Year 526 A.B.
Hurried footsteps followed by the bloodlusted, thirsty howls of enticed apparitions fill the hallways of the bunker.
“We can’t run forever,”
Nina yells while firing waves behind her. The funneled wall of spirits is dented many times but quickly reforms. With no attacks in her arsenal that can destroy them all at once without preparation, any gaps created in their ranks are quickly replaced by such rushed attempts.
Anni takes over.
“Did you hear m-!”
Sherwin, the only one seemingly winded by their sprint, struggles to speak.
“Yes, but most of these are tier 1’s and 2’s, meaning that they can phase through any space around us to attack! If we stand still in a tight space like this, we’re just asking for them to exploit that! We just need an open space!”
“These bunkers were a rushed job. That’s why the design is so simple and clustered. The largest room, which all other paths eventually lead to, is the cafeteria. But Xing and the others are there.”
Sherwin’s eyes fly open in surprise at Rai’s detailed response.
“So you can talk!”
Anni punches his arm in time with every word that leaves her mouth.
“Sherwiiiin,… Not! The! Time! Dumbass!”
“Sorry, sorry! Okay, Rai, what would you say is the second largest room in this place, then?
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Rai laughs nervously at the previous interaction, but quickly puts a serious face back on.
“Every path here may lead to the single cafeteria, but every path should have a couple medium-sized medical bays built for radiation victims.”
Sherwin nods to himself.
“Alright, we’ll try to hold out on wasting energy until we get there. I have a plan.”
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Just then, something whizzes past them. Then another object. And another. The first thought is a typical wave being fired in their direction, but that affirmation is quickly ended when they realize that the “waves” don’t fade away. Their heads turn to look behind them.
“They’re done chasing us in a straight line... We’ll have to break through fast if we want to get there in one piece.”
Anni says, giving voice to the inevitability that was in the back of their minds.
The blobs on the ground ahead that were thrown by the smarter, more materialized tier 3’s of the pursuing spirits, morph back to their feet, forming a defensive wall.
“No, over here!”
Rai raises his hand and blasts a hole through the wall further ahead on their left. One after another they pass through with such haste that the debris doesn’t even have a chance to hit ground. Rai crosses his forearms in the shape of an X, veins bulge under his skin as he channels a large amount of energy through them with the small amount of time he has until the spirits come flooding through the space he created and the walls around them. He slams his palms against the empty space and completely covers it, and a large portion of the hallway, in a thick barrier that he knows will only hold out for so long.
Immediately, he tries to regroup with Anni and Sherwin who look at him from behind, but is momentarily overcome with a feeling similar to standing up too quickly. Still, he shakes it off, picking up his pace to meet them.
“That should hold them off just long enough for us to reach the medical bay.”
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Without stopping his odd, choppy, stride, Sherwin looks at Rai out of the corner of his eye.
“If you could do that, couldn’t you have done something when they were funneled?”
Rai slightly hangs his head.
“Sorry. I thought about it, but they were probably huddled that close together before so that they could form a barrier for anything we tried, and I’m not quite skilled enough to get around that as it was.”
“Right...”
The hallway becomes silent with the exception of their footsteps until Anni spots a door on their right with glass panels on either side.
“M-dica- B--,” It reads with engraved letters above it that have been eroded by passing time.
Despite the fact that the hallway is still silent, suggesting that they still have a reasonable amount of time, Anni quickly grabs the doorknob and bursts through the door with one smooth motion and slams it behind them.
They all take a moment to breathe, checking the room for any other entrances or blind spots they may have not considered. The room is just as grey, worn, and dated as the rest of the bunker. But at the very least It is relatively large, about the size of an average classroom, but with a much higher ceiling. The three of them decide to stand directly in the middle of the room, the point furthest away from all sides and least vulnerable even if an attack comes below.
MInutes have passed. Under this oppressive silence of deafening white noise, they’re unsure how many, but they know that even seconds and split-seconds could be life or death-determining moments. Anni can’t take it any longer.
“So now we just wait?”
She asks, looking around the room. Her frustration builds not from fear, but from feeling just as vulnerable as before.
“We really don’t have much of a choice. We could keep going through these walls until we either reach Xing and the others or hold out until they take out Reigner and the rest of these guys weaken. One would just end with us getting in the way and the other is just kind of unlikely.”
Sherwin utters with forbearance.
“Geeez, I know that much, Whiney. I hope you didn’t mean to make that sound so shitty though. You’re even putting Rai to shame.”
Right as they speak his name, he shoots back up to his feet prompting them to follow.
“Rai?”
