The World Of Blazing Part 3

Bruno drank some tea after he gulped due to the awkwardness of the situation.

"I missed you so much..." for the first time in a long time, the face of the princess of Embla didn't display any anger or even that loneliness that convinced Xander she needed him.

This time, it was a genuine smile of happiness, as if she had returned to be the same little girl of that time when she was five years old or less. She served more tea to her beloved brother as she spoke.

"Why were you wearing that stupid mask and uniform?"

Now dressing in a more classical black spearman outfit, besides his new haircut similar to the one he used to have as a kid, the prince drank more tea before answering. "You know that since I was exiled I cannot be seen here... had I returned with my old clothes I would have been executed as quickly as the sound of a snap is produced... without mentioning my old Emblian clothes don't fit me anymore."

Veronica frowned with fury. "Anyone who would have dared to put a single finger on you... I would have sent them to rot in prison!"

Bruno tried his best to do not to react at all to that moment of rage of his sister. Had this been caused because of the curse on their blood or it happened thanks to their love of siblings?... or perhaps a combination of both?

He didn't know... "You didn't have the authority to make that possible back then... besides it would have caused a hell of problems even worse than the actual."

"Where have you been?" Veronica's concern for him was also genuine, he could notice it easily.

"In Nilf." he lied, taking advantage of the fact that in his magic investigations he had learned to cast ice magic. "I always enjoyed the cold climates."

"And you never thought about writing some letters to me?!" Veronica hit the table with her fist. "Have you any idea about how I felt!"

"They would have burnt them as soon as they noticed the letters were written by me, and even if I got someone else to write them instead, they always read and check anything it's sent to you because it could have a dark magic hex on it." Bruno shrugged, and then he scratched his head's back part. "It's also possible they would have sent assassins after me for "daring to plan something against our country again" or anything similar."

The princess growled as she stood up and ran quickly to hug him. "Please don't leave me again..."

Bruno patted her on the head. "I won't leave you, that's a promise."

The inclusion of that specific pronoun had reflected the fact that he, indeed, wasn't going to abandon his sister... but not the Empire. If anything went well in the end, perhaps he could actually take her with him to Nilf before Alfonse repeated with his sister the same event their parents had experienced.

Unfortunately, to continue his investigations in peace and be able to stay by Veronica's side without a knife trying to get to his neck every ten seconds, he would have to work against Askr for a while...

"By the way, I have some information that might come to be-" he didn't get to finish his sentence as Veronica placed a hand on his mouth.

"No!"

"Uh?"

"Just for today... I don't want to do anything regarding war... I just want to spend time with you, just like the old times..."

Bruno could only smile at this... yes... there was hope he could still cure her... he had managed to resist after all...

"As you wish."


The members of the order of heroes remained silent as the dead bodies of the local heroes were been placed inside some holes recently dug by the Askarian soldiers.

It was a shame there weren't any coffins at least to give these heroes the burial they deserved...

Florina's tears weren't exactly as many as one part of herself told her they should have been... but the fact that these weren't exactly her versions of her sisters and friends just didn't make it possible.

Roy and Lilina, on the other hand, looked at the scene with a certain fear growing in their hearts... the possibility of being unable to save their "parents"... or worse... having to kill them...

Even though this wasn't his Lilina, Roy wished she wasn't there to witness this...

He placed a hand on her shoulder. The young woman turned to see... a copy of those gentle eyes filled she had fallen in love with...

She quickly backed off.

"Roy!... we must not..." she turned around and covered her face with her hands.

Roy shook his head. "Sorry!" he turned around, too.

What in the hell was he doing?!

Kiran had been watching them... he frowned as he crossed his arms. "Recordatorio... mantenerlos alejados... (Thing to remember... keep them away from each other)."

Kiran's mind was only occupied by his desire to cut both Veronica's heart and brain with his two swords. "They were the swords of demon's bane" after all..."

That all was thrown away when he felt someone pocking him on his right arm. He turned to see...

"Nino..." the girl's face didn't denote that... beautiful happiness she used to have... he could detect easily the fear.

"A-Are we going... t-to have... t-to..."

"Kill more versions of your friends?..." he, as usual, caressed her hair. Nino didn't waste time and she hugged him.

Both didn't say a thing for a minute... until she gasped, backed off, and placed her hands on her mouth, it took her some seconds before her "crystalized" eyes met Kiran's ones.

