"So what possessed you to decide to go with us to the show later this week? Who are you and what have you done with the real Saint?"
It was long after work, and they had decided to aimlessly walk until something caught their interest. As they walked, the woman beside him put her hand to her chin and was silent for a while, as if deep in thought.
"I wanted to get out of the house,"
Sunny stared at her for a long time, getting the woman to frown.
"What?"
Sunny gaped at her.
"What do you mean, 'what'? You can't be serious, that's it?"
Saint nodded and looked away.
"That's it, no other reason."
"No other reason, huh?"
Saint nodded.
"Yes, you don't sound convinced."
"That's because earlier you said you didn't want to do anything or go anywhere on your weekends."
Saint shrugged.
"I changed my mind, is that so hard to process?"
"Absolutely,"
As they walked to nowhere in particular, Sunny spotted Mordret walking beside a tall man with raven-black hair that fell down his back. He couldn't tell who the man was as he wore a dark, three-horned, demonic, snarling Halloween mask.
The eerie mask covered his entire face, leaving only two abyssal holes staring back at anyone who gazed at him. Even though the man clearly looked out of place, that wasn't what grabbed Sunny's attention… no, it was something else entirely: his attire.
He was wearing a bright red suit, red slacks, and obnoxiously bright red dress shoes. It contrasted harshly with his admittedly terrifying mask.
'Good god that's an eyesore,'
Still, despite the masked man's strange attire, Sunny called out to his friend.
"Mordret!"
His friend stopped in place and looked around in confusion before his eyes landed on him. He seemed to hesitate for a moment before smiling and making his way towards him, with the tall, mysterious man easily keeping up with him.
"Sunny! Oh, hello, Saint."
"Hello,"
Sunny jutted his chin to the stranger.
"Who is this?"
"Oh, him? He's my… friend, his name is No-"
Unexpectedly, a bright voice from beneath the frightening mask interrupted Mordret in a suspiciously rushed tone.
"Norris, yes, that's right, my name is Norris, it is a pleasure to meet you, spawn of sha- I mean, young man. I must ask, are you going to a funeral by any chance?"
Sunny frowned at the question and shook his head.
"No?"
What a weird question. What a weird man in general.
The masked man suddenly scoffed.
"Then why are you wearing such a thing? Where's the style? The flair?"
"Nowhere, I don't need it, I'm a professor."
"Then stop dressing like a funeral director or at the very least throw some grey in there for goodness sake!"
Sunny's right eye twitched in irritation.
"Who are you to tell me what I should wear?"
The masked man threw his head back and laughed.
"Me? Who am I? I'm someone who knows how to dress to impress."
Saint put her hands on her hips and gave the man an unamused stare.
"Impress who exactly?"
The abyssal holes in his mask turned their gaze on Saint, who held his gaze with a calm expression as he spoke to her, his voice clear with mirth.
"Myself, of course."
Sunny stared at the man blankly.
"Right, right. So what's up with the Halloween mask? Last I checked, it's only August."
The masked man presumably smiled.
"Because if I were to take off this mask, everyone in a five-kilometer radius would be running to me. That's how gorgeous I am."
How arrogant. Who did this guy think he was?
Mordret forced a smile.
"Let's go, er Norris. I'll call you later, Sunny."
Sunny nodded, wanting to get away from the man ans his creepy mask.
"Alright, see you later,"
Sunny watched as he began walking to a store with his strange friend, then continued walking with Saint in silence for around thirty minutes before they passed a good-looking officer wearing dark sunglasses and a face mask, who greeted them.
"Good evening,"
Sunny nodded with a smile.
"Good evening, officer,"
The officer stared at him for a long time before his gaze drifted to Saint, then back to Sunny. The man pulled off his face mask, and a pleasant smile formed on his lips.
Sunny didn't know what it was, but something felt off about the smile, like it had been practiced countless times, like the man was only smiling because he felt like he had to, not because he felt any true joy.
"My my, the real Song Eunbin would be jealous if she were to find out that you're taking a stroll with a woman who wasn't her, let alone your own shadow."
