Author: I was afraid of this, I've slowed down writing, exponentially. It really is a weird thing, there's a bunch of stuff in my head that I want to get out, but there's a bunch of other stuff that I'd rather do instead (games and such). There were short bursts of writing adrenaline every now and then, unfortunately they can be tiring. At the very least though, I will do what I can to actually finish this one.
Also, I'm warning you now, this chapter doesn't have the fun atmosphere that the previous chapters had. If that's what you came here for, well there's at least the next chapter to look forward.
"Mom?!" A young girl walks down the steps of her house, she heard extremely loud noises downstairs. There were still more noises, glass breaking, wood snapping, metal clanging, ice shattering and fires raging. The house she was in is covered in flames, black flames. There were also large chunks of white ice scattered about and starting to melt.
"MOM!" She calls out, but there was no sign of her mother. There was a large hole in the wall, as if someone was knocked through it. Looking through it, the house just across the street also had a similar hole. But the house beyond that erupted in an explosion of white ice and black flames.
Loud creaking noises could be heard above her. The young girl runs out to escape the collapsing building she was in. There were people rushing out into the streets to see the strange explosion of ice and flames.
A gigantic mountain of ice erupts out of the ground. Then something at the very top breaks out violently with a flurry of shadows and flames whirling around. The black storm expands tremendously. The little girl instinctively braced herself, creating a shield of ice all around her as the whirling storm of darkness and black flame approaches.
Her defence was weak and she was sent flying into a wall, but she was spared from the flames, unlike the people around her. They were burning in black flames, screaming in agony, but the black flames would leave nothing, it burned everything away.
The girl's horror is met by a sudden chill in the air. A sweeping wind blows through, carrying a drizzle of ice, until it became a relentless blizzard. She isn't affected however, as her own powers give her immunity to the cold. But she knows what, no, who is the cause of this storm.
Large sharp icicles began to rain down as black flames spewed about. There was another eruption, and a woman's body flies through the house, covered in ice until it shatters on the pavement and her body rolls to a stop near where the girl is.
"MOM!"
"Get back Isolde!" The woman waved her arm to motion the girl away. She had long, hip length ice blue hair, golden yellow eyes, dressed in tight white pants, and a short white jacket over top a pink long sleeved shirt.
"Well now..." what appears to be a young man stood atop the roof of the house that the girl's mother just flew through. He had short, messy black hair with a body cloaked in black robes that held a black orb above his heart, and he is engulfed in black flames against the blizzard. "It's already grown this much. To think that you were raising it all by yourself." The man jumps away as very large icicles bombard where he stood. "I must say, I'm disappointed! I was expecting a former Admiral to put up much more of a fight!" The man dashes down inhumanly fast and charges the young girl.
The woman steps between them and blocks his attack. His blood red blade held back by a pure white ice shield. The man jumps up into the sky as icicles erupt at his feet. He bounces around in the air like a light hitting mirrors, completely avoiding large icicles that fly in his direction. The man goes around the two females and tries attacking the girl again. The girl's eyes widened in fear, the man suddenly jumps over just before icicles sprout out at his feet and around her.
The man is met midair by the girl's mother, wielding dual white sabers. They clashed in the air, and rose higher while their swords clashed at high speeds. They separated after a strong impact, the woman falls as the man hovers. The woman summons hundreds of ice pixies around the man and they fly in faster than the human eye can see. The man's black flames form into draconic familiars covered in shadow power, they encircle him at high speed, shattering the pixies they flew in close.
The woman lands on her feet and raises her arms. Several dozen gigantic icicles emerge around the man. She closes her arms and hands, the giant icicles crash into each other, with the man in the middle. Then she falls to one knee.
"MOM!" The girl runs to her gasping mother. A loud cracking noise stops her. Looking up, the large ice star shatters completely with black flames dancing in the center.
In the middle of the flames, an orb glows black. The flames form into the young man, unharmed. "Hehehe... HAHAHA!" The man laughs. "You actually almost had me there!"
A gigantic ice whale appears dives in from above and swallows the young man. The whale cracks up horribly with black flames spewing out and finally shatters from the pressure. The man just floats, smiling. "Heh, too bad I'm here to kill you both. I've never had this much fun before!"
"Kill us?!" The mother stands up, with difficulty. "You're not here to take her back?"
"No, that would be boring," The man answers while he pulls out a decorated dagger, the handle is yellow with a pointed end. "But they don't need it anymore, you see..." The man stabs his dagger into the palm of his other hand, the handle glows and extends into sword hilt with a yellow H shaped crossguard. "They've already made another." He slowly separates the hilt from his palm, the blood from his hand solidifies into a blade, a blood red sword.
"Another? How?!"
