The pale moon was almost eaten away by the deep sky's darkness. It was cut by the glacial horizon, cold, frosty air surrounding every aspect of the suspenseful scene. The glacier top was filled with frothy, subzero air and painted with the shade of reflective moon and starlight, yet still dark in ebony.
Yards away from Hyoumaru, his power representative robes swaying lightly with the rising wind, as if being swept away was Takiato Kenneth, the Ice Minor. He lay on the icy floor as if four-legged, his hands and feet bent on the cold, uneasy grounds. Bright blue energy completely enveloped him, visible in the midnight darkness, yet transparent enough for visibility in the Minor's human presence. The energy surrounded him and created a bird shaped like cage, as if he were inside it. The energy sprout wings made of itself, looking like magic blue fire burning in the air. Kenneth's expression tightened and his face seemed uneasy. His eyes were piercing and demonic, his teeth grit tightly, showing like a ravenous hunger, his body pouring out the energy constantly like an active volcano.
Energy is coming out of him at a constant rate, even if it is a slow and small one, Hyoumaru observed. But even so, I'm surprised he could reach this level of power at just a beginning stage. Maybe it was White Cloak's doing after all… I guess he just wanted more power to absorb when he got to them. That's him all right, always taking risks just for power. I have nothing to worry about yet, though. I'll just end it right now.
Kenneth growled horridly, as if he were turning into a beast. His eyes glowed like a million neon signs beaming at once. His gritted teeth began shaking from such a strong hold. His "wings" fluttered violently, dusting away cold air as it crept closer to him, always trying but never succeeding.
Hyoumaru fixed his stance, and closed his eyes. The wind began to pick up almost immediately, and cold, frothy mist began to surround him out of nowhere, wrapping around him like a scarf of numbing cold. Hyoumaru felt the temperatures drop dramatically, almost reaching zero Kelvin. Above, clouds began forming, churning violently like snakes bodies creating an arc of cold mist. Below the glacier where the ocean rocked viciously, it slowly began to slump its pace and freeze into ice crystals, creating an ice patch for the glacier to sit on.
Kenneth waited in his still position, the thick ice shards of different shapes stuck onto his back, blood leaking out like tiny streaks of a river, black red soaking his clothes, churning with the hot sky blue energy. He stared as a second later, it began to drizzle. The lining drops of water lasted a nanosecond before turning into snow. The snow stopped soon as well, and turned into crazed hail. The wind picked up violently, the chill factor unbearable and raw. The huge ice pellets of hail rained down, crashing onto the glacier and the ocean below like massive boulders, the sound of plopping ocean water being able to be heard even from the top of the glacier.
The mist around Hyoumaru diverged away, the wind swirling around everyone and everything like a pre-blizzard. The ice dove down so quickly all at once, that it was almost blinding. They came downward with the attempt of murder, striving to kill someone.
Kenneth growled loudly in challenge, his human consciousness half gone. As seconds passed, the crashing ice grew thicker and thicker, until the point where they were visible rocks falling from the sky to the human eye. Although they flew in every direction in every single way, they never came in contact with Hyoumaru.
This is it, Hyoumaru thought, his hair swinging wildly, whipping in the air murderously, and his eyes squinting to see through the falling maelstrom of frost. As if on cue, a titanic boulder of ice – at least ten feet in diameter came soaring from the sky, diving down quickly like a meteor, pinpointing Kenneth's precise, direct spot. Kenneth growled in acceptance to the challenge, and his wings began fluttering horridly, his body hovering above the floor just as the ice meteor crashed with a horrid shatter, dust flying everywhere and ice shards fired crazily. As soon as the pooling cloud of dust cleared, the icy dust clearing almost immediately, Kenneth was found lying on his back in a pool of his own blood, tens of ice shards struck through his chest. Luckily, there were none through his heart. His wrapping energy had faded away, and his eyes were closed in unawareness. The hail seemed to calm down afterward, calming to a light snow that pooled on Hyoumaru's hair.
The council sighed. He walked slowly up to the Minor, and picked him up in his arms. Blood began to stream down and cake his hands, but he didn't care for anything like that. "Time to go back," he concluded, flash speeding away, leaving behind the glacier arena, the moon just about set, only a sliver of its crescent smile remaining.
