Crimson

"I feel it. The environment itself is aching. From the North, Northwest, South, Southeast-- there are a few others that are a bit further away. They're coming here-- all of them."

Those were the words that Ishtar had said to Gilgamesh that morning. It had been three weeks since they last saw any of the Wyrm Lords' soldiers, meaning that it was only a matter of time before they finally showed up.

Once he was sure that they were close enough, Gilgamesh and the others gathered their things and Ishtar placed the house back into the pouch.

They chose the direction that Ishtar was certain would keep them away from the approaching armies, and began to put some distance between them and the area they had spent the last month or so in.

Gilgamesh did not want to depart from the core region completely, as he still wanted to have some fun with the Wyrm Lords. While walking away, they felt massive reverberations coming from various directions behind them.

Marshall looked back, and saw a cloud of blackening smoke on the horizon.

"You're sure that we won't run into them?" Sylvia gulped.

"We won't. In almost every direction except this one, I sensed a great amalgamation of spiritual energy. There's no Wyrm Lord army in this direction." Ishtar reassured her as she herself followed behind Gilgamesh.

He was leading them to a small grove, where the hills lessened, and the foliage provided some cover. Here, they would be able to cast an eye down onto the open area they had come from, and observe things as they played out.

It was also close enough for him to intervene if he so wished.

Once they were under the cover of those trees, they spread out and found places where they had a clear view. The morning silently passed into midday, with no changes save for the ever-growing cloud of darkness looming.

As evening set in, finally, an army of gold-plated soldiers trampled the foliage and entered the clearing.

Leading them was a massive man, as tall as he was muscular, and bareback. The golden gauntlets on his hands glowed even in the fading light; Gilgamesh could feel that man's strength from where he was.

"Gold," Sylvia gulped.

"The Golden Wyrm Lord, is it?" Gilgamesh smirked.

"The others are already there. Look." Ishtar pointed, and when they looked they saw green flames consuming the foliage not too far from where the Golden Wyrm Lord had entered.

Another young man, though not nearly as large, strode into the hilly clearing with his hands behind his back, dressed in green robes. Filling his eyes were verdant tongues of flame which grew until they spilled out of his eyes and into the air.

There was no army behind him, which greatly surprised Ishtar. Even Gilgamesh was frowning when he discovered this.

"Even though I see one man," Gilgamesh started, "I sense the spirits of many."

"It must have been an amalgamation, then. Forced or otherwise." Ishtar concluded before she sighed.

"So he killed his own men? Why?" Sylvia posed the question, even though the answer had already come to her.

"The same reason any sane person commits horrendous acts: for power."

Marshall's level-headedness and clarity of voice shook his sister to her core. As the realization dawned on her, she looked to her brother and shuddered. This was another of the key factors that saw him promoted in rank when she could not be.

Despite every trait Marshall seemed to possess, it could all be discarded and replaced with cruelty and coldness. This allowed him to make decisions and deductions that she could not.

Marshall ignored his sister's reaction, and instead looked over to Gilgamesh and Ishtar.

"There's a chill in the air, despite all the fire."

Ishtar nodded. "I sense a fire, so cold it burns, and a poisonous flame spreading throughout the minor forest. It seems that two of the Wyrm Lords have begun their battle elsewhere, and that they are the cause of the smoke cloud above us."

Gilgamesh leaned forward a bit and scanned the landscape with his physical and spiritual eyes. Ishtar did the same, and so did Samael's spirit.

"There's Gold and Verdant, Azure and Violet are battling each other somewhere, so that leaves Black, Silver and Crimson," Marshall counted on his fingers and he adjusted his position, also scouring the landscape in the same way as the others.

Sylvia looked behind them, further out in the direction they had walked a short distance in. Ishtar said that she did not sense anything coming from this direction, and though it was mostly clear, Sylvia's eyes could not help but wander.