"It was soon after you left, they had all the data they needed to create another. Except this one is even less human," He pointed his sword at the girl, his free hand drips with blood. "There's no need for two of those monsters to exist! Especially the lesser one! But just killing it normally won't be any fun, something like that has to have a powerful soul. So I'll just rip its soul out and FEAST ON IT!" He raises his bleeding hand upwards. The blood shoots out of his palm, turns purple and forms a pentagram in the sky.
"Isolde run!" The woman yells out, the blizzard intensified greatly. The girl steps back a bit, very confused and afraid. "RUN!" The woman screams out, creating a thick wall of ice in front of the girl. The girl turns around and runs away.
The man's black flame dragon familiars emerged again and protected him from the storm of icicles and ice pixies. He jumps up and above the pentagram, then flies down to slam into the center. The pentagram stretches into a cone as he forces himself through it, eventually it disappears as his robes are coated with an ancient language, in the same color as the blood pentagram.
Several giant icicles ram into him and ice walls try to stop him, along with stronger blizzard winds. But the man doesn't slow down, rather, he is picking up speed! Even ice whales and an ice titan is easily rammed through.
The woman notices the ground around her cracking up. She creates a pillar of ice to avoid the black dragon flame familiars that erupt out from underneath. The pillar gets destroyed, the woman rolls on landing. She intensifies the blizzard to slow down the familiars, she creates ice swords and slices the familiars when they fly near.
"Isolde!" The woman flies, using blizzard winds out of her back to push her forward.
A dragon flame familiar erupts from the ground in front of the young girl.
"AHH!" The girl falls to the ground. Instinctively, she turns around and sees the man flying towards her.
"Hahahahaha!"
"MOM!" The girl tries to shield herself.
The man reaches the girl, a large white dome erupts when they connect. The dome compresses itself into an ovular shape. Pentagrams written in black appear on the outside.
"Now face true despair! Feel true agony! Let me hear your cries of anguish and sorrow!"
The young girl clutches her head as the world around her turns blood red, she sees images of devastation and death, the voices of wallowing souls screeches in her ears, she can feel her soul slipping away... the wisps of lost souls, a maelstrom of blood, planets exploding, pentagrams and monsters, a six armed horned demon standing on top of piles of bones, finally the world tearing itself apart.
The girl screams, but there's no voice.
"Isolde!" She hears her mother calling out to her, but her mind was already on the verge of breaking. "I'm here Isolde! Listen to me! Hang in there!"
The girl can barely hear her mother's voice, she could not feel her mother's embrace. Her body was being encased in ice.
"I'm sorry, Isolde... This is all I can do for you. But even if I lose my soul, a part of me will always be with you."
The dome blackens, then glows red. The top part shatters as the man in black breaks out, he lands nearby as his dome disintegrates, leaving behind two bodies, one frozen in ice. He pulls out the black orb at the center of his robes and inspects it. A white shine glows from inside it.
"So she gave herself up to protect the monster, pathetic." The shine fades out and the orb becomes completely black once again. "Strange, it doesn't seem complete. Where's the rest of it? Still, it's the strongest soul I've absorbed, perhaps I'll keep it as a trophy." The man places the orb back on his robes and turns around. "Now, for the other one."
The smaller body breaks out of the ice encasing it. She stumbles about, confused. She holds her head. "Mom..." She opens her eyes and sees her mother's body lying before her. "Mom? MOM!"
"It's useless," the man approaches the young girl. "Her soul's gone, that's just a shell now, there's nothing there. But don't worry..." The man grips the blade of his sword. "You'll be seeing her soon..."
"Mom!" the girl violently shakes her mother's body as tears well up in her eyes. "Mom wake up! Wake up! Mom..." The tears flow down her cheeks and onto her mother's smiling face.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" A massive wind blows out from the young girl, the tears that remained froze on her face.
"What the hell?!" the man is forced to shield his face momentarily until he gets his black flames ignited. But the strong winds still forced him to get some distance. "It's awakening... so this is its power..." The man smirks, then laughs out maniacally. "HAHAHAHA! Now things are getting interesting!" He cuts open his hand and spread the blood around him into a pentagram. The sigil glows as the man smiles a crazed smile. "Come Leviathan! Show me your legendary power!"
Wind and ice continue to blow out from the little girl's body, her pupils disappear and are replaced by a crystalline flower of ice.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"
XXX
"-HHHHHHHHHH" Isolde suddenly sits up, controlling her shared body. She breathes hard as she gathers her surroundings. With a hand on her chest she calms herself down.
The girl holds her head and closes her eyes. "That memory again... except for some reason it's a lot stronger. Why?" She looks at her other hand, it's covered in ice all the way up to her elbow. At her hand the ice formed into a fin like shape. (It's never gotten that high before.) She looks at Touma on the other bed and finds him sleeping soundly.
