Auris Aurora has beauty. She has wisdom. She has courage. But most importantly…she has pride.
So much so, that no one would have ever guessed she'd be capable of saving a life that wasn't her own.
But one lesson in life stuck with her. The principles of how to properly wield a sword.
In the defense of the innocent, not as a tool of violence.
She loved to fight, she relished the opportunity to overpower her foes. This wasn't a misguided creed of survival of the fittest, like with Vermilion. Or the cruelty of superiority, like Lilith.
This was a true warrior's spirit that burned inside of her.
Her hands…mighty enough to cleave her sword through fate.
Whether on the ground, in the sky, over the moon, or as ashes in the burning sun, her spirit was unyielding.
So she grit her teeth patiently in the depths of space until her body could FIGHT, fight for that one moment she needed.
Once she touched the Aegis Dragoon, her trusted companion through many battles, she pointed her sword at her world.
And then, at the slimmest moment of time her eyes remained whole, she jumped.
Farther. Faster. Piercing the atmosphere like an arrow slung from heaven's ivory towers.
She could feel her enemy in her path. Whether god, demon or man, she'd meet the face of this foe and obliterate them entirely for whatever threats they've brought to her home.
Fueled by the anger and love that came from years of family life, she was ready to strike…
When her foe revealed itself as a friend, hesitation grew…
And it was to Justek's fortune, because that spared him a few moments from her wrath…
Chapter -8: The Ones Saved
When Auris pointed her steel at him, Justek felt a ghastly cut across his neck.
Even with her body in the state it was in, it was still the jewel of Sarajin's eyes. Rough…but beautiful.
He leveraged an inevitably futile demand her way, "Stand aside, Auris."
She grit her teeth harder, "What is going on…? Why you?!"
"We all knew it'd come to this moment," Justek nudged his glasses up with one finger, "All of you chose how much you wanted to accept that fact, though."
He could tell she was pushing her senses outward, assessing the events she missed out on.
Taking census of her home, and the lives that vanished from sight.
Being assaulted by the impurity of the Vortexians stretched thin across the planet.
And from her observations, came a scathing question, "How many…?!"
"Too many," He answered, "But for your father, such sacrifices were but a mere drop in the sea compared to his oceanic pride."
He then glared at her with a light gesture of his hand, "Will you keep pointing that sword at me in defense of him?"
"Khh…!" Her blade trembled, then she steadied it and jabbed it his way with a roar, "I'm fighting to protect this world! …Damn you, I thought you were too!"
"..." Justek closed his eyes and murmured, "It's funny, isn't it? You were trapped, but eventually found freedom. And I was free, only to be trapped."
He raised a finger at her, then turned it around on himself with a somber smile, "I wonder…if our fates had been reversed, and your father chained YOU like a beast…Would you still have taken up arms in his defense?"
"What is your POINT?!" She uttered out.
"Are the ties of the blood so thick they wrap around your eyes?" His question was posed in a biting tone, "Circumstances have fashioned us into blind men, but it seems you are the one turning your eyes away from the light."
She replied confidently, "My eyes see just fine…!"
"The face of my enemy, the enemy of the world…Is standing before me!"
Justek smirked coyly in response, "Cutting me down will change nothing. Eventually…you will have to confront the morality of letting the Ten Sages live."
"That's NOT the path Sarajin would take!" She declared, "You've turned your hate upon the entire world, and that's supposed to make you righteous?!"
Justek hung his head and muttered following a heavy sigh, "...Carmine and Brine are dead."
This made Auris bite the tip of her tongue and gasp.
"And who is to blame? Lilith. Because her evil was allowed to fester under your father's neglectful eye."
"In a single day's time I was close to managing what none of you could accomplish in years," Justek's voice swelled in rage and triumph, "I had my hands on Borealis' NECK. The last obstacle to peace would have been made SILENT!"
He thrust his staff to parry the sharpness of her blade, and leave her choking up another gasp.
"You were never the right person for this role so…chained down by your sentimentality."
Auris looked at her hand and clenched her fist against her chest, shouting at him in defiance while tears for her fallen friends were flung from her eyes, "You're the one who is weak! Sarajin was your friend…and you've chosen to spit in the face of his dream for revenge! And now look what's happened…!"
She raised her voice even higher, "As far as I'm concerned, you killed Carmine and Brine too!"
Justek's eyes flared open and his heart shook. Then it began to beat slowly but loudly, as he brought his staff back down to his side.
