The silence in the forest was deafening. The path was littered with dead insects and the mummified remains of small animals: bees, wasps, flies, birds, hares. The Celestial could not even see any spirits around. The El energy around them was so unstable that it was akin to walking through fine sandpaper. Ainchase could not explain why the El energy was in such disarray.

It was as if whoever was sowing chaos here was also overloading the El with something. Whatever it was, it was undoubtedly the same kind of power that had led the local fauna to its demise.

The further they headed down the path, the breeze was more crisp, almost wintery. Yet, every flower was in full bloom, and the trees still had all their leaves. Ainchase clutched his pendulum closer. Every creak, buzz, and shadow lurking outside of their path could be a sign of danger. The Steel Cross, the demoness, and the mage girl had also done the same. Elsword, on his end, stuck closer to Ciel.

A breeze made the leaves sing, but there was something else: rustling, twigs snapping, and a low, guttural huff—almost a growl. The group stopped, gazes darting to where the noise had come from.

'To the left!'

Ainchase drew a halberd, and Ciel aimed and fired at the source of the noise with supernatural precision. The shot reverberated through the forest, followed by a shrill scream. It was far too unnatural to come from man or beast. It was something unsettlingly in between.

Ciel eyed Aisha, and the mage gathered mana within her staff, muttering a spell that made the El energy in the air become visible. The tiny ribbons of power that Ainchase instinctively felt were now dancing around them. What should be a steady, cyclical tensing and release of the threads – much like the waves reaching and retreating from the shore – was a disjointed discord of threads tensing and quivering until some inevitably snapped under the tension. The chaotic flow of El energy would have ripped the spirits apart had they stayed.

"Fuck," Ciel cursed under his breath. "This is the kinda thing I thought only happened in the history books."

Aisha broke her spell, an uneasy frown souring her expression. "Yeah, this is really dangerous," She pressed her lips together, clenching her staff closer to her body before eyeing the half-demon. "I say we go back and, uhh, Ciel, can you contact the Earth Guardians? Or, even better, the Earth Priestess?"

The half-demon clicked his tongue. "Best I can do is contact the Ninth Water Guardian, but who knows if he'll believe me."

"Fair point," the mage sighed. "If I were him, I'd have a hard time believing you, too."

"What is it?" Elsword quizzed. "What's going on?"

"The El energy around this place is collapsing," Ainchase explained. "It's quite a rare phenomenon; I don't think I've ever witnessed it before."

"Nobody who's ever lived after the Old Kingdom was founded has seen it happen," Aisha grumbled. "This sort of thing shouldn't be happening. Ever."

"Well, we better go and stop it!" Elsword urged them as he started to walk off the beaten path.

He barely made a step before Ciel grabbed him by the shoulder. "Don't. We're all too young to die. Well, most of us."

Ciel glanced at his mistress as he said that last remark, which drew a smirk out of Ainchase. Any adult demon would be considered older than the world by human standards. His amusement did not go over the demoness' head, who tried to slam her elbow on his hips. The Celestial was quick enough to evade her hit.

"But we can't just wait for—!" Elsword protested.

The screech echoed again, and the El Energy grew stronger but unevenly. Ainchase felt empowered, but he could see that the half-demon and the mage were tensing under the strain of trying to use spells where there was no El Energy to power them. On her end, the demoness did not seem to be affected at all. She summoned her flames from her gauntlets with ease. It was hard to determine the effects of the El energy's collapse on the boy since he was neither a trained mage nor carried any enchanted objects or weapons.

"I'll go. You stay and protect Elsword," he said, oddly in unison with the demoness, who had called him 'the boy' instead.

He blinked at the coincidence and looked at her, who, for once, looked as taken aback by how their thoughts had aligned.

"Lu, if you go," Ciel warned her, "You know what you can't do. I didn't bring those potions with me."

"Understood." The demoness nodded as she glanced back at her servant and then made a sign to Ainchase. "Shall we go, Friar?"