Observing his now glinting, violet eyes and tracing his line of sight, they realize something. He’s not looking at the wall, he’s looking through it. Rai thinks of saying something, to alert them about some type of ambush. But there’s no point. Firstly, he almost doesn’t know what he’s looking at. But most importantly, there’s no ambush being made. They were all just so preoccupied with listening for the screeching and grinding of the murderous wraiths from before that they didn’t even notice the clever approach of the new, but familiar threats lurking in the absent part of their consciences.
“A Tier 4...”
Rai mutters.
A hand slams against the glass panel on the left of the door. It's so materialized that even the eyes of a foreigner would be able to perceive it. The horrid body and blank face comes into view from the other side of the glass.
“The souls all fused together… W-we can still do this. I’m sure this is what Rae meant about Reigne-.”
Sherwin is silenced by a chill running through the stagnant air, the blank face on the mannequin-like mixtures of souls turning into 3 constantly changing expressions.
“Tier 4--smart--kill you first.”
Through the sea of individuals swimming within its core, it struggles to speak coherently, but it gets its point across…
They get into ready positions next to Rai. Sherwin taps his ID card many times to no avail. The signal won’t go through. Could it be jammed by the space they chose to escape to? By the electromagnetic field of the countless spirits blended together? There’s no more time to talk--to plan. The door to the medical bay explodes and the windows at its sides shatter, sending a peppering storm of glass into the room towards them. Eager to fight back since the beginning, Anni spreads her arms wide throwing up a barrier to protect the 3 of them, she thrusts her arms forward and it crashes through the room in an attempt to turn her defense into an attack. She doesn’t feel it connect with her target and her eyes streak harshly above her.
“Get back!”
They look up to see the amalgamate propelling itself towards them using a light fixture as a foothold.
“Funny--Rats--Trapped in your own trap…,” It mocks them.
Sherwin fires a blast that is easily tanked and ignored, his crumbling confidence making the weight behind his attack featherlike. Rai reaches upward, picturing the image of a giant hand in his mind then projecting it onto his arm in reality, hoping to crush their opponent mid-lunge. The giant hand clasps shut, grasping nothing. Was it so fast that it could dodge a point-blank attack in mid-air? No... Rai knows that the more energy a spirit has, the more it is confined by physical laws. Before Rai can lower his arm, he’s batted across the room and into a curtain.
Anni holds up her hand, making an L with her index finger and thumb to take aim before her target can recover from its heavy attack made on Rai. The sharp wave forms-- she hopes to take the head of the Destructive spirit clean off.
“Not so fast.”
She hopes that the voice, followed by the pressure around her wrist is Sherwin’s, but when she turns her head and sees Sherwin stuck in his own battle, the pieces are finally put together.
There are three separate opposing presences in the room now surrounding them. It didn’t dodge earlier, it split itself apart. The pressure around her wrist exerted by the spirit wearing the face of Madness gets so tight that she can feel her bones creak.
She needs to think fast. Before it can get any tighter, she twists her body until her arms are hugged to her. The Mad One’s body is dragged just far enough so that it blocks the view of the Destructive One. Now, she needn't be worried about a counterattack from either side. Using the generated momentum and her free arm, Anni presses her palm against her captor’s torso.
It vanishes along with the pressure around her wrist as soon as she fires. But again, there’s no connection, and to make things worse, the Destructive one has disappeared as well; Anni knows exactly what this means.
Before Sherwin was doing his best to keep up with the amalgamate of Despair. He had somehow managed to block or evade its every strike with his projected knife held straight ahead for counterattacks. But his new attacker overwhelms him with attacks that he knows would even prove fatal if he guarded against them. Why are they able to do this? Why had he underestimated them so gravely? What plan had he come up with in the first place? Had he made a fool of himself again. “Your only option is to hold off until you can get backup. You’re not strong like Rai. You don’t have tricks up your sleeve like Anni. What are you doing here?”
Sherwin shakes his head--an attempt to eject the thoughts from them. Just then, he trips backwards and accidentally avoids a wide, swinging blow. There must have been an uneven part of the floor. There had to be. Why else would he trip?
“Right, the floor…,” he feels around for his weapon, with his upward-locked eyes stuck on the spirit approaching him. The floor is cold and… smooth. Why?
He holds up his knife in a threatening display, his hand shaking. The amalgamate doesn’t flinch even when the knife explodes, sending a blast towards it and revealing its feeble ace-in-the-hole, it tanks it just like it had earlier.
It’s not until his opponent is standing right over him, smiling its three-faced smile, that he realizes…
“Oh… you’re reading my mind too?”
… that he had fallen into the exact same hole as on their first mission.
Sherwin hears an impact and grinding.
