Chapter Nine - Part One

Squad Archie Extermination Mission #0465

Irene Albion

I was not going to lie, I was completely stoked for today. For starters, it's been a week since I passed the Rite Ritual, which turned out to just be a battle with the Reaper in an effort to claim an Aether Relic of your own. Since I wasn't dead the Reaper specifically enchanted a random pen for my use. It was creepy how he knew exactly what meant most to me: the ability to write.

Oh and also, I was the newest member of Squad Archie.

Life is boring until you meet those strangers.

I hated when my grandpa's words rang through my head, and I hated it more when he was right. Ever since I'd arrived, my life had been full of events, one after the other without a break. Like an incessant insect, the world of Grim and its dangers could not leave me alone. Not that I was upset about it, no, I was exhilarated. Especially right now, back in the now empty vast ghoul territory surrounded by black trees and stained terrain where I'd first found myself enveloped in rivers of blood and gore.

It was my first official extermination mission as a member of Squad Archie.

Archie kept an eye on me, worried I'd stumble and make one wrong move to alert surrounding enemies. But there was just one problem.

There weren't any.

"Strange, we'd been alerted that there was a recent activity of massive proportions." Spoke Medina, scouring the plane of deserted death.

We'd received from a reliable source that there was unruly activity present on the edges of Atlantis, the unsleeping city of Grim, between the Aether Ravene and Atlantis itself in the midst of the Unknown Territory. That's where we stood right now.

"Let's keep looking. Leave no stone unturned."

Obeying the command, Archie's group separated not too far from each other listening close to their commander. I tried too but Archie opted to follow wherever I wandered. Could she be any more transparent?

I started, "You don't trust me."

"No."

"Why?"

"You kicked the Grim Reaper in the balls, it's not that hard to think you'd stir up more trouble."

I stopped to survey the environment. Bleak branches were left decaying over the red path and dead grass, leaving the ground in a reddish colour, almost as if blood had permanently stained what vegetation was left. Coating it in a disgusting shade of red.

She sighed before saying, "You're like a lost puppy."

"I am not a puppy!"

"Bark louder so the world can hear you, why don'tcha?"

I whispered, even more frustrated than before, "I'm. Not. A. Puppy."

Archie closed the space between us, forcing my head to look up as our breaths intermingled, both of us gasping as we stared at one another.

"And. You. Aren't. Dying. On. Me." She spat.

So that's what kept her mind frazzled to the point of no return. She was afraid for me.

I calmly placed my hand on her shoulder, smiling from ear to ear as I effortlessly manoeuvred the pen between my fingers like a pro, reminding her I was not completely defenceless or weak. (Don't tell anyone but I spent more than an hour practising that move).

She let out an exhausted breath, probably tired from the previous night judging by her purplish dark circles underneath her half-lidded eyes. I don't know what happened, but other than her being an insomniac something else kept her up and out of the apartment. When I asked Helen about it she said to ignore it and leave Archie be. I wondered what plagued her mind, what made sleep so fearful and me so worried.

"Fine. But stay within three metres of me at all times."

"How does that change my predicament?"

"And I won't compare you to a dog."

"Deal."

We shook hands at that, her hand was rough as if she'd never stopped working since the day she was born. I was curious about what made her hands so coarse yet so warm.

Then it all happened too quickly.

We were attacked by a sudden assembly of ghouls, except they weren't like the last ones I'd seen, aimlessly wandering slow and sluggish.

This time they were all after me., running fast towards our group.

Archie was quick to react as if anticipating something like this would happen. Without thinking she sliced through the hoard of ghouls with her Relic of lilac silk, ripping through and exposing their misshaped organs and bloody guts. There were one, no three, wait no ten. Maybe even twenty of the strange ghouls that barely walked my way, stumbling over each other's corpses, the monsters sluggishly moved as their numbers increased.

"Move back, back!"

I heard Helen bark out orders to me as she joined Archie mid-battle. They moved swiftly, eradicating the monsters that spawned, working around one another without exchanging a single word. Where one attacked the other defended, and both Relics worked cohesively to efficiently wipe out this haunting of ghouls. I turned around and found Yudai and Medina doing the same.

On the other side of the plane, Yudai's watch erupted in a cloud of black smoke before freezing the ghouls in place. His Aether Relic, his prized watch handed down from his sister, clicked frantically as it worked its magic. Taking advantage of the situation, Medina lunged with his blades and ruptured through the helpless ghouls that gurgled ungodly sounds. Their partner work was foolproof, perfected through experience and unrelenting practice.

I stood useless and sandwiched between my teammates who fought valiantly.

"Your punches are weak, your form is incorrect and your balance is off."

"Well, I've never trained a day in my life, Medina."

He helped me up from my sprawled position on the ground, hopelessly defeated in a training battle between the two of us. That's what we've been doing for hours, every day for a week up until my first expedition. We were meant to have more time to correct my mistakes and hone my skills. Unfortunately, time didn't wait for us.

