"See you tomorrow, Mr Incredible!" Nora said, waving at Horatio from her doorstep.
"My name is Horatio." He retorted annoyed but still waved back.
"Ok, boring name guy."
"That's even worse!"
"How about Mr I-don't-like-the-names-my -best-friend-caringly-gave-to-me?"
"Now that's just a mouthful!" Horatio hung his head in his palm. He waved again as he moved away from Nora's front door. "See you tomorrow Nora." He said.
Horatio continued down the street from Nora's house, towards his own. He rubbed his right palm with his thumb. He winced slightly as a sharp pain shot through him.
"I guess two days isn't enough for this to heal huh?" He mused, wriggling his fingers to dissipate the pain. He looked back behind him towards Nora's house.
After Horatio had passed out saving Nora, he was taken to a hospital out of town. There it was found that he had no major injuries except for serious bruising all though his left hand.
He awoke the day after, showing signs of extreme exhaustion. Margulis heard of his accident and made arrangements for him to be transferred to the Toldaap mansion for treatment.
Using their bond, Margulis transferred some of her energy to Horatio, taking care of his exhaustion. He stayed at the Toldaap mansion for the day after that and was released just today, with a message from Margulis stating that she would come over to his home at the end of the day for a meeting.
Horatio sighed, "Sylvia is gonna be so mad." He shivered, simply thinking of that fact put him on edge. 'How am I going to explain Margulis coming over?' He thought, running his hands through his hair in frustration.
He let out a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. "Worrying about it isn't going to get me anywhere." He told himself and continued towards his home.
Horatio closed in on the comfortably-sized two-storey suburban houses he and Sylvia called home. His parents weren't as rich as Nora's but they got by just fine, even after they left.
Horatio pushed through he dauntless white gate and into his front yard. He was tense moving towards the front door.
"Horatio Peppngar." A low growl came from behind him. He jumped in surprise, turning swiftly and pushing his back against the door.
"Margulis..." He said weakly, giving a broken smile. Margulis eyed him incredulously, smirking.
"How is your hand?" Margulis asked, her voice commanding.
Horatio held up his left hand, "It's much better, almost don't feel a thing." He said.
"That's good, but be careful with it, pushing that much flawed energy through it damaged the tissue beneath," Margulis explained.
"Flawed energy?" Horatio asked.
Margulis gave him a confused glance. "Of course," Her eyes softened, looking at him with disappointment. "You're spending so much time understanding spirit energy while you still don't understand your own energy, that's just like you."
Horatio listened to her words, his body tensing up at the moment she spoke of spirit energy. He realised he had not studied his energy, he just thought it as part of himself, not even training to use it correctly before he joined Margulis.
Horatio noted Margulis' eyes on him, every movement they made. Even though he knew he could trust Margulis a minuscule part of him kept analysing her every move. He realised Margulis had picked up on the minuscule flinch he had made earlier and tried to divert her attention. "Margulis, how about we go inside and continue our chat?" He offered.
Margulis sighed, "Your energy isn't quite formed before six in the evening, at least that had held you back in spreading incompatibility."
Horatio felt adrenaline push into him, his muscled flexing into readiness the moment Margulis spoke of incompatibility. "Wait, Margulis, why did you come to my house?" He felt a sudden urge to get away from Margulis.
"It's truly unfortunate that spirit energy is not held by that restriction," Margulis said, closing in on Horatio.
Horatio shrank back, trying to avoid her menacing bulk. He gulped, flattening himself more against the white wood.
Margulis came up to him, rising above him. Her fingers moved deftly, swiftly tilting his chin and levelling his gaze to hers.
"M-Margulis I can explain-"
"Your recklessness hurts us all." Margulis hissed. Horatio felt small under her words, under her icy crimson gaze.
"Anyone of your classmates could have noticed, no matter how little the chance was, there was still a chance. Need I remind you that the literal fate of the world rest with us? Your actions were immature." Margulis said, berating Horatio with every word. She released his chin and Horatio dropped to the ground.
"I-I'm sorry." He stammered. Margulis' expression remained unchanged. She huffed, then looked over her shoulder.
"No, you aren't." She noted sorrowfully, "But your punishment comes later."
Horatio heard a withering sound bite at his ears. An unmistakeable stressed crackling, as though something was being scrunched up like a ball of paper.
Margulis let go of him, turning to the street from where the disturbing sound was coming. In a single moment, quick and unexpected, the air was filled with a glassy shattering. Horatio felt adrenaline pour into his body, responsively his fist clenched, his body carefully tensed and his stance changed.
Margulis snapped into fighting form, quickly readying her inner energies. Horatio's eyes and hair began to glow. He stared into the newly formed rift, counting down in his head, quickly refreshing on his combat training.