His life must be over, he assumes. The noise he’s hearing is his bones being grinded to dust as his weak soul itself is added to the sea of his opponents' reserves. But his eyes--he can still feel them. They open and he sees Rai using the chain between projected nunchucks to hold the mace-like, spiked arm of his executioner at bay, his feet skidding against the dry ground.
“Sherwin… can you stand?”
Sherwin doesn’t respond and Rai can’t afford to stand still any longer. He presses his arms upwards, staggering the amalgamate backwards. The enemy and Rai both know that it can overpower and outspeed him in this state like it had before.
But, “A battle should be viewed as a constantly evolving game of chess...”
And so Rai clashes in the seemingly losing battle until his side’s pieces are in place.
--
Meanwhile, Sherwin feels a tug on his arm. And the harsh voice of his comrade.
“What are you doing? Are you going to sit there forever?”
Sherwin responds this time, but his voice makes it obvious that he’s close to the giving up.
“What’s the point? If even you and Rai can’t do this, what can we do?! If you two run now, and leave me, you can still make it.”
“Do you hear yourself!? You’re the worst kind of dumbass, Sherwin! What happened to everything you told me after that first mission-- to all that training!?”
He feels his entire body lifted by a few inches as the voice patronizing him grabs him by the collar of his shirt.
He refuses to look into her eyes, but his suppressed emotions well up inside him as if they were shaken up by his moving body..
“I am stupid… I really thought that I could become an exorcist when I can’t even walk two steps without tripping. In the end, we’ll all fall into our cliches! Nina will always be the bubbly, over-forgiving, annoying ditz to get you killed! And you, Anni, the edgy, battle-ready snob, will end up the same way just because of the way you talk to people!”
He looks up, shooting his spite into her eyes.
“I’m not a freak like you two, no amount of training can fix this, and I’m done acting like this is some type of anime where everything will be oka-”
Cotton candy-shaped earrings. That’s the only thing he can think about. Because of the way she was patronizing him, he had assumed it was Anni talking to him this entire time. Had he really said all that to her? He hangs his head again; everything he’d said was wrong, and now he’s expecting to hear the plops of tears hitting her forearms in front of him.
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But Nina simply lets him go, his knees digging furthering into the ground. NIna, who would normally be emotional by just reading about an animal missing a meal, speaks to him with a calm disappointment worse than any anger he could have imagined.
“I see... I guess I was just wrong about you,”
She stands up, now facing Rai’s battle.
“Watch closely, then. I’m about to show you how unforgiving I can be…”
She advances forward without looking back, making sure not to get too close to battle in front of her as she and Rai have both realized a lot by now about their opponent. Still, she gets close enough to draw Rai’s attention.
She makes two movements with her hands--no--two words?
She holds both of her hands out in front of her, four fingers up on each hand, then overlaps them. Next, two fingers up high and by themselves.
--
Rai nods his head; the pieces on the chessboard become clear, and now he can give it all he has.
His violet eyes glint and streak around the amalgamate’s vision as he begins to parry its attacks instead of dodging them. Every time the phantom swings its weapons, Rai skillfully smacks it away with a nunchuck spinning in the opposite direction of where its momentum is coming from and counters with the other. Again and again and again until it grows tiresome. The Destructive part of the sea of souls takes over and makes a sloppy, but well-timed combination as an answer. It swings with its mace, Rai parries. When Rai’s other weapon comes through for the counterattack, the spirit stomps, sending a fiery blast upwards from its feet that burns Rai’s hand, knocks the nunchuck into the air and sends Rai falling backwards. Falling? Rai flips backwards, kicking his opponent in the chin and following up with a boxer’s combination. The spirit splits apart and reforms a few meters away to gain a wider field of vision and stop itself from taking any more damage. Even though it’s faster than him, it has 3 objects to worry about even if Nina and Sherwin are across the room: the two nunchucks and Rai himself.
Rai spins the nunchucks faster and faster. To his sides and under his arms. Between his legs and behind him. Nina has moved behind Rai, but across the room. Sherwin is still kneeled, helplessly watching their battle. Yes, perhaps it could get Sherwin out of the way, but maybe Rai was waiting for that like he had done earlier.
Maybe, it could get past him to take out Nina, but then it would be between them.
Rai has to die first…
But does he?
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It violently grits its teeth, filling the air with the sound of what can only be described as a similar sound to a freight train slamming on its brakes.
“You can all--die--at onc-!”