Sunny stared at him some more before smiling in amusement at his eccentric behavior as he immediately recognized the man standing before him. His assumption was correct as his friend took off his sunglasses, revealing his reflective eyes.
It was Mordret, and yet something seemed… different. His posture was straighter, and his body language was strange. It was much more confident than he had ever seen before, and yet it somehow looked… off.
The way he shifted from one leg when the other got tired, every twitch in his fingers when he idly played with his sunglasses, and even every blink. It all felt…artificial, like he was rehearsing for a play or acting in a movie, rather than being natural.
"What are you talking about? Why would she be jealous? She hates me, you know this. Quit messing around."
Mordret, for some reason, slightly frowned.
"Oh, you two don't seem to be awake yet; that's a problem. Well, I'm sure the blind one and naive one will figure something out. I'll be seeing you around, Sunless."
Sunny stared at him strangely and nodded slowly.
"Right, we're not awake yet, uh huh. Anyway, why are you wearing a police uniform? Where's your friend with the creepy mask at? Hey! Hey! Where are you going?"
His calls fell on deaf ears as his friend began walking away into the crowd on the sidewalk.
Was that Mordret? No, no, it was, Sunny saw his face. But how come it felt like he was talking to a completely different person? And why did he ignore him?
Saint stared at the crowd for a while in silence before turning to him with a neutral expression.
"Your friend is strange. Anyway, I didn't know you were dating her. It's about time. I always figured she was pretending to hate you because she didn't know how to express her feelings for you. I'm certain that there's a word for that, but I can't recall what it was."
"What?! No!"
…
Three gorgeous people sipped wine at a dinner table, a beautiful woman with auburn hair, warm green eyes, and a smile warm enough to melt glaciers. She sat beside an obnoxiously handsome man with auburn hair, electric green eyes, and a dazzling smile that was enough to make a crowd faint several times over.
Across from them sat a young man who looked almost identical to both of them and was equally as handsome as the people sitting across from him. The young man finished his wine, stood up, and put his plate in the sink with a smile.
"I'm heading off to bed now. I'll see you both in the morning. Good night."
"Alright, we love you, goodnight, Kai!"
Kai smiled brightly.
"I love you too,"
As he walked upstairs, he closed the door behind him, locked it, and his smile immediately fell from his face as he trembled against it, whispering to himself.
"Calm down, calm down, calm down. They're not going to hurt you so long as you keep pretending."
Pretending was something Kai excelled at nowadays. But that begged the question.
Why in the world was he here?
It was never supposed to go this far; he was never supposed to go this far. All he wanted to do was become a master so he could protect the ones he cared about, like his parents. It's why he convinced them to live in Bastion, as it was much safer than the waking world.
Yet here he was, in a place of imagination in a fake city created by….well, actually, Kai didn't know who made this imaginary city into what it was now. But all he knew was that there was something in this place that Sunless sought to become stronger for the upcoming war.
They all needed to become stronger. In fact, during the meeting the cohort had a few weeks ago, the dreamspawn made his presence known through a cult called 'The Moon's path to freedom'.
In that meeting, the Prince of nothing gave them information on what the dreamspawn was capable of, but not without wanting something in return. He wanted one of them to accompany him into the hollow mountains so he could become stronger as well, and he requested that Sunless come with him. Sunless told Mordret to give him some time to think about it, to which Mordret agreed.
'Thank the gods they didn't suggest dragging me along for that trip too.'
Before going into the palace of imagination through the mirror, Sunless spotted a tattered mantle, and Mordret told him that, as a child, Saint Jest had told him that the dark mantle had been down there before they came here. Kai would have almost believed him if it weren't for the fact that it was a complete and utter lie from The Prince of Nothing.
Kai knew this was a lie not only because of his flaw, but also because Cassie had informed Kai beforehand that Clan Valor had no idea the mirror maze even existed down there.
He didn't mention it to anyone, nor did he confront The Prince of Nothing, because he assumed that Sunless knew it was a lie as well. It was clear that Mordret had ulterior motives, but Kai didn't yet know what they were.
