"If I could relive the time we shared together again… I would without any hesitation."
Miyamoto reminisced as he took another sip from the shallow white ceramic cup. He was still conversing with Setsuna while sharing a dinner table with everyone else. Aside from the shrine maiden, only Krieg was paying attention to it as the others were either finishing their meals or conversing between themselves.
"So my mother's name was Hizuki…" The knight muttered under his breath. "I don't remember much about her."
He closed his eyes and the only thing he could recall was a faint memory of a silver haired woman holding him but nothing else.
"But it's heartening isn't it?" Setsuna said with a cheerful mood. "Krieg inherited both your passion for the blade and her incredible strength."
"Well… he certainly has her strength." He started to smile. "But he can't hold a candle against me in terms of swordsmanship."
"Hey! I am improving you damn old man!"
Leona watched from the balcony above where she sat with an open book on the table in front of her.
'I'm glad you're back to normal, Krieg.'
She had a smile on her face but it soon faded away as she returned to reading the book. As her eyes darted through each line of text, she held her right hand on the side while trying to manipulate mana.
It was a book about earth magic. A step by step instructable written by Robert in order to teach the element's basic uses and how a mage would learn it from scratch.
"Earth magic, one of the four main pillars of magic which also makes it one of the easiest elements to learn as an apprentice.' She kept reading with a monotone voice. 'Alongside fire, wind and water, it is one of the most fundamental elements to learn in order to advance to the next level."
'Next level?'
"Lightning, ice, light and dark are elements far more complex for a mage to cast due to the many steps one has to take in order to evoke these elements into the physical realm. While lightning and ice come from mastering wind and water alike, earth magic is a standalone element which makes it less prone to mistakes. However, knowing ice magic does make this process easier as their visualizations are similar in many ways."
On her right hand, she created a spear of ice the size of a knife.
"How is this going to help me with earth magic of all things?" She inspected the spell closely for any hints on how she could apply that knowledge for earth magic, but… "Argh… it doesn't make sense…"
"Spell structure and visualization method."
A familiar—complacent voice, came from somewhere behind her. She didn't even need to turn around to know who it was.
"Robert, mind telling me why you have a habit of appearing out of nowhere when I'm training?"
"To check on my hopeless pupil." He joked as he pulled a nearby chair and sat by the opposite side of the table. "What are you having trouble with?"
"Everything. I can't wrap my head around this one." The ice spearhead changed shape, forming a ball of solid ice. "I can do these things with ice but I can't even create a simple piece of stone."
"You are too engrossed in this part." He tapped twice on the page she was reading. "I mention that ice and earth elements are similar in the spell formation and its visualization. In layman's terms, it's how you 'imagine' the spell taking form."
He raised his right hand and the air seemed to accrete into the center of his palm before freezing and turning into a triangular shard of ice. Conversely, on his left hand—mana started to compress itself and slowly started to form what could only be described as a mini storm of lightning before it eventually burned itself out—forming a black sphere.
"Wha-!" She flinched at the sudden compression of the lightning surge. "What was that?!"
"Creating what could be considered 'earth magic' from scratch." His expression slowly but surely turned into a smirk. "You see, earth's advantage doesn't lie with making mass out of nothing like ice magic but the versatility of the element itself. If this was a close quarters scenario where I had to deal with you, a mage, I would first open the fight with an earth barrier to put a physical wall between you and me."
"And why not an ice wall?"
"Tsk, tsk, Leona. You're too focused on what is happening in front of you. Think of what you learned with lightning magic. What is the best element to disrupt mana readings?"
She leaned back on her seat and frowned her brows as she mentally rehearsed everything she had learned so far.
'To make use of reading mana I need to use lightning magic in order to 'feel' the mana around me… wait…'
She turned at him with her eyes widened and a half open mouth.
"Are you telling me earth magic can get in the way of detecting mana?"
He snapped his fingers which made the ice triangle shatter in a myriad of shards.
"Bingo." Before the ice shards could fall below the balcony Leona noticed a darker shade of mana holding the many pieces mid air. "Now, think of this way, if an enemy mage can't read what type of spell you'll cast next, you essentially have infinite possibilities behind that one simple earth wall."
"Huh… now that you bring it up, I always wondered why Setsuna always started a fight by casting earth spells."
He scratched the backside of his head, seemingly a bit flustered.
"That's a bad habit of hers. In terms of speed for casting, earth magic is in the middle of the bunch alongside with water. Meanwhile wind and ice magic are extremely fast elements to fire off so technically speaking, at extremely close quarters a wind or ice spell might be more useful if speed is your concern." He shrugged off. "But I'm getting sidetracked. The point is—earth magic is far easier to use if you think about how to manipulate your surroundings rather than 'making' something appear out of thin air."
"Manipulate huh? So like a wall made of earth or…"
"A pillar of stone shooting from your opponent's feet. Or better yet, the one two combo of shooting earth spears and following up with a thunderbolt. Even if you miss, just hitting a nearby spear will usually result in your target getting electrocuted anyway."
"Ah… so that's why Kaeli tried that one time…"
"Huh? What are you talking about?"
"Huh… nothing."
He raised an eyebrow and snapped his fingers. Leona's right side felt warmer for a split second and Kaeli suddenly plopped down right beside her. The high elf held a wooden ladle on her right hand with a ceramic dish on her left—apparently she was in the middle of cooking.
She blinked a few times and held her right knuckle against her temple as if feeling a mild headache from the sudden teleportation.
