I holstered my pistol and materialized the Relic in my right hand. The hilt felt slightly warm, as it always did, and I took it up in a two-handed grip as I strode toward the helpless specter.
The specter's four multifaceted eyes all focused on me, filled with hate and rage and hunger. I drew back the Relic and spun around, putting all of my strength into a slash that would bisect the monster and destroy its miasmic core, ensuring that it would die and stay dead forever.
As the sword's brilliantly-burning edge swept around, the specter abruptly vanished.
It didn't disperse into a cloud of miasma, as it would have if it tried to teleport away—which it couldn't do anyway after being hit with three MQ rounds. I was certain that none of my rounds hit it in any vital locations, and even if they did, the corpse would have remained for at least a few moments before slowly crumbling into miasmic ash.
I felt my jaw drop in astonishment and I halted my swing as best I could.
The specter just
disappeared
. For no reason at all.
Misaki looked just as surprised as I felt. I released the Relic back into its extra-dimensional storage location and turned my attention to the summoner. He was still conscious, fortunately, but there was a good bit of blood leaking from where I shot him. I doubted he'd die from that much, though—not if he knew enough magecraft to summon a devouring specter.
“What did you do to that specter?” I demanded, standing right next to him with my booted foot placed threateningly near his wound.
“N-nothing! I swear I'm not lying! This happened last time, too! It broke my binding and disappeared just like that!”
I glanced at Misaki, who shook her head. We had no reason to think the summoner was lying at this point—there really was no hope for him now. “Is it still around here?”
Misaki shook her head. “No, it's gone. Not just 'not here,' but
really
gone, no longer anchored to the material world.”
I blinked. How the hell did
that
happen?
“My leg,” the summoner groaned. I sighed and stepped back—I wasn't really going to stomp on the gunshot wound, anyway, but he didn't know that. I pulled out my phone and entered the encrypted comm system again. Star picked up the call immediately.
“What's going on?”
I turned away from the wounded, moaning summoner and stared out at the sky. Dark clouds were gathering over the Pacific Ocean and I knew that a storm was coming, both literally and figuratively.
“You're probably not going to like this.”
rainclouds
The rain was coming down pretty hard now. Misaki and I ducked into our favorite local dive, having mostly avoided a good drenching. We picked our way through the sparse gathering of people, following the cute young waitress to a booth in the far corner.
“I'll be back with your drinks,” the girl said. Ah, the perks of being a regular. We didn't even have to say anything; just show up, and in mere moments they'd have delicious booze ready for our eager consumption.
I settled into the booth and rubbed my temples. What a monumental fucking pain in the ass today had been.
After I called Star and told her what happened, an AEGIS cleanup team arrived on-site with a small group of local police co-opted to keep any curious eyes and ears away from the site sanitation efforts. Our incompetent brat of a summoner would be interrogated and then permanently dealt with.
I sighed, more than a little relieved. Killing people wasn't something that came naturally or easily to me, and I hoped it never, ever would. I was almost angry enough to blow him away at first, but the events of the battle that followed had me convinced that he was a scared and desperate idiot, not a vicious monster.
“She didn't seem surprised by what we had to say,” Misaki murmured, breaking into my private thoughts. I nodded and leaned forward, keeping my voice as low as possible so it wouldn't carry in the relatively quiet restaurant.
“No, she didn't. I don't think this is the first time she's gotten a report like ours.” I tapped the back of Misaki's hand lightly as the waitress returned with a tray bearing our drinks. We suspended the conversation for a few moments while Misaki and I hemmed and hawed over which appetizer and entree we'd order.
My eyes settled on the girl's skirt-covered, nicely rounded rear end as she briskly walked back toward the kitchen. Misaki snorted and elbowed me none-too-gently.
“Oh, come on, you were staring, too,” I complained.
“I won't deny that.” Misaki giggled softly. “I thought you preferred a little more
tail
on your tails, though.”