PoVS
Tsukansu found himself standing in the midst of a room's darkness, facing an entire monument of memories that had been locked away fro so long. He sighed in nostalgia and closed his eyes to relax. He stared at the small cabinet like closet, the darkness and deviant orange surrounding it, giving its ancient look. For some reason, the Water Council hesitated. He grinned a crooked smile of non assurance, his arms resisting to obey command.
I'd never thought I'd find myself in this room again, he thought. Never even thought about seeing these again. He stared solemnly at the dimmed plaster cabinet, the material that everything in this dimension seemed to be made of. He gulped a semi nervous knot inhis throat that never seemed to go away. It was almost like a friend, if you could call something that annoyed you the most a friend. It would always come up as a sign of nervousness, to make Tsukansu realize his emotions in a state of confusion and cloud mindedness. He sighed another dreadful sigh and placed his hands on the moldy handles of the closet, gripping tightly around them, ready to open them up.
Come on, he pleaded himself. It's not like opening them is going to make a difference. It's not like opening this closet is going to open a black hole that's going to consume everything. That kind of thing might only happen if I don't open it. So what's wrong? Why do I resist so much to open this closet? His grip grew tighter and tighter, until he felt the narrow handles dig deep into the palm of his hands, cutting into his skin li9ke an essential knife. The darkness seemed to grow thicker and thicker as Tsukansu hesitated more and more. The knot in his throat came back, and he tried to swallow it back down, forcing it to be locked away in the depths of his empty stomach.
"What're you doing?" came a serious, deep and calm voice. Tsukansu's eyes widened in surprise. His grip grew accidentally tighter around the handles of the plaster, almost breaking the whole thing off. He took a sharp and silent breath through his nostrils, and calmed as he let it out through its entrance. He closed his eyes to calm himself further, and recognized the voice completely.
"Hibiyomi, huh?" he retorted seriously as well, his begging brown eyes covered beneath his secretive eyelids.
To a distant wall of the room stood Hibiyomi, his arms crossed in front of him and his back up against the dim orange wall. His large, gray and inhuman eyes were piercing in the deep darkness that seemed to never end, his presence looking comfortable in the current surroundings. No light source gave into the room, yet you could still see a bit thanks to the adjustment to the darkness of your eyes. Hibiyomi stared into space as he paid close attention to Tsukansu, wrapping his accusing stare around him.
Tsukansu, still in his uncomfortable position smiled in acknowledgement. He didn't turn around to look at Hibiyomi, and loosened the grip on the plaster, his hold almost disappearing completely. Hibiyomi peered to the corners of his eyes, still waiting for an answer.
"Hmph," Tsukansu smirked. He had yet to turn around and face Hibiyomi as he talked. He just kept his head bowed down on the floor, as if he were ashamed of some sort. He kept one hand on one of the closet handles as he said, "Always asking questions you know the answer to, isn't that right, Hibiyomi?"
Hibiyomi stared in silence, being that there is no need of answer. His shadowy cover concealed his identity, not taken off for at least five hundred years. "Considering how things are feeling like they are going to become more intense," Tsukansu continued, his fingers now playing with the handle in nostalgia mixed in with boredom. "And more mysterious, it had recently come across me… that I might need them again someday."
Hibiyomi stared solemnly for a minute, and replied deeply, "Oh?" without much enthusiasm, his expression blank as always, his arms still crossed in front of him. With every single word spoken, the darkness seemed to wrap around stronger and stronger.
"Don't tell me you don't know all ready," Tsukansu said, a little more mean that he meant, but still plain and blunt with the answer. He picked up his head in acknowledgement, staring hard and blankly at the cabinet doors that would lead to something he hasn't even seen in over five hundred years. The two solemn councils have yet waited to make eye contact with each other, even if it were to be a moment.
Tsukansu sighed a deep sigh that filled the whole room, and took his other hand and gripped it around the other handle, tightening his hold around them, feeling the plaster dig into his skin again. With a bit of hesitation and a lot of nostalgia, he turned the handles to divergent sides, and pulled the doors open. They pulled apart gracefully and with a loud, aged creak. The opening of the closet let out an ancient, strong stench that immediately filled Tsukansu's nostrils, enveloping him in more memories. The old stench spread out, a mature one that grew over the years and was held in like an imprisoned substance, but now, finally having a chance to be free, it took it's once in a lifetime opportunity, and swam through the air properly.