"I didn't want this," He whispered, hovering a hand before his heart, "But inside…another set of chains bind my heart."
He closed his eyes and strengthened his resolve with a deep, nasally sigh before opening them back up to gaze upon her, "There can only be one shepherd worthy to guide the king of dreams."
"Auris…Let us put our resolve into our blades, to answer the question that I have long repeated to myself…"
"Why did it have to be you?" He uttered with eyes narrowed.
And as these words paralyzed her, he rose from the crater towards the setting sun with draconic slits in his illuminated eyes.
His skin split, his muscle and sinew unraveled. Scales, thicker flesh, and a pair of wings wrapped around his body like a shell.
He grew within the boundaries of the twilight painted sun and then unfurled his draconian features into view.
Claws, long neck, a jawline sharp with teeth, scales as black as night.
The light bounced around the border of his body so that all that was visible was his dark silhouette and hazy, glowing eyes.
He drew his claws down by his sides, the staff now split in twine. In his grasp, he infused them with dark blue flames to shape them in monolithic, triangular swords.
He then finally settled upon the edge of the crater and murmured in a bellowing, beckoning voice, "Hold nothing back…Rainbow Valkyrie."
His power was immense like the gravity of a dying star, yet serene at the same time.
Auris did not waste a moment. She touched the Valkyrie Drive and immediately stabbed her forming broadsword behind her.
She dashed across the crater and dragged a fissure through the ground on her path to slicing up the Justek's location.
He jumped back and buckled against the pressure off her air splitting attack. She landed and pointed her sword at him from out beside her face.
Her thrust stabbed his gut from air pressure alone and her blade then collided with him planting his sword into the ground.
He performed a hard swerve around and she leaped over his tail and swung.
But mid-swing she was slashed from the side by his other sword forced through a rift.
She quickly stabbed her sword down to prevent tumbling and then was harassed by a series of sharp white beams firing through rifts.
Her reflexes helped cut them down as she pushed forward.
Justek stopped moving and lunged his head out to fire a massive blast of fire between the rifts, only for her to flip over with the grace of an angel and slice aura at his face.
His head recoiled upright with a grunt and the two stamped their heels into the ground together.
They hurled the weight of their swings against each other, mighty hurricane winds sweeping the lands around them and bringing devastation to the structures.
Borealis watched on from his city, fearful of the intensity on display.
For even an invincible warrior like his daughter could still suffer pain.
He was compelled to reach out and join the battle.
But a sudden jolt from Auris made her act rashly against her foe, "I invoke the Rite of Singularity!"
She then overpowered Justek's attack and tackled his chest with stabbing force, pressing forward like an unstoppable arrow that grew larger and more vibrant with time.
Enduring it all, Justek condemned her actions, "You cannot best me alone…!"
And in defiance her road grew louder, the edge of her aura bursting into neon white flames for a brief moment before Justek was knocked off his feet.
She then continued with a flip forward, driving her sword down towards his chest with all her strength, cleaving a split into the air that gave him a focused look into the furious glare just one eye gave off.
"Heh…" He chuckled, sinking into a rift before he hit the ground, and sealing it thereafter.
Her attack was left splitting a ravine a mile long, but her senses sharpened towards the space behind her.
The instant he formed a rift she flicked her sword to bat away another beam. Then a series of them formed around her to keep her pinned down.
Numbering in the hundreds, the amount of light pooling into the area was building up into a series of domed blasts with her wedged in the center.
Justek then flew out of a larger rift and scorched atop all the light with his fire breath, filling them to their bursting point, a bright expansion of blue and white fusing into one massive dome.
Auris grit her teeth against the pressure and raised her sword up high to cleave through the dome, splitting the ensuing explosion in half in front of her.
Justek dove straight down and dragged one of his swords along the ground until he hit her, performing a swift slash to knock her off her feet hundreds of feet into the air.
He then bolted straight after her and smashed his other sword against her gut, dragging her through multiple -spheres of the planet before arcing around and firing her back towards the surface.
She fought against her descent to grab her sword and force an early landing upon a platform of aura as Justek pursued her.
He fired a string of hot blasts for her to cut down, then summoned a rift below her that pierced her footing with a beam.
She flipped backwards just in time to land atop his back and take a few swings at his scales to little effect.
He then flipped around, forcing her to hop and turn around as he continued flying upside-down while staring her down on his gut.
She strolled forward and managed two cuts across his face before attempting to thrust her sword down his mouth.
He retaliated with intense fire that billowed off the tip of her blade and held her back. Even switching to both hands barely gave her any progress.