I felt a faint heat blossom in my cheeks and didn't even bother to argue. There was certainly a
lot
to be said for Misaki's tail. It definitely helped that she wasn't particularly shy about making, um,
creative
use of it in the bedroom, either…
Misaki cleared her throat. Apparently it'd become obvious from the pink flush on my cheeks that my mind was headed down a very dirty path. “Keep your mind out of the gutter, love,” she chided me, wagging a slender finger. “This is important. I get the feeling that we witnessed something significant.”
“A specter just vanishing right in front of us? Yeah, 'significant' is an understatement.”
“Either something severed the binding anchor externally,” Misaki mused, her invisible tail thumping against my legs, “or the specter itself rebuffed the summoning and binding. Though I don't know how that would even be possible.”
“I'm sure our illustrious leader will part and parcel the data off to the appropriate departments and they'll study it and poke at it and all of that fun stuff and figure it all out. And we'll never know.”
Misaki shrugged. “That's how working for the agency is, love. We should be used to it by now. It really isn't all that different from being a member of an arcane house.”
“I guess.”
We let a few minutes pass in silence, simply enjoying the company of the other. There were a lot of times where Misaki and I just sat together without saying anything, just basking in the warmth of our shared feelings. We were both such sappy romantic idiots, it was really ridiculous.
The waitress returned bearing a tray containing our meals. She set the heavily-loaded plate of Southern-style barbecue ribs in front of Misaki, and a plate of old-fashioned fish and chips for myself. I smiled at the paper used to soak the excess grease, a sheet that was printed to look like old newspaper. It had been years since any real newspaper was available for serving fish and chips on, after all.
I picked up the lemon wedge and sprayed a piece of the beer-battered pollock before cutting a piece out and popping it into my mouth. This place had really good food and was reasonably priced, being pretty close to our new apartment. A definite winner, especially with their house brews.
Misaki was tearing into her ribs with her usual wild enthusiasm. Two of the bones were already completely stripped of the smoked and spicy-sauce-slathered meat. I watched her eat for a moment, putting her cute little fangs to their intended use.
“This is really good,” she said around a mouthful of pork. I felt the rate at which her tail smacked me in the legs increase as her mood improved. I sipped at my beer and savored my dinner, trying not to match Misaki's rate of consumption. I had only two chunks of fish and a handful of fried potatoes, but she was chewing through a full slab of ribs at a pace best described as 'ravenous.'
“Someone's awfully hungry.”
Misaki swallowed and nodded. “Didn't eat lunch, remember? We were too busy chasing that idiot.”
“I'm not likely to forget this case any time soon.” I frowned and contemplated the piece of fried potato held between my fingers. Misaki had been right—Star didn't seem to react at all to the revelation that the specter we were trying to kill just vanished.
I popped the chip in my mouth and chewed slowly, still turning over the earlier chase and battle in my mind. There wasn't much point to it since it was definitely out of our hands, but I couldn't stop myself.
Misaki set her current bone down and leaned back, sighing contentedly. There were few occasions where my wife-to-be looked happier and more satisfied than after eating a pile of grilled meat. Well… there
were
certain other things she looked more satisfied after eating, so to speak, but that's hardly polite dinner conversation.
“When are we going to go visit our family again?”
I blinked at the abrupt change of subject. “I don't know, whenever? I mean, they aren't all that far away or anything.”
Misaki gave me a dirty look. “'Whenever' wasn't the answer I was looking for. Karin, I want to go be with our family. Maybe families who love you are something dull and mundane to you, but remember I've never
had
a family before.”
She didn't need to remind me. For over six centuries, Misaki had been a slave, a living weapon used by powerful arcane houses to aid in their wars against rival clans. Spirit hunters, those humans inextricably bound to the blessed evil-killing weapons known as Relics, were the definitive trump card against enemy summoners and the specters they commanded.
