"Run!"
The earth shook, a deep tremor that rattled the pristine white plates underfoot and set the purple grass trembling. Brian ran with everything he had. Mary slowed, then stopped behind them.
"What are you doing?" Garfield yelled, skidding to a halt.
She shot them a determined look. "Go! It will be alright!"
"No, wait! Are you crazy?!" Brian shouted, turning back.
But Mary was already running toward the source of the trembling. She didn't care about the logic. She needed to do this. She needed to be ready.
She stood her ground. A dark, twisted limb, like solidified shadow, protruded from the corner of a shelf. Another limb smashed down from above, shattering a section of the white bookcase. She trembled.
She was scared.
She knew what to do. She saw the deformation in the shelves. She could perhaps have barricaded it, but its speed... it would catch them at some point. A B-rank Unfaithful. They were not mindless. She had to do something. Her eyes darted to a crack in the shelves where green blood—some earlier, forgotten conflict—had spilled. That wasn't the matter at hand. She had to trap this thing.
Looking at it now, the plan felt laughable.
But this was not the moment to falter. She pictured him in her mind. Calm. Thoughtful. Mysterious. Charming in a strange way. Courageous. It made the knot in her chest loosen, just a little.
What did he look like behind that mask of mist? Someone brave. Someone determined.
Two white eyes, stark and pitiless, opened within the shadowy black form. It stepped fully into view, moving with a slow, deliberate walk. It looked at her.
Mary readied her staff, clutching a gemstone artifact in her left hand. She pointed the staff and focused, pulling the ambient fate essence from the strange air. A bright white light gathered at the tip, focused into a searing dot, then burst out in a wave of violent purple flame.
The creature advanced.
She threw everything she had into the blast. The world went purple. She used too much, momentarily losing her focus, but she gritted her teeth and sucked the backlash of wild essence back into her body. She couldn't hold a lot, but she was determined.
Nothing.
After the debris settled, after the dust fell, the B-rank Unfaithful stood exactly as it had before, completely unharmed. It fixed its dead white eyes on her soul. Her feet froze. A dark, leech-like substance lashed out from the shadow. She brought her staff up, meeting it with a weak concussive blast that deflected it. She took a step back, weary, dizzy. She quickly channeled again through the gem.
Another blast. More dust.
Nothing.
The creature, towering over her, took a heavy step. One of its limbs shot out, knocking her to the left with brutal force. She scrambled up, her side screaming in pain, lifting herself with her uninjured arm.
She was running.
It hurt. Everything hurt.
She was running with tears streaking down her cheeks. Her patched glasses slid down her nose. Her form was bad. She was bleeding from her left side. Another shadowy limb smashed into the ground beside her, the shockwave rattling her bones. She was so scared.
"I can't do it... I'm not like you," she sobbed, the words broken.
She turned back, readying another spell.
A shadowy tendril wrapped around her staff and squeezed. The staff shattered, the crystal gem exploding into useless shards. The breaking force snapped her stance. She fell.
In that last moment, she put her hand up. She fired a final, desperate, luminous spell from her bare palm. It blasted forward.
Her own arm, caught in the violent backlash, snapped with a sickening crack.
"Arrrghhhh!" she squealed, the sound raw and animal.
She bandaged the thought, crying, huffing, scrambling back to her feet. The blast had bought her precious seconds.
She turned. Two figures stood there.
"Now!" Garfield yelled.
Brian charged forward in a blinding, furious push. Garfield leapt, putting himself between the creature and the shelves. Something passed between them in that moment—a knowledge, a silent accord Brian and Garfield shared. Mary just noticed it. She looked up, clutching her ruined arm.
"NO! YOU GUYS ARE NOT ILLUMINATED! PLEASE!" she cried out, horror dawning. She had seen it first hand. It was too fast, too strong. Brian and Garfield couldn't handle it.
Brian charged, pushing against the writhing shadow mass. Another limb shot out toward his shield. It didn't deflect. It pierced straight through the reinforced metal.
Garfield spun through the air, his long sword a silver blur.
Something grabbed him mid-air. He hung there, suspended, struggling.
Mary, crawling back, broken, looked at everything through her fractured lenses. The scene reflected in the cracked glass was one of pure, undiluted fear.
Brian's shield was destroyed. Immediately, four huge, dark limbs shot through his stomach. He hunched over, vomiting a fountain of blood, clutching weakly at the shadows impaling him before slumping to his knees.
