Chapter Text
Inside the Pleiades Watchtower, two stars were about to collide.
They were face to face, iron-clad resolve faced iron plated helm.
Unforgiving determination faced endless repletion.
The one who Shoulders the burden of her power faced the one who was generated to Hunt her very existence.
Subaru Natsuki knew a lot about stars. Some child Psychologists that young women watch on YouTube would guess the interest came from a horrid set of parental figures that wanted to get a free car by naming their child after a brand. Someone who actually studied child psychology or met the Natsuki family in any capacity would tell you that it came from the inevitable moment in every child’s life when they learned how to speak and form words, that they have a name, and that names have meanings.
But if you asked Naoko Natsuki, Kenichi Natsuki, the nurses who took care of a newborn Subaru in the hospital or whatever other unfortunate soul had the tedious task of putting that child to sleep, they would tell you that the interest came pre-packaged with her brain. The wailing potato of a newborn could be instantly calmed by the sight of blinking lights in the sky, little dots of ethereal nature that in her mind were the most wonderful thing to ever lay eyes upon, an opinion maybe to be credited to a lack of object permanence common in infants.
So Natsuki Subaru decided to learn about stars, their name, their stories, their nature, their origin, their behavior, their life, their discovery, their purpose, to the point where, if Hipparchus and Shi Shen were to be alive today, they would be begging to take her as a disciple, fighting each other for the chance to fill those eyes, so dark and hungry for knowledge that they might be mistaken for spaghettifying Blackholes, with notes and theorems and hypotheses and experiments about all manners of celestial bodies.
And among the things that Natsuki Subaru learned, nudged between the Three Body Problem and the Third of Kepler’s Laws, she knew that two stars can never be too close to each other; because if they did, they would clash, and in their clash, they would destroy all other celestial bodies too close to them.
Aldebaran knew much about enemies. He learnt how to break them before they broke him. He learnt how to fight them when they didn’t need to fight him to kill him. Some children grow up being taught about animals, colors, shapes, numbers, names and stories. These children grow up to become farmers, brewers, artists, poets, merchants and soldiers. But not him, it could have never been him. He grew up learning about pain, despair, tragedies, only knowing responsibilities and the consequences of him not fulfilling them. He learned about Witches, and he learnt more than every historian ever knew. He learnt about secrets, and he cried when he realized he would be the only one to keep them. He learnt about manipulations, and how broken hearts burn brighter than any distant ball of gas and plasma. He learnt about love, and how it was a poison for body, mind and his own self. He learnt that it couldn’t be his, it could never be his.
If you asked the Witch that forged him into his role, she would call him a failed experiment, a comrade in her faulty existence.
If you asked Priscilla, she would call him a jester, a fool who had only the gift of entertaining her.
If you asked little Schult, he would call him trustworthy, a person he felt others could rely on.
If you asked Aldebaran himself, he wouldn’t be able to answer. He was never someone, he could only ever be the shadow of someone.
It was clear to both of them, if they would clash openly, that all their and the other companions would be destroyed, if not physically, then psychologically.
‘The order is the only thing that matters,-’ Aldebaran thought.
‘-Not strength-’ the Star followed
One settled his stance, disciplined and aching through millions of trials.
‘-Nor speed-’ the Follower went on
‘Whomever misses first-’ Subaru’s mind followed along…
The other felt her soul settle, fist balling up and determination flaring like fire, her own blood and despair as kindling.
‘-will lose!’ The Hunter followed
‘So, the optimal strategy is-’ Every single mind inside the Tower zeroed in on a single thought:
‘-to strike-’ and the harmony held…
‘FIRST!’ two Humans shouted in their minds in unison...
Mana filled his gate, the ache of his soul coming back like rheumatisms, the hum of mana coming from the exhalation of very soul of the world assessing itself in a pattern inside his synthetic gate almost impatiently, as if the spell itself was waiting to be released, to be used.
Thousands of loops run through his mind.
Lessons, the lessons of a Witch, cruel and unforgiving of any mistakes, every failure a catastrophe, every distraction purged like a poison from his mind, every success a small flicker of light in the darkness of those eyes.
“Echidna, guide my magic one last time-” years of teachings turned to heat at their fingertips
“-And let me strike-”
“FIRST!”-He screamed in his mind, one last plea from him, from her failure of a creation
“OL SHAMAK!”-he screamed out loud and truly
“SECOND, I SUPPOSE!”-another request, shouted in the mind of the spirit, releasing her counter measures.
“IL SHAMAK”-the spirit shouted out, leaping off the ground, while simultaneously driving all the air and most of the mana outside her body.
There are 4 tiers of Spells in this world: ‘standard’ spells, El spells, Ul spells and Al spells, with each level increasing in mana cost and complexity of casting. ‘Ol’ spells and ‘Il’ simply don’t exist.
Or do they?
‘Ol Shamak’ isn’t an evolution of the Shamak spell, but rather a spell that has a similar, or partially similar, function to it, to bound the target into a position where they are unable to act against the caster.
‘Il Shamak’, however, isn’t even a true spell, but a simple push of mana. An aimed way to unravel a specific spell, A forced destruction of a carefully crafted spell matrix, as if pushing each thread of a piece of fabric in the opposite direction as it was woven in.
