He held her as she silently cried. This was the point of no return, and both knew it. Even so, he had to march on.
"Ru," he softly called her name, and for a moment, she lifted her head to look at him. Her beauty was hardly affected by her puffy eyes and the tears that still streamed down her face. Two pairs of blue horns crowned her head, complementing her wavy white hair and ice-blue eyes. Though her regal outfit was hidden by a dark cloak, he could still see the elaborate silver choker he had gifted her on her neck.
They stood alone on the balcony of the Tower of Dedication, the most sacred and imposing monastery outside of Elrianode. At the edge of the stone balcony, countless stairs made out of divine energy lined up towards the skies. He was the only one who could climb them and reach the goddess of the El, Ishmael.
"Please don't go," she pleaded as she grabbed both of his wrists. Her gloved hands held him so tightly he could almost feel her claws dig into his sleeves. "There has to be a mistake. You aren't meant to go over there. Not without us."
Part of him wished to believe her without question. However, there could not be any mistakes about it. His powers had always been different from the rest of his tribe, and this was why. He was meant to bridge the differences between Celestials and Demons. Ishmael had appointed him as her new warrior in exchange for peace. Now, this was the time to fulfil his destiny.
"I wish I could bring you and Belegor with me," he confessed, lovingly cupping her face. "But I need to respect Ishmael's terms. It's the only way to reclaim our ancestral land without shedding more blood. I want our son to grow up in an era of peace, and I know you want that, too."
"I don't want to forget you, Zeral," she sobbed. "I don't want you to forget about us. I can't stand having a god stealing everything we've shared. I can't live knowing that I'll be unable to tell Belegor anything about you."
"No god in our world or this one can erase our memories. We'll both remember, one way or another. So, don't worry so much, Ru. I'll come visit you both whenever I can, I promise."
She buried her face once more in his chest, trying to muffle her sobs. It pained him to leave her, but he could not allow his doubts to ruin the future he had promised to bring to everyone, be it her, Belegor, or any other demon who had suffered throughout this endless strife.
He kissed her one last time. It was a chaste kiss, but he could almost taste her fears, in all their unfathomable depth, on her lips. He opened his mouth to try and reassure her again, but, to his surprise, she was the one to push him away first.
"I'll find a way to drag you out of heaven if you don't come visit soon," Ru swore as she swept her tears away. "Go, now. Go before I stop you."
"I'll always be the first one to find you, Ru," he said with a rueful smile. "No matter where you might be."
With those words, Zeral turned towards the imposing temple of the El, where the goddess was said to reside. As he climbed the stairs that vanished into the sky, the demon warrior only felt his doubts grow and fester into full-blown hesitation. What if he was making a mistake? He glanced back, but he was so high up that he could no longer spot where Ru was. Maybe she was already gone.
The thought of his only love leaving him made his heart ache, but it was also a reminder of the weight of his decision. The demon turned back and continued to climb, even as the wind uncovered his hooded head. His silver hair flew free unto the wind, and his black, ram-like horns were now fully exposed. He felt the threatening presence of dozens of Celestials above him. Zeral looked up and flinched at the endless circles of Ishmael's warriors looming over him. They reminded him of vultures.
Though it was only for a moment, the demon's aquamarine gaze met a Celestial's. Their blue sclera and white, empty irises were as unsettling as their presence alone.
That was what he would turn into for the good of his family and his people. Was it the right choice? He contemplated flying back to the ground but also suspected that his future brothers-in-arms were not merely circling above him to welcome him into the temple.
'It'd take one word from their goddess to send them on a rampage,' he reasoned as he saw the Celestials stare back at him. 'If I went back, who's to say that they'd content themselves with taking my life?'
Zeral marched on until he finally reached the top of the staircase. He faced a long and mostly empty corridor where dozens of Celestials lined on either side. Each of them had their gaze hidden under a set of crystal wings. Even with their blue cloaks, their marble-white body stood so still that, if he did not know better, Zeral would have assumed all those divine warriors were merely statues. At the end of the hall, a white-haired human girl with turquoise eyes stared at him with a faint smile.
Judging by her elaborate white and golden dress, Zeral presumed that she had to be the El Lady. This priestess was the incarnation of Ishmael, whom the Elrians always talked about with great pride. Zeral had presumed, judging by the legends about her, that the El Lady would be as imposing and powerful as the Suzerain, the chosen vessel of the Demon God Sult.
