Some time during the war.
"Hold on!"
Along Waynies arms protruded glass shards, shaped like tears, dangling down from little slopes on his sweater. He kept holding his arms stretched, his back slightly bent as if he was about to take a shit.
One of the glassy objects, the 'Tear of a wistful comrade' dangling just from about below his left shoulder vibrated quietly at a steady pace. The object was made, just like all the other glass tears, to alert Waynie to danger. This particular tear warned him of comrades with hostile intentions.
Waynie shivered at the thought what the guard would do to him, once he found out the secret.
The man in front of Waynie was not a comrade, but a guard in the service of Ki-Song, the all-powerful sovereign of the Song domain, and one of the last two remaining rulers of the two worlds. The reason why the drop-shaped object had started to react was none other than that the Spell, for no other virtue than being a human, considered the guard an ally of Waynie. Or perhaps, because they both lived in the Song domain.
Regardless, Waynie could hardly tell him that the 'Tear of a wistful comrade' considered the soldier a threat without the soldier growing, likewise, wearier of Waynie.
The guard did not like to wait for an answer, and grew more alarmed by every second of silence.
"It's just an alarm." Waynie decided to come clean and not to escalate the situation. At his calm explanation, the guard's face turned into a grimace. The soldier's brain was working in overdrive to understand the situation and as far as he was concerned, Waynie could've been a spy and the glass shard might as well have been vibrating because it was about to explode.
He moved a step forward and tried to grab after the tear, but Waynie just took a step back and stayed out of reach.
"Can you back off? I don't like you get close to my shit." Waynie chose to be confrontational. The reason was being that the glass tears were precious to him, and he did neither want to submit, leave, hand over or see any of the fragile pieces broken. The soldier, agitated by this, pursued.
A small wound opened on the guard's face across his cheek. Waynie had materialized a tiny glass knife in his hand and scratched the man a little. A warning, to not escalate the situation further by approaching him.
Waynie was not stupid. Normal laws didn't apply in the dream world. Not to the same extent as in the waking world. But the man in front of him, had the backing of Ki-Song. And messing with the guard meant threatening Ki-Song.
However, Waynie wasn't some nobody. He was a master in his own right. And Boss… well, Boss, or rather his boss was Chi Cho, the small butterfly. A beautiful female calamity in the service of the exalted blood goddess Sheishan, one of the highest-ranking daughters of Ki-Song herself.
Chi Cho was a prospect, in line to become another daughter in the future. And a survivor of the Forgotten Shore, a harrowing place only a hundred people alive had ever laid their eyes on.
The elite warriors that survived this place were so famous that the government of the waking world had made a movie about them that still charted among the most successful classics of all time. Not that Chi Cho was featured in it, but she had still survived it.
And now she was in the process of becoming a Saint herself.
Which was the root cause of Waynie's predicament. He had been supposed to follow her in the Nightmare before the entire mound they were standing on had collapsed on top of it. Well, that wasn't the true reason. The true reason was that he was actually scared. He could've gone but had wavered too long in his feelings of inadequacy. Perhaps it was for the best, yet he could not bring himself to leave. Boss wasn't alone. A cohort of eight strong members of Ki-Song accompanied her. And the soldiers present were rightfully concerned about their return. Or at least that was what Waynie believed the reason was that they were here.
However, after Waynie had scratched the soldier, the atmosphere in the giant mud pit had become eerily serious.
The hostile, that the 'Tear of a wistful comrade' had warned him about wasn't alone. The shard was still ringing as the other guards were approaching. One wearing a helmet with a crimson crest that felt like it had fallen out of time. A memory of a long gone civilization. This man had to be their leader.
Before the situation could escalate any further, Waynie tried to explain the situation. "I'm actually here to visit the nightmare."
The newly arrived head guard assessed what was happening. The guard that Waynie had talked to earlier had already drawn his sword. His eyes observed the always awkwardly positioned Waynie from head to toe and then finally demanded of him to drop all of his tears to the ground. Something, that Waynie wasn't going to do, for the simple reason that if he did, the glass tears would break the moment they were no longer connected to his body. The rest was routine.
A tiny piece of glass crushed the annoying guard's windpipe immediately. All it took was a flick from Waynie's finger. For a split second another drop, the "Tear of impending doom" took a ruby red color.
Then a handful of splinters shred the 'captains' face and he dropped on his ass. Waynie sent out two more shards to incapacitate the legs and arms of the two remaining warriors. They were no problem.
The leader slowly lifted himself up again, his hands held up high, his face a bloody mess. Eyes and nose shredded from deep wounds, covered behind a stream of blood. His voice was lisping from his shredded lips. "You really think you will get away with this?"
Waynie somberly contemplated the question for a moment. "You guys made two mistakes. First, you messed with me without knowing who I was. My boss is in that nightmare. And she serves Sheishan. Which means you have crossed her. It's not I who has to wonder how I will get away with this, but you. I for my part, will just go home after this and have a cup of tea."
The head guard who had been full of confidence a moment ago was now all but reduced to a state of terror.