"It seems you've learnt to not order me around," he noted. "How pleasant."

She smirked. "Expect more of that in exchange for chess games."

Then, she leapt into the forests.

"Wait, but it's too dangerous, you shouldn't—!" the mage pleaded with them, but Ainchase cut her misplaced concerns off.

"Miss Magician, that, uhm, woman and I are different," he assured her. "I'm sure you could see it during our spar. Trust me when I say that our lives aren't at risk, unlike yours."

"I've…wanted to talk to you about that, actually," the Sanderian girl softly said, briefly casting her gaze down. She soon lifted her head to look at him and pointed at him with her pink and purple staff. "Don't you dare die before I ask you some questions, you hear?"

Ainchase chuckled. "That is quite a shocking way of wishing someone good luck, Miss Magician. It almost sounds like you think I owe you answers."

The girl blushed, and her gaze widened with indignation. "T-That's not—!"

However, before she could explain herself, he was gone. Even through the chaotic flow of the El, tracing a demon's foul mana was as easy as spotting an elephant in an open field.


Luciela, like all demons, was not dependent on the El's energy to survive. In fact, it was more akin to a poison that eroded her power to varying degrees. She was at her weakest within the Tree of El, so much so that she had to resort to unlocking her full power to be at least capable of holding her own against all those Glitters. However, the overexertion of her already limited power was not something she had planned. It was simply a knee-jerk reaction to an overwhelming display of power.

Power was all that mattered among demons. Every last drop of water, every inch of farmable land, every village and city was mercilessly destroyed and ransacked from those who grew too complacent and did not show their might as a deterrent. As the Steel Queen, Luciela killed her enemies and conquered their lands until no one dared to challenge her might.

By comparison, Elrios was a far more peaceful land, and it was all thanks to the El. She had lost her will to conquer this world. The last time she tried, she failed. That said, she would not allow anyone – least of all the traitor who almost killed her – to invade Elrios.

The Steel Queen could not sense magic, the mana, nor the El Energy within all things, but she thankfully did not need to. She could recognise the power making her stronger the closer she got to the source of the unnatural screeches that could not have come from any demon, man, or beast.

"Barkat," she growled in her native tongue, "I know you're there, you filthy traitor. You can't hide from me now…"

Luciela was tempted to reveal her adult form but refrained from following her instincts. Ciel knew how to play with the fine print in their contract. It would be incredibly shortsighted of her to tempt him to absorb an even more significant portion of her power.

The forest was a blur, but she could distinctly hear the Celestial following her. Strangely, she could feel her skin crawl from the power that emanated from him. The Steel Queen stopped dashing around and looked behind her. He still was in his human form, but seeing his strength grow at the same pace hers did was somewhat disconcerting.

"Did you lose its trace?" he asked as he caught up with her. He stopped with an unnatural ease despite how fast he had been leaping around to catch up with her.

Having him only a couple of paces away from her only cemented her impressions of his growing power. She was not mistaken; his strength was thriving in a way that should not be possible for his kind.

"Unfortunately, I did," she lied as she turned away from him. She furrowed her brow, pretending to look around the forest for Barkat. In fact, she was just a tad uneasy having him so close to her. There was something abnormal within him.

A Celestial fighting like a demon was one thing. A Celestial whose power thrived in the absence of the El was an entirely different beast. It was a paradox—not the kind she liked to solve.

"Follow me, then," he said as he dashed further west, following precisely the same energy she had detected. "I know where we'll find that thing."

"How do you know, exactly?" she asked as she dashed behind him. It would be impossible to fully catch up with him in this form.

"It's quite easy," he answered, creating one of his bastard swords. "I just follow the growing gap of El energy."

"Won't that make you weaker?" she asked. It was baffling how strong and stable his divine energy was.

"If that were so, we would've been incapable of banishing your kind once and for all," he scoffed. "Please spare me the fake concern."

His answer made her pause.

