The Witch's Game: Nate

That night, Nate changed into his original form of a young man around his early twenties before Kyrie's eyes. The young man put on his mask and quietly sneaked to the palace into the king's office. He pulled out a box in one of the drawers and took out a pendant. The black stone pendant was recognized by Kyrie immediately after it caught his eyes. It is the same pendant that was drawn around the neck of the saint of Darkness when he visited the temple in the Kingdom of Ethern.

Questions started to pour in Kyrie's mind. What is the connection between the pendant and the king? Does it have anything to do with Ian's magic attribute? Since there might be a connection between the pendant with Ian, Kyrie decided to get involved and ran towards Nate when his guard was low. Nate flinches from the sudden rapid figure moving towards him and shields himself with his arms. Kyrie takes Nate's arm with one hand and pushes his head backwards with the other, collapsing Nate into the floor. Then, Kyrie placed his knee on top of Nate's throat. Chocking from the pressure that Kyrie put on Nate's throat, Nate tries to push Kyrie's knee off him but fails. Then, Nate lifts his arms up to show that he surrendered when the pressure continued to increase on his throat. Kyrie makes robes using light magic to restrain Nate. He takes the black pendant off of Nate's hand. Examining the stone, Kyrie is now sure that the pendant is a mana stone with attributes to darkness.

"Who is there?" The king suddenly screamed at the two shadowy figures. Kyrie takes off his attention for Nate, which gives Nate the opportunity to use one of his treasured collections. Nate throws a ball into the window, and it explodes. The explosion blast opened the walls from the king's office, and Nate escapes. Kyrie runs after Nate but soon loses him in the palace garden. He looked around but did not find a trace of where Nate could have headed towards. The palace started to light up, and the rushing footsteps of the soldiers uniformly echoed in the hallways. Kyrie clicked his tongue in annoyance and returned to the temple.

---

"Let's be civil and speak our problems out, lady Winstanley. Violence is not always the answer. I am not going anywhere, I promise," Nate said and used his finger to lower down the sword that was against his neck.

Imogen frowns at Nate, and the sword pressed against Nate's neck starts to cut into his flesh. Nate lets out a small cry when he felt his neck getting cut.

[The only one you can blame is yourself, Collector... You tricked Imogen too many times in the previous rounds for her to just let you go like that. Praying for your life seems like a better alternative.]

"Speak! How did you get here?" asked Imogen, who is running out of patience.

"Blood!!! I will speak... I will speak!!! Just lower the sword... You can restrain me... anything... Please, no violence! Let's be civil! Civility is the key to humanity," says Nate with tears gathering his eyes. His eyes were going out of focus as if his soul was lifting away from his body.

Imogen lowers down her sword while Kyrie restrains Nate, but this time tighter. Nate looks offended at Kyrie when Kyrie tightened the robes even further around him enough to restrict blood flow. Kyrie smirked at Nate as he acted innocent and oblivious to what he has done.

"Sr. Rowan..." Nate whispered as he felt betrayed by Kyrie.

Nate looked pitifully at Ian, but Ian only smiled apologetically.

"I just placed a tracker on the necklace and got here when I followed it," Nate finally confesses.

Interrogating Nate was relatively easy; all you had to do is to threaten him, and he will tell you anything. However, whether to trust his words or not, Kyrie decided that he will leave that for the future. Nate's form as a little boy was actually a curse rather than his trickery. He would transform into a little boy at random intervals of time, most of the time, because he overused mana. He appeared in the town next to the forest of Labam because he was trying to escape from the demons inside that forest. He overused mana and transformed into a little boy that the townspeople thought he was an orphan.

He was in the forest of Labam because of the rumours he heard when he was visiting the fairy kingdom. Despite the small bodies that the fairies possessed, they had a big mouth, although that only applies to the younger ones. The rumour that the demons will use a relic against a human kingdom because of a mana stone spread in the fairy kingdom. Since the demons remained quiet for so long, Nate was curious about the sudden change. Plus, a relic is much more precious than a mana stone, so that piqued his curiosity even further. The stone might be an excellent addition to his collection. So, he decided to investigate by infiltrating himself to the demon troops. However, he was unlucky and got discovered by the fallen paladin. He had to run away by using one of his artifacts that consumed a lot of mana.