Before I saved her, Misaki was treated like either a prized possession or a useless slave girl depending on the whims of her “Master.” She hadn't even been given the dignity of a name—I suggested the name “Misaki” shortly after we first met.
Misaki's growth over the past nine months never failed to astonish me. The powerful attraction that bound us together in those chaotic first weeks blossomed into deep and enduring affection that hadn't dimmed even in the slightest as time passed. If anything, we grew more and more in love with every passing day. The molten passion of the first few months had cooled a bit, sure, but emotionally we were closer than we'd ever been.
Besides, having sex four or five times a week gets
exhausting
. It may sound really amazing and mind-blowing at first, but after a little while familiarity sets in and most nights all you want is to get some sleep.
“Karin…”
Misaki's voice broke me out of my introspection. Her vibrant green eyes were wide and fixed directly on me, the rest of her expression informing me in no uncertain terms what my answer better damn well be.
“Okay, okay, fine. We can go visit them this weekend. I'll give So-yi a call tomorrow and we'll head down there Friday.”
“Yay!” Misaki fairly beamed and leaned over to kiss me, mashing her lips against mine with her typical fierce enthusiasm. We'd somehow managed to match up quite well when it came to intimacy, though honestly I'd never expected to have a dominant partner who was so, um, cheerful and energetic about it.
I drained the last vestiges of amber ale from my glass and set it down. Misaki was nestled up against my left side now, leaning her head against my shoulder. A very suggestive smirk curved her lips.
“Are you done drinking for tonight?” Her voice was low and husky and hinted at all sorts of things that sent my imagination running down several paths, all of which increased my heart rate and quickened my breath.
“Um, I am now.”
Misaki collapsed into a fit of giggles. I felt my cheeks starting to warm a bit—a common occurrence with this girl around, I swear. She raised her hand up and waved, catching the attention of our server.
“Check, please!”
--
The last thing I remembered was falling asleep in Misaki's arms. We left the little pub and grill and headed home, feeling the pleasant buzz of alcohol in my system and more than a little frisky. The door to the apartment had barely latched shut on the auto-lock before we were flinging our clothes off—we even raced each other to the bed, giggling the whole way.
By the time our activities ran their course, I'd fallen pretty much dead asleep. Clocked out, down for the count, all of that stuff. So why the fuck was I suddenly standing in the center of an ancient ruin?
Obviously, I was dreaming—but it felt
wrong
. Too real. Way too real.
My dreams were typically lacking important kinesthetics that made them easy to identify as a conjuration of my brain, bored and aimless during its nightly shutdown and repair session. Even nightmares often failed to truly frighten me.
But this was different. I could feel the usual waking aches in my body—the bad leg pulsed with a dull current of pain. I felt thirsty, a little chilly as I wrapped my arms around my torso. It was as if I weren't even asleep. I was
there
, in this strange place I'd never been before, never set foot in before, shivering and naked.
And I wasn't alone.
The dark figure that stood before me was impossible to identify. Cloaked in a heavy draping robe made from the darkest shadow, they very well could have been male, female or neither. There was a faint, barely-perceptible tingling pressure hanging in the air, making it seem heavier, unnatural.
I recognized that sensation—I felt it, on the very edge of my senses, every time Misaki used magic. In this dream-but-not-dream, the odd pressure of gathering mana was so obvious it was oppressive.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
The cloaked figure shook its head, deep beneath the folds. When the figure spoke, they spoke in a soft, dry whisper that lacked any hint of the speaker's gender or age.
“That is not important.”
I waited, expecting the mysterious stranger to finish, but they remained silent and unmoving. Great, just what I needed—a weird magicky person in my dreams. It was clear this person was real, not any creation of my dreaming mind.
“What is important, then?”
The heavy shadows cloaking the stranger seemed to shiver and I was given the impression of soft laughter. “Nothing. Everything. You.”