The moment it splits apart, Rai seems to appear in front of the three of them like a predator concealed and pouncing through long grass. The Despairing amalgamate looks on in shock. All it can do is make a hasty swing in retaliation. Rai ducks, elbowing it in the core and connecting the ends of his projected nunchucks. He presses his closed hands together at the point of connection and slides them both outward along the weapon, sending the spirit flying and turning the connected nunchucks into a spear. The other two look at Rai as he rises to his feet with a spin, arm cocked over his shoulder, as if he were about to throw the spear like a javelin, then back to their targeted third on the other side of the room. They make their fatal mistake and their last bad habit. They hastily fuse back together with their grounded third… but no spear comes. Their body feels heavy… it lifts its arm in what feels like slow-motion in comparison to the world around it.
“What--have you--done?”
It's not looking at Rai anymore. As a body of pure energy and emotions, it can tell that its infection was someone else’s doing.
Nina points at the earrings on her ears. Or, more accurately, the fact that she’s not wearing them. Then, into the belly of the beast.
“I guess you could say that this is my Trump Card…”
It looks down into its core. Two earrings in the shape of jet-black moons float within the furious entity that once had the upper hand.
“I basically injected something foreign into the mix. A normal person would be possessed, but for you… imagine that you feel preeetty drunk right now, huh? ‘Not so fast,’ are you?”
It doesn’t bother asking anything further. It knows exactly why Rai kept nunchucks as his weapon of choice when a spear or sword would have made more sense in the first place. The fact that he must have caught the earrings when the nunchucks swung behind his back. And that Rai knew that, when split apart, he was faster than they were. The embodiments of Madness and Destruction were so occupied with Despair’s condition that they hadn’t even realized that they themselves had already been implanted with one earring each.
“Drunk--doesn’t change--a thing!”
Defying the laws of what a physical being can do, it whips its arms to its sides, changing the very structure of them into appendages with daggers at their fingertips. This is an obvious answer to Rai’s spear, a means to increase its reach.
“This will be--Kharon’s--will…”
Even though its facial expression continues to change, the determination and bloodlust in its eyes remain adamant. Everything will be decided soon.
Rai holds his weapon out horizontally in front of him, his breathing perfectly in sync with his heartbeat, with this train of thought, with everything except his soul.
“You really are amazing, Kahnyne…”
He lowers his stance.
“So this is what you dealt with almost every day just because I was around…”
Rai and his adversary close the distance between each other, showering their surroundings with fiery sparks that dance like they too are engaged in battle. They keep each other a little over a meter apart, with barrage after barrage of thrusts and slashes. Their bodies are riddled with shallow, petty wounds, but neither one can land a decisive blow.
Nina watches from a distance, a bead of sweat trickling down her forehead despite her confidence.
“Just one more push--just a little more damage. If I do it now, I’ll lose Anni. Come on, Rai!”
As if he were pushed forward by her thoughts, Rai breaks through, landing a deep slash across its abdomen. The wraith screeches. Yes, it has realized that it can peer into his soul as it did with Sherwin, but It cannot hope to conquer Rai’s physical skills on equal footing, and so it only has one option: abandoning reason and its humanoid form in favor of a surprise attack.
The oozing cut in its stomach opens, nearly tearing the phantom in two, Rai can see the deadly abyss within it trying to suck him in and tear him apart now that he’s close. Their next moves will be the end of everything.
“Anni, now!”
Nina yells across their small battlefield. Anni’s soul, injected into the seas of Despair, Anger, and Hatred, dives as deep as she can. The pressure is great. The horrid cries of the denizens reaching out to her are even worse, speaking of curses brought on by the past and hopeless future. But with the damage done on the outside, she’s able to slowly, but surely lift both of her arms and point them above her. Her hands glow brighter and brighter, until they become little violet-colored stars, bubbling the sea with their heat.
She learned something from Elly recently--that one’s vessel stands a chance of going into a Soul Shock if they output a large amount of energy too quickly or an amount disproportionate to their max capacity and the rate that they can replenish their energy. But if only one of their souls is in control of their vessel at a time, wouldn’t that mean that the soul on standby has no vessel in question to worry about?
The wretched sea of souls explodes and parts; the effects of this show themselves in the overworld when the beast readying its attack doubles over for a moment and lets out another screech. Rai immediately severs both of its arms with two fluid thrusts and spins of his spear. It tumbles backwards, erupting in a fatal, fragmenting display of beams as it loses control of the many souls stored within it. Rai observes Anni’s earrings hurrying to return to their rightful place immediately after. He takes a few steps forward and propels himself into the air, avoiding the approaching attack. He looks down on the Senescent, but not yet defeated foe. Somehow, despite the fact that its single body is actually composed of at least a thousand, it looks Lonely, Angry, Empty even.
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“...But why am I thinking about this now? This is the one who has caused us so much pain so quickly.”