However, to his dismay, this poor girl was a pale-looking teenager who seemed to have one foot in the grave. Zeral wondered if the goddess felt her divine powers crushing her chosen vessel.
"Welcome, Zeral," the girl greeted him with a smile. "I'm glad to see that you accepted my terms. I have had enough of these senseless and brutal wars between my forces and demonkind."
"I'm glad you still see it that way," he said to the incarnation of the goddess that slowly approached him. The demon tried to ignore Ishmael's shell's unnatural, puppet-like movements, but it was impossible.
The girl's body would not last long if it had to host the goddess' soul for any significant amount of time. Zeral feared he was witnessing the girl's final moments in this realm. He furrowed his brow, wondering if he should intervene at all or if he could even do so in the first place. Zeral's magic could interrupt Sult's hold on the Suzerain, but the spell took quite a toll on him. Besides, he was unsure if the spell would work on an Elrian.
"What is it?" the El Lady asked as she stopped only two steps away from him. "I hope you aren't having second thoughts now."
"No, you're mistaken," he half-lied. "I just worry about the Elrian girl you've possessed. I'm afraid your power is far too much for her. She will d–"
"You're such a kind soul, Zeral," the goddess praised him with a bright smile. "You're right. This girl won't feel good if I possess her for too long. But that's all the more reason for your initiation to begin without further delays, don't you think so?"
"...I suppose so."
"Perfect! Then, please kneel before me."
Zeral did as she asked and his mind went blank.
In a way, he had died that very night. His loved ones forgot him and, most worryingly, Zeral lost the memories he held of them and himself.
Ainchase slowly regained consciousness in a freezing cold void. He felt so weak that he considered himself lucky when he noticed he had kept his humanoid form. As the Celestial looked around him, he saw the eviscerated corpses of many citizens of Elrianode diving further down the dark abyss of Henir's dimension. Guards, clergymen, priestesses, and more civilians than anyone would have liked to count drifted into the same void he found himself in. They were all headed towards their total annihilation. The buildings and statues that were thrown alongside him and the countless victims were slowly crumbling as they drifted further into the void. A strange, blue glow formed where the cracks on the objects appeared, giving only the faintest of lights inside the otherwise woefully empty dimension.
The Celestial turned around and found himself staring into a gargantuan orb of darkness whose blue halo twisted in a spiral-like motion. It was the heart of the abyss, and he was flying right towards it. If – or rather when – he drew close enough to it, he would spiral around the vortex again and again; his body, his very essence, would be twisted until his light was devoured by that pitch-black sun. This was the inevitable demise of everything and everyone who came into contact with Henir's dark and chaotic world.
Yet, he refused to accept that inevitable fate. Even if he had failed his mission, there had to be something he could do to try again. The rift he had come through closed. It was the final nail in the coffin, but Ainchase refused to accept defeat.
"Goddess Ishmael," he cried to the dark dome above, raising his hand towards it even if the goddess' light could never reach him. "I can still fight! I will find that traitor and kill him! I'll retrieve your vessel, too. I know the darkness of Henir is weaker than your light. Please, goddess Ishmael! Please, get me out of here! I won't fail you again!"
There was no answer, but he kept trying. He climbed higher and higher, trying to break through the dimension of darkness. The climb was long, and his strength waned for each flutter of his wings. He had grown too weak to pierce the upper boundary when he finally reached it. His fingers slid off its black, icy surface, but not much more. The darkness bit onto his flesh and began to spread from his fingertips. The intense cold burned through his entire being, making him cry out in pain. He had no strength to keep himself in the air, so he fell back into the disorienting abyss. No matter where he looked, the only destination he could reach was the black sun that would devour him whole. Ainchase tried to use any structures he could to at least delay the inevitable. However, the pain was eating away at what little divine energy was left within him. He had to choose between maintaining his humanoid form or forming a sword. If he chose the latter, it would make his destruction all the faster.
Then, he saw a roof right in front of him. The landing would hurt, but he thanked his creator for putting at least one obstacle between him and the black sun.