Horatio tensed as his countdown struck zero. Just as expected the foreseen environmental changes came swiftly and strongly.
A wave of foreign energy barreled through Horatio. At that moment he was in another world, his conscious temporarily transported to another realm.
"It's dark, very dark." He mumbled, forcing information remotely through his body, enough for Margulis to prepare a relevant counterspell.
The words successfully came from Horatio's mouth, his objective had been completed as far as the foresight was necessary. The darkness soon whitened out, bringing Horatio back to his own body.
"External energy assimilated, status: OK." The Analyst reported, its voice was stable, just at expected. Horatio thanked her mentally as he took his body into his hands.
Horatio and Margulis both watched the street, monitoring the rift.
"Here they come," Margulis warned, her voice barely above her whisper, undoubtedly keeping concentration on a spell she was soon to activate.
Right on cue, a dark, shadowed foot shambled through the rift, forcing its way out of the darkness of the other world and into the light of the street. Another foot followed after, then another and another. Several humanoid appendages grappled their way out of the rift. Different forms and sizes fighting each other for escape.
"What could be so horrible in Umbra that these things would fight so hard to escape?" Horatio wondered aloud. He knew what the enemy was, but facts about the dark world of Umbra were small and far between.
Their current enemy was the shroud. A hive mind of shadows that somehow take corporeal form. Usually taking humanoid shapes with missing and mismatched limbs being commonplace but are not adverse to changing shape to fulfil their primary objective, to feed.
"Shine, from the realm of light, Seraph's Grace!" Margulis set a sigil above the rift, etched into it was the image of daybreak. Bright ethereal light poured out of the sigil, searing into the shadows below.
Margulis had fashioned this simple spell as a means of quick deployment of high-intensity light. It was especially useful against the shroud as it took advantage of the shrouds' only instinct.
The shroud, were simply guardians of balance, if the balance was simply darkness. They existed solely to consume light, in all shapes and forms from photonic wavelengths to abstract renditions. This was to keep the dark world dark. They stored this absorbed light in their core, which was also their weakest and only vulnerable point.
"Go for their cores," Margulis advised as Horatio dashed onto the street, clearing the wall in a single leap.
Horatio landed on the asphalt of the paved street, skidding to a halt. His eyes darted through the rapidly swelling crowd, pinpointing their cores as he began running a calculation in his head.
Horatio scoured his body, collecting every bit of dark energy in him. He focused on it drawing on as much as he quickly could and directing it towards his palm.
Against the rapidly approaching Horde, an area of faint darkness murked above Horatio's skin, smoothly flowing towards his right arm.
"Free control, right arm," Horatio commanded, his voice reverberating coldly through the energy that begun to agitate.
Horatio closed his eyes. He forced all work to the energy manipulation, he had completed his calculations.
His energy responded quickly, pooling swiftly into his hand, compacting into a sphere no bigger than a tennis ball.
"You know what to do," Horatio spoke to himself. More than fifty shrouds had come through the gate with even more to come.
Horatio and Margulis both agreed that shrouds were simple enemies, the Horde, however, was an unparalleled force that could annihilate a small town in less than thirty minutes.
This fact belief was due to a fundamental fact about rifts. They were passageways. One-way but with no carry limit. As long as a rift was in use it would stay open for eternity.
Most invader parties only consisted of a few members. That was not true for the Horde, the Horde was infinite, there are even rumours that each person had a horde shroud to account for them, to balance light and dark. For that reason, a rift being used by Horde shrouds would most likely never close, unless it was destroyed.
"Calculations implemented." The Analyst reported from within Horatio, he grinned.
"I'll use it wisely." He laughed, flowing energy into his legs, powering them up.
Horatio had performed a simple physics calculation in the prior moments, one that centred about the shrouds cores, specifically how a ball of energy would bounce off it if it were travelling at a speed close to a hundred metres a second.
Horatio leapt up, exploding the energy gathered in his legs. He aimed, gripping the sphere with expert precision. He carefully lined up the shot, cocked his arm, and let loose.
The ball whizzed through the air, faster than the eye could see. Perfectly it zipped on its predetermined path, colliding with the first shroud core.
Horatio had his eyes closed, completely focused on the energy sphere. In the instant it hit the first core, he changed its properties, softening its once he was sure it had done definitive damage to the core.
The ball wrapped about the core, its latent kinetic energy still pushing it on its path. Then it was flung in a new direction, on a collision course with another core. Horatio hardened the sphere again.
In this manner, Horatio precisely controlled the ball, sending it crashing through all the horde shrouds' cores, leaving them unstable.
His feet touched the ground and he made the energy dissipate, fishing out of reality.
"That should do it." He said, using his hands to shield his eyes. Horatio had destabilised their cores, enough such that they were on the brink of shattering. Their cores were capacitors and in this state, any more light absorbed would break them, releasing all the stored light, all of it.
