Tale I: Dazzling the Stain

  Synopsis:

  Karkus, an easygoing man, is almost killed during the process of transfer to Omneira where he is treated as an experiment subject in finding the truth behind Earth’s deviation from its Destiny’s course. So Trakun, a Deity of Fate, can observe him, he is tasked to protect Cerea from an upcoming harm that will soon befall her to which he accepts nonchalantly. He is used at guarding people. However, he must do this while controlling himself from being overwhelmed of the effect of Relapse, a disease where he relives his memories of the past arbitrarily and with a miniscule of his original strength.

  Cerea, as a promising young adventurer and a protégé of a prominent figure in Zestential, finds herself bored with the hunting missions that floods the Quest Board. Tremors are displacing monsters, making them migrate to another place; stopping them from entering the towns, and farms is the top-priority. While urging the receptionist to give her a different type of quest, she is then tasked to patrol the cave’s surrounding where her teammate is last seen.

  Once she is on the cave’s jaws, she meets her teammate and with him, is the person she always see in her dreams after she was lost in the thicket of Verriad Forest.

  Chapter 1: Descent of Inevitability; Part 1

  The numerous ethereal threads around are writhing again. Spencer, the middle-aged balding man sitting in front of me has these threads attached to him. Some are inside his skin, others are on his quality-brand grimy shirt, faded jeans, and sneakers; all are the size of his index finger.

  On his bare head, however, there is a lone thread as long as his forearm. One thread after another sprouts making him look as if he has a newfound hair, an uncanny kind. They continue to ascend until they reach the lone thread; then they distance themselves from each other, and starts to revolve. They eventually form a sphere with each thread slithering like a snake, then it swallows the tip of the lone thread soundlessly and compresses till it becomes the size of a thumb.

  As I wait for him to speak, the sphere begins to throb, sucking in the threads that formed it and the lone thread.

  “I am leaving my daughter to you,” Spencer says, resting his bearded chin on his hand. “Take care of her.” He is the leader of the fifteen-person group I am currently guarding.

  “Are you sure about this?” I ask. I stop thinking about the threads. They fade until I can see them no more. But they are always there, I can just choose whether they appear or not.

  Spencer nods. “We’ve got the guns from the bar you’ve told me. It even has a rocket launcher.” He gestures at me to look at Blake who was sleeping on the other side of the road’s curb. “The young man wants to use a strong weapon in his last stand, and he is the only one who could use it without staggering so I gave it to him. He was so happy that he cried.”

  Although Blake acted manly most of the time, today he sleeps in a fetal position, and the skin around his eyes are reddened. The same goes for the other people who are with us. They sleep on the asphalt road, atop a rusty abandoned car, or beside the curb. All with some sort of gun with them.

  “My offer still stands, Spencer,” I say. “If you agree and head north to join the government-supported group, I will expel the miasma and hinder the monsters.”

  “You don’t have to. In this catastrophe, sooner or later we will die. Death from diseases, from malnutrition, from that cursed miasma, and from those vicious monsters. I think we’re already lucky enough to live this long. If you didn’t come back then, we would’ve been dead a long time ago.”

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Won’t you change your mind? I suppose I have no choice.”

  “I’m glad you understand. We hid ourselves for a very long time, so fighting those unforgiving monsters will perhaps—”

  “You don’t have to say more. I have met many groups that did the same — I’ll let you be.” I remove the glove from my left hand where light pulses. “But I promised your daughter just this morning that you’ll live.”

  Spencer’s face lost color, and clenches his arms as he drops his shoulders. He can do nothing against me so this is the right action to do.

  Yellow light glows on my left hand as it forms a crescent moon and a sheep. The symbols surges an arm-sized replica and disintegrates into powder which forms a transparent outline of my body. Furthermore, the original symbols on the back of my hand transforms into a stream of light and runs to my heart. These in a span of a heartbeat.

  The light distributes throughout my body and disperses to my immediate surroundings becoming a beam toward Spencer and the thirteen people that are still sleeping, and then small spheres of light shoots through the beam soundlessly. Spencer falls to the ground. Together with the others, he will not be waking up anytime soon.

  As I look up, the purple miasma, the harbinger of monsters, is looming over me. The last time I looked at it, it was still on the horizon. But now, it’s just a few kilometers away from us. It is pushing out the stray clouds above me, painting the blue sky darker.

  I leave the unconscious group and run further the asphalt road to reach the miasma.

  The miasma touches the sky as it saunters, and ascends much higher. I stop and take a look. Inside, there are countless lightning striking at the same time; swift gusts that cut buildings and trees; a hail battering the roads, and melts instantly, flooding the area beneath; and despite unseen, there is a decaying poison inside. It will definitely kill Spencer’s group if I leave it alone.

  For this one, I cannot consciously form the symbols to use. Instead, I think of something that will expel it. Obscure symbols forms one after another, creates a replica which turns into powder that outlines my body with each pulse. The originals flow to a stream connecting my left hand and heart. But this time, the light does not disperse throughout my body, nor does it go outside my body. The light becomes whiter light stream and returns to my left hand.

  Once the symbol formations stops, I aim my left hand to the miasma and make the threads appear again. Millions of it writhe violently inside the miasma, with some clustering together. Further and higher into the miasma, there is a vortex of ethereal threads which carries a colossal slow-throbbing sphere. A shockwave releases whenever the sphere throbs, fortunately, it’s ineffective against me.

  I focus my sight on the sphere and adjust my aim. An array of magic materializes in front of me, and by clenching my hand, it bursts out a short, single wave of light. The wave clears the miasma it passes through, it expands, and hits the colossal sphere. A huge explosion occurs, leaving a wide, gaping hole in the sky. The million threads ceases from moving and disintegrates. The miasma also ceases from moving, and vanishes as the wind blows. I stop thinking about the ethereal threads.

  Chapter 1; Part 1 End.