He crashed on his back on the roof, breaking through its crumbling surface. Ultimately, the wooden floor of what he assumed to be the home's attic stopped him from falling further down. Ainchase coughed and gasped for air, but once he knew he could still breathe, the first thing he did was scream in frustration. There was no way he could climb back up now. The Celestial looked at his hand. It had turned a worrying shade of indigo while his veins were now the same colour as the halo around the black sun. The burning pain was nothing compared to the realisation that he was losing himself to the corrupting power of Time and Space. Worse still, he felt the burning sensation climb rapidly over his elbow and shoulder until it ate away at his face.
He repeatedly called his goddess's name, but silence was the only answer to his plights. Ainchase eventually grew too tired to scream. He was confined to his fleeting thoughts. He thought about death, about the black sun, but his mind did not linger on the fate that awaited him. Ainchase began to wonder about his life as a Celestial. He remembered very little of it.
'There's surely something. I wonder why I can't remember it,' he pondered. 'I should remember what it was before I die…'
Ainchase closed his eyes and tried to remember anything about his life under Ishmael's banner before he and a dozen comrades were sent to Elrios to contain the El's explosion. He remembered kneeling before the goddess when he accepted his mission but not much else.
There was nothing. Ainchase had no achievements to his name other than Ishmael's empty praises. He could not recall anything that would justify his status as her strongest warrior. The dying Celestial felt the ground start to spin, and that is how he knew his end had finally come.
Just as the ground beneath him finally gave out and spiralled into hundreds of shards, a strange dream began to form in his mind. He was trying to comfort a beautiful woman with icy blue eyes. Strangely, her pupils had the shape of a four-pointed star. Though she spoke through her sobs, he could not understand what she was saying at all. He felt her growing despair. She did not want him to go; truthfully, part of him also wanted to stay. And yet, she got inexplicably further and further away from his reach. It seemed like she was being pushed into the black sun, even if he could no longer see it.
'Wait,' he hollered at the woman fading away from his dream. 'Don't leave! Don't leave, please!'
The woman seemed to notice him, and she spread her cobalt-blue wings. Ainchase was not even disgusted at the sight of the horns on her head nor how her wings looked like those of a bat. This demon woman held the memories he wished to have in his last moments.
Their fingers grazed each other, and any semblance of reality faded away. Ainchase saw boundless farming fields burning around him before they turned into hundreds of demons falling dead from the sky. He walked over to the dead enemies to see their faces, but Ainchase noticed they had no faces as he approached. He looked above and saw the sea and a rocky beach where two demons walked alone. Ainchase opened his wings and flew towards them, but he did not get far before something yanked him back down. He looked at his feet and saw that the dead, faceless demons around him had turned into long, heavy chains that coiled themselves around him. He did not try to break them; he continued to observe how they pressed against him and eventually covered him whole.
Ainchase's dream faded into white, and he opened his eyes again. He felt warm. Some tears were rolling down his cheeks, but he did not care. The sacred light of the El was all around him, and he could feel the hands of the goddess cradling him, cleansing the darkness he had been infected with.
"I heard your plight loud and clear, Ainchase," the benevolent goddess of all creation said. Her voice enveloped him like a warm blanket. He was safe now. Ainchase figured he had woken up crying tears of joy from being saved by his creator, his goddess.
"I'm glad you didn't leave me," he breathed as his strength returned. "I'm sorry to have failed you, but I will–"
"Ainchase, it's alright. You don't need to apologise," the goddess reassured him. She carefully put him on the ground of the most sacred temple within her realm. The temple was a large corridor made of pure crystals, and the goddess floated at the end of it all. Her face was hidden by a piece of cloth held by an intricate golden crown. Her white hair cascaded over her back. While she wore an equally white robe that hid most of her body, her crystal arms – as blue as the gem she had created – were in full view and decorated with delicate golden bracelets. Seeing the goddess in all her splendour was a privilege not many Celestials had. It inspired such awe that Ainchase immediately knelt at her, ready to receive her new orders.
"The El has shattered," the goddess informed him with her ageless and motherly voice, "But it wasn't your fault. You did the best you could, given the circumstances. Elrianode would've been destroyed if it wasn't for you."
"Even so, Ishmael," Ainchase insisted, "Elrios can't prosper with a shattered El. I beg of you, let me fulfil my duty as a Steel Cross. I won't fail you."