Horatio winced, intense signals shot through him. His body's sense of light waves peaking as the cores soon began to shatter. The Horde was an instinctual hive-mind, even in this situation they would still try and absorb more light.
Horatio heard several unceremonious shattering noised whipping the air. More angry bright light came, until there was only silence.
Horatio slowly drew his arm away, blinking away the spots that still managed to form in his vision. The world looked ethereal about him, all surfaces near the blast were bathed in brilliant light, positively glowing.
The destabilised shrouds had been destroyed, but the rift remained. The Horde inside only stopped to absorb their fallen brethren's light.
Horatio looked off the road to where Margulis was standing. It took him a while to notice but she was rubbing her eyes in obvious discomfort.
Horatio rushed to her. "Are you okay?" He asked, barreling through the gate, his voice was wobbly with panic. Margulis looked up as if trying to find him from his voice alone.
"Dammit!" He cursed, nearing her. "Stop subbing it." He held her hands away from her eyes. Horatio looked into Margulis' eyes and a horrifying realisation dawned on him.
"Horatio?" Margulis called our uncertainly. "Where are you?" She asked, her hands groping at the air. Her eyes moved about, they were pale pink unfocused discs.
"I'm right here." He put his hand before her and she grasped it, firmly like a lost child. "It's going to be alright, trust me." He said. He was unsure of what he was saying. He looked back at the rift, if it wasn't dealt with, the Horde would come through again. If that happened, and he didn't have Margulis to depend on...
Horatio realised he had to make a choice here, only he could not think logically. His mind felt jumbled up, his hand began to shake.
"Margulis, I, I don't know what to do." Horatio's voice shook. He clenched his fist in frustration. "I can't leave you." He looked into her eyes again. Still pale and unfocused.
"Then you fail." Margulis sighed. Horatio stared at her quizzically, still panicked and rushing through several analyses. Then it struck him, like a sledgehammer to the gut, what Margulis had meant. He stopped, stepping back in surprise and horror. As he looked into her eyes they slowly turned back to the glossy crimson he knew them to be.
"Remember always; the mission over your partner, we have to keep incompatibility at a minimum or nothing would matter anymore." Margulis lectured. Horatio stared wide-eyed, his face a myriad of conflicting emotions.
"You. You..."
"I was testing you, at any moment while you were worrying about me the shroud could have come through." Margulis stated matter-of-factly, "Though it was quite entertaining seeing you panic like that. I suppose we could call that your punishment." She said moving past Horatio towards the rift. She smiled.
"Though, it was quite nice of you to come running like that, and the way you spoke so earnestly, are sure you don't want to confess right now?" She laughed, Horatio huffed.
Margulis shook her head, "I guess you didn't fail after all, but that comes later. I'll deal with the rift."
Margulis stepped forward stretching her hand towards the rift. Two dawn-bearing sigils formed before her. "Pierce the sky, with shining light, Light Lance!" She called. Her energy shot into her hand forming on her palm.
"Wait." She said, closing her palm and dispelling the spell. Horatio picked up on the uncertainty inherent voice and followed her gaze.
"What!?" Horatio felt a sudden hotness flush through him, his pulse quickened and adrenaline dumped into his bloodstream. "That's...impossible." Horatio stared unblinkingly at a figure that stood still. A panicked woman, with silver hair and blood-red eyes. And behind her was a dark figure, almost impossible to notice from a distance. A nauseating realisation hit Horatio.
"Sylvia!" He yelled, throwing himself inner direction.
"Horatio wait!" Margulis called out to him.
Horatio pushed his body as fast as it would go, cycling his energy recklessly to push him faster. At late afternoon using this much energy would have adverse effects on him, he knew that, he just couldn't care at this moment, not when his sister could be in danger.
The shroud behind Sylvia held out a hand tenderly, as though it was looking to protect her. Horatio forced himself faster, knowing it was only a front to take her light.
"Don't take its hand!" Horatio yelled, coming closer. "Flauna!" Horatio commanded, forcibly drawing out spirit fire. His unattained body singed against the flame but he kept moving, closing the gap instantaneously.
Horatio's flaming fist punched through the shroud, scattering its shadow and exposing the core. He grabbed hold and pulled the crystal out of its chest.
A shadowy spike darted towards him. He dropped low, dodging it.
Horatio pointed his flaming hand on the ground, using a blast to right himself. He tried to jump back but his legs wouldn't move.
"Dammit, don't you dare stop now!" He cursed.
Another spike came out, skewering Horatio through his shoulder. His fingers flinched for only a second but that was enough for the crystal to slip through.
"Sylvia run!" Horatio felt the shroud's feeders dig into him. He felt his consciousness slipping
He lashed at the shroud, hitting only shadow, until he fell into shadows.