"Y-Y-You're... not... gonna make my babies... kill the other me... r-r-right?"

Kiran grimaced "Of course not..." he closed his eyes as he hugged her tighter this time.

However, bringing up the detail of the another Nino caused a few problems on Kiran's mind.

An image of the precious angel-girl in "soulless" mode materialized in his mind. Kiran's face displayed a legendary awkwardness at this...

Unfortunately for him, thanks to that phenomenon he called "the call of the darkness", based on the call of the void the French people mentioned, mixed with his rage thoughts to Veronica... recreated that image of him stabbing her on both heart and brain... but replacing Veronica for Nino.

"GRAAA!" Kiran yelled as he interrupted the hug and placed both hands on his head as if he was suffering both a migraine and a stroke at the same time.

"Kiran?!"

Of course, all this noise got the attention of some of the others present.

Kiran kept shaking his head and growling for a while before his mind decided to stop messing up with him and the thoughts vanished. He opened his eyes. "It's nothing... it's nothing..."

"I highly doubt that's nothing..." Nino's worried expression didn't help him to relax... even less when she tried to put her hand on his forehead... as if she thought he was sick or something... which she barely could because of how tiny she was... which gave her an even cuter look...

"I-It does not matter..."

But it did.

He was used to having intrusive thoughts. Some of them were even worse than what he had imagined himself doing to Nino at that very moment... throwing a baby from the roof of a high building, punching someone to death just for the sake of being an asshole... and he had managed to deal with them since a long time ago. It wasn't something that indicated his mind was off. He had investigated and it was a normal condition for everybody, intrusive thoughts were a normal thing and what mattered about them was that he would never make any of those thoughts come true...

THEN WHY THE HELL HAD HE SO OVERREACTED TO THIS?!

He even had had this kind of disgusting thoughts even with people of his family... then why...

Unfortunately, his brain didn't seem to generate the answer.

"Y-You don't trust on me?..." Nino seemed... disappointed...

"Hey, it's just like that time when I pretended to be having a heart attack for the sake of exaggerating." He said, for the expecters, he seemed to be more relaxed... but his mind was a mess...

Nino frowned. "Why would you even do such a thing?..."

He grimaced. "You know... I'm just a stupid guy regardless of how smart I can be."

He once again hugged her... yet this time she didn't seem eager to hug him back.

Kiran then noticed... Raigh... watching.

The dark mage had an expression similar to the one Kiran had when suffered stress... however, Raigh's mouth curved slowly and he gave him a thumbs-up... his eyes were still narrowed though...

Nino finally decided she didn't want to continue receiving affection from the idiot as she just left, not even saying goodbye.

Kiran felt he wanted to follow her... but his logical side seemed to be taking over once again as he walked away on his own path. He shouldn't bother her by the moment. Once he was near a tree, he smashed his head against it... which, of course, ended up with him on the floor because of the pain.

Had Raigh really... had Raigh really... told him what Kiran thought that thumbs-up meant?

"What are you doing?" he heard the voice of Anna.

He stood up. "Nothing..."

Anna, however, seemed interested in something on his face.

"Are you... blushing?..."

...

...

...

Only a fucking bastard like him could blush in a funeral...

"Yes... now, if you excuse me... I need some rest" He smashed his head against the tree once more before he left to get inside his personal carriage.


Once the sun illuminated that side of the planet once more, the order of heroes was marching in the direction to where the Emblian soldiers had escaped after the previous battle. All this after restocking all their supplies, buying them in the town.

Robin was walking by Kiran's side.

"So there's nothing we can do to break the curse this time?"

Kiran, still affected by the experience with Nino and irritated by the fact innocent heroes had died, growled as he answered. "According to Raigh, this type of curses cannot be activated if the caster or at least the one controlling is too away... so anyone who killed them is part of the Emblian army we're fighting right now... the question now is... who the heck is that person?... common sense would indicate that a powerful dark mage or at least a general would have the other part of the spell... but."

"Probably because of this same reason, it's none of them. You would prefer to give it to someone who isn't that obvious." Robin completed his train of thought. "We don't know what exactly they use though."

"So, unless Kagero somehow manages to discover it by pure casualty, we have no option... we have to finish them off..." again, he growled like a beast.

Robin raised her eyebrow. "What's going on with you today?"

