~AFTER Saga II : Verse Final : Silver Blessed Knight of Gales~
Grabbing his fist tight, Astra merely felt the presence of Isdera as his presence slowly lost himselves amidst the huge heat signals of the burning fire and the shaking grounds… Saga and Wira only looked and loomed silently as Isdera’s back slowly integrated itself into the shadows of the flames…
“That fool! Even though he’s the most device reliant of us all… Saga, let me-“
“Don’t… at least not yet. If you do, there’s no point.”
“But!”
“You noticed, didn’t you?”
Saying that, Saga’s look and Astra’s slightly angered face lightened, as they looked melancholic…almost sad.
“The one who’s really finding it hard to adjust to our new life…isn’t you who cannot see the new world with your eyes, nor is Wira who’s struggling with the language… but Isdera. Among all of us, he is the one who is truly a knight on both heart and soul… and due to his weakness; a world like this is almost like a world which denied everything he lived for.”
“,,,Ever since my failed experimentations on him… his inability to use regular magic other than wind-types, and his inability to fly…”
Astra thought back in the generations, back when his eyes were seeing a narrow world, despite being clear, and his arms was sinned with the pains of countless subjects who had suffered for the sake of the war… Isdera was one of them, for he had his wings and everything aside from his sword removed from his grasp.
Wira could only pull his sleeve, shaking his head…”Not..fault…Astra.”
Alongside that, Null popped herself on Astra’s head, as if patting his head.
[There, there, Astra.]
Even so, it was understandable. For that is the kind of man Isdera was…
For a knight like him, it was like asking him to strip away of all his pride and honor. But even after that, Isdera still fought on, despite so many of his flaws. Because even then, the world was acceptant of him… A world of blades, battles, and knights… a world that embraced him.
But this world…
“Don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault… If it was anything’s fault, it was the era we were born into…. Don’t worry about Isdera. Even at his current condition, he’s not someone who would so easily succumb to this… Even so, just in case…Null.”
[Hai?]
“I need you to..whisper, whisper…”
Saga whispered something into Null, as she sat right next to his face on his shoulder. Null’s face popped up, as she gave Saga a playful salute.
[Roger!]
With that, Null flew off…towards the city center.
“What did you tell Null?”
“It’s a secret.”
Saga continued to concentrate as he focuses his energy, visualizing the location and coordination of the worlds from this to the Dimensional Seas, where the Central of the Bureau lies… there can be no mistake; else he ends up floating for dead amidst the seas instead… alongside a risky teleportation power that power is not completely controllable…
A gamble indeed, but there was no other way to reach where they need to be…
~Isdera~
A single step.
“Everyone, hold your defense lines!! Hold up until reinforcements from the branch arrives!!”
And another…
How long had it been since I felt like this…
“Damn it! How did these many worms manage to breach through the city perimeter surroundings!?”
The rushing voices of orders, heightened to its climax… the sound of fear, as one is overwhelmed…
“Hold your line-ARGH!!!!”
The sound of death, crawling up one’s skin… The sounds of falling weapons, signifying the defeat of a warrior…
The radiating heat sticks firmly to my skin, as if threatening to burn it should I lose…
As my legs brought me to the scene of the grounds, a small flock of life-sized sandworms surround the city centers, as corpses of both mages and worms lie on the shattered grounds…
Goddamnit… rookie! Behind you!”
An elder mage, injured from an attack, as another young one…being attacked by a worm over 3 meters in height… I didn’t need to do anything, as my body just reacted instantly to the impending chaos.
“I’ll borrow this.” Words just came out spontaneously as I grabbed the staff-type device from the arms of the weakened, injured mage… a single burst of speed accompanies me, as I rushed faster and faster…
“Wind, schärfen.”
[Sharpen Wind.]
Slamming the edge of the staff into the worm’s mouth…the insides of the worm mutilated, as the edge of it, from my will and strength, formed a small, concentrated whirlwind inside the body of the worm, as I destroyed it from within…the bug’s blood and remains splashing lightly against my body and the other youngster…
“You still alive?”