'You left me in that tower last time. You'll leave me again if I fail, won't you?' Ainchase thought. He was not sure why he doubted his goddess in the first place, nor what tower he was referring to. He had not made it to the El Tower in Elrianode before the dimensional rift appeared and sucked him and half the town into Henir's realm. Was it because of his dream? It was incredibly idiotic to harbour doubts about his creator, regardless of their source.
"I'm glad to have saved my strongest and most devoted soldier," she flattered him.
The voice of the goddess had changed. She sounded like a young woman. Something about that particular voice made him yearn for her touch. He felt Ishmael's hand over his shoulder, and he grew anxious. It started like anxiety, but it soon morphed into a powerful yearning. He wanted the goddess to embrace him like that woman in his dream, even if he knew that wishing for that was unbecoming of him. Ainchase did not want her to go, not again. He wished to tell her so much, and, most importantly, he wanted to do so much for her sake. He craved to build back what he had lost.
'What have I lost?' he asked himself, 'I failed my mission, but I haven't lost anything, have I?'
"I would never abandon my valiant, selfless knight. It would kill me to lose you, even for a moment."
Her cold, crystal fingers now felt warmer, almost human-like. Her touch felt velvety as if her hands were covered by gloves. Ainchase closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind of the sensation, to no avail. The more he tried to focus on what he was truly seeing and feeling, the more he felt his unnatural desires grow. The Celestial felt his face growing hotter and hotter. It was rather strange, considering he was not near any flames or anything that could have raised his temperature like that.
"Well, uhm, thank you. But I'm, uh, I'm merely doing what any other Steel Cross would've done. It's really, really nothing much. Anyone would, I mean, well, the other retainers would do the same," he spluttered.
Ainchase briefly questioned his own words. Ishmael had no retainers. The gods did not see their soldiers like human nobles saw their warriors. Yet, even those doubts completely vanished from his mind as he grew increasingly aware of how the fingers from the goddess ran up the side of his neck and cupped his cheek. If he had lowered his gaze out of respect before, now he felt that the goddess' touch had frozen him in place. Or was it merely that strange urge to have his creator continue to touch him that had paralysed him?
"Oh, don't sell yourself short, Z̶̦̚ė̸̻r̶̻̆a̷͛ͅl̶̯̑" the young woman with white hair cajoled him.
The goddess' hand finally forced him to look at her veiled face. Though he had not understood her last word, it reverberated in his mind until it cleansed it from all his previous doubts and indecent thoughts. Ainchase remembered desiring to be touched by his goddess and the physical symptoms of such desire. Still, those sickening emotions were so distant that they might as well never have been truly his. He was disgusted even to remember ever having thought such things in the first place. Perhaps that had been the last remaining side-effect of staying in Henir's void for as long as he had. There was no other explanation for those unbecoming thoughts to plague his mind out of nowhere. His mind was clear; he knew he neither desired nor deserved to be so close to the goddess. Such desires were born out of the sinful imperfections of mortal souls, and Ainchase knew that he had nothing in common with them.
He distanced himself from the goddess and bowed at her.
"Please forgive my disgraceful thoughts, goddess Ishmael," he calmly pleaded. "I let Henir's darkness linger far too long inside your light."
"At ease, Ainchase," Ishmael sternly stated. "I have a new mission for you. From now on, you shall bear my name as part of yours. Your name will be Ainchase Ishmael, my last and strongest warrior, and you will restore the El. You must not interfere with human matters. Do not fail me again."
"As you command, goddess Ishmael," he acknowledged her command immediately as the ground beneath him shattered into a hundred pieces, revealing an unfathomable darkness underneath.
However, he no longer feared that void nor the vortex at the very end of it. He could feel the goddess guiding him through Henir's domain, filling his mind with all the history and new dialects that had appeared since Elrianode fell. The explosion generated by the El was so great that the land had separated into two continents. While some regions fell into chaos for centuries to come, others had found relative peace. That was, of course, only thanks to the strong presence of the devout and brave mortal souls who guided their land towards a peaceful era. All heretics and bandits were purged, leaving only the righteous to build the empires of Senace, Velder, Feita and Xin.