He kept firing ahead as the blue flames grew brighter and brighter, igniting embers on her bare skin and parts of her armor.
She grit her teeth as the skin around her eyes were pulled back and was inches from breaking through his flames.
At that moment the pressure overpowered her and sent her sword flying out of her grasp, with the fire scorching her right arm down to the bone.
She marched forward regardless and uppercutted Justek in the jaw to force feed him his own flames.
By then her arm recovered enough for her to call her sword back and immediately go for his neck.
Justek dropped his swords and slammed her between his claws. She used her shoulders and kept them from closing all the way.
Irrelevant, as Justek spun and slammed her into the ground full force, then pierced her abdomen with his thumb claws.
She let out a restrained scream.
After which he pulled back to catch his swords and deliver a grand slash twice across her body, obliterating the ground below her.
Her vision briefly faltered but she felt the heat from his mouth pressing down into the chasm.
She repositioned herself to land on a boulder then started scaling off other ones with a streak of many colors in her wake.
Eventually she leaped out as the chasm was engulfed in flames, swinging her sword at Justek's body.
He threw his swords up but the sheer cutting force got around it and made him bleed.
"Gh…!" A barely audible grunt came out as he was knocked back to the ground.
She dove for another strike and he turned sideways before fully committing to a tail swing.
She blocked it with her sword but ended up being swept off her feet.
She flipped away, landed on a platform, then flung herself straight like an arrow.
She repeatedly bounced around to try and break Justek's defenses, surrounding him in hundreds of streaks in a second.
Then she landed with a long slide and a longer wind up on her swing, bearing her heels deep into the ground to fire off a cascade of aura straight at him.
On impact the slashes expanded into spears piercing through the base of a massive holy pillar.
Auris braced herself and looked around, starting to deflect the beams that came her way.
And it wasn't long before Justek broke straight through the dimensional wall, claw outstretched towards her body.
His scales were bathed in holy embers and he made her feel some of them as he grabbed hold and nailed her into the ground. He then raised and hammered her multiple times to soften her up before throwing her out and immediately whipping his sword out to bisect her horizontally.
Auris diverted the blade to only cut off her feet, which made landing rough but more manageable to recover from.
"Impressive." Justek uttered sincerely as he called his other sword back and twirled them backhanded behind him.
He then sprinted ahead and slashed at her with one hand while returning it to the proper position. After she blocked his attack he slashed downward and then twirled to hit her with the broad side of the other sword.
Her eyes widened as her blade was pressed against her chest and her elbows cracked.
She then ducked under the next slash and moved within the duller range of his attacks to deliver another uppercut slash that lifted him off the ground.
He then flapped his wings and took to the skies, assailing her with beams from rifts until he had enough fire in his blades to start swinging it at her.
She cut through the first few attacks but started leaping clockwise when she noticed the ground giving way.
She counterattacked with her own waves of energy until arriving at a raised plateau, which she used to line herself up with him and launch off.
She pierced through a few more of his attacks and readied her sword for a large swing.
He held both his swords together and swung out, stiffening his body and wings on impact to hold out.
Shockwaves lashed out from their attack that managed to damage a couple Vortexians far out.
They then split off and kept bouncing around smashing into each other to break the stalemate of strength between them on their way to the ground.
Upon the final clash the two slid back on their heels with Justek stopping sooner, with him having a laugh and admitting straight out, "I suppose it was a folly to attempt to beat you in a battle of physical force."
As she was bracing herself to lunge out, his pupils narrowed and he muttered, "Let's try something else…"
When he opened rifts around her this time it exposed her to the cold, harsh suction of space.
It tried to pull her apart from both sides, and tore back some of her skin first. But she was stronger now, and combined with her rage she managed to whip her sword out to cleave the rifts in two with her aura.
Gasping for air, she grit her teeth and widened her eyes as Justek scathed the ground with fire to try and get to her.
She jumped over and slashed aura his way, which he caught in a rift and flung right back at her, followed by stabbing his sword into her gut through another rift.
She held on and flipped atop the sword, sliding into the rift and delivering a slash across his arm that made him drop the sword.
When she landed and turned around for the follow-up she slid into a rift and wound up repositioned in front of him, where he dropped the other sword atop her.
She held the blunt edge of her sword up to hold it back until her footing gave way to a rift.
Then he brought the other sword down with such force it hurtled her out the other side a few feet away, face first into the ground.