The young one couldn’t even react, as his legs died out… dropping to his buttocks, as I took it as a sign he’s fine, as I looked at the remaining worms…
From beyond the flames and the darkness of the night, the shining red eyes of the worms appear themselves from beyond, as the small flock becomes a small army… Each one are weak, but united…
“Looks like things won’t be that easy…”
Holding the staff like a sword with a needlessly long hilt, I positioned myself, as the winds that form out from the edge of the staff slowly sharpens itself… like a concentration of sharpened wind.
However, the longer I held, the more I could tell that this device isn’t meant to be used as such…
“Let’s go.”
The winds tore apart the guts and remains of the worms as a barrage of shots supported my rear, a small group of mages, around the rear, holding back the worms from a distance as I slashed another worm in half, though this time, much harder than the previous… I could see that my device was malfunctioning, as the wind then dissipated, the staff breaking down…
“17 worms…”
I quickly reacted as I jumped back to the rear position, grabbing another fallen one’s staff, as I quickly positioned myself back in the frontlines. The voices who are instead, supporting me from the rear shouted, “I don’t know who you are, but it’s too dangerous to fight like that! Its okay to assist from the rear until reinforcement arrives! The way you’re using that device, it’s not just crazy, it’s suicidal!”
“…I can’t do stuff like that.”
“Huh?”
“This is the only thing I can do.”
Ignoring their confusion, I merely rushed further.
My blade clashed again. A ripping sound of wind against the shells of the rampaging beast, a unique constrast… though the further I fought, the sound of my blade became dull, as my concentration but slowly diminished, my wind slowly became something that can hardly be considered a blade… I could only aim for internal kills now, as my bleeding body was the sign of my weakness.
And another staff broke, after entering the body of another worm for the kill…
And another. And another. And another. Until there was no more…
Standing in the middle of a battle, surrounded by beast… without a weapon…
And then, a tremor increased its rhythm playing on the ground as an earthquake shakes the ground beneath me, and before I knew it, a gigantic sand worm was attempting to swallow me from below, as it shattered the land I stood, its jaws attempting to crush me, my arms and legs, holding on…
“So, you’re the mother…huh…”
A barrage of shots was fired at the mother worm from the rear support, but it was no use…
I will not give up. Never…
“I will not die… not here, now now…not like this…”
Because…
“Even if this world rejects me, I’ll accept that rejection…because…”
Because…
“This is the life I had pledged my entire being to!”
Because I made I an oath as a knight, as I intend to keep it.
All of a sudden, something inside me stirred, as my grip slowly loosened itself, my arms bleeding… as I see something forming out of my chest…
“This is!”
So…that’s what it was… That day when I died, I pledged my last existence… I understand now…
Letting go of my grip, rather than resisting, I quickly jumped inside the sandworm and deep down into its belly, swimming through a cesspool of blood and guts within…
[Isdera!!!!]
This voice? As I quickly regained my stability, inside the belly of the worm, as I sought to confim that voice…
[Null KICK!]
Something flew over, as I instantly felt a pain running across my face, getting my right cheek brutally attacked. That voice… and that attack…
“Null? What are you doing here?”
Rather than answering, she turned into a full sized young child as she slapped me hard on the left cheek instead… before she starts to hit my chest in succession as she cried out…
[BAKABAKABAKABAKABAKABAKABAKA! What the hell are you thinking!? Jumping in like that…Do you not value your life!? Do you realize how worried everyone is about you!? Don’t think that you’re the only one suffering… Everyone… everyone understands how you feel! But just because we’re conflicted, we shouldn’t so quickly… be selfish!!! Have you forgotten what it means to be a Zerstroritter!?!?!?]
So… everyone knew… Even though I tried to hide my state of mind, everyone too…was going through the same thing.
“Thank you… Null. And I’m sorry as well, for making everyone worried. But don’t worry… I’ve calmed down now…”
Looking around the insides of the guts and belly of the sandworm, I gauged the hardness of the skin… it’s not too hard, a spell from Null should be able to destroy it, but…
“Null, I need your help… if I’m not wrong, then it’s the only possible way.”
I told her what I needed her to do… It was a simple request, to unison in…
And if there was anything inside that realm of my soul in which the unison occurred, push it out with all her strength.
[Roger.]