He wanted to be more than the former idol, the handsome archer, the lead singer of Night&Gale. Kai felt stuck, metaphorically. He felt like he hadn't grown at all after all these years, while everyone else was making leaps and bounds in power and personal growth.
Sure, he killed a dragon or two, but that was it, which often made him feel like a pretender, a fraud, as he felt like he wasn't powerful enough to be in the field with his friends.
Yes, he knew he was being harsh on himself, but how could he not? Especially when his friends and people like the song sisters were taking on great ones and coming out on top.
How could he stand beside them when he couldn't even command a great beast to stand in place for a few seconds to buy his companions time?
But he also knew he was being naive to think that getting stronger would make everything better.
He knew it wouldn't, and yet… he found himself not caring about that, so long as he was strong enough to save one more person. He didn't care about becoming stronger; the only thing that mattered was that he was strong enough to hold back the great one long enough for everyone to escape.
At the end of the day, that was all that mattered to Kai: making sure he was strong enough to hold on for only a second longer so the remaining straggler with a limp could get out safely.
Making sure that the woman with her newborn child could live so that her child wouldn't have to grow up without a mother, as so many other people did. That was why he didn't give up, so that everyone could have a brighter future, even if it cost him his own.
What was the point of having this power if it wasn't used to help people?
…
Knights of Valor battled nightmare creatures in the dark forest, the only source of light being the shattered moon in the sky, illuminating the forest with a pale glow. The only witnesses to their possible demise were the shadows that stretched across the ground.
Elsewhere, guards stood in front of the entrance, not daring to look into the lake as they silently waited for their shift to end and listened to the steady, emotionless strike throughout the broken palace.
The sound came from a tall, crumbling tower with deep cracks, rising into the broken sky. But despite its condition, it still stood tall and proud, not daring to succumb. At the top of the tower, through an arch window, a vermillion fiery glow could be seen, and in front of it stood a handsome, bearded man with a chiseled bare chest.
Anvil struck the glowing red sword with his hammer with a still gaze, though his mind was anything but still. It was a raging storm of emotions he had never shown anyone.
Another strike, followed by another.
Clean, as always, but he didn't care about that right now. He saw what happened to his father, and from then on, he let his flaw consume him, trying to find a way to counteract it rather than spending time with his loved ones while he still had them, and it cost him everything.
Anvil gave Mordret to that creature not only as a sign of truce after killing Broken Sword, but also in hopes of saving his son from his cruel flaw. It turned out that Anvil was very wrong and his decision had cost the boy his humanity and his sanity.
He neglected Morgan in hopes that not seeing her as a person but a weapon instead would keep her alive.
Anvil stared at the glowing sword before dumping it into the bucket of water on the ground, where it hissed, steam rising.
And it did, but now she was beginning to lose faith in him, realizing that her father would never love her, never cherish her, no matter how much she tried to hide it. He knew that Morgan was beginning to see that. Yes, he was the sovereign of steel, but at the end of the day, he was still a father, even if he was a terrible one.
Pulling the sword out of the water, he stared at it for a moment before it hovered in the air and began using his ascended ability to slowly grind the sword and polish it until it gleamed in the pale moonlight from the window.
Worthless.
He tossed the sword into the pile as he used his aspect to put another piece of metal into the fire pit.
The greatest gift his wife Gwyn gave him was his children, and he failed them. His son hated his existence, and his daughter no longer wanted to prove herself in hopes of getting some recognition, some affection from the man she called father.
Anvil stared at the hammer in his hand. He always told himself he came here to craft swords for his knights, to make perfect weapons. But in reality, it was only used as a distraction. Because with smithing, there was no need to think, no need to feel, to reflect on the past. Only strike, and yet he was doing the exact opposite right now. How could he not when he knew that the dreamspawn was coming back?
Yes, he could kill all those who knew his name to stop the infection, as he and Ki Song did in the past. But then what? Only Ki Song and Anvil knew that creature's full abilities, including his aspect legacy.
