I don't own anything you recognize.
Prepare for anything everything.
---
"Oi, calm down, Boss. Don't go dying me after Peurrin saved all of ye asses, aight?" Blizzard nudged Moji back to sanity, relatively normal sanity at least.
"Who is Peurrin? And where is here anyway?" Moji asked the newborn of cold.
"Peurrin is that dragon you saw, Boss. And here is her stomach." Blizzard's words that didn't make any sense. How could being eaten save them from a multi-gigaton grade bomb?
"Er... Do we have to chest-burst to get out of here? Having to do that to an ally is no good..." Sorin feared.
"Oh, nono. You don't have to, Bosses. Your stay here, and also mine, will end in about a minute. Have plans until then, or ask me some good old question!" Blizzard was cheerful, happier than they thought an element of white, death and all things cold could be.
"Heh," Maybe that was what they needed in this day and age,"Can you tell me about all the things you know about me and Alma?"
"Aye, a good question, Alma is your soul/life force's expression. And first comes Awakening and also Manifestation. You could start with one of 'em or both of 'em. You started with both of 'em Boss!" Blizzard ventured to hover around Moji, orbiting his creator.
"Right, my Awakening is probably... Hm... Elemental powers... What's my Manifestation? This silly albeit very cool white feather cape?" He tugged on the silk as to gesture to it.
"Yep," popping the P, "it's Peurrin, pros of that thing being a draconic magical symbiote." He approved.
"But, how do you know all this? I don't know a single thing but you some to know a lot of things..." Moji said.
"Ah, we all know what Alma is. May it be locked, forgotten or hidden Alma will always be there. Awakening, Manifestation and then one final phase before you become a solid user of Alma is Kindling..."
That was ominous. "Well, I am skipping one thing and that was Unlocking but that is not really important for beginners..."
"We need to know... Hey, Sorin, what are you doing?" He found Sorin to be meditating.
"Unlocking the meaning of life, duh." Oh, ever so Sorin.
"Oi, anyway, Boss, be safe. Kindling is... How can I put this? Instead of you waking up by something else, you are forcing the creature inside you to wake up?" That was difficult to imagine.
"You mean, there's a creature living inside of me?" Blizzard thankfully shook his head, and also shook it up and down?
"It's... Why, I have to do this fast,... More like what kind of person of you are getting turned into a living and breathing a character... What that character looks like I don't know myself. Unlocking is getting your powers to be better and could be theoretically developed, invoked endlessly just like when you lost your hand..." Moji eyed the new limb in a new light. What's it made of anyway?
"And the reason why you couldn't have a five element... Well, let's just say that Peurrin is that element..." An element? Come on now, you have been forthcoming so far, don't go all vague on us all.
"...Dare I ask?" Moji tensed.
"Of course. Peurrin is your Will. And a part of the being I explained in Kindling... That's your Fifth Element." And then there was bright light.
---
"Did they die? I don't even see ashes... Hm, serves them right for not taking this as serious as..." He heard a sound he couldn't describe. It was electric and made the flames spike up in readiness.
"Oh?" Down at the crater, right down on the center, a portal was opening. There were white and black streaks of light.
A disk lit up like a wormhole, "Ah, fresh air! Now, where's that dunce and the trashcan I will punt him in."
They walked out, two people and one spirit, "He's right over there!" Blizzard pointed to the man seeing down the canyon he made.
"You know, I expected this to be a lot more fiery and hellish than just a..." He swiped the ashes away with his shoe.
"Canyon? How big is this anyway?" Sorin said.
"Way more than a kilometer... And it's width... Don't get me started. And hey, Blizzard," Blizzard hummed, "You wanted a name right?"
"Yeah, have you thought of a cool one? Hehe." They smiled. And the person currently only a dozen meter away from them did also.
"Scream for me!"
"Olwen Rex."
---
"What's with this mist?" Judgement asked as if he was faced with a traffic jam instead of a giant wall of gray sickening mist that rose up into the atmosphere.
