“Aliya!” Erik sprinted out of the treeline into the pouring rain. He spotted Regulus on the ground where she was standing before. The shifting of a large creature beside him drew his attention away from the gun.
A deep growl that sounded just like the thunder they’d been hearing emitted from the massive dragon that held Aliya completely encased in its claws. Silver scales shimmered in the electricity that sparked from its maw. One eye was scarred closed by a claw mark, the other was a vivid green filled with hatred as it looked down at Erik.
“Tierney!” The hiss that came from the dragon made her identity unmistakable, it was Mistral. “So you did help him betray us, didn’t you?” Her grip on Aliya tightened until Aliya let out a yelp of pain. “If he didn’t need you alive I’d crush you right now!” Mistral let up and snapped her attention to Erik. “I’ll just have to settle for destroying everyone in your little crew!”
Mistral moved with lighting speed for a beast of her size and she pinned Erik to the ground. Erik tried to pry her claw from him, but was not strong enough to make her even flinch. She slowly put more weight on him, wanting him to suffer as she slowly crushed him.
“Mistral! Stop!” Aliya yelled in a panic. “Don’t kill him!”
“Your commands won’t work on me Aliya!” Mistral’s eye settled on her. “As much as I despise the idea of it, I’m tethered to the only being that directly opposes your voice’s influence! My connection to him negates your commands.”
“What?!” Aliya felt that same sense of fear welling up inside her chest she had felt in the Imperial Research Facility.
“You need her alive, right?!” Erik choked out. It was getting harder to breathe as the weight on his chest increased. “I’m Aliya’s tether! If you kill me she’ll turn into a Fomorian the moment you get near a city.”
“You tethered with a human?” Mistral scoffed in disbelief. She didn’t let up on the weight she had placed on Erik but she stopped increasing pressure on him until she could confirm it was true. “Scum like this no less?”
“Yes, Erik is my tether!” Aliya looked down at Erik and glanced at Regulus, that wasn’t too far from him. Erik followed her eyes and as soon as he spotted it he started to reach for it, but it was just out of reach for him.
“No wonder he wants you to return to him,” Mistral closed her eye and shook her head. “He’s obsessed with you. He’s jealous.”
“Who are you talking about?” Aliya was confused by the strange sense of terror that she was feeling every time Mistral spoke about him. She didn’t want to know the answer to that question. Every instinct told her not to ask, but she had to keep Mistral from noticing what Erik was trying to do.
“You can’t be serious Aliya, how many humans have you ever tethered with?” Mistral groaned bitterly. “I’m talking about the first.”
“What?! He’s still alive?! That can’t be! Zephyr and Lios told me he was dead! That Lios and Captain Thatch killed him together!” Alya couldn’t remember why she was so afraid, the fog in her mind was still there. She only had the stories that her brothers told her about the nightmare she could never recall.
“He can’t be killed! He’s immortal!” Mistral grumbled bitterly. “If I knew he was posing as the head researcher I would never have sent an assassin to try and kill him. History is beginning to repeat. He’s puppeting the Imperial Family and he’ll soon have you in his grasp once more.”
“I see,” Aliya looked down, trying not to cry. She saw that Erik was straining to reach Regulus and it was just barely out of his reach. She focused her mana to move the water on the ground and it slipped across the mud into his hand. “From what I remember, the only thing that can oppose him is me and Regulus’s ability to break a tether.”
Erik picked up on the hint. He’d never used Regulus to break a tether before but something in the back of his mind told him that it was similar to Aliya’s Glyph Breaker just condensed into Regulus. He hadn’t the slightest idea why the glyph came to mind so perfectly clear despite seeing it once. He was uncertain if it would actually work by shooting Mistral but he didn’t think Aliya would encourage it if it didn’t work.
“Now you understand,” Mistral looked down again to see Erik aiming at her head.
“Understand this!” Erik pulled the trigger with a smirk. Mistral let out a deep growl as her head was knocked. The drifting glow of the visible mana on the wind vanished.