Of course, they even spoke with that annoyingly cryptic and profound manner of speech. I mean, really. How fucking stereotypical could you get? I suppose it did have the benefit of keeping me off-balance and on the defensive—though I wasn't exactly sure what a magic-user projecting themselves into my dreams had to fear from me.
I leveled an annoyed glare at the stranger. “What the fuck is
that
supposed to mean?”
“The dawn approaches,” the mysterious stranger stated.
I didn't bother to say anything. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the stranger was here—if you could even consider a dream to be a place—to talk, not to listen, nor to answer questions.
Well, then. I strode across the clearing in the center of the overgrown ruins and sat down on a fallen block of stone. Moss coated the top of the shattered granite, cushioning my rear end as I settled in to wait. The eerie silence hung heavy in the air, almost as uncomfortable as the thick accumulation of mana. I crossed my legs and fixed the cloaked figure with a look that spoke of great impatience.
“You destroyed Isao Tsukimura.”
I blinked. “Yeah.” My eyes widened as I considered the implications of such a question; perhaps this strange cloaked figure was an ally of the dead archmage—
“Doing so has sent ripples of change through the astral,” the figure said in that same dry, cold whisper. “The Tsukimura maintained continuous invocations. They were unmade at the moment of his death.”
“What?”
I mean, I sort of knew what they were talking about—according to Misaki, a continuous invocation was a spell that had a minimum duration of a few hours but more often described spells that were more or less “permanent.” Unlike an ordinary invocation, the continuous types had to be, well, continuously renewed in order to keep working.
“The Tsukimura wished to gain control over the astral.”
That didn't surprise me at all. The astral, or the astral world, was the source of all magic in the universe; any individual who managed to gain control over it would become a literal god. That Isao Tsukimura made a serious effort to do so didn't really shock me all that much. I mean, he was definitely a “rule the world” evil overlord type.
“He would bore through the boundary,” the dark figure went on, as if they somehow knew I'd assimilated the implications of what they'd already revealed. “His magic pulled mana into the world, into the Black Core within. A conduit for power, drawing it in through the spectral essence.”
“I know all of that,” I snapped, a tad impatiently. “He bound a powerful specter, obliterated its consciousness and fused the vacant miasmic core to his own soul. That's why he was able to cast so much high-level magic without destroying his body. If you think this is some kind of revelation to me, trust me, it's not.”
The mysterious stranger rushed forward with impossible speed. We were face-to-face, my nose only a few scant centimeters from the inky blackness contained within that voluminous hood.
“You do
not
know.”
I snorted in derision. “Maybe if you'd just speak plainly instead of these stupid fucking riddles, I'd get it a little quicker.”
“The Tsukimura created a tunnel through a strong wall,” the figure said, completely unruffled. “With the destruction of the Black Core, that conduit has collapsed. The boundary is weak and grows weaker with every passing season.”
The annoyance in my expression vanished.
“Is that why the specter disappeared yesterday?”
“Yes.”
Finally, some
useful
information!
“The approaching dawn cannot be stopped by the night-bringers. It cannot be stopped by anyone. It will break upon this world and its radiant light will wash over all.”
And that lasted exactly thirty seconds before they went right back to spouting cryptic nonsense. I suppressed the urge to slap my hand to my face in exasperation. Maybe this really
was
just a dream.
“What the hell is 'the approaching dawn?'”
The cloaked figure was silent and still. I got the impression they were staring at me as if I were an idiot who didn't understand anything, despite the fact that I couldn't see their eyes or any other part of their face.
“You will know when it is time.”
Shadow dispersed as the dream-world around me began to dissolve into a gray, formless mist. My body remained solid and defined, but I felt the decidedly odd sensation of the fragment of keep wall under my butt start to fade away and become insubstantial.
I tried to stand up, but found that there was no substance for my feet to rest upon. The odd pressure of mana around me began to recede as well. Matter and energy in the dream world started to break down and I felt myself falling.
Falling, falling away, as the mist surrounded me and engulfed my consciousness in the utter darkness of dreamless sleep.