There were little trees in their immediate surroundings, save for similar groves to the one they were spying from. However, further away, where eyesight failed, there was more forest.

While taking in the image of that forest, Sylvia felt something call out to her spirit. The shrillness of that call alerted her to the potential danger they would be in if Ishtar was wrong, and once she started thinking like that she could not stop.

The fear intensified as it built up; she needed to give voice to it, and perhaps acquire some form of reassurance, but one look at Marshall changed her mind.

"Look, there. I see a flame that does not emit light, and a flame that holds in itself a reflection of all others."

"Those must be the Silver and Black Wyrm Lords. They're all here except for Crimson and his army." Marshall sat back and leaned against a tree, looking relaxed.

Below them in the clearing, three armies stood behind their Lords, while a single young man in green stood by his lonesome. A tightly dressed woman in black clothing walked out from amongst her army of shadowy soldiers, while a heavily armored young woman stepped out from her army of silver-plated soldiers.

Each of them possessed fully black hair, and seemed to all be around the same age.

"Are the Wyrm Lords all siblings?" Gilgamesh asked this question after seeing the four of them come together.

"It's been speculated that the Scaled Emperor shamelessly practiced nepotism, but there was simply no way to keep track of his progeny; he just has too many children." Marshall chuckled as he answered.

"I see," Gilgamesh's eyes narrowed, and his mind revisited what little information he had on the Wyrm Lords.

"Besides where they come from and who they serve, everything else is just based on rumors and hearsay, like what their skills and abilities might be."

Ishtar turned to face Marshall and asked, "What about their levels? Is that information also untrustworthy?"

"That's the odd thing about these systems of ours. Everyone possesses a variant, and even though they're all variants of the same thing, the commonalities aren't all there sometimes-- even levels."

"There's been rumors of the Wyrm Lords having entirely skill-based systems, without any sort of levelling whatsoever."

While they spoke, Sylvia's mind was riddled with negativity. It was not uncommon for her to overthink, but even she was now coming to realize that something was wrong.

There was too much negative energy assailing her mind, and the more she tried to alert her brother and the others to her plight, the further into that negativity she sank.

As this was happening, the four Wyrm Lords in the clearing had come forward to speak to each other, but it was unclear what they might have been speaking about.

"So you're saying that levels are entirely unreliable?"

"I don't know what I'm saying. All I know is that it's entirely possible that levels don't matter to the Wyrm Lords. By honing their abilities alone, they may be able to grow and evolve. Perhaps those skills even evolve with them."

Marshall, Ishtar and Gilgamesh were engrossed in conversation as they awaited Crimson's arrival. Meanwhile, not even five feet away from them, Sylvia was breaking down from the inside.

Her spirit was in disarray and her mind was in shambles. She could form no coherent thoughts, nor could she control the jumpy movements of her body. With each turn of her head, she expected to find the source of her torment.

Yet, with each glance, there was nothing to be found. This would likely drive her mad, were it to continue any longer.

Luckily, the negativity faded in an instant of sudden clarity. There was no more speculative power in her head, only a twisted assurance that seemingly mocked her previous state.

It was as if her own spirit was lamenting at her pitifully weak mind, as it had been just now, and was now informing her that she was certain to die because she had failed to overcome it.

The surrealism of it all vanished, though, when her head took its final turn and her eyes met another pair of eyes, stained with hellfire.

He stood taller than most men, and was adorned in naught but red-scaled trousers. His fingernails were akin to claws, and his skin resembled that of a lizard, only there was a thin layer of more human-like skin above it all.

Even so, his human skin seemed so fragile that a mere flex of his muscles would tear it open, revealing his true self.

Sylvia froze, and could only stutter the word that was now on her mind.

"C-C-C-C...."

Marshall heard her and looked over, and he too froze.

"C-Cr-Cr-Cr-Cri..."

Sylvia's stuttering reached Ishtar and Gilgamesh, who unsuspectingly glanced over in her direction. When they followed her gaze, they saw the man standing there, unblinking, his long black hair reminding them of four others they had been paying attention to.