Isolde gets up from the bed and heads for the washroom. She shatters the ice into dust. (I thought I've got that thing under control. That nightmare must have woken it back up.) She looks at the mirror, specifically, her eyes. There was a single spike of ice in front of her pupil.
(Tch...) Isolde closes her eyes and breathes in deep. Mist circles around her body slowly as she concentrates. The mist stops and disappears into the air. She opens her eyes and checks the mirror again, her eyes were back to normal. (I don't know how much longer I can keep this from Liliian. She'll find out eventually. No, I have to keep it from her. This is my problem, not hers.)
Isolde walks out of the bathroom and starts her way back to the bed.
"What the hell?!" Isolde sees the glass doors to the balcony were open, and someone standing over Touma's sleeping body with a short blade.
She launches an ice pillar at the intruder and hits the wall instead. The shadow runs out to the balcony and jumps off.
"[Kanon!]" a young girl calls out as her partner jumps off the balcony and rushes to her side. "[What happened?]"
"[A stroke of bad luck,]" the woman answers as Isolde jumps off the balcony and stands before them.
Isolde's eyes adjusts to the night and uses what little light to make out the two intruders. One was a young woman with short bright violet hair, her body is cloaked in a black cape with red waves. The other was a girl about her own age, with slightly longer and darker hair than the woman but tied up with a ribbon, wearing black robes tied at her waist with a red sash.
"Who are you?" Isolde asks.
"[She wasn't asleep?]" the girl talks to the woman in a strange language.
"[Of course not,]" the woman answers. "[The Perpetua Una Dormienda only works on sleeping people.]"
(That language...) Isolde listens in. ('Eternal Sleep'?)
"[The Imagine Breaker?]" the girl asks the woman.
"[Still alive.]"
(Imagine Breaker? They're here for Kamijou?)
"[What do we do?]"
"[We have a mission, we complete it!]" The woman charges forward.
Isolde readies herself. The woman held out an arm and paper flies out. Isolde erects a solid shield, the paper embeds itself into her shield.
(They're sharp!)
Paper in the shape of daggers pierce the shield deeper.
(What the hell is this paper made of?) Isolde notices the woman running to her side. The ice girl launches icicles at the woman.
The woman jumps back while throwing paper daggers. Isolde creates a whirling mist to disrupt their trajectory and they land around her instead.
(Markings?) Isolde notices writing on the paper daggers. ('Explo-!') The daggers explode around Isolde, covering her in smoke.
Icicles fly out of the smoke cloud, the woman barely dodges, one icicle rips off a piece of her cloak around her shoulder. The smoke cloud is blown away by windy mist from Isolde, remnants of her ice armor chipping off of her body. Isolde herself is suddenly bombarded by wind. She turns to the source, it was the other girl, using a staff to control the wind.
The ice girl freezes her feet to the around and blows mist against the wind. She manages to push the wind back halfway before the other girl intensifies her power.
While the two girls are struggling against each other, the woman quickly sneaks around behind Isolde, readying her blade.
"No you don't!" A voice from above screams to the woman.
The woman turns around, her face is met with a fist and she is knocked down. Isolde quickly notices her body hit the ground out of the corner of her eye, she notices something tattooed on her shoulder where her cloaked was ripped off.
"That's-!"
The woman gets up while firing paper blades at both Isolde and her attacker. The ice girl breaks one hand away from the wind struggle and makes a solid ice shield. The woman rushes back to her partner. Isolde brings back her shield hand, gathers mist and throws it low. The gathered mist blows underneath the wind storm, spiking up icicles as it chases the woman.
The young girl breaks off her attack and jumps away, sending a wind blast to Isolde's mist ball to scatter it. The two of them regroup.
"[Are you alright?]" The girl asks.
"[I'm fine Sienna,]" the woman answers. "[But now...]" They both look at Isolde as Touma walks beside her.
Touma flexes his wrist. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
"Mind telling me what's happening?" Touma asks.
"Sorry, I'm as lost as you are." Isolde answers. "How'd you wake up anyway?"
"It got cold all of a sudden."
"Heh..." Isolde smirks.
"Not to mention some thick block of ice suddenly dropped on top of me."
"Oh, I forgot about that..." Isolde nonchalantly tells him. Remembering the ice column she shot at the intruder
"[Hey Kanon,]" the girl turns to her partner. "[She's supposed to be an Esper, right? So why does her power feel so much like magic?]"
"[I don't know, I've never faced an Esper before.]"
"[What do we do now?]" The girl grips her staff.
"[We still have a mission to accomplish,]" the woman calls out a slew of paper that flies around her body.