Time slows to a snail’s-pace as Rai descends upon the amalgamate.
A million thoughts fill his mind.
Even now with their upper hand, the violent beams showering the room could kill them all if they aren’t contained properly. Rai closes his eyes.
“I either execute this technique correctly for the first time or… no I will do it correctly!”
Memories of an absurd amount of books and knowledge take the forefront of his consciousness until he finds the perfect one to manifest for this situation; this is the true nature of Unorthodoxy.
“Unorthodoxy Page 1851:..”
With a clap he puts his hands together, interlocking all of his fingers except for his index and middle.
“...Melville.”
A large mass of energy forms behind him taking on the shape of a large sperm whale. It swallows him and the amalgamate whole, encasing them in a water-like prison that muffles the area of effect from the enemy’s attacks.
He’s only a few meters away from it now; Rai points his right palm downwards, holding his wrist with his left.
“I see now… this is about the distance that all my Calibrations would take place.”
A flash, a dome of energy, and a crater in the ground. The battle is over.
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Rai lands sure-footedly and approaches Sherwin as Nina has done already.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry… Nina, all you did was prove that you two really don’t need me here.” Sherwin isn’t crying, but his voice and his boggling eyes show a pain even worse.
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Rai searches for words to express how he’s feeling. He wants to connect. In the battle he felt a connection, but now what could he say to this situation that he had no idea how to relate to. He wants to tell him that they’re alive. All three of them. Everything should be okay then, shouldn’t it? But the heaviest of his words get stuck in his throat.
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“It’s okay, Sherwin…”
Is all that he’s able to speak out loud.
“...”
“...”
There is no doubt that he not only chose unwisely, but said something completely wrong.
“What the hell did you just say…? You are the last person I want to hear that from, Rai! How is any of this okay!? For the second time, I’ve just run into a life-or-death situation thinking that I could just pull some type of plan out of my ass and prove something for myself! But I don’t think things through! I can’t even call them plans--they’re nothing but half-assed ideas that I hoped would work out somehow! Me getting where I am today is probably the same thing, isn’t it!? So how is any of this, okay, Rai!? How can I be an exorcist when I can’t even take a single step without falling!?”
“...”
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“Unbelievable…,”Sherwin chuckles. Tears finally breaking free from his eyes.
He begins to violently punch and hammer at his legs until his knuckles become a ghostly white from the blood rushing away from them.
“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Da-”
Anni grabs his arm.
“Are you done, yet, you big baby?...”
Sherwin sits and listens to her in shock. He can’t tell if she’s being gentle or if somehow he’s seeing things and Nina is in control, but her grip is surprisingly weak right now. The battle must have taken a toll on her.
“Something I always liked about you was that even when you’re nervous, you’re always the first one to offer up your neck for the sake of becoming better than you were yesterday. Your problem is that you just can’t accept when things start to go wrong, so the moment they do, all that bravado falls apart. So, you know what? When you’re like this, you are dead weight. We’d be better off with a sandbag.”
Deepening his shock is the feeling of arms wrapping around him in embrace.
“But damn it, Sherwin… we’re all alive right now, aren’t we? This was your plan and even though I’m sure Elly and the others could have seen the faults in it, they believed we could pull through. And that trick I used earlier that turned the tide for us… you gave me the idea for that, remember?”
Her hands are shaking on his back. She hasn’t forgiven him completely; the harshness in her words proves that, but this is genuine. He returns her embrace for a moment, wipes his eyes and gently pushes her away to stand on his own two feet.
“Thanks, Anni. Thanks Nina. I won’t apologize for what I said earlier though. Instead...”
He pounds his tear-glossed fist onto his chest, obviously reminiscent of a certain someone.
“...I’ll make sure that I’m the one to save the day next time. That’s a promise.”
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Anni and Nina switch places back and forth, each smiling sweetly.
Their ID Cards begin to glow in their pockets.
“Then I’ll hold you to that… Now come on, you two, I think it’s time to regroup.”
“Okay, but don’t you go telling Xing that I up and cried in front of you, alright?”
“I’ll make it worse and tell Rae. Then, he’ll start thinking that you’re his bullied comrade in arms or somethiiiing.”
She and Sherwin share a laugh that Rai joins in on. They all exit the room, but it's as if his mind is still stuck there.
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The thoughts that trapped his words earlier play on repeat:
“How much do I deserve to say?”
“If I couldn’t then, can I now--should I now?”
“At what point did I start thinking like this? After Bly? Before that? Is there any use thinking about it now?”
“We essentially said the same thing… but somehow those extra words that someone can only speak when they themselves are resolute--the words I wish I had said, the ones I wanted to say-- make all the difference…”
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