"....Crimson"

Sylvia finally managed to speak the word, already putting distance between herself and that man. When he stepped out of the shade and into the dim moonlight, he chuckled.

"I didn't think rumors had spread so far that Marshall Hautaine- I'm assuming- had come to hear of them." The man's voice was like the flickering of a warm fire, and it took the edge off of the chill in the air.

Disregarding Sylvia, the man walked toward Marshall and flashed a deceptively kind, teethy smile.

"I didn't think the Silver Wing Academy would want something with my continent as well. Tell me, Hautaine, why are you here?"

In the man's presence, Marshall and Sylvia were speechless.

Gilgamesh sighed and stood up; Samael was already on his back. Ishtar's gaze was locked in place, and as Gilgamesh got up to walk away, her hand slowly tried to reach out to him.

She could feel something within that man that was just as irregular as the contents of her own spirit. However, if she was now filled with sparks, then he had to be filled with the eternal flame that birthed those sparks.

"I didn't think you of all people would be scared shitless," Gilgamesh smirked at Marshall, and the latter cleared his throat and averted his gaze.

Crimson eyed Gilgamesh strangely, and for a second seemed to be experiencing some kind of discomfort.

"Incredible. It is meager, but the Obscure Spark has indeed touched you."

Gilgamesh frowned. "How can you be so sure?"

"Because if you did not possess the Knowledge of the Obscure Spark, you would have been incinerated the second I used it to peer into you."

Gilgamesh's head tilted and he scoffed, "You did what?"

Crimson seemed confused by the question.

"You dared try to peer into me?

Samael was already in Gilgamesh's hand at this point. From the crown of the tree Gilgamesh had been sitting under, a large number of crows flew out and started to make circles in the air.

The choppy wind picked up and started to rattle the grove of trees.

Crimson shook his head and looked down his nose at Gilgamesh, who was nothing more than a little boy to him.

"Of course I dared to. Do you fancy yourself important because the Obscure Spark deigned to bless you with a scrap of knowledge? Please!"

Gilgamesh was no longer interested in conversation. The same moment that he raised his sword, was the exact same moment that Sylvia, Ishtar and Marshall were all brought out of their state of fear.

Crimson had reeled in his spiritual power, making it clear that it alone was enough to render them useless.

When they truly comprehended just what Gilgamesh was about to do, they all cried out in unison. For Marshall and Sylvia, it was because they underestimated Gilgamesh's ability.

However, for Ishtar, it was because she knew very well what kind of person Gilgamesh was.

Samael cleaved a path through the air, and Crimson simply raised his hand to defend. The sword passed through his wrist, leaving a spiritual trail as it exited, showing that it was reaping his spirit.

'It's too much to contain all at once!' Samael's spirit shouted in Gilgamesh's mind, meanwhile Ishtar, Marshall and Sylvia's shouts reached his ear.

"GILGAMESH, NO!!!"

Crimson saw what had happened and his cocky smile was immediately deconstructed. The hellfire in his eyes exploded, and the grove was instantly incinerated while Ishtar and the others were blown away.

Down in the clearing, the four Wyrm Lords instantly recognized who it was.

"You dare assimilate my spirit! Return it to me, boy!"

Gilgamesh was grabbed and hoisted into the air by the neck, his body already covered in a few burns. Luckily, that explosion had not been directed at any target in particular, and since Gilgamesh was so close to Crimson, he had been spared of the majority of the force.

His eyes first searched for any sign of the others, and once he saw them he felt the relief in his heart. They were knocked a considerable distance away, but were okay. 'Now,' he thought, 'I can have my fun.'

"You will return it!"

Keeping a tight grip on Samael, Gilgamesh looked down at Crimson and smirked.

"Finally, a real fight..."

Before he finished speaking, Samael was already cutting another arc through the air.