Elrios was, unfortunately, no longer as peaceful as it had once been when the four most influential empires were created. Mortals lived so little that they forgot the wisdom of their ancestors. The greedy uncovered old banned magic, and while the humans had formed their own Steel Cross forces to hunt down the wicked, it was hardly enough to correct the course of this decaying world. No Celestial since the fall of Elrianode had set foot on Elrios. However, Ainchase was going to change that.
The darkness around him shattered, and a forest welcomed Ainchase. The quiet buzz of all sorts of insects and the melodies the birds offered was an orchestra enhanced by a cool summer breeze.
Ainchase heard a bird take flight and looked up, spotting a rather large, red bird of prey. Considering the bright, multicoloured plumage on its tail, it was a Ruchi, probably a male. The bird landed a few paces before him and tilted its head at him. The Celestial understood that he was in the northmost part of Lurensia: Ruben's Forests. Though the scenery was very peaceful, his skin crawled with disgust. Henir's chaos had managed to follow him here, of all places. He could sense it.
The Celestial looked around him, and only after he completely turned around did he see the small rift that broke the world around him as if it were merely a broken window. The dark, insidious energy had already crawled out, threatening to slowly consume the entire forest. Ainchase Ishmael would not allow such a thing. He called forth a blade from Ishmael's divine armoury. The weapon was a bastard sword made of hundreds of tiny threads of energy that housed a fraction of the goddess' might. He slashed the opening to Henir's realm decisively and left a mark of light across the toxic darkness. The portal writhed and spiralled as it agonised under Ishmael's light. Then, it finally closed.
However, to Ainchase's disgust, some of that impure, outworldly energy was still crawling around the forest. Some of it had already infected the trees and, most worryingly, the animals. The Ruchi he had seen had fallen prey to bone-twisting spasms until it grew deathly still. However, instead of dying, the bird was swallowed by Henir's miasma and transformed by it. Its vibrant plumage was dyed black, and its sharp beak was deformed into a crooked saw-shaped blade. Once the corruption reached its eyes, they lost all their orange vibrancy and turned into a sickly blue shade. The creature got back on its feet and screeched at him.
'I ought to deal with this quickly', he thought as he cut the contaminated bird cleanly in two. He barely noticed the blood that spurted out of it. In his Spiritual form, he was invisible to all mortals. His snow-white skin and blue cloak could not be stained by anything from this realm. The tainted blood from the animal simply went through him, landing somewhere behind him. Ainchase glanced at the extent of the contamination and flew from place to place, purging the darkness with his blade. A dozen swift and methodical slashes from his weapon left ribbons of light as they cut through the darkness around him. It was a deadly, elegant dance that no one would see.
The forest returned to normal, and Ainchase decided it was a perfect moment to forge his human shell. He focused on the divine energy on his sword and poured a steady flow of his divine essence into it. The weapon began to transform. The handle grew longer and thinner while the blade shattered and reforged itself into a lamp-like shape. Ainchase's divine energy gave his weapon the shape of a white and green pendulum, and his otherworldly appearance became far more normal. His pristine white robe turned into three pieces: a shirt, pants, and a long, hooded cloak. His paper-white skin took a still pale but human-looking shade. His white hair turned into a grey mane with blue highlights, and his unnatural blue sclera turned white while his irises became green.
Satisfied with his mortal appearance, the Celestial put the hood of his white cloak on and began to walk on a path to the northeast. The local El Shard was his first objective. He had to convince the local knights to give it to him or take it by force if they refused.
Hello, dear readers. I'm Solar. I'm friends in real life with Kalafinn54 (Kal). I admit that I'm the furthest thing away from a fan of Elsword (I played for a few hours and got bored. MMORPGs aren't my thing :P), but I am an avid fan of Kal's writing. It's not the first time she's deleted her stories, and I find it very sad because she is very passionate about writing and brainstorming with me (when we can meet, of course). Reading her work and hearing her talk about her ideas for "The Edge of Dusk" was very inspiring. That's why I dragged her with me in this collaborative project. Most of it is my own twist on her ideas and what I can read from the game's lore without boring myself to death in-game (thanks Elwiki), but everything I publish also has Kal's approval.
I hope you enjoy "Their Perfect Soldier" and its sequel as much as many of you enjoyed "The Edge of Dusk".