However, Waynie's words had barely reached him. Glass shrapnel buried deep into his face caused him excruciating pain that was so great that it would've killed any mundane person. But the head guard wasn't a mundane. He was a master and a proud warrior of Ki-Song. His right hand dropped down, a spiked steel ball dropped on the floor, still connected to the soldier's hand by a chain, a morning star. "You're mistaken about one thing, stranger. It is for I and my men serve no other than Song Eunbin. A saint who receives the utmost loyalty of Ki Song. I understand that you are too strong to beat. But would you leave me alive, considering the trouble it will cause you if I die?"
Waynie tilted his head in confusion at the head guard's words. He didn't know who Song Eubin was. And he felt little empathy for the soldiers. Most of all, the 'Tear of a wistful comrade' was still ringing, telling him of impending danger.
"And if I let you live, we just all walk away and nobody will know about this?"
Waynie wasn't sure if he could trust them, but he figured, it didn't hurt to ask. Besides, the leader of the guards seemed strong enough to give him a hard time. And if there was one thing Waynie hated, it was to pick fights against people who stood any chance against him.
The head guard, however, was too exhausted for this type of negotiation. "You killed one of my men. Of course I must report this. But you'll not be in nearly as much trouble as you will be when I die. Also there is no chance that you'll get away with..."
The head guard never managed to finish his sentence, because Waynie had already cut his throat. The man had been a threat, but Waynie's special condition meant, that he either had to fight fast, or he would be in trouble. Waynie walked over to the other two incapacitated guards and executed them as well. Now all the witnesses were gone.
Then the monotone ringing from his armpit made Waynie turn around in confusion. 'Huh'. The 'Tear of a wistful comrade' was still vibrating. Waynie's eyes landed on the head guard again and then his massive morning star almost shattered into his left arm. At the last second, Waynie jumped back, all without changing his slightly bent position and kicked his right foot into the reemergent sword arm of his adversary. 'How is he alive?'
"See, I'm quite resilient, you know." The man with the crested helmet answered his question without Waynie even asking. "I think I can guess your flaw as well. It's those shards, isn't it? If they break, you die."
Waynie grinned, whilst slowly creating more and more shrapnel of glass between his fingers. He wasn't impervious to the sharp pieces himself, but years of use of this trick had made his shredded hands thick as leather "What an interesting idea."
In truth, a lot of people presumed that the glass tears were Waynie's flaw. And it wasn't that far from the truth either. However, this unwanted misunderstanding had only led to them often breaking in the past. An outcome that Waynie was no longer willing to tolerate in his life. After all, being a master made him one of the strongest people in the two worlds. Why should he bend to anyone? Well, the man he was fighting right now might have very well just thought the same thing about themself.
Another time the morning star flew in his direction, the guard with the crested helmet just going with a straight horizontal swing for the tears. Waynie stumbled backwards and threw more glass shrapnel at the enemy. He couldn't hold his balance and softly dropped to the ground, his arms and body still bent forward. The glass tears, however, were safe! If someone was watching the fight from the outside, they might have thought that Waynie wasn't taking it seriously.
"You won't be keeping those for long." Glass pieces had created tiny cuts all over the soldier's body. The wounds were so many that a red pool was forming on the ground within the soldier's shadow. For a moment, Waynie couldn't help to think that this man with his ability to endure blood loss would have made a quite good match for a subordinate of Sheishan. If he wasn't already serving another daughter. Anyways, it wasn't like it mattered at this point. Waynie would not give him that chance. At least if he could actually defeat the guy. But how? Shallow wounds did not seem to work and even crushing his throat had failed. The situation called for a longer weapon. Something that could actually cut deep. Waynie had been in situations like these multiple times when traversing the dream realm that was occupied by dreadful nightmare creatures capable of withstanding terrible wounds. But it rarely had been an issue with humans before. Now, Waynie was, like most Awakend, in possession of a small number of memories, objects granted by the Spell that he could materialize at will.
The object he thought to call upon now was the 'Phantom Grasp'. A translucent blade that seemed to phase in and out of reality. It required a tremendous amount of soul essence to wield and was a gift of Waynie's younger brother who was a mere Awakend and didn't have the capability to make proper use of it. Waynie himself hated to use the weapon, because it always left him exhausted and gasping for air. Nevertheless, a man had to do, what a man had to do. Still sitting on the ground, the sword appeared in his hand. As the guard moved forward, Waynie phased the translucent sword out of reality and phased it back inside the guard's head. Where bones, brain and blood vessels had been previously, the Phantom's Grasp now occupied that space, and the other parts had nowhere to go anymore but to explode out of the head. The entire accident left a terrible spectacle and Waynie found his clothes to be completely ruined. The matter was all over his precious tears as well. But the 'Tear of a wistful comrade' had finally grown silent. And then, the guard fell on his knees and onto the ground just inches away from Waynie's tear drops.
Waynie released Phantoms Grasp and got up from the ground utterly drained. 'I really have to get an alternative to this sword'.
In the end, it didn't matter, a prolonged fight was not something he could survive.
Because his actual flaw was much more severe than simply dealing with those glass shards. Which happened to be all unscathed after all.
Waynie did not want to leave the location of the nightmare seed, but seeing the dead soldiers on the ground he did not feel like he could stay any longer in this place either.