Power left her…
The Spell itself was an interesting idea, despite its simplicity and Brutishness. “Destroying” an opponent’s spell was nothing new, a known and mostly scoffed at technique in the circles of mages, as it often needed the recklessness to physically touch an enemy’s spell or body to infiltrate its matrix. But the great difference came from an unlikely source of inspiration: Curses.
More specifically, the act of Dispelling a curse.
She’s clever, but enough to survive?
Dispelling a curse is an act similar to resolving a riddle or untying a knot: It is a matter of finding the simple solution to a difficult problem. To understand a curse is to have power over it, to master it. One might believe that merely identifying one, learning its name and effects would suffice. This would be foolish. Its source, its name, the way it spreads and affects the target, how it’s activated… all of this would never be enough. One would need to learn how it came to be, how it was developed, and maybe even what one might have felt when creating it. So, creating a counter to a curse by taking apart every one of its pieces is not only unrealistic, but simply preposterous. Hence, how the standard way of defusing a curse was created: creating a pattern of mana aimed at destroying whatever bound the curse to the target or to nullify its effects.
So, here comes the principle behind it: Il spells are nothing more than the right mana pattern to undo the corresponding spell.
This magic has only one flaw however,-
“Beako!” The knightess hurried over to catch the spirit falling from only a few meters from the ground, already unconscious.
-this magic is still unoptimized, it consumes a lot of mana, even for a Great Spirit.
Aldebaran was knocked backwards, throwing him backwards into the far wall of the base floor of the tower, the impact raising some dust, but leaving the Hunter mostly unscathed. He still felt the taste of iron take over his mouth and his blood clog up his nose, his back radiating signals of pain to his brain, but he was only immobilized. In another battle, this could have meant the end of him, but his opponent wasn’t only unaware of his accursed gift, but she was also more concerned with her spirit.
Subaru took the opportunity, catching Beatrice’s small figure. Her frail body of mana shivered in her frilly dress, icy cold spasming inside her like the heat does for a human fever. She held her close, silently begging and praying to God, Buddha, Od Laguna- anyone or anything who would have answered- for her safety, for her to be safe. She ran outside, feeling the dread setting in her heart, ignorant of a fact she should have been all too familiar with.
The weak have always a plan in case everything goes wrong.
The Auriga Sand dunes is a difficult environment, especially if you were a young woman covered in Witch Scent carrying an unconscious child.
The Sun that shone above it and its dunes of sand were a quiet little lie, noting of this place was warm. Its barren landscape wasn’t born out of unforgiving radiation from the sun nor from its existing lack humidity. The only scorch of these lands was the life-corroding miasma of the buried calamity under it, attracting unique ferocious Mabeasts, all of them starving for nutrition after being trapped in a desolate desert by their own design. The Famished monsters were sure to catch up to her sooner or later.
She wasn’t thinking about this, however.
The Sun beating on her head brought no comfort, as if it lost all compassion for humanity, letting the unnatural chill run across her face. Rough sand collapsed under the soles of her shoes, the weight of her fainted spirit in her arms the only comfort in her heart as she ran in search of her allies.
“I just have to reach Mirula, and then I will be able to warn them of-” sharp pain interrupted her train of thought, a shout of pain escaping her as her ankle was slashed open in a single, swift snake-like motion, dyeing the sand crimson red.
“Gyah ha ha ha, please don’t stop! We love it when our food struggles a little before we feast, tsu!”
Subaru quickly turned herself over to confirm her suspicion, but she truly didn’t need to. Her blood boiling in her veins was enough of an answer.
“Y-you... it’s-” Her voice was a mere whisper, one that many could mistake for fear or worry, but it was truly something else.
“Oh? Do you not recognize us dear Subaru-Chan, tsu?” The voice was unmistakably the one of a kind, yet obsessive person, of someone that Subaru knew she didn’t truly hear from in over a year, despite what she told herself- yet, it wasn’t attached to a kind smile and two ocean blue orbs, but at a despicable, sharp-toothed grin and starved eyes. A tattered green vest and a pair of gaunted, yet still annoyingly rounded cheecks, and a sick expression of deranged mockery.
She gritted her teeth, her heart beating rampant with rage, he dared speak in that voice, the one that his brother stole from the world, and mocked.
“GLUTTONYYYY!!!” she screamed, cursing him from the bottom of her soul, from her heart, cursing that... that monster, that stole a piece of her soul from a time that seemed so long ago...
“Oh? So, you do remember us, tsu! That Makes us so happy, I feel like we could just run away together and start anew, From nothing, tsu!” Roy’s mocking tone was enough for the glaring woman to ignore the pain momentarily and stand up. The little mongrel dared to maim those words so close to her heart, vandalizing one of the pillars of her heart.
With all her adrenaline powering her, with her heart pumping blood at record speeds, Subaru Natsuki’s mind was focused on one thought: “You cannot Get out of this. Alive. You’ll have to do It better next time.”
She pushed away that thought with disgust, she will live! She will fight! She will do it! She can-
“Sorry to interrupt your power monologue, tsu, but we are getting hungry...” The sin archbishop lunged at her, pouncing with his hand extended towards her, faster than the time it took her to blink- “Will you feed us already, Natsuki Subaru?” He touched her stomach, and the world went away, as she slumped next to Beatrice.
-at uk_ S.ba u lost once again.