Chapter 20: The Honored One.

“So,” Ash said, stepping over a root, “what exactly is the plan? I hope you have one.”

We had been walking for some time. The forest had thickened around us, and the canopy above filtered the light into scattered patches on the ground. Hamel was behind us now, and with it, the hut and the mother and the boy I had failed to heal. “The barrier around the boy’s mind is the System’s power. Its decision,” I said. “My Cradle cannot breach it and I have tried. This power only creates.”

“You only used the Cradle,” Ash said. She had been watching closely. “Why not try the other one then? The Requiem? That’s why we’re here, aren’t we?”

A fair question, if an obvious one. “If I had tried the Requiem as I am now, it would have killed him.”

Ash glanced at me. I did not return the look. The words needed no embellishment. The Requiem was not an ending. It was the ending. If I had turned it loose on that barrier, the decay would have spread past the barrier and into the boy’s mind, and whatever was left of Marin would have been unmade along with his cage.

“So you held back,” Ash said.

An odd way to frame it. “I held back, yes.”

Ash nodded slowly. “Should I applaud your restraint?”

“You should need no reason to applaud me.” I said. “My existence alone was enough, once.”

“Sometimes I wonder how you can even walk straight with a head that big.”

“With applause.” I said. Ash laughed, and the sound of it carried through the otherwise quiet forest. I found myself smirking, before I forced the treacherous expression away.

“So you’re here to…what? Practice until you can break that barrier? How can you be sure it’s even possible?” Ash asked when she’d settled down. “To use this power on him and not…do what you said it might. It seems like a risk, and a big one at that.”

I extended my right hand toward the nearest tree. A flicker of black fire left my fingers, crossed the short distance, and kissed the bark. The wood greyed where it struck, a patch no larger than my palm. The rest of the tree stood untouched. “Because I know what this power’s nature is,” I said simply. “In my time, the System would have classified it as a type of [Concept Magic]. That was the highest order of power for my Class. The Requiem does not merely decay matter, though I suppose some other fool with this power would have only used it so.”

Ash stared at the grey patch on the tree. “Concept Magic, huh.” she repeated.

“Yes. And before you ask why you have not heard of it, it is because you are a Hero. Heroes hit things with swords and aura. Anything else is lost on them. After all, there was no base intelligence requirement for the Class. Perhaps a Sage or a Saint might have known this already.”

Ash gave me a look that I had come to recognize. It was the one she used when she wanted to hit me and had decided not to.

We walked more, my eyes scanned the tree line. I had little doubt Ash was doing the same, and could grudgingly accept that the woman’s senses were likely keener than my own. It was some time before Ash spoke again, and when she did, it sounded like a question she had deliberated on for days.

“Answer me this then…you were the strongest Demon Queen we ever faced. I don’t think there’s much use denying that.” She chewed on something. “Why?”

That was not the question I had expected. I turned to her and raised an eyebrow. “Is that not obvious?”

“Your magic could destroy just about anything from all accounts,” Ash continued. “With it, you killed two of the Gods -Calithra and Calith. None of the Queens before you could have managed anything like that from everything I was taught. Why you and not them?”

I turned the question back to her. “Why do you think?”

Ash considered for a moment. “Because you must have had powers the ones before you didn’t. Maybe you found something or-”

“Wrong.” Ash blinked. “Every Demon Queen shared the same Class,” I said. “The same abilities were available to all of us. The same spells, and the same potential. If I unlocked more of those abilities than my predecessors, that does not mean they could not have. The ceiling and floor were both the same.”

We reached a clearing. I chose to stop there, and Ash followed a moment later. Ash sighed. “Alright. I don’t know the answer, so just tell me.”

She assumed I would then? Well, it wasn’t like the answer mattered now. “My Class’s magic responded to intent and will as much as raw power. Two people with the same spell, at the same level, could produce different results based on what they meant to do, and who they were.” I paused, if only to make sure she could follow where my words led. “The class of magic reads the caster. It always has.”

Ash stared at me. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? That you’re….” She trailed off.

I found myself smirking. “I was not the strongest because I was Lysanthia,” I said. “I was Lysanthia because I was the strongest.”

There was a beat of silence. Ash closed her eyes. “Your ego grows bigger every day.”

“It is not ego if it is simply the truth. And it has not grown at all.”

“It’s ego.”

“Very well. Then my ego is also the truth, which makes it the finest ego in existence.”

Ash shook her head, and I thought I saw her lips twitch. “What’s the plan then?”

“Simple,” I said. “You will catch beasts and I will practice on them.”

The Hero’s expression went flat. “You want me to be your huntress.”

“I want you to do the thing you are good at so that I may do the thing I am good at. This is called delegation. I did it often, in my time.”

Ash stared at me for a long moment. Then she drew her sword and walked deeper into the trees without another word. I sat down, started drawing in all of the ambient mana I could. Experience told me this would be a near thing.

The first creature was one of those long eared vermin I now knew to call a rabbit. Ash brought it back in her hands, holding it by the scruff. It kicked and twisted, but the Hero’s grip was absolute. She set it on the ground and kept one hand on its back. “Whenever you’re ready,” she said.

I knelt and extended my right hand. I stared at the creature, and just for a moment, I hesitated. What are you doing, you fool?

I closed my eyes, channeled mana into the Black Line. The Requiem answered me at once and Ruin followed. I reached for restraint -trying not to feed the Requiem too much power. Wisps of black fire shot from my fingers.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

The impression came. The thing was afraid. Deeply afraid. Yet, some part of it had known this day would always come. That did not make the acceptance any easier. I forced the impression away even as the rabbit turned to dust.

It simply ceased, as if it had never been. One moment there was a living thing beneath Ash’s hand, and the next there was grey powder drifting between her fingers. I suspected if I had used more mana, there would not have been dust left. Ash looked at the dust. She looked at me. She wiped her hand against her leg, slowly, as if the dust still clung.

“That,” I said, “was too much.”

“You think?”

I did not appreciate her tone. “Another.”

Ash sighed and went back into the trees. She returned shortly with a second rabbit. This one was larger, which I suspected she had chosen deliberately. I knelt again.

This time, I tried to hold the Requiem back further. I imagined closing a fist around the flow of power and letting only the smallest whisper through. Ruin left my hand, barely visible. The decay spread from the point of contact across the rabbit’s flank. It was slower this time -I could see it move, watch the fur grey and the skin beneath it wither. The rabbit convulsed. I tried to pull the power back, to tell it where to stop.