Garfield, still in the air, twisted and spun. He cut one dark limb. Another caught his right leg and twisted. Sharp cracks—dislocations, breaking bone—echoed, followed by a spray of blood. It was a horrifying sound.
The shadow threw his broken body in front of Mary.
Brian's head was twisted at an awful angle. But as the life drained from his eyes, a subtle, chilling smile crossed his face. A final, grim satisfaction.
"NOOOO!" Mary wailed. She couldn't do it anymore. What was this cruel world? She prayed to a god, to a benevolent being, to Alisia. Why would such a deity allow acts and deeds like these?
The dark creature carried forward. A shadowy limb, sharp as a spear, pierced her stomach.
Thud.
Blood splattered on the white stone. It lifted her up. She felt it—the immense pressure on that single point of contact.
"It hurts..." she muttered through bloody lips.
In that moment, she didn't care anymore. She let go. She thought about everything. What had overcome her? Why was she so confident she could take it on? She had wanted to be reliable. Someone brave, for once.
She held the shadow's gaze, the white eyes fixed on her as its form seemed to open, a maw ready to consume her.
In that instant, an energy unlike any other burst from her. It was bright, so bright it made the shadow reel. It was a burst of color—green, red, yellow—a chaotic, magnificent ball of flames.
But something felt wrong. Something burnt inside her.
She realized, across the span of her studies and her new-gained sense: she was overclocking. She was manifesting the traits and power of a low-grade Enlightened as a mere Latent. This was the only way. A desperate act. A final gamble.
The rainbow blast shot through, burning the shadow. The world was briefly consumed in chaotic color. It felt good, but something inside her extinguished with the blast.
She slumped. The shadow, diminished now, receded, dropping her to the ground.
It was much smaller, but it wasn't enough. It carried on, inching closer to consume her. She closed her eyes, waiting for the end.
A pierce.
Something pierced the shadow from behind. A woman in dark robes, pale, with eyes bloodshot and intense beneath her hood, met the creature with violent, graceful movements. The Unfaithful retreated, analyzing this new threat. She carried forward, cutting it with a dagger again and again until there was nothing left of it.
The shadow dissipated as she made quick work of it. It receded back into the other shadows cast by the luminous shelves. She had won.
No.
Mary was dying. Her blood pooled beneath her. Her hand was pressed over the hole in her stomach.
She thought: all this training, all this study, all this hard work was for nothing. But it felt real, and worth it, in the end. She had acted brave in her last moments. She had cared.
Like him.
She looked up at the grey clouds, the orange tinge past the white luminous bookshelves. She saw an outline—of Brian and Garfield. They were extending their arms to her.
Yet, another face was prominent in her fading field of vision.
Black, messy hair. Fair skin. Skinny but athletic. Kind, though blunt. A coward, but a brave one.
She muttered under her bloody, breathless lips, "If only... I could have... had..."
The figure who had saved her knelt down. They were cloaked, but Mary could see a pair of unmistakable red eyes.
"Met..." Mary breathed.
Cold hands brushed her neck, monitoring her fading pulse.
Mary trembled. She was scared, but she felt warm, and comfortable, and so full of regret.
She muttered, "Lucid..."
The figure in black robes spoke, its voice soft. "You met him..."
She thought of someone as brave as him. Someone as stupid as him. She wanted to spend more time with him. With them. She had hated the group at first, but it had grown a heart. It was somewhere she finally belonged. Someplace she could be accepted.
The figure's hand wiped the blood from between her lips, then cupped her face gently.
"I shall carry your wishes in my stead," the figure said.
The figure took a blade and, with a swift, merciful motion, pierced Mary's chest.
A soft, final exhale escaped her. Her body went limp, her mouth forming the shape of the name she had grown fond of.
The figure in black robes and bandages rose and looked up at the sterile sky. She pulled back her hood.
Black, straight hair framed a face with soft cheeks and sharp features. A single, short horn protruded from the side of her forehead. Pale skin. Her eyes, which had been bloodshot red, faded back to a deep, calm black.
"Kindness is a virtue that you still show," she murmured to the still form. "Let your death be a return of my kindness... Lucid."
She stepped back, turning away from the three still bodies lying before the red-and-white glowing shelves, and walked away into the maze of archives without a sound.