Nonetheless, Nate was able to get the information that he wanted. The demons were looking for the mana stone with the magic attribute of darkness. They made it sound that the necklace was vital.

"What do you think?" asked Kyrie to Imogen at the inn's balcony.

After Nate has confessed almost everything, they have decided to go back to the inn to wait for the others. However, no one came back. Laurel sobbed for a long time till she fell asleep from fatigue. Ian and Nate also withdrew to their rooms to catch some sleep.

"About what?" asked Imogen.

"The reason why they were looking for the necklace," says Kyrie.

"Maybe they have someone with those magic attributes," replied Imogen.

"Darkness... They also have someone with that magic attribute," murmured Kyrie.

"Are you going to use it for Ian?" asked Imogen.

"Yes, that is what I intend to do," says Kyrie while he was sliding away, indicating that he is not going to share.

[After all, the last thing I want is to use it in Laurel when I know what the future entails.]

Imogen took a long pause while looking at Kyrie. She knew that Kyrie was aware that Laurel also has the same magic attributes as Ian. Imogen picked up her glass and swirled the ice submerged with alcohol. Now that Imogen has time to think calmly about Laurel, her mind gets flooded with the past memories that she recalled when she was dipped inside the springs of tranquillity. Her memories are not that complete anymore, but remembering something like that still bothers her. Kyrie looked at Imogen and sighed.

"Are you alright?" asked Kyrie.

"I am not that frail... unlike someone," says Imogen mockingly while cracking a smirk.

Both knew that Kyrie is already stronger than any regular human out there, but compared to the protagonist, Kyrie is still lacking. To prepare himself for the upcoming events of the future, Kyrie has to continue to progress so that his involvement can at least leave a mark. Although this kind of comment would piss Kyrie off, at that moment, Kyrie was thinking of something else.

[Now that Laurel is here... I have to decide whether to kill her or not. I can't let the opponent use her for their goal. If I kill her, at least, it will delay some time if stuff does not work out. However, I can't seem to be so heartless as to kill Laurel after what I saw in the springs of tranquillity about Imogen.]

Kyrie lets out a whine and sighs again. He leans over to the balcony and runs his fingers through his hair.

Imogen, thinking that Kyrie is depressed from her words, says, "You will get there."

Kyrie smiles at the misunderstanding.

[Get there what? Killing your lover?]

He takes a deep breath of the cold night air. He looks at Imogen, who is starting to show more human emotions and decides to leave it as it is. Maybe right now, he does not have the answer, so this might not be the time for him to decide.

Kyrie left for the night and quietly sneaked into Ian's bedroom. He crouched down and looked at Ian's sleeping face. He wondered if Ian is still mad at him. Ian slowly opened his sleepy eyes and looked at Kyrie.

"It is still late, go back to sleep," says Kyrie while caressing Ian's hair.

Ian takes Kyrie's hand and puts it on his cheek and says with a soft sleepy voice, "I am sorry, Kyrie. I should not have been mad at you. I don't know what got to me."

"Hmm..." Kyrie smiled and felt a bit teary after receiving the apology.

[I guess Ian being mad affected me more than I thought it would.]

Ian lifted his duvet and invited Kyrie in. Kyrie lay down, letting Ian snuggle in Kyrie's arms.

In the balcony, Imogen looks at her hands. Although they were clean, in her eyes, they were stained with blood that endlessly dripped from her hands.

"I want to end this. I will end this tragedy this round," whispered Imogen.

The night went peacefully, and the day came. When Kyrie opened his eyes, Ian was already up fixing his clothes. They both exited the room after getting ready and found the rest in the balcony looking outside with frowns between their brows. As soon as they stepped to the balcony and the sun hit them, they looked at the ground, surprised. A golden line appeared under their feet and would move as they move, always remaining under their feet. They looked at a distance away to see where the line leads to, but cannot figure out since their view got blocked by the buildings.

Then, they looked at the clean streets in which was piled with ghoul corpses the night before. Now, the streets were impeccably clean and without a single splash of blood. The town looked as if it was reset or something alike because everyone seemed to have resumed their daily activity as if nothing happened. However, all five of them knew that now, in this town, there might not be a single human apart from them.