"Rage accumulated, the stress of feeling I'm a useless piece of crap for not being able to do anything to help these slaved people... pain because of training with Frederick... and now this thing seems to be malfunctioning." he began to hit his head with his fist.

Robin, worried about his mental health, held his arm to stop him from continuing to do that, and hugged him. "Relax..." she patted him and kissed him on the head. "Just tell me, what do you mean by that? how is your brain "working incorrectly"?"

Kiran... actually cooperated as he sighed and let his head rest on Robin's shoulder "... I had a dream..."

"How is that something off? was it a particularly bad one or...?"

"I don't have dreams... well, technically speaking, I have them... it's just that you need to remember I have... had total control of my mind so I could transform my dreams into everything I wanted..."

"I suppose this time was an exception," Robin concluded. "It makes more sense, what was the dream about?"

...

...

...

"A nightmare." he lied. His dream was too cute to be considered like that... at least from a certain perspective...

"What kind of nightmare?"

"Remember Meteor?"

"The doomsday device you mentioned?"

"Yeah... I saw it fall on Askr." he lied.

The only thing that had fallen was him when he woke up when his dream was at its climax...

"Perhaps you should really take a break from your job... we appreciate you are willing to help us all to deal with things that even some of them will happen in a very distant future... but we all worry about you. I had to learn the same thing during my travel with Chrom."

"I need to lead this army."

"I could take your place for a while."

The idea of getting vacations was... tempting...

"No thanks... just, wait for me a second."

Kiran released himself from Robin's embrace as he, again, placed both hands on his head.

"Focus... focus... focus..." he breathed slowly, one, two, three... four times.

"Focus... focus... focus..."

He could deal with this mental disaster later. Right now, he had a duty.

"(TĂș controlas las emociones... ellas no te controlan a ti (You control the emotions... they don't control you))." he repeated that sentence over and over and over until he finally relaxed.

"Okay, I'm fine. " he coughed a few times.

"Are you sure?"

"At least by the moment."

He REALLY had to start controlling them, he had gone from rage to blushing, to blushing to self-deprecation and from that to rage again...

Unfortunately for him, that day something was going to happen that would send his mind into an even more insane spiral of emotions.


The general in charge of the Emblian army in Elibe had decided to use the Castle of Caelin as the place for the last stand against the Order Of Heroes. It wasn't a fortress surrounded by walls but it had enough to be defendable.

He had already discarded the dolls he had needed to destroy, he still had some of them but he just couldn't allow losing more.

It mattered more to remain in control over this country to continue extracting gold and more useful minerals, but without the heroes, Askr would win.

What was strange was that detail regarding the tactician of the order. Some of the soldiers that retreated declared to have seen him fighting alongside his army... yet another fraction of the army declared they had been chasing him for two weeks and he had been killed near the castle days ago when he attacked to the soldiers patrolling...

It didn't seem to make any sense... but after he got more information that described the first one as a swordman wielding two swords and the other being a powerful mage... the general concluded they weren't the same. Perhaps just someone with a face similar. Had the tactician of the order died, he would have had the advantage to win this time. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case.

There were enough food supplies to resist at least two months, so he at least had time enough to come with something to win the battle.

As he left the papers on the table and walked through the corridors, he noticed two maids, one of black hair and another with blue hair, carrying what seemed to be wine.

At least there was something to have some fun or get rid of some stress.


Because Emblians forced local maids to serve them but they at least were smart enough to take advantage of the language barrier to do not allow any important information to get filtrated, and another important detail, Lilina had to come with Kagero for the infiltration mission in case they got questioned. Kagero only needed to pretend to be mute in the worst scenario.

Thanks to the fact Florina had inhabited in a castle totally similar to the one they were at, the location of where the food supplies were stored was very well known by the ninja and the red mage.

As they entered the kitchen and proceeded to try to enter the supplies room... a soldier there noticed something off with these maids.

"Do we have a register of an enslaved blue-haired maid?"

"I think the answer is no."

As Kagero saw the two guards walkings towards the same direction as she and Lilina, she yelled. "Change of plans, burn everything now!"

Kagero quickly pulled out her daggers, dodging a spear attack and stabbing one soldier in the neck.

Lilina used her fire tome to transform the kitchen into a hell. Then she kicked the door she was going to open and cast three times her fire magic inside.