"Phew, thank the man who thought putting the wall at Fae territory instead of ours. You know how annoying would it be climbing up?" Pawn commented.
"We could just jump on the air, you know? I think it's worse now because it's a ramp instead of a thick and straight wall that we can lean on against and measure where the wall ends, those stairs are no joke." Pawn disagreed.
"Shh... We need to get to the capitol of Grenz fast..." Judgement went in the shade of gray, and the Pawns, all ten of them, followed suit.
This went not unnoticed. While keeping track of things inside was hard, entering and exiting out and in of the mist were different things from the previous statement.
"Hm... He's here... I need to do this quickly. Where's Nifreim? I still feel the connection so he isn't dead nor is he beaten..." Kaiser twirled his staff.
"Nifreim, do you hear me?" Kaiser reached out to the mind of his subordinates.
"Loud as clear, my Majesty. What do you want from me? To hasten it?" And Kaiser heaved out a sigh of, and then exhaled of anger.
"Of course, and faster than possible. Judgement is here." He brought the bombshell and unleashed it.
"Huh... That fast? Very well, my Majesty. I shall finish it up... They have been tougher than I anticipated." Kaiser grunted. Great. Who were these folks rousing trouble in his city, and why has he never heard of them before?
If everything went to plan, everyone of power should have submitted to him when he did that speech a few days back, there were stragglers, yes. But, he did not think that those stragglers would have been able to fight against a Crawler.
He may have to send in another Kommandant. Or himself if need be. Now though, it's time for action. "Let's see how strong Judgement became in the time we were separated."
Kaiser clicked his claws on and with each other. "Yes... Let's see if that traitor still is as strong as that day..."
"Raaaaghhh!!!"
"Be wary." The planted their feet securely in the city street. They didn't waste one more second before they launched themselves back into speed.
As the town blurred, they made their way over the rubble and cars lining the way to the capitol. "Damn it, I have visited these place and it now looks depressing... Did the Fae take over or something?"
"No Pawn, it is not. But that's probably a joke." Judgement was correct. It was.
Fae territory was marked by a purple hue instead of a gray one, and it was not even similar to that of the living world. An alien world even more alien than Hellstar Remina.
"Rauuu!!!" But, maybe, their inhabitants were more of a normal breed of horror than the sun-eating monster.
"Hm... Lemme take care of that." Pawn gave out a punch towards the growling Shambler.
The Shambler splattered against the nearest building. "Heh, weaker than even those orcs..."
"Hm. There's a lot of them though... And I feel that thing was one of the weakest of their race..." Judgement grimaced. What a bother. They won't be a problem except for being a time-waster.
"Boss, you can leave it to us..." Pawn backed his leader up.
"Yeah, even our weakest recruit back at the nation are a match to this Shamblers. Being faster than eye and boulder destroying does that." My oh my, he was as confident as ever.
They weren't as strong as any of the Cardinals but with these types of opponents, they might as well be. And now, there weren't just four but eight of them, excluding Judgement, "Very well, I shall pray for you to rescue whoever you can and beat back the odds. Good luck."
"Aye, sir!"
---
Back to Sorin, Olwen, Moji'n, Nifrei'n and co'n...
"Freeze!" An entire column of ice rose up against the man charging at them. It was fast, quicker than expected so as it the pillars of ice cut through the wall of the crater and into the open sky.
They delegated their positions, Sorin to be upfront and tank the attacks while Moji withered down Nifreim with whatever he could get his hands on.
"Will... I wonder what that does as an element... You know anything, Olwen?" He asked as Sorin smashed the ice in right on the fireman's face.
"You won't trap me that easily!" He wasn't damaged. Not one hit. Even if he got hit at all.
"Then why did we trap you in the first place!" And the battle resumed as intense as ever, a messy one that consistently caused entire building-sized imprints of fists on the wall that evidently cored through the cliff face.
And that was only the fists, the sword slashes and the gouts of black flames, orange light made out of speed that were being thrown around weren't little either.
