What You Know, You Don't

"What? Is it that surprising to you, Asterio? You were still alive when you shouldn't have been, so why is it so surprising to hear somebody else can do that?" Ultima asked him. She remained on guard, pestering Sky with questions while charging up an ability that would save her from danger.

One of Ultima's abilities was the Eternia Palm, an engraving underneath her right palm where a black glove was able to hide it. The Eternia Palm was an engraving meant for those who had trained enough, as Ultima did, to unlock and use at the leisure of teleportation. The only way it functioned was with Strand-Entities, a concept familiar to Sky.

Sky wasn't sure of how this process worked, and since it was primed for Ultima to use whenever she had the time and flexibility to pester Sky with questions for a little bit.

"It's not, surprising in the slightest, what's surprising to me is how you believe you won't be brutally murdered by my hands. Do you have any kids? I'd like to make them watch if at all possible," Sky told Ultima. He looked straight through Ultima, barely even regarding her as an Arkian.

"Just one, Mizu Eternia. Orion got his dirty hands on her when she was just a baby, so I'm doing my best to make sure she turns out to be nothing like him. Maybe I'll hang you up in the front room for decoration, as a warning to what happens when you listen to an Asterio," Ultima teased around again, letting the staff down to her side. Sky noticed her leniency.

"Mizu, what a nice name. What's that under your glove?" Sky pointed, shocking Ultima down to her core as he even pointed to the correct hand she had the engraving on, and spotting what it was capable of.

"Maybe you aren't stupid after all," Ultima said. She put away her staff fully and took off her glove to reveal a palm with two circles in the middle.

Within the two circles were engravings of all kinds. Runic-looking letters, strands intertwined, and the middle symbol, which stood to be a White Stone in the center of her hand.

"An engraving meant to protect me from you, actually. It can materialize any ability in front of me, counter it, and make it perceivable to where I can leave it if things get too risky. Blah blah blah, it's an escape route in case you try to use that speed on me," Ultima confessed to Sky. She revealed her main strategy, which meant that Sky was stuck in his position, waiting for Ultima to say something again.

It took every fiber in his being to keep her there and figure out more about the girl who suddenly killed his friend. Sky didn't want to, but knowing that she was there and not anywhere else brought him a sense of closure that even one second where she was distracted would be more than enough for Sky to decapitate her ruthlessly.

"I'm curious, do you actually care about the people around you? Or is this just a play to you? A play to act like people matter only for you to have an excuse to kill? Moral justification, that's it! You aren't even heartbroken about your friend's death, you just want an excuse to kill me. If you do, that's fine, but I want to hear it from your mouth, you ugly creature," Ultima shouted out to Sky, crossing her arms and standing her ground.

"What kind of sense does it make for you to ask me if I care when you're the one who inflicted that? You're really, really lucky you can vanish out of nowhere, because there's nowhere on Earth you could escape from me if you started running, even with an hour's head start. I would lift up every border, every continental plating, everything, just to kill you. I don't say that lightly, Ultima. Every threat I've served like that has been dished out very, very quickly. So, when I say this, I want you to live in fear knowing that his Ugly Creature has a saber that's begging to be bloodied," Sky told her, pushing his hair up his forehead and slicking it back. The sweaty and messy hair slowly fell back down to Sky's forehead as he began to smile.

"Live in fear, knowing that Sky Asterio will soon have your entire bloodline on the end of this saber," He said.

"You already have my sister, what's another two?" Ultima said. She clasped her hand shut while putting between the space in her fingers, making a motion like cutting with scissors before warping out of the area completely with no trace of her location.

Khalil and Acchi both came over the cliff first, with Raiden and Netsu following right behind. The four looked at each other, then back at Sky to see what was going on.

Dani and Carl both emerged over the same cliff beside Khalil, holding Faith and Illya in their arms respectively. Sky had already forgotten about Ultima, running over beside Dani who was holding Faith in the same way Carl was holding Illya.

"What's wrong with her? Is she okay?" Sky asked. He lifted Faith's face up, watching her head slowly nudge back into Dani's shoulder as Sky let it go.

"She complained about pain and collapsed. She's okay from what I've been able to heal, but it was weird," Dani stated. Sky quickly remembered right after her explanation that Faith told him that she would take the same damage that he gave to Cole. It shouldn't have been possible that Faith could even be alive, but he was glad to see her still steadily breathing.

It wasn't until he knew that she was breathing without problems that Sky looked down at his hands, realizing the inconsistency of the recent encounters he's had, the overwhelming nature of the size of the world, and the violence in his blood taking over what he tried to become. He had fallen into the same pit he desperately tried to crawl out of since The Pinnacle.