered. Then her face, hair, and everything else of her was sucked into the sphere. It pulsed with a bright red light.
The skeleton didn't seem to by her answer. It laughed with joy as the yellow veins covered every inch of its body. Then it blew up into onyx dust as monsters did, evaporating within the second. Its clothes and rod fell to the ground, nestling into the grass unaffected by the fight. Then it shimmered black before fading out of existence.
For a moment, Kyro could only stand where he was, observing the aftermath of the carnage. Besides turning in place, he couldn't speak or move. He began to wonder with panic if he was forever stuck where he was until he saw the ground around the crystal ball shift. The ball shifted from side to side. Then circles of banana yellow, and black appeared on one of its sides. At first, it looked to Kyro like some bumble bee was trying to pop out of the ball with its pointed rear end out first. Then he realized it wasn't that at all. The ball had transformed itself into an eye, with a massive black pupil and a ring to separate its yellow iris and sclera. And it looked evil.
The eye starred at something behind Kyro. As he turned, he realized with a shiver it was eyeing (no pun intended) Meadow Village. Then the ground shifted again before the eye seemed to rise into the air. Kyro thought it was levitating before he noticed a pink, slimy stem rising from the ground, making the eye something of a flowerhead. Then he realized it wasn't a stem at all. It was a tongue. Human teeth the size of tree trunks rose from the ground, surrounding the eye as it lifted ever higher.
Then once again, Kyro's dream changed. He stood in a dark cavern with the hag standing a few feet in front of him. The smell of mold, the hag's stench, and the sound of water dripping somewhere filled the room. With a withered black book cradled in her arms, the hag was pacing back and forth before an ancient, stone door flanked by torches. A layer of condensed mana, which looked like see-through cyan plasma, covered the door, glowing like a light beneath tropical water. The light of the torches and condensed mana only lit up the few feet around the door, leaving Kyro in the dark. Etched into the door and walls all over were symbols Kyro had never seen before. Yet somehow, whenever he focused on a symbol, he knew what it meant. The hag pointed a finger towards one symbol on the door and looked to her book, mumbling in a whisper, "What does it mean?" Yet Kyro knew the symbol she pointed at meant "breaker." In fact, without meaning to, he translated all the symbols on the door: "Here lies Spellbreaker, the mighty blade of Alavan and the bane of mana and magic."
The hag lifted her free hand, pointed her fingertips towards the door, and closed her eyes, chanting. "Lightning Inferno."
Bolts of lightning shot out from her tips, crackling on impact against the condensed mana layer. A deafening BOOM echoed throughout the corridor, slightly shaking the room. The instant it was over, Kyro processed what he saw as he observed that nothing changed: each lightning bolt had fizzled out shortly after connecting with the layer.
"Hmm." The hag scratched her bald head and flipped through her book. "Not even a crack, eh? Curse ancient magic."
The hag glanced to her left. What seemed to be an obsidian column with a lantern on top stood in-between the door and the left torch. Etched on each side of the rectangular column was the same symbol: Aether. The hag placed her open hand on it and focused. As the hag channeled her mana into the ancient relic, a cyan flame burned within the lantern. The "Aether" symbols glowed as the mana seeped down through the relic. As the mana reached the bottom, it flowed towards the door in tendrils like veins leading to a heart. As it reached the door, the condensed mana layer glowed brighter. The lantern's fire died as the symbols faded away, but the door retained its new brightness.
Realizing she had made the mana layer stronger, the hag cursed dozens of times while stomping her foot and shooting one lightning bolt after another at it. After a fit of fury, she pointed a finger at the door. "See here, darling," she said to it as if it was alive. "I'll have you open by tomorrow's end, I swear it! If what my lord said about you is true, I will be single-handedly destroying kingdoms! I will become his new favorite servant! I've come so far for that power, and I won't let you get in my way for much longer! Enjoy your existence while you can! I'll figure you out soon!"
She spat into the mana layer, and her spit evaporated on contact. Then after a kick of dirt at the wall, she turned around, looking dead at Kyro. Kyro's heart leaped into his throat, but she simply stormed towards his direction as if he wasn't there.
When the hag should've bumped into Kyro, he woke with a start.