"You were around back then?" she gasped.

Luciela still struggled to remember her life before Barkat's betrayal. The only thing she could clearly remember of that time – besides her conquests in the demon realm – was the end of her journey on Elrios. Some Celestials tore her wings off before letting her fall to her death. If Barkat had not been there to catch her…

She shook the thought of that traitor off her head. Whatever good that whore had done in the past was null and void. The moment Luciela saw her again, she would bash her head on the floor until her brains spilt out. That would only be the start of Barkat's retribution. The Steel Queen knew full well that her former confidant's regenerative capabilities would not allow her to die that easily.

The Celestial remained silent. Without seeing his face, his silence perturbed her all the more.

"Were you there?" she repeated. "Were you there when…when Elrios was fully isolated from other worlds?"

Silence.

He stopped at the edge of a clearing, leaving her finally the chance to catch up to him. She was set on grilling him until he answered her, but once she saw what lay ahead of them, all her senses geared for combat. The Celestial gritted his teeth and unveiled his spiritual form before her. She could only see his silhouette, but the wave of power that flowed out of him was enough to overwhelm her senses. She took a few steps back, watching him approach the gruesome scene.

Three rogue Phorus were feasting on the remains of four men; their beige fur was dripping with blood, as were their long, sharp claws. Their rodent-like teeth were mixed with sharp fangs they used to tear flesh from bone. One of the masked men was still alive, weakly groaning in pain as his guts were being pulled out and devoured by one of the Phorus. There was a fourth Phoru at the edge of the clearing, but that one had a bullet hole in between the eyes. It was the creature Ciel had killed.

Barkat was nowhere to be seen, but the traces of her power were so strong that it froze Luciela in place. It was subtly hidden under the foul energy that emanated from the tiny El shard on the Phorus' forehead. Still, the demoness knew precisely what it was: Barkat's energy contaminated this clearing with her power. It oozed from the ground, swirling around the Phorus and, to a lesser extent, the dead men.

'How is this possible?' the demoness asked herself. 'Her energy is everywhere, but there is no trace of her or her henchmen.'

"You dare put the goddess' gift inside your foul bodies?" Ainchase growled as he leapt to behead the Phoru, who was feasting on the only living victim's innards.

One strike was all it took for the three monsters to drop dead. Blood gushed out of their severed necks, making the pool of crimson underneath the men's corpses grow wider by the second. The Celestial held one of the abomination's heads up with one hand, grabbing it by its long, dirty, beige fur.

"You will return what you stole," Ainchase hissed before his weapon lodged itself in the middle of the creature's skull. He ended up splitting it to retrieve the tiny El shard within it. The Phoru's brain and mangled head dropped unceremoniously to the ground with a mushy sound.

Once he had the shard, he materialised again in his human form. The Celestial looked at her; his emerald gaze was fixed on hers with a hint of malice bubbling under the surface. His smirk only heightened the similarities between his face and the one every demon harboured deep down.

"Come on, demoness," he chuckled. "Make yourself at least a little useful and collect the remaining shards for me. Didn't you say you wanted to protect Elrios? Prove it."

Luciela quickly realised what was happening. It was not that he was, from the very beginning, an abnormal Celestial. Barkat's power was insidiously poisoning him. Her chains appeared under his feet, as did a recognisable summoning circle. The blood of the men and the Phorus was moving as if it were alive. It formed old demonic glyphs that fed on his power to grow stronger. She clicked her tongue. Even with her growing power, dealing with blood magic in her current form could prove impossible. One wrong move, and she would end up accelerating the ultimate aim of the spell.

The white-haired demoness unveiled her adult form. Ciel would have to understand that she had no other choice.

"That's it," the Celestial chuckled, "Let's deal with these heathens without holding anything back. I know where the others are. I'll show you."