Cuts. Slashes. Detonation. Explosions. And from all that, destruction. "I can't get a read on those two mess..."
"No, sorry, Peurrin won't let me know... My guesses only nets us the information of it being like any generic energy manipulation that those supposed 'reality warpers' throw around to each other..." In short, Olwen shook his head side to side.
"Infuriating... I guess it's to be expected. He is a part of the being still sleeping inside of me. Still unworthy, damn it." He grabbed Olwen and screamed for Sorin to...
"Move!" Sorin jumped out of the way while stabbing Nifreim, using him as a clean, make-shift get away.
Naturally, it didn't really dig in into Nifreim's skin. It had pushed down Nifreim just enough to get covered in frozen solid sheet of ice like a sweet, fresh popsicle, amped by Sorin's own weapon.
Moji himself had head-started on the thawing of this harder than the naturally impossible ice. 'This isn't as good as an upgrade as I thought... I can store five elements but I can only use two like before... Time to use Will... I hope this hurts... For Nifreim and not me... God, not me."
One hand biting down on Olwen and another one holding down the oddly fluttering element, it was white and it was glitching, a bismuth out-of-focus and out-of-color.
It's attack name that Moji decided was none other than, "Fallen Will." He did not think of anything else that suited it better. It was said to be Will, and he threw the Will down towards Nifreim.
Let's just hope it wasn't a sort of healing potion. That would be terrible. "How about a taste of your own firepower!"
Energy, pure undistilled energy were weaves upon the fabric of reality and burned, crushed everything it touched. Was it light? No, it couldn't be...
It was a light that behaved like the lightbulb from a flashlight. It dug into the ground for as many as five kilometers. And it's fist was a tenth of how much it pierced through. "Wow, I feel tingles in my whole body..."
He shivered. It wasn't a shaking caused by the elements of cold and winter. Dare they say, the shaking came from body, mind, soul and spirit... Of excitement.
It was regressing, receding back into the hole in reality that was spawned above Moji's hand. He swore to God, right there and then, he saw a fist at the end of the light... Was that Peurrin or the entirety of the being that Olwen foreshadowed?
"Whoa, what was that just now?" Sorin moved over to Moji's side as they landed on the edge of the old crater.
"I... I don't have any solid ideas..."
"Heh, good, it wouldn't be as magnificent as if we did."
"You and your damn games!"
"Hey hey, Bosses! Calm down!"
---
To a place that was unknown and unheard of from both Company and Judgement except for only Nifreim, someone was sitting down.
Nifreim was utterly relaxed. And no, this place wasn't the cave that Moji made with his Will, it was dark and gloom but that wasn't because he was deep inside the ground.
There were two of them. One, the true human form of Nifreim. The second person inside of Nifreim's Mind Scape...
It was no regular being. That thing was the reason why Nifreim had his whole body be imprisoned itself in black fire. It's name was...
Azi Dahaka, Corrupted Hydra King.
"Embarrassing..."
"Hohogogoggo... A bit, yes." Nifreim twirled his fingers around in a circular, rolling motion. If maybe they were high schoolers, it would have been romantic even.
That sounds like a good spin-off, no?
"Sigh... When are you actually going to get serious and tear these fools a new hole?" Azi Dahaka grumbled.
"Ah... Probably after that man punched me down here..." Nifreim explained.
"You cam handle them right? They are strong enough to destroy enough and escape into orbit but..." He sighed.
"I know. I know. But, you would understand that... They feel like younger versions of us all... Feels a bit bad to punch em down like this..." He then whispered. "Even though it's kinda fun."
"How is Kaiser going to feel about this?" Azi Dahaka said, and that's where it got somewhat serious.
"Hah! Kaiser will understand... He very much will..." He smiled deviously.
"Are you sure?" Azi Dahaka's unreal brow was lifted, aware of the answer already bubbling up inside of her master's chest...
"Of course he will. After all..."
---
"Playtime's over..."