“You bastard, that won’t save you!” Mistral dug her claws into the dirt around Erik so he couldn’t try to worm his way out of her loosened grip.
“You don’t have to listen to his orders now you aren’t tethered to him!” Aliya thought it would be enough to get her to back off once her tether was broken.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m not bound to him, he has April!” Mistral hissed. “It’s bold of you to assume that I don’t want to take revenge for what this little rat has done to me and my guild!” Mistral put more weight on Erik causing him to wince in pain. “I’d be here even if he didn’t send me! I’m taking you two with me to Belfaygor Tower so that I can be rid of you both forever!”
“Storm Dragon!” Sigmis stood tall looking up at her with a dead serious look in his eyes. With the dense mana gone he could see his surroundings once more and his opponent came into much clearer view. His internal temperature was rising rapidly, so much so that the rain falling onto him immediately turned to steam. “I am going to give you one chance to release my companions and you can leave here unscathed.”
“A Celestial?” Mistral wavered a moment. The amount of heat he was putting off began melting the ground beneath him. The air was growing even more humid by the second making it hard to breathe. The thought of what might happen to April should Mistral die flashed across her mind. The fear of leaving her in the hands of the Empire turned her stomach even more. “I won’t back down!” Mistral growled as she spread her wings. She didn’t want to take off right away, as it would leave her vulnerable to attack.
“I figured as much,” Sigmis dug his foot into the molten, cracked ground. He was controlling how the ground was cracking under the heat. He kicked up a long thin stone that was red hot. He gripped one end and used his other hand to flatten the edge between his thumb and his palm. He swung it outward and extracted as much heat out of it as he could, resulting in a jagged blade made of obsidian.
“Sigmis, please try not to kill her!” Aliya pleaded.
“I won’t,” Sigmis shifted his weight.
Mistral blinked and he was gone. She looked around the clearing for him until a sharp pain shot up through her shoulder. She looked down to see her arm that was holding Erik down was falling away while Sigmis pulled Erik to his feet. The stump of Mistral’s arm burned with searing pain that amplified tenfold in just seconds causing her to let out a roar.
Before Erik could prepare to fight, Sigmis shoved him underneath the claw that clutched Aliya. Mistral released Aliya to clutch the wound that was burning hot to the touch causing her claw to recoil. Erik barely caught his balance in time to catch Aliya. He winced at impact and dropped to one knee, finally realizing the effects of Mistral trying to crush him.
“This isn’t over!” Mistral’s roar echoed across the sky as lightning shot across the clouds. She took off and began to fly away.
“Are you okay?” Erik put on a smile to hide the pain as he looked at Aliya.
“Am I okay?” Aliya scoffed, reaching out and barely poking his ribs. He couldn’t maintain his poker face and groaned. She scowled at him, “You got the worst of it!”
“Better me than you,” a pained grin filled his face as he let Aliya go only to wrap his arms around himself. His pounding heart only filled his chest with more pain now that Mistral was gone and he was calming down.
“Radiant fire shines deep within,” Sigmis closed the gap and extended his free hand to cast a healing magic arte. “One will find themselves in the true flame, Hearth.” Warmth spread throughout Erik and Aliya’s bodies, easing their pain as the damage they’d been dealt by Mistral’s crushing grip faded away. “How are you two feeling now?” Sigmis asked with a warm smile.
“Way better, thanks!” Erik grinned, climbing to his feet. He picked up Regulus from the ground where he dropped it to catch Aliya. He started brushing the mud off of it.
“Thank you very much for saving us,” Aliya smiled at Sigmis. It was a strange sensation for her to feel as warm as she did and not feel some sort of sting in her normally cold body. It was a nice change especially in the rain that was falling.
“Here,” Erik offered Regulus back to Aliya. A deal was a deal and it was still hers. Aliya reached for it and paused. She looked from the gun to him. He just looked at her confused as to why she would hesitate.
“Keep it for now,” Aliya retracted her hand and looked away. Erik was stunned she would let him keep it. “It’s not really my style and I think you’ll make better use of it. If I ask for it back-.”