"Ugh… my head… why did you teleport me here? I was in the middle of something."
"So, Kaeli." Robert started asking with apparently little concern for her opinion—his expression remained somewhat unamused. "Did you try to perform a piercing stone into a thunderbolt combo?"
"Huh? Oh, that…" She rolled her eyes over. "Yeah, I was trying to kill her." She pointed at Leona with the ceramic dish. "You know, before when I was a paladin under Alexander's orders."
Leona sighed as she glanced at Robert, who was understandably—or so she thought, bummed out.
"And you failed. How?"
"Hey!" The tactician was incredulous by his lack of tact. "Did you actually want her to kill me?!"
He shrugged off.
"I mean, your spellcasting prowess wasn't anything to write home about before training with us."
Leona clenched her right hand into a tight fist while also instinctively biting down her teeth. At that point it seemed like a two person conversation instead of three since Kaeli started to explain her previous battle against the tactician in detail. Perhaps in the hopes of getting Robert to teleport her back faster.
"At the time she had both Asteram soldiers and a shadowmaster aiding her in battle." She twirled the ladle as if trying to remember everything. "I couldn't find time to cast a large area fire spell which forced me to use a water shield in order to stop their bullets from hitting me while I planned my spells when they stopped to reload their guns."
Robert nodded a few times as she kept explaining.
"I did use their bullets that were inside the water shield in conjunction with mana burst in order to create a makeshift bomb but it wasn't as effective as I planned it to be…"
"A fragmentation grenade huh?" He muttered. "Not bad usage of a propulsion only spell."
"While I had the upper hand throughout the fight, one thing that made me lose the battle was Phoebe's poisoned dagger. Somehow she made a concoction that interrupted the flow of magic."
"Ah, the mageslayer poison." He snickered. "I see, she learned well."
"Considering it was thanks to it that we avoided losing Princess Leona here." Kaeli had a somewhat warm smile on her face as she looked at her. "That stab wound was a small price to pay."
Leona saw the sincerity in her eyes which made avoid her gaze. Robert on the other hand nodded to himself, satisfied with the explanation he raised one hand ready to snap his fingers.
"I'll teleport you back."
"Ah, no. No need." She smiled awkwardly. "I can just walk back, Master."
He chuckled while lowering his hand.
"Sure."
She bowed slightly before taking her leave, ladle and ceramic dish in hand. Leona seemed to be holding a mixture of sadness and weariness in her expression as she grabbed her own left shoulder and started to massage it.
After a while she tilted her head to one side then another before looking at him with a serious look.
"Robert, is there a reason why you collect so much knowledge? Despite being an extraordinary mage you seem…"
He had a sarcastic smile on his face as he raised his hands while saying.
"Compulsive? Excessive? Perhaps, obsessed?"
However, despite his nonchalant attitude, Leona replied with conviction.
"Desperate. I see before me a man of tremendous potential to even be a king and yet… you seem desperate to remove these so-called 'shackles' that keep you in this world." She narrowed her eyes a bit, making it seem like she was frowning. Despite that he remained silent. "But even that doesn't make sense. I've seen how much you love your children and despite giving me and the others the cold shoulder, you still keep treating your daughters with the love only a true fatherly figure would. In a sense It even made me a bit jealous of Setsuna and Yuna." She clenched her teeth before eventually continuing. "My father always wished the best for me, but despite my acumen for magic and strategy, he would always treat me like a kid no matter how old I grew."
"This won't last forever, Leona. One day, everyone you and I know will have to part ways with one another."
"But it doesn't have to be today!" She slammed her fist on the table, sending a jolt through the wood that made the book snap shut from the impact. "Isn't that the whole reason why it's important to live today and not the morrow?"
He shook his head.
"You wouldn't understand. None in this world would."
"Because it doesn't make sense! You want to see your daughters grow yet you yearn for your own death!"
"How can a man riddled with sins of past lives make amends to those he killed before? The answer? Erase the cause entirely." The shards of ice that were still floating around him suddenly collapsed to the palm of his hand as he clenched it tight into a fist. "Lastraeous is something that shouldn't exist. Why would the void, the end of all things, have a consciousness?"
She was taken aback. Cold sweat formed on her brow.
"You're telling me—that place is actually Lastraeous? I thought it was a god that ruled over it…"
"I could've battled against it if it was the case. No… that 'thing' is the manifestation of the void itself, a collection of lost souls adrift amongst the stars, the worlds… death incarnate. Yet despite all of it, somehow it grew a mind of its own."
Leona held her chin as her head tilted down. She could remember clearly the time she spent in that place. A shattered existence between life and death—a timeless existence. Although she could feel the teeming souls beneath her feet, Lastraeous itself wasn't just a consciousness in her eyes.
"But…" She muttered under her breath. "I saw it take the form of a man when I met it."
That single sentence snapped Robert's attention to her.
"You met what?"
"A man. I… I don't remember his features—but I'm certain it was a man and not an amalgamation of souls as you described."
Robert let out a low chuckle while closing both of his hands with each curling joint of his fingers cracking under the tension. There was a foreboding feeling growing inside her chest as she witnessed the sage lose himself in laughter.
"Leona, you might be the key to end it. If the void presents itself to you in a form that you recognize—it means it is aware of its own existence." He clutched the right side of his face—his grin widened as his fingers dug into his skull. "You might just be the hero of this neverending tale."