It seemed like Tai had slept off after lunch in the afternoon and woke up in the evening.
It was odd, as the sword wraith would usually take him on rudimentary sorcery or sword techniques.
Closing his eyes, the teenager tried to call forth the ancient wraith, but strangely, he could not feel anything.
"Weird."
Through out the day, Tai lazed about studying runic sorcery, destroying his almost finished batch of pencils, and killing one or two mundane beasts.
An ordinary day for him.
But he could not shake off the weird feeling that something was horribly, terribly wrong.
Claire walked up to the deck of the majestic flying ship and sat down beside the red haired teenager.
Tai smiled lightly as he waved.
"Hi."
Claire nodded at him and waved back.
Then awkward silence followed.
Tai wasn't really a people person to start conversations, and Claire did not even have vocal cords to begin with.
However, while they sat down in idle silence, Claire began to twitch.
And twitch.
And twitch.
Soon, she was shaking vigorously.
Tai looked worried a little bit at first, but when she began to shake, he got worried.
"Nikolah!, I think something is wrong with Claire!!"
Claire suddenly began to shake even more vigorously, then she suddenly stopped.
"Claire?.. a..are you okay?"
Tai was afraid to touch the blonde girl just in case she was dead.
However, Claire's eyes suddenly shot open.
"Three fools lay dead in ashes on a hill of gold, one in search of vanity and another in search of glory."
Tai frowned slightly.
"What?"
What unsettled the red haired teenager was not the fact that she was talking.
It was because he had heard it somewhere before.
However, the blonde girl did not stop there as she began to scream at loud decibels far above that of a ordinary human.
"Three fools lay dead in ashes on a hill of gold, one in search of vanity and another in search of glory."
"Three Fools Lay Dead In Ashes On A Hill Of Gold, One In Search Of Vanity And Another In Search Of Glory."
"THREE FOOLS LAY DEAD IN ASHES ON A HILL OF GOLD, ONE IN SEARCH Of VANITY AND ANOTHER IN SEARCH OF GLORY."
"THREE FOOLS LAY DEAD IN ASHES ON A HILL OF GOLD, ONE IN SEARCH Of VANITY AND ANOTHER IN SEARCH OF GLORY."
"THREE FOOLS LAY DEAD IN ASHES ON A HILL OF GOLD, ONE IN SEARCH Of VANITY AND ANOTHER IN SEARCH OF GLORY."
Tai frowned, he had a really strong feeling of déjà vu.
But he feared for his teammate more, so pushing away the weird feeling gnawing at his heart, the red haired teenager shouted.
"Nikolah!, Where are you?!!"
In an instant, Nikolah appeared out of nowhere.
"We have to get her to the highest point on the island!"
Soon, the three had arrived at the highest point on the entire Island.
The Black Nest itself.
It was a twisted mass of gargantuan branches that had a golden light gleaming from it's middle.
Without thinking much, the three climbed up the hill and placed the twitching body on the hill.
Cold sweat ran down Nikolah's spine ad she tried to wake the blonde girl up.
"Claire! Come back Claire!!, Clarence Voyante!!"
But Tai had a great feeling of dread creep up his heart.
'Why did it all seem so familiar?'
He felt like the exact same thing had already happened.
Soon, Claire had come to as Nikolah sighed in relief.
As Tai went over to check on Claire, Nikolah suddenly tensed up.
Then white ice shot towards him and black flames came from behind at the same time, luckily Tai had felt something wrong and decided to take the left path.
"What the fuck?!"
Tai fell on his behind in terror.
In front of him, a gargantuan black dragon with gleaming obsidian scales stared at the group of three.
It opened it's maw, and everything went black.
Tai had died once again.
***
Tai woke up very early in the morning.
It was another day on the Black Nest after all.
For the past few days, the red haired teenager had been slaughtering mundane level beasts.
These were beasts that had absolutely no powers whatsoever.
They were actually nothing more than oversized animals without energy cores.
He had become quite used to using a sword, and had almost achieved the first step of runic sorcery.
As his daily hobby, Tai closed his eyes and began circulating his energy towards the pencil.
A creak followed by a thud, then the pencil crumbled into dust.
Tai sighed and shook his head.
"Yet another one."
Then he froze, an awful feeling gnawing at his heart.
"Why do I feel like I've done this all before."