His aspect legacy gave him an abundance of knowledge, including how to use his powers to enter dreams and manipulate a person's subconscious. Or if he wanted to, he could enter someone's mind without their permission and lock them in their own personal hell, making them relive their worst memories over and over.
On top of that, it also gave him the knowledge of how to use his powers to project his mind into someone's head, allowing him to speak with them in real time without physically being there.
Finally, it gave him information about his ancestor, the heart god. It was so eerie that many people in the past, including Ki Song, Heaven, Broken Sword, and Anvil himself, thought it was his transformation. So if they thought that in the past, then Anvil was sure Mordret thought it was as well, or that it was his supreme ability.
Regardless of what they thought, the Dreamspawn would use his powers to spread his name again, or he would use his many cults, such as the Moon's Path to Freedom and the Church of the Moon, to spread his name like he was doing now, or have his followers make murals around the waking world like Morgan told Jest about.
As he continued to stare at his hammer absentmindedly, the metal hovered out of the fire pit, glowing red, and lay itself on the anvil, waiting to be made, to be crafted. Anvil struck it with his hammer and met the sparks that hit his beard with a calm and unflinching gaze as he continued to think.
Anvil would be taking lives as a form of suppression, something that would only last for a few days at best. Not only that, he would have less of a domain if he were to do that because most of the people who knew the dreamspawn's name were of his own domain.
'What do I do?'
Truthfully, Anvil was afraid; he was afraid of the dreamspawn because that thing was coming, and neither he nor Ki Song had any idea how to stop him, at least not permanently. Inaction would hasten his arrival, while action would result in needless deaths as the infection would keep spreading regardless of how many he killed.
It was no longer like the past, when nobody knew the existence of Sovereigns.
That was what made it easier to kill his followers and erase every trace of him, as few people knew about their existence. But now, it was the present where the world was aware of the existence of sovereigns.
In fact, Anvil figured that the Dreamspawn waited until this very moment to begin spreading his name again. That way, he could slowly dwindle both Ki Song and Anvil's growing domain to build his own again.
But he digressed. If he did kill anyone who knew his name, Anvil would lose a large portion of his domain, resulting in less power during the approaching domain war in two years. These were but an example of the choices he had to make over the decades as the king of swords. Action would mean death, and Inaction would mean even more death.
Anvil took a deep breath as he continued striking the metal.
"Damned if you do, Damned if you don't."
That was the quote that defined many things, mainly Antarctica. If Anvil intervened, killed the winter beast, and saved everyone there, many powerful awakened would emerge from the event and join him, seeing him as their savior and his side, thereby strengthening his domain.
But as a dire consequence and based on the late professor Obel's research, because so many people would awaken, to compensate, more nightmare gates would open, which would result in hundreds of millions of deaths at the very least.
On top of that, he suspected that the dream realm would begin assimilating the waking world much sooner. So much so that he predicted that most of the world would have been gone by today, and in the dream realm. Ki Song knew this as well, which is why she did not intervene either.
Anvil knew he couldn't let all those nightmare gates open because so many people were conquering nightmares and becoming masters and saints.
If Obel's research was true and Anvil believed it was, for the longest time, he suspected that somewhere in the distant past, hundreds of thousands, if not possibly millions, of people awakened at the same time. Which, in turn, resulted in all those Nightmare Gates opening around the world during the dark times. So, with that knowledge, he made a difficult, necessary choice: inaction.
He knew that many people would resent him for it, but he didn't care as long as it kept the waking world alive for a few more decades.
He didn't enjoy knowing that all those lives had been lost because of his inaction, but what else could he have done? If he had acted, it would have resulted in an unfathomable number of deaths, and Anvil knew it would be futile to explain to the people why he made that decision, as they would only see him as a monster. Much like he knew some of them did now.
But he digressed again. While the dreamspawn was an ally in the past, even someone like Anvil was always unnerved by the creature. And yet he always found himself passing it off as the dreamspawn not being accustomed to the waking world, since he had grown up in the dream realm.