She spat out the dirt and blood in her mouth and stood right back up despite being repeatedly beaten down by more beams.
She grabbed her sword in both hands and held it centered with her waist.
Justek paused and drew his swords down by his sides, muttering with a hint of misery in his voice, "Fall already…"
"You know I won't…!" She shouted in a grizzly tone.
"Is this truly so important for you?" He asked.
"You don't know what's been sacrificed to get us here…!" She yelled tearfully, raising her head to scream at him with a fervent but honest declaration, "I'll do everything I can to protect this moment! Sarajin's dream…means everything!"
"Haaa…" Justek let out a deep, gravelly sigh, "Sarajin deserves to be able to enjoy his peace while he can. He's not like you and I. We live to waltz towards the end of eternity, and suffer the endless void beyond…"
"But if we give him his dream, the satisfaction will carry us forward as a warm memory to look back on in the worst of times."
Auris shook her head, "He'd never accept peace. Not in this way!"
"...Then what do you expect me to do?"
"You fight for your family."
In Sancturia, Zeno tried to pull away from Gabriel's safety to get a look in the direction he sensed his mother fighting from.
"But so do I…"
Solaris was making no progress in repelling the rotting horde entangled in the parasite's grasp. But still, he did not yield, for the sake of his site.
"You fight for a dream."
The Ten Tribes continued to fight a seemingly endless battle against the Vortexians.
"So do I…"
He singled his focus on the Ten Sages struggling to keep up with his wrath.
"...You fight for love."
He sees Auris walking to hold hands with Sarajin amidst a white light. The two walked together forward, while a hand reached out towards him, coveting the hope he brought…But never making it.
"...And so do I."
The hand closed and went against his chest.
And Justek's heart beat faster, as he resumed staring Auris down with a somber rescinding of his prior remark, "Forget it. It was foolish of me to ask."
"I shall put an end to all this…even if it means cutting you down to get to my enemy, Auris."
"You're welcome to try…!" She grunted back.
She dashed ahead and zig-zagged around his beams and swung her sword through the center of his fire while leaping at him.
Before she cut through his head he chomped down on her blade and tossed her to the ground. She bounced off on one hand and cleaved a wave of aura into his body before landing.
Once he was staggered she darted ahead and sliced his knees, then whipped right back around and tried to take off one of his wings.
He dropped his sword and grabbed her blade, jerking her near while stabbing his sword into her gut for extra punch.
She forced herself not to gasp, holding on to all of her strength in order to grab the sides of Justek's sword and start dragging it down.
He could hardly meet her willpower without igniting the blade first.
She let her skin sear black by the time she ripped the sword out of his grasp. It was denser than she could have imagined, but in her hands she was able to wield it like it weighed like a stick.
She slashed it, but Justek redirected the flow with a rift so that she wound up cutting her own back.
Her heart cried out in pain but she defied it, throwing the sword into the rift and then immediately jumping over it with her sword redrawn.
She swung down and bounced off Justek's second blade, hurtling into the path of his first sent through another rift.
She bent back and grazed the underside, taking a deep breath so that when she landed she could take another mighty swing at Justek's legs.
Only for a myriad of rifts to widen and blast her with a condensed cone of energy, briefly staggering her while the sword flew through one last rift to hit her in the gut.
Justek then swerved and swept his sword across the ground to hit her into the air, where he opened his mouth and blasted her with intense flames.
She pushed her sword into the line of fire part way in and found her footing to be able to cleave down it and force Justek's jaw shut.
"Heh heh…!" He gave out a jolly laugh as he let his head rest and looked upon Auris with body half-scorched and her eyes more beast than human.
"We're both beasts by nature. It's hard not to enjoy ourselves a bit, isn't it?"
"That's why you invoked the Rite. To have me all to yourself…!"
Auris' eyes flared and she rammed Justek down to the ground in a single burst of speed. Then leaped hundreds of feet into the eye in an attempt to drive her sword through his gut.
He rolled onto his feet, using the girth of his wings to suspend her with a gale, then rose to meet her, spiraling around with his swords extended to slash her multiple times.
Once the deed was done he banished her to the ground with another flap of his wings followed by a few great fireballs.
Auris slammed her feet into the ground and started to sweat. She took great leaps to escape the fireballs fissuring the ground on impact, and eventually drew her sword forward to meet Justek's descent.
Only for him to pull another surprise by flying through a rift and emerging elsewhere even faster than before.
But he still did not make contact, and after escaping into another rift he sent fireballs ahead of himself to keep her on edge.