As Kagero finished off the second guard and the screams of the other maids and cookers were getting the attention of everybody and more soldiers would arrive soon, the ninja held the hand of the queen of Lycia from other timeline and both ran through the corridors until they were back at that fake wall Florina had also explained them about.


"Mission completed, all according to the plan," Kagero reported, still wearing that maid outfit.

"How many soldiers do you had to seduce?" Kiran asked.

"Just one that perhaps saw us coming out from the wall the first time, I'm not sure, I killed him quickly."

"I see..." he turned to see Lilina. "Sorry for that, but Kagero isn't a mage and it was just more practical to set everything on fire with your magic."

"It's okay," Lilina said forcing a smile... she was just happy she didn't meet any of the heroes... especially her father... "I don't like a lot this kind of tactics but they are useful after all."

Kiran drank lemon tea this time... he had attempted to speak to Nino again but at the very moment she saw him, she ran away... this had, of course, made him feel depressive again... so he decided something like this could help...

"Now the question is... are they going to attack us in a desperate attempt to have anything to eat for tomorrow?... or we will have to wait until they starve to death?... An army marches on its stomach, as Napoleon would say." he drank more tea.


While inside the castle the invader army was in chaos even during dinner time, Kiran was inside his carriage once more... he was going to go to the dining tent... not now...

He preferred to invest his time continuing writing that special book, filling more pages of that back-up of all the scientific information his brain had stored.

The more time it happened, the more likely it was he would forget an important detail, like the exact value of a mathematical constant, and valuable time would be lost in the future trying to rediscover that.

As the door opened... he saw the last person he ever expected to see bringing him his dinner...

Raigh.

"Hey!" he had a... smile... sure, a tiny one... but a smile anyway...

"It's not like it disgust me but... why did you choose to bring this to me?... I suppose you had more important things to do..."

"Well, you're one of the few ones I actually like." he shrugged.

They remained silent for a while... now that he was here... Kiran's mind returned to what had seen while hugging Nino...

"Raigh... I need you to confirm to me something... what do you exactly meant with that thumbs-up?..."

Raigh crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow a little. "I thought it was obvious... I mean, at first, I thought you were some piece of crap, garbage with legs, putrid degenerated... now, honestly I think you are the only one that actually understands me. Not even my brother can do that." he laughed. "So... I gave you... permission."

Kiran grimaced... "Raigh... I don't want that..."

Raigh shook his head as he laughed again. "So you mean to tell that each puppy hug, each kiss on the forehead and the fact you gave her a collar heart-shaped, asking her to come home with you after the war and all that shit never was with the intention of taking her to your bedroom? are you fucking kidding me? because it's not working." he raised his middle finger.

Kiran's teeth clenched. "Wey (dude), we're talking about your mom! she calls me brother and I call her sister..."

"Yes, I know she's my mother. But that is irrelevant. Now, even if she actually thinks of you as a brother even though you didn't get raised together, you're not really answering my question."

"It's nothing very different from what I did with my sisters..."

"Even the kisses part?" Raigh mocked.

"Eh..."

Kiran had to rub his face furiously with his hand.

"Besides, if you really think of her as a sister, wouldn't a more logical reaction be laughing at everything I'm telling you instead of negating everything like a bitch with a voice tone that does not support at all your affirmations... not to mention that stupid red color of your cheeks?" Raigh pointed out with his index finger.

...

...

...

Raigh smiled like a bastard. "Je, gotcha."

"I-I need fucking air..." Kiran stood up and kicked the door.

"Aren't you going to eat this?" Raigh asked, still smiling.

"LATER!"

"... Pendejo (Idiot)." Raigh laughed once again as he got out from the carriage too and proceeded to follow Kiran as he was running without a reasonable patron towards the darkness of the night.


Kiran didn't know how much time he had been running, shaking his head and growling. When he stopped, he started to punch a tree... which had kinda the same result that when he attempted that with his head.

Again, his own mind mocked at him as it materialized images of the sweet green-haired angel. The effect Raigh added when he said "taking her to your bedroom" made those fantasies even worse...

"GRAAAAAAAAAAAA! GRAAAAAAAAAAAA! GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHH!"

Kiran really tried his best to throw those thoughts away... he just couldn't...

He was a follower of people like Tesla and Newton. From people like them he had learned love was not worth it. It was just a chemical reaction that impulsed animals to breed... he had managed to keep that cursed feeling buried in the deepest part of his mind since a long time ago.