But now, after all these years, Anvil began to wonder if that was just the dreamspawn manipulating his judgment so that he would let his guard down and trust him more. But if that was the case, how much more did he manipulate?
Was Uncle Jest's theory about the dreamspawn manipulating Ki Song and his thoughts to kill Broken Sword, right?
Anvil grunted and shook off the thought as he tossed the sword in the ever-growing pile.
"No, that's impossible, he's wrong."
Jest had to be.
But could Jest be right about something else? Could Anvil truly reconcile with his children like Jest believed he could?
Anvil doubted it.
Though perhaps in a perfect world, he could. A world where he didn't have to bear this curse, in fact, it was the reason why he went into the palace of imagination through the great mirror in the fake Bastion throughout his younger years.
Not only to explore uncharted territory, but also to escape reality and live in a world where everything was perfect.
A world where he still had his wife, a world where his son didn't want to kill him, a world where his father was still alive, a world where his daughter could rely on and confide in the man she called father. And a world where he wasn't a victim of his failures.
But every time he went there, he despised it more and more, because it reminded him of the life he could never have, which is why he stopped.
Though it was moments like this that he especially despised his flaw for taking his wife and brother away from him, he now had no one aside from Jest to voice his concerns to. Uncle Jest was the only one left that he could speak to as Anvil of Valor, the youngest son of Warden, and not as the cold, uncaring King of Swords.
He may have suppressed his emotions to counteract his flaw, but that didn't mean he didn't still feel them. He still felt happiness, anger, disappointment, and sadness, along with many others.
Anvil stared out the window at the shattered moon, his expression unreadable, his lips moving as he spoke softly, and his features softened a minuscule amount.
"If you were to learn what I did to our children in your absence, would you come to hate me, too, Gwyn?"
"What did I tell you about being so hard on yourself, brat?"
Anvil turned away from the window and towards the door to see Jest leaning against the doorway with a frown. His cane was in his right hand instead of his left. Anvil took note of that and turned back to the forge, staring at the mountain of swords with a neutral expression.
"What are you doing here, Uncle Jest?"
Jest scoffed.
"An old man can't check up on his late best friend's kid? The question is, what are you doing here?"
Anvil ignored his question before looking over his shoulder to the old man still leaning on the doorway.
"You're not going to come in?"
Jest stared at him like he had grown two heads.
"So I can sweat my ass off in there like you are? No, thank you."
Anvil frowned and fully turned around to face him.
"It's never bothered you before. Come inside."
Jest shook his head.
"I'm good, I was only stopping by, besides, I have places to be, and I don't feel like getting my suit all sweaty. Anyway, what's on your mind? Did you think about what I said three weeks ago?"
"I did,"
Jest raised an eyebrow.
"Well? Have you considered it yet?"
"No,"
Jest sighed deeply.
"Well, it's a start… I guess."
Anvil nodded before turning around to face the pile again. He reached in and pulled out a gleaming sword, held it up to face, and stared at the reflection of the room along with his own for a moment before turning around and tossing it over to him.
"Tell me, what do you think of this one?"
Jest put down his cane and caught it with his right hand.
"Pretty good, now I have to get out of here."
Anvil held a hand up.
"Before you go, I want you to do something."
"And what's that?"
"Tell me a joke."
Jest stared at him for a long time.
"Who are you and what have you done with the real Anvil? You're not another reflection of him, are you?"
Anvil didn't smile as he stepped closer.
"You didn't ask if I wanted to hear a joke when you walked in like you usually do. So tell me a joke now,"
Jest rolled his eyes.
"Are you being serious right now? Boy, I'm an old man, I can be allowed to forget sometimes-"
"Now."
Jest frowned and held his hands up in a calming manner.
"Alright, Alright, fine, calm down, will you?, Hmmm. I'm not good at making jokes nor do I like them, but I'll-
Jest didn't finish as the sword he was holding suddenly moved at blinding speeds. His body immediately fell to the floor, along with his head rolling across the room.
I'm back, sorry for the wait :) let me know how this chapter was.