“Then it’s yours,” Erik finished for her. He grinned feeling like he was building at least a little bit of trust with her. He holstered the gun in his belt pouch. “Let’s get out of this storm. I’m pretty sure the cliff is just through those trees.” Erik pointed to the edge of the clearing that was pretty similar to the direction they were traveling already. It was reassuring that they were on the right path.
“Erik,” Aliya’s tender voice caused him to stop dead in his tracks, nearly slipping in the mud. “When we meet with Zephyr, can you tell him about what happened here? You too, Sigmis? I can feel some of it slipping from my mind already…”
“Yeah, sure thing,” Erik’s excitement quickly turned to confusion. He had a lot of questions about the person Aliya and Mistral were talking about.
“I thought I saw a curse embedded in your mana,” Sigmis sighed heavily. Her mana was always so strange to him, constantly in flux, but the curse was more apparent in that moment. “It’s barely there but I can see it in your mana. A memory curse never can truly be dispelled.”
“A memory curse?” Erik just kept getting more questions about Aliya.
“Don’t worry about it, I've had it for centuries now,” Aliya waved it off as she started walking in the direction Erik pointed out. Erik and Sigmis followed, wanting to get out of the rain. “It’s only surrounding the first human I tethered to and that’s why I need you two to tell Zephyr. I don’t know how much of what I discussed with Mistral will stick or if the curse will erase it, but Zephyr will know more so he can answer questions.”
At that moment, Erik saw a face in his memories. A sadistic smile of jagged teeth. Golden eyes that had an eerie glow. Long, black and white hair that was split evenly down the middle. A sinister laugh that he could recall hearing in the research center. He’d never seen that man before but he could see it so clearly as though it were his own memory. He realized it wasn’t his, because the fear he felt he could see on Aliya’s face. It was her memory.
“Aliya, even if you can’t remember you know who it is right?” Erik tiptoed around the question. He wanted to know and the way she talked implied she still had some sort of idea who it was. He knew this person was the one that ruined her trust in humans as tethers. He wanted to know the name to go with the face she feared most that he saw.
“The First Arch-Druid of The Order,” Aliya couldn’t remember his face or his name but she could recall the stories that Zephyr told her when she was freed. She remembered fighting alongside her brothers to stop The First Order’s reign of terror over the Spirits, but she couldn’t remember the battle with the First Arch-Druid that she was told she was present for. So she took Zephyr’s word that he was dead.
“Jack Mystic is still alive?!” Erik couldn’t wrap his head around it. “But it’s been over 200 years since The First Order! Now he’s working in The Empire?!”
“Mystic?” Sigmis stopped. The hatred in his voice was the same as when he spoke of Alcor. Aliya and Erik looked back at Sigmis. The look on Sigmis’s face caused them to freeze.
“You know who he is?” Erik was afraid to know the answer.
“He’s the reason all the other Elemental Celestials from the Age of Darkness were wiped out of existence. Mystic is the reason Alcor betrayed me!”
“That was over ten thousand years ago,” Aliya whispered in shock.
“Mistral said he was immortal,” Erik knew he was dangerous from the stories he’d heard about The First Order as a child, but knowing Jack Mystic was immortal and had been around for thousands of years terrified him.
“Zephyr will be able to connect the dots,” Aliya tried to shake off the dread in the air. “Let’s put a pause on this until we meet with him again. It’s likely I’ll end up forgetting this and it hurts the more I try to cling onto this information.” She put a hand on her head feeling a dull ache setting in.
Aliya started moving again. Sigmis and Erik exchanged looks of concern for Aliya. Erik quickly followed trying to get to the point where he could lead the way again. Sigmis took a deep breath and tucked the obsidian blade he had crafted under his sash, soon trailing behind them as usual.
A/N: Art will be added to this chapter at a later date but I didn't want to leave you hanging if you came from the live reading on Arcade Allies. I leave cliffhangers for a reason teehee :3
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