THEN WHY HE COULDN'T DO IT NOW?!

His beast-like growls finally stopped when his nose detected a smell as horrendous as the mental disorder he was suffering.

"Tch!." he pressed his nose as he wondered where the hell that nasty shit was coming from.

"Did you get lost?"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" Kiran almost buried his sword into the face of his "nephew" "RAIGH!"

"Sorry about that." he shook his head... until his own nose also detected what Kiran's one was barely managing to do not let in. "Damn! that's the smell of a corpse!"

"How do you know that?!"

"I'm a black mage, creepy stuff is my specialty."

"...True..."

As Raigh predicted, it didn't take them that long to find a body in an advanced state of putrefaction.

It was thanks to Raigh's magic flame that they were able to see.

"Perhaps he was the victim of bandits..."

They frowned... and his eyes went wide a little as they noticed... a certain silver compound being expulsed slowly from this body...

"Is that... quintessence?" Kiran asked.

"Most probable answer? yes."

Kiran, wanting to confirm that hypothesis, approached his hand to touch it and determine both compounds felt the same...

Which made the compound react.

Kiran barely had time to frown when the quintessence began to flow and enter his body through the skin.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!"

"Kiran!" Raigh held him... "Kiran?!"

Kiran's vision became... fuzzy... "W-What?... argh... uuuuh... daaaah..."

Raigh tried his best to make Kiran react or form any sentence coherently... but after a while he then stopped moving.

Kiran had passed out after receiving such a level of that compound so quickly, "Dang it!"


"Healer! I need a fucking healer!" Raigh yelled, dragging Kiran's body through the camp.

His screams got quickly the attention of the members of the order. The first one to reach them was Alfonse. "What happened to him?!"

"We found a corpse expelling certain energy and it got all into his body!"

"GET HIM TO THE MEDIC TENT, NOW!" Ordered the prince, worried by seeing his, by now, only friend without moving at all.

Artur, Joshua, Sharena, and Cordelia held the white tactician by his extremities and carried him away.


The white blood cells didn't react positively at first when a strange substance invaded their world. The neutrophils and the T-killers attempted to eliminate the quintessence... however, at the moment the silver substance made contact... the cells "relaxed"... no, not only that happened. It was as if they suddenly became stronger... a group of weak local bacteria that entered the body after a while met a horrible destiny because of this. The red blood cells didn't get as much energy as the white ones, but all this caused that the blood obtained a tiny silver coloration.

Most of the quintessence, however, made its way until it reached the brain and "energized" the neurons as new memories began to be loaded into the brain...

After that day, the body was going to become partially based on silicon.


That last kinda detailed explanation of what happened inside the body is thanks to that anime called Cells At Work. Because what could be better to watch during this quarantine than an anime regarding our internal defenses fighting bacteria and viruses?! So, I'm also one of those who ship U-1146 and AE-3803. I can't wait for season 2.

Intrusive thoughts are common things, I also have them (the most disturbing ones would be those when I imagined myself letting my baby nieces hit the ground... with their heads) but it just takes some will to be able to ignore them and destroy them as quickly as they appear. There's a Wikipedia article about it if you want to read it. Why hasn't Kiran displayed them before? well, because each of those were not really important for the plot (most of them were like: punching Sharena for apparently no reason at all). While "Call from the darkness" and "Call from the void" may seem the same, as far as I know, the latter one is only used to describe the thoughts where the person imagines himself/herself committing suicide by jumping.

I guess it's obvious who was the corpse that gave its quintessence to our idiot here.

The Westermarck Effect explains why histories of childhood romance and incest between siblings are, in general, not very realistic (especially with the latter one, seriously, what the hell Japan?!), basically, two children (a boy and a girl) that have grown up together since a time before 6 years are kinda unable to think about the another one as a potential love interest. It's not a universal law but this is why Raigh highly doubts Kiran actually thinks of Nino as a little sister. (Actually, had Nino not mentioned that to him, the idea would have never crossed his mind). He himself had admitted he would have asked her to go out on a date with him had he been between thirteen and ten years old... because he thought she was like 9 or 11 years old because of how tiny she is... (and because when he was 13 years old, while he didn't have an active interest in girls, the idea didn't seem like something intrinsically wrong or a limiter to his intelligence) but then he learned she's actually 15 years old.

Time to answer reviews I guess.

A fan:

Doesn't that thing require modern gasoline to be made?