"Let's go get them!" She beamed, covering the sole of her feet and her hands with her flames. Luciela approached Ainchase, using her heightened strength as a radar to detect the movements of the demonic power all around them. It swirled around in an increasingly small circle. Should she take too long to cut the invisible chord that had turned him into the spell's power source, his death would be the least unfortunate event that would come out of it.

She stepped left and right, avoiding the trails of blood that swerved around her, trying to latch onto her. Luciela played it off as a dance, swirling and pivoting rhythmically as she hummed. The last thing she wanted was to make it too apparent that she had understood the ultimate aim of the spell.

She finally reached him, and a close look at his face was enough to confirm that she was right. The light in his eyes grew dim, and he breathed more heavily.

"Ainchase," she softly called him. She put out the flames around her hands and let the ones on her feet spread and devour the foul energy that threatened to consume him whole.

A curtain of blue fire surrounded them, and she delicately took the small, bloodied El shard from his hand. His coldness lingered on her fingers, but she did not let the sensation distract her from what she ought to do. She now had the right medium to absorb Barkat's power out of him.

"Fight it, Ainchase," she told him as she cupped his face. Curses and tainted mana usually resided in the head, as Ciel had told her. It was the best spot to sap it out of the Celestial. "Fight it because our lives depend on it. Elrios depends on it."

"Elrios depends on it," he echoed. His voice was barely a strained whisper.

Luciela began to feel the demonic energy coursing through the small El shard and into her veins. The traitor's power had grown far stronger than what she remembered. It made her wonder how many centuries had passed since she was sealed away.

'Power like this should only be in the hands of the Suzerain. But if Barkat's power alone is enough to affect a Celestial like this, then she's become even stronger than that. But how? Sult's chosen one should be the strongest of all demonkind…'

The glyphs of blood that her flames had not burned away pulsated; some of them exploded into stains devoid of all magic. The chains wrapping themselves around the Celestial's ankles crumbled into dust. She saw his eyes turn into a clear aquamarine shade. A brief memory bubbled to the surface of her mind. She remembered meeting someone with that same gaze but could not remember when or where.

"I'll always be the first one to find you," the Celestial murmured. His weak, trembling hand grabbed hers, and he closed his eyes. His touch was warmer.

The Steel Queen felt a knot in her throat, but she could not explain it. She let out a shaky breath, fighting her strange urge to cry. She had to focus on her spell. It was almost done.

The last blood rune exploded, and Barkat's power vanished. Luciela's flames disappeared with them, and the Celestial collapsed. She caught him in her arms, and her eyes widened when she heard a faint heartbeat in his chest. He was warm as if he were a real, living person.

Luciela exhaled and slowly knelt down to better support the man's weight. She blinked a few times, and her arms tightened their grasp around him as she debated whether or not she should let him go. Any semblance of life vanished from Ainchase; he was once again just an imitation of life, as all his kind was. The bushes around the clearing rustled, and the demoness looked around her. They were surrounded by a dozen elven rangers. All of them were aiming her arrows at her.

"Foul demon!" an elven with lime-green, short hair hissed. "Your dark ritual ends here!"

The blue-eyed demoness sighed. "You elves are all insufferable."

She gently put Ainchase down, and with Barkat's power now coursing through her veins, her flames ignited brighter than ever. The first volley disintegrated with a flick of her fingers. The rangers were all throwing glances at the short-haired elf. She had deployed her green, crystal-like wings but was still hesitating.

"So, do you wish to continue throwing pathetic attacks at me, or will you allow me to explain?"

She charged an orb of fire in her gauntlets, and a crooked grin twisted her expression as she watched some of the rangers retreat. "Otherwise, I could always neutralise you. No need to worry. It'll be over before you even notice you've been immolated."

"Lime!" Rena's voice chimed in from the right. "Wait! I need to tell you that—"

The elven woman's peridot gaze widened when she saw Luciela. Her eyes drifted to Ainchase and then back to Luciela. The elf grabbed her bow but did not try to aim an arrow at her.

"What did you do, Lu?" Rena coldly asked her. "Why did you corrupt that shard?"