"Num praefecto amissa pudicitia?" Isolde calls out.
The two of them widened their eyes momentarily. The woman's paper stops flying and flutters down.
Isolde pointed a finger at them, "Dic praefectum volo loqui ad eum."
"What are you saying?" Touma asks.
Isolde drops her arm, "I'm trying to scare them off by telling them what I can do to them."
"[Let's retreat for now,]" The woman surrounds herself and the girl in a tornado of paper.
The paper tornado disappears, along with the both of them.
"Huh it actually worked," Touma scratches the back of his head. "What were they after?"
"..." Isolde said something inaudible, as if unwilling to tell the truth.
"Sorry, I didn't hear that."
"I don't know," Isolde tells him. "I just saw them sneaking around when I was getting back to bed."
"Now what?"
"If you don't mind," Isolde starts. "Can you get rid of all the ice I left behind?"
"Huh?" Touma looks at her, baffled.
"You asked," Isolde mockingly smiles. "I need to find something." Isolde pops her wings out and jets upwards. A quick scan of the scenery reveals the little beach side town in the night, as well as a temple in the distance on a mountain.
Isolde looks down at the building they were staying in. "I don't see anything... Where could it be?" Isolde dives down and searches the perimeter around, carefully scanning the walls and whatever else she can find. Eventually she makes her way back to where Touma finished shattering the ice with his hand.
"You do good work," Lilian compliments.
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
"No, whatever it is, it's probably inside."
"What were you looking for anyway?"
"I don't know exactly, but I do know that they used it to keep everyone asleep. They won't wake up unless we find it."
"Some kind of ability?"
"No, some kind magic."
"What?"
"That's a strange reaction," Isolde notes. "In fact, every time I've mentioned magic, you've been having a strange reaction. You've encountered magic before, haven't you?"
Touma scratches the back of his head, reluctant to answer.
"Well, it doesn't matter now. We need to find that thing so that everyone else can wake up." Isolde walks over to a looked door and puts her hand on it. She fills up the inside with mist, sensing the mechanics inside. The ice girl creates a key out of ice and unlocks the door.
XXX
"This is one of the last rooms," Isolde mentions as both she and Touma walk into a dining hall. "There's the prizes for the sand sculpting contest." Isolde makes her way towards the prizes.
A set of glow in the dark Gekota paperweights, a pendant with shining crystal angel wings, tickets to a cruise getaway, a group the latest state of the art cellphones in different colors, some more tickets to host a big party at a fancy restaurant, a jewelry set made of rare stones, a very fancy kimono made of the finest material and colors that shines, a piece of moon rock or asteroid, a cluster of colorful rainbow rock crystals, and a huge stuffed animal of some cute mystical creature.
"How in the world did they get these?" Touma asks in awe.
"It's Tokiwadai," Isolde answers. The girl looks over the prizes again, she waves her hand over them all, and goes back to the rock crystals. "Here it is." Isolde picks up the cluster. "I sense this emitting a magical field. Here, touch it."
Touma takes his right and touches the rock cluster. Something shatters.
"Now everyone can wake up in the morning," Isolde places the rock cluster back on the table. "Let's get back before anyone finds us."
"Say, how come you weren't affected?"
"A bad dream woke me up when they activated the spell, it only works on people that are already asleep. And those that don't have the Imagine Breaker."
"So is Sterling asleep?"
"For now yeah," Isolde answers. "Listen." She turns around and points at Touma. "Do not tell Lilian about what happened, understood?!"
"W-why?" Touma asks nervously.
"She doesn't know about magic, and I'm certain you are trying to keep magic a secret from everybody in the City. Besides, I can't mess with her if she knows about it."
"..."
"Got it?"
"Alright, but if they happen to show up again. I'm going to stop them whether you like it or not."
"That's a pretty tough line, the magic world must have really messed you up somehow."
"It's complicated."
"Heh, at least you and I have something in common. Let's get back, quietly."
They managed to sneak back to the hallway leading to their rooms. But their next door neighbor opens their door. Isolde and Sachya nearly bump into each other.
"Huh?"
"What are you doing up?" Isolde asks in a quiet, whispery voice.
"I was about to ask you," Sachya replied in a similar voice. "I was about to go check out the night life around here. I almost overslept somehow." She looks at a shocked Touma and back to Isolde. "What the hell?"
"Not a word..." Isolde tells her, while pointing at her. "Got it?"
"Alright," Sachya raises her hands defensively. "Alright... I'll keep quiet about you if you keep quiet about me." She turns to Touma, smirking. "Heh, you're more of a player than I thought."
"W-what?"
"Have fun," Isolde smiles as she leads Touma back to their room.