His speed continued to increase by leaps and bounds until even her precise eyes were struggling to see anything but a vague shape of black.
Auris amassed aura into her sword and started tanking through fire blasts until the blade was three times as large.
Then she performed an immediate swing to counteract Justek's force and halt it in half. Her eardrums cracked as the ground divided into a massive fissure miles wide, then the ears ruptured as a sonic boom followed to devastate the land further.
She knew she screamed at the top of her lungs as he tried to grind her legs down to brittle bone. She did not care.
Every cell in her body could be reduced to dust but she refused to give in to his vengeance.
He eventually broke off and sent her hurtling flat against Sancturia's barrier, to the shock of her father still watching.
She pulled off and jumped away without a second thought, advancing past Justek's guard to cut him from neck to shoulder in one quick motion.
She then landed on a platform and jumped back in an attempt to stab his back. Though her force prevailed, her blade was not sharp enough to do more than dislodge a couple scales.
She dragged him into the barrier and kept pressing down persistently to slow his descent to the ground. She needed to breakthrough, she needed blood.
Justek, however, used his rifts to perform a simple readjustment behind her, where he dropped his sword and grabbed her, throwing her into the crater where this whole engagement began.
And just in time for the sword he dropped to plummet out of a rift and impale her into the ground.
"Grrrr…!" And despite everything, she was ready to put her hands and knees to the ground and shove that sword off her.
Justek dropped down in front of her and used just one claw toe to pin her right hand down.
She gripped her sword diagonally and started stabbing away at his foot and leg, but the awkward angle combined with the pain made her little more than a shaver of scales.
"You could have had this battle won at any moment…No. It's more appropriate to say that you could have prevented this engagement from ever occurring."
"But those eyes of yours were only ever focused on him, never the bigger picture."
Justek pointed his sword at her bracelet and began to speak coldly, "You could have been a legend that soared beside him through history. Now…you shall be little more than a footnote."
"The Tale of the Rainbow Valkyrie…ends here."
With that, he stabbed his sword into her Drive Stone and started shoving at it with all his might.
"Ghhh…!" Auris first kept stabbing at his leg, but then her Drive Stone began to get dislodged out of the bracelet.
"AAAAAHH…!" There was no way to restrain the pain.
Two layers of nerves were being pulled on at the same time.
The Rite ensured that no one would be able to come to her aid.
Leaving her father, already on the verge of despair, crumbling to the ground on his hands and knees and yelling at Justek with all his heart, "Please…! NOT HER! Anyone but her!"
Justek chose to be deaf to his pleas. This warrior made her choice, and forcing this pain upon her was only done out of respect for that.
A victor had to be decided. Time was of the essence…
With one final, mighty roar, his strength performed a feat considered to be impossible, and ripped the Drive Stone free from her system.
And with it, inflicted a spiritual bleed upon her body, a wound that even she could not heal from quickly…
Her eyes widened and then lost their light, as her body reverted to it's original state, her aura diminished into a mere flicker.
Justek then flicked the stone before his face and crushed it in his claw with a triumphant smirk, letting the dust fall atop her head as a final confirmation to her that she had failed.
"You were never the right one for him…" He muttered bluntly, removing all impaled forces from her body before giving her limp body a light kick towards the edge of the crater.
"Only I…have the will to see the end of his dreams fulfilled."
He held both swords and raised his head to glare at Borealis outside of the crater, "Well now…where did we leave off?"
He suddenly felt chills down the back of his neck and looked down to see Auris clawing at the ground in a desperate and ultimately futile attempt to stand.
His eyes trembled, as he muttered at her in a pitiful tone, "Stay down already…"
She dug her knuckles into the dirt and growled weakly, "I-I won't let you…do this…!"
Justek closed his eyes and shook his head, "You wasted the only chance you created. This is over, Auris. Curse this hateful future with your bated breath. Time does not overturn cruelty for the whimpers of the defeated."
He marched one step closer to his destiny…then stopped.
A silent wind blew over the battlefield. His eyes widened with a gasp.
There he stood, as perfect and just as ever.
The man he called friend, whom he longed to call so much more…
Standing once more as a shield for the beaten and weary, uplifting their broken spirits with his presence alone.
Sarajin had returned…
And despite entering this chaotic scene, he remained calm towards him, smiling as he always had, "Hey buddy. What's going on here?"
It took all Justek's strength to not cry as he grinned his fangs at him, "I wish it did not have to come to this…my old friend."
Next Time: A Lasting Promise