"To stop a ritual that would've not only killed this man," she answered, pointing to the unconscious Celestial. "But also opened a permanent gate to the demon realm." She furrowed her brow at the short-haired elf. "I know that gratitude is not an elf's strong suit, but you could try it at least once."

The demoness returned to her childish form once the elves slowly lowered their weapons. Rena was the first one among the elves to approach the scene of the carnage. She knelt beside one of the murdered men and took off his wooden, boar-shaped mask. The man's face was scarred by demonic glyphs; most of the wounds were perhaps months, if not years old.

The short-haired ranger flew near one of the Phorus' corpses and cut some of its mangled fur off with a pocket knife she took out of her skirt's pocket. The texture of the creature's bare skin was far too similar to the one of the murdered, masked men, and the scars on it were identical.

"This…this is a human," the winged elf gasped. "They're all humans. No demon could've…"

Her grass-green eyes turned towards her, looking for answers. Luciela herself was shocked to hear that those monsters had been human.

"No," she replied. "We could turn humans into demons, but not, well, whatever that abomination is."

Ainchase groaned. Everyone set his eyes on him as he stirred back into consciousness. His clothes and his hands were drenched in blood, but he did not seem to notice right away.

"Goddess almighty," he whispered as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "My head…"

"Please excuse us, your Holiness. We couldn't find a nice, cushiony pillow for you," Luciela joked. "There were more pressing matters at hand."

The short-haired elf furrowed her brow at her. "Your Holiness?"

"It's her way of mocking the faith," Ainchase sighed. "A demon would never respect the goddess or her creation, elf."

The Celestial got back on his feet unsteadily, and a cursory glance at the scene around him made him fully alert.

"Why are there still blood mages living on Elrios?" His voice quavered with disgust. "To sully the paradise the goddess created for them like this…What are they thinking?!"

"Don't be too quick to judge these puppets, Celestial," Luciela insisted. "I know who's behind this would-be portal. It's the scheming, traitorous bitch I want dead."


Night had just fallen in the base. The recent reports had everyone around scramble to man defensive positions and discuss strategies with Lowe and the other high-ranked knights, and some mages were busy broadcasting the terrible news to whoever they knew in the Church. The mess hall was, therefore, abandoned, only lit by the oil lamp Ainchase had brought and the small fire in the fireplace. He was still thinking about what the demoness had explained to him and the elves and then repeated it to the rest. But, above all, he mainly was asking himself what – out of everything he heard and saw – was real.

The green-eyed priest looked at Luciela, noticing she was setting up the chess board for the two of them far less enthusiastically than usual. She seemed to hesitate whenever she placed the pieces on his side.

"You didn't tell us the whole truth, did you?" he asked.

The rook she had taken slipped from her hands, knocking over the pawn in front of it before both pieces rolled down the table. Ainchase caught them and put them where they belonged.

The demoness crossed her arms and sighed before resting her elbow on the table. She rested her head on the palm of her hand and continued to put the pieces absentmindedly.

The board was set. Luciela claimed the white pieces. As her opening move, she placed the pawn in front of the king two spaces ahead. Ainchase countered by advancing his pawn in two spaces in front of the queen's bishop. She freed her king's knight, making it hop to her bishop's column.

"What is it about this Barkat that scares you so much?" he continued to ask, moving the pawn in front of his king one position forward. "If she wanted to launch a full-scale invasion like you said, her plans are foiled."

"I'm not afraid of her," she finally answered, scratching her head before she made the pawn in front of her queen advance two. "I'm just bothered by another issue."

Ainchase did not hesitate to capture her pawn with the pawn he had advanced the most. She replied by using her knight to capture his pawn in turn.

"Am I the issue?"

The Celestial made the queen's knight hop over the bishop's column. She drummed her fingers on the table's edge, staring at the board for a long minute before she advanced her knight again. Now, her two knights were in the same column.