“Lend me your power, Wind of the General, Null!
UNISON-IN!”
As the unison occurred, surrounded by a gust of wind like I’ve never felt before, a wind that is both rough and soothing, an amalgam of the powers that made up my existence… as a the wind then turned into magical particles, controlled by Null, turning the elemental particles into a donned Knight Armor of silver white…
A complete armor of silver white, with black inner-toned protective vest that hugs tightly to my frame, akin to the old battle armors of Ancient Belka, and as my face is covered and enshrouded by a metallic framed knight helmet-mask, and a cloak formed itself on the back of my armor… I felt a tingling sensation in my heart…
[Here…it…is!]
As Null forcefully pushed something out of her unison realm, a light of blue poured out from the center of my chest, as I closed my hands together, grabbing that blue sphere of light emitting… as an all too familiar voice resonates and spoke…
[Aktivierung….Zulfiqar.] (( Activation… Zulfiqar ))
A sword formed itself as I grabbed hold of it, a sword that had fought hell itself with me… Zulfiqar….
“Wind…Cutter.”
With a single word, I channeled my energy into my blade as I formed a succession of sharpened high-velocity wind surrounding Zul, as I jumped high and up, flying above allowing Null to help control the levitation while I solely focused on flying for the first time in a long time, and lastly…
As Zul penetrated the inner layers of the worm, my sword pierced its withins as I broke out from inside the the worm… killing it. As the splurge of red spilled my silver armor, I flew out instantaneously as I left the corpse of the worm fall to the ground, shattering itself into its remains, as I landed on the ground… not even needing to look back, as all the worms scattered and fled from the ground below they came, at the instinct of their mother’s death.
"Ware wa..."
[Tateru mono rashi-desu!]
However, I am suddenly surrounded by a group of mages, as they pointed their staffs towards me, circling me in position…
“Don’t move!”
“Ceh…”
As I was about to quickly dash away, another gust of wind came about; hitting the grounds accompanied by the winds, as another full-armored knight donning an armor of a tinted bronze, the one worn by the General at Drei Form, along with 2 cloaked figures made their way by my side.
“You’ve done well, Isdera. The charge for the teleportation is complete…We can go anytime now, but first…”
Clapping his hands together, he summoned a large magical field that surrounds the closed perimeters of the battlefield…
“Since you’ve been so flashy, we have to at least destroy the records…..
Data Drain.”
As General Saga said those pair of words, all of a sudden, the field expands itself further as every electronic device, to an extent even the staff of the mages got vaporized internally, removing every single electronically saved data and information inside, without a single remaining trace, other than the memories of men who had witnessed today’s incidents…
“Abgrund des Endes.”
A light of moon, as we floated up slightly, and vanishing… We left the world we’ve roamed for 3 months, as we went on to seek a new destination, through a new discovery…
This is the life I had chosen… and I don’t regret it.
As my eyes opened, I found myself released from unison, as I was floating within a sphere of a time-distortion temporal force field, and a floater field, etched up by General Saga and Astra…as floating amidst a black sea of nothingness, a mass of purplish, neon-like black sky like a sea of twisted mass and colors, as standing in the middle of all that, was an auspicious looking-structure…
“This is…”
“The Dimensional Sea…and that is TSAB’s Central…”
Trivia:
Data Drain : A field spell utilizing the techno-emphatic powers that allows every electronic device within 2 kilomters radius to be removed and destroyed of all their data and information.
Abgrund des Endes : Just like Carim's prophecy power, this is Saga's rare ability akin to Goku's teleportation powers, where he can create an invisible dimensional tear in space that allows him to travel anywhere so long as there's enough visualization, coordination, angle, distance and such information. In a way, it's a mental seeker spell with no radius limitation that allows him to travel to places he knows of, or at least has a grasp of where it is. However, it can only be used when the moon's allignment is on the 7th moon of the 7th night, which is only once a month, and depending on how little or how much the user knows of where he wants to go, it may take up to 2 seconds to even an hour to accumulate the necessary teleportation energy.
Zulfiqar : Well, since Isdera died channeling his remaining life energy into his sword, it's only natural that the sword be inside him spiritually, no?