"Have you thought of how you'd fight with your Relic yet?"

I shook my head. Still gasping for breath as I stood on my pained feet. "I haven't been able to summon any power as I did with the Reaper. It's all just…empty."

Medina crossed his arms, thinking deeply. We started physical training to improve my overall chance of survival. Although my stamina was good, I was lacking in everything else. The original plan was to train my control over my Relic, but what use was training my control over something I didn't have?

"Do you remember what it was like when you first used it?"

"I was more preoccupied with the thought of not dying so, no."

He huffed, leaning against the wall in the outdoor ring. He looked more confident than he usually did, I suppose this was his area of expertise, yet this different behaviour felt so strange. Foreign, but good.

We were just outside the walls of Atlantis next to the Forest of Black. It was midday, so we were both sweating a great deal underneath the sun that purposefully decided to take its time moving through the sky in its unbearable heat.

His bronze skin shone, sparkling in his black tank top and pants. His muscles were bulky as always, accentuated by his tight clothes. His already scarred face was scrunched as he pondered what to do. One scar began just above his right eye and continued above his cheekbone onto his neck and under his shirt. I wondered how he had gotten it.

"How do you do it?"

Now brought back to reality, he asked, "What?"

"How do you do it," I repeated, "Live without knowing how you died."

He inhaled a sharp breath, mostly not expecting me to ask such a random question. But he humoured me, twiddling his fingers as he shyly answered, "I was an assassin. I deserve this."

"No, you don't."

"Yes I do," he asserted, slight pain in his voice. His eyes were glossy, like marbles that reflected the surroundings. "I killed people, for money no less. I couldn't do anything better than murder. I killed a newborn once, then his sister and mother, and his cousins."

"So? That's in the past, you're a new person."

"It doesn't change the facts," he shook his head. "I killed them!"

He shouted that last part, angry at life, angry at them.

Angry at himself.

He continued, finally letting his pent-up emotions out. "We were made to live, to protect the ones we loved. My mother would be ashamed to see her son this way. Not only was I a killer but I was a liar. I lied to those who I cared for and lied to myself most of all. I let myself believe it was okay, that the people I killed were bad and that I was good. Imagine that Irene, an assassin who thought killing was good. I'm pathetic, a liar and a disgrace. I was supposed to save them."

It shocked me to see his vulnerable side but I let him have his way. Let him vent, let him talk. He needed this. And I knew that pain. That loneliness that comes with keeping it all inside, building up until your dam walls overflowed. The guilt that followed, and the ache that was left.

I knew it all.

I walked over to him, where he bent forward folding himself as if trying to hide from the world. I couldn't imagine what he must have been through all these years, hating himself for something he couldn't control.

I didn't know what to say, so I did whatever I did best, and hugged him.

I could feel his heartbeat as I tucked his head between my arms in the crook of my neck. I could feel my shirt get wet, either from his sweat or tears. I didn't care. He needed me. I ran a hand over his back, rubbing soothing circles as he continued.

"I couldn't even save the girl I loved most."

Love. He loved someone.

"All I've wanted was to save someone. Anyone," He whimpered, his voice cracking as he spoke, "Just once."

I don't know what welled up inside me but that same feeling of a sad sickness erupted through me as if trying to suffocate me. Instead, I extended a mental hand and clutched it as hard as I could.

Before I knew it, we were surrounded by a night sky and stars in a galaxy of black and purple. Medina's eyes were still closed, now sobbing as his past caught up with him. A single word in the sky:

P R O T E C T

You'd have thought the Grim would have saved him from this pain, instead, it hurt him when he needed healing the most.

"You're not a bad person. You never were."

He broke down, hysterically crying as if his soul bled an ocean through his eyes. He cried and in this moment of weakness, I held him. To cry so much, to be processing so much pain, was a time for unconditional love.

It was those same eruptions of emotions that allowed me to, right at this moment, summon up power to defend my comrades. Amidst the battle and overwhelming numbers of ghouls, my friends struggled. In that pool of infinite hatred, I pulled and pulled until the internal river fit the mould I needed. On the inside, I expelled everything in me.

Back in reality, there spawned a large physical wall that circled around the plane and kept the monsters at bay.

A barricade.

Yudai yelped in surprise before cheering, "Awesome!"

I smiled, proud of what just happened. Yudai ran my way, arm outstretched to high—five me. I obliged, revelling in my success as I stared at the floating word.

P R O T E C T

It was then that I'd made the connection that my emotions were related to this power, to my Aether Relic. I wondered if it was the same for the others.

"Nicely done," beamed Medina, his chapped lips stretching into a warm smile. In the dark, his brown skin looked even darker yet more reflective, shining the way the night sky did.

But he spoke too soon.