"I know I owe you my life," Ainchase continued as he moved the pawn in front of his queen one step forward. "You were the one who told me to fight, right?"

Luciela was still set on ignoring him entirely, but he could see her jaw tensing and her blue gaze moving left and right of the board. She was usually more composed, taking in the board like a piece of art and not like a book she had to skim through. The game was probably the last thing that was making her so tense. She finally grabbed the pawn before her queen's bishop and placed it two spaces forward to protect her isolated knight.

Ainchase had only heard her name once – the real one, not the little nickname her servant gave her. He figured he would use it to let her know he was sincere.

"Thank you for that, Luciela," he said before bringing his king's knight to the bishop's column. His knights were now on the same row.

The demoness slammed her first on the table. The vibration knocked over a lot of pieces, including her king. Forfeit.

"Don't call me that," she breathed out. "Don't make this more complicated than it already is."

"I assumed I was the only one with more questions than I'd know what to do with, but if it's the same for you…" he trailed off. His green gaze sank into the board, and he knocked his king over.

The fire crackled behind her; its orange glow made her white hair look coppery, and her wintery gaze, too, captured the pale light of the oil lamp that rested next to their board.

"What do you remember?" she wondered as she finally decided to look up at him. "Other than what you heard me say."

"Now, I can't recall. Everything is blurry," Ainchase confessed. "But, after I heard you telling me to fight, what I was seeing felt like…" He clicked his tongue and exhaled. "I almost want to call it a stream of memories, but memories aren't so flimsy."

"You'd be surprised how flimsy they can be when you're trapped for ages," she remarked. "You grow so weak you forget it all. You can't even answer the simplest questions about yourself, like who you are."

He raised an eyebrow at her words. Though he was rescued by the goddess just in time, Ainchase had experienced part of that existential dread. He had wished to know all the exploits that made him into the goddess' strongest soldier. Yet, his mind was blank.

"Forget it," she scoffed, dismissing him with a hand gesture. "You wouldn't get it anyway. Let's start over. Right from where we left off."

She quickly placed their pieces where they had been before she knocked them over. Her memory was impeccable, even under pressure. Once everything was set, she freed her queen's knight to secure the defence of the other one.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," he chuckled joylessly. "It's rather odd how similar we are. From how we fight to more personal things, like being trapped somewhere we can't escape...if left alone, anyhow."

He threatened her knight by moving the pawn in front of the queen's rook two spaces. She recognised that she could not keep her knight so close to her enemy and retreated to her rook's column. Luciela looked at him, expecting him to continue talking.

The Celestial took the pawn in front of his queen and moved it one space forward.

"Let's just say, demoness," he explained, "that I'm here more to correct a past failure than to hunt your kind down."

"Were you there when that goddess of yours isolated Elrios from other worlds?"

He furrowed his brow at her question. It was utterly nonsensical. Elrios had always been protected from otherworldly invaders, though the strength of that protection varied with how close Ishmael was to reincarnate through the El Lady. It was the only flaw that demons like her could take advantage of.

"What are you talking about? The El has always—"

The door swung open. The half-demon waltzed into the room, armed and with a bag full of supplies. "We gotta head down the Tree of El. Now."

The demoness immediately got back up and joined her servant. The Celestial followed suit, but he asked what had happened.

"A group of bandits is attacking the Tree of El," Ciel informed him as they ran out of the base. "They're only three, but two of them are highly skilled. Acting Captain Lowe thinks they're after the El Shard, and he doesn't have enough men to launch a counterattack. It's up to us to stop them."

'This is the worst possible moment for the goddess to reincarnate,' Ainchase gravely thought as they ventured into the dark forests. None of them needed light to navigate through the darkness around them. 'What are my brothers doing? If any of the El Shards go missing…I can't even imagine the disaster that would come from that.'


For anyone who is interested to know if i based their chess game on something real, the answer is yes. My favorite game of all time: Karpov vs Kasparov (1985).