Hibiyomi let his hands fall back down to his sides and stared hard into the deeper darkness inside the closet, finding two figures silhouetted against the ebony. "So, have you noticed it, Hibiyomi?" he said solemnly. He took the two objects from the sea of darkness, and they clicked in return as he held the two by the handle, then crossed them scissor like, their long shafts easy to handle. Feeling the two things in his hands again felt so invigorating, so new to him, even if he had been through benevolence and blood with it almost all his life. They gave a familiar feeling to him, and made him feel complete, even more confident. "A major reason I finally pulled these out was the fact of the difference we found recently in White Cloak's voice."
Hibiyomi stared halfheartedly, the other half acknowledged. "The other reason being…" Tsukansu continued.
"I know," Hibiyomi said dully. He shamed his head and tilted it downward, his arms still crossed in a tough manner. He closed his eyes in ancient realization and repeated, "I know."
PoVS
In another dark room along the mysterious corridors that hid some kind of secretion, Teresa lay in her bed, Minoa at her side sitting on a wooden chair, staring hard at the sixteen year old girl, and thinking of how much the Minor reminded her of herself back then. Her eyes were closed gracefully, lost in a paralleled trance from another universe. They were lost, and her eyelids were waiting for their return. Darkness consumed the room entirely, eating away every aspect of visibility.
Teresa lay with the covers up to her chest gracefully, sleeping heavenly like an angel. As soon as she began stirring, Minoa took notice. Teresa shifted around, her arms waving around the white sheets, her hair scrambled across the pillow beneath her head. Slowly, her eyes returned, half opening at first, then closing in awakening, but then reopening in enlightenment. She began to build a more steady and noticeable breathing pattern that could be heard from miles in the silent darkness as she looked around to find Minoa by her side.
"Wh…Where am I?" she said, her eyes barely open and her entire body feeling weak, her lips closed gracefully. She ran her fingers through her purple hair by her side, feeling them just for the sole purpose of comfort.
"You hurt yourself while you were training yourself. I had to stop you," Minoa said, brushing her arm against Teresa's feeling the thin, soft skin under the sheets.
"Oh," she said, peering away from Minoa and staring into the ceiling in thought. Her expression remained solemn, and she closed her violet eyes, hiding her obvious thoughts. "I see," she said quietly, almost in a whisper. "So I'm that kinds of person now, aren't I?"
"What – What do you mean, Teresa-san?" Minoa said comfortably, attempting to be her therapist at the moment.
"I'm totally useless, aren't I? That's how I am, no matter how hard I try, right?" she said in a clam voice, sadness consuming her words, her eyes beginning to glimmer in the nonexistent light. "No matter how hard I strive to pay off that debt, I can't ever succeed, can I not?"
Minoa let out a choked gasp in realization and acknowledgement. "I can't manage to use the first level of Visible Darkness, and I can't even train without almost killing myself. I'm completely useless… I'll never cure the burden I seem to always carry on my back as I climb up life's mountain. I'll never reach the top, will I?"
Minoa didn't know what to say. She was completely speechless. All she did was look down in shame for not realizing how Teresa would feel after she had woken up earlier. "That snowy, chilly top of the mountain with the fresh smell and comfort… I'll never get to that, will I?" Teresa concluded finally, a single tear streaking down the side of her face, her eyes glimmering brightly with water. Her expression began to shake a bit, but she held the tears and sadness back, the sense of failure completely overtaking.
"No," Minoa said, her head still bowed down in apparent shame. Teresa sniffed and looked at Minoa's dangling hair with watery, red creeping eyes.
"What…?" Teresa said, revealing overwhelmed teeth, flashing a non purposed smile.
"Don't give up just yet. Just because you failed at one thing one time doesn't mean you have to give up your goal completely," she advised with confidence, slowly tilting her head back up. "I understand how you feel, and I promise I won't let you down in your next training. You'll be surprised about what we have in store for you guys. All you have to do is try your best. Don't give up hope, or everything is lost, you got that?" she said finally, clenching her fist tightly by her side.
"Yes," Teresa said forcefully, giving a short and meaningless smile. She's right but… Teresa pondered. I don't know if it's so easy to find what I've lost anymore…