TBATE | The Brightest Light and The Darkest Night [Discontinued]

The Other Side

||Morlack Heirghund||

"Lieutenant, I'm afraid that this winter would kill me first before the Dicathians even lay a finger on me." Captain Reid shivered in between his words.

"If we are suffering surely the enemy is suffering as well," I replied to him as I sit by the campfire that emitted the much-needed warmth.

I pulled my journal from my dimension ring, this little guy has seen better days I can tell you that. Its leather cover is painted by the ashes of war, the pages were darker in shade probably due to how many times it almost caught on fire. It was once proud and sturdy but is now weak and flimsy, bending clumsily and limping as I turn its lifeless pages.

I pulled out a pen and quill as I found the empty page I was looking for.

"You have the energy to write?" Reid was thrown aback.

"If I die and when someone loots my corpse, they would at least have a story to read," I grumbled to the captain.

'Sixth day of the week of Mal'kaz, the month of Granh
The cold was harsh but bearable.

My mind went blank, and my hand was frozen not by the cold, but by my head spacing out. It waits to lie on the paper, waiting on what to write next.

"Maybe you're right, captain. I could use some energy." I stood up from the log I sat on and tucked my writing equipment into my storage ring.

"L-lieutenant..." Reid was startled his tone completely shifted, it sent a chill down my spine and adrenaline began to build up as my body anticipated me turning towards the captain.

Strangely enough, a roll of haybale landed on our campfire dampening the flames, my body exaggerated on that one.

"It's not often you throw a haybale at your enemy." Reid was as confused as I am.

Suddenly more haybales started to rain down from the sky, one by one they softly landed on the snow.

"Do you think they're trying to warm us up?" Reid asked.

"I don't know, but we shouldn't touch them. Maybe they could be filled by poison or something." I tried to uncover their intentions.

It was barely audible but it made a 'tick'. I didn't know what it meant at first, but my gut was telling me to run.

"Captain I suggest that we-"

Without finishing my sentence a bright light enveloped both of my eyes and I was propelled backward with my ears ringing wildly.

The wind within me was knocked out and I feel like passing out but there was a searing pain that kept me awake.

I looked down from where my body lied and I saw my legs completely blown off and my arms filled with hot metal shards.

Those...bastards...

"Captain Reid?" I tried to call out but my voice would not escape my throat.

My vision blackened and I slowly lost my senses, I considered myself dead at that point, it was no use trying to regain consciousness.

I could feel the dark crawl on my skin and slowly consume me, it was time to rest, time to give up.

But just as I was about to die my body was engulfed in black flames.

I felt my body regrow what was lost of it, and the vision of my eyes began to return.

I turned to my left and saw a slender-pale man with glasses, he had small horns that jutted on his forehead.

He glared at me, his eyes piercing my soul and extracting whatever essense of life there was left of me.

"Get up, looks like they're attacking." His voice was as cold as his demeanor.

Black spikes began rapidly rising from the ground and it poked the haybales that fell from the sky making them explode midair.

Scythe Nico!?

I recomposed myself and brandished my weapons.

There was fire everywhere, but the camp was not blown to smitherines due to Scythe Nico's intervention.

"Smart." He said as he stared at the sky.
||Arthur Leywin||

"You wish to speak to me, Lance Leywin?" Gideon turned his head towards me as he stopped tinkering on an object in his desk.

"I didn't know you use honorifics." I retorted as a means to greet him back.

"Tell me what you want." He grumbled.

"I want a lot of things," I threw my arms up and shrugged before sitting on a wooden desk that was on the left side of the room, "First, how is the project?"

"I'm making some progress, but too little in today's standards." He replied.

"Pioneering a ground breaking feat will always be messy, the road is hard to thread when you cannot see it properly."

"Ah, poetic as always," He replied tersely as he kept tinkering with his project "Now tell me why you're here."

"What was it like before I was here?" With that question he immediately stopped what he was doing.

It was uncomfortable seeing him silent and still as a statue.

I only ever checked on Ellie and mom due to the limited amount of time the stalking orb was activated. While I felt the desperation they had felt I never got to fully see the picture.

"It's ok if you don't answer me." I said to the man.

"It was an endless torment of sleepless nights, we were getting better but it wasn't enough to make it feel like the life we once knew. It was tiring, but now it feels like I could rest for an hour or more." He said leaning on his chair and sighing.

I got out of sitting and approached his desk.

"I want you to have this." I handed him a small orb that I filled to the brim with pure mana and boosted it with Arcane magic that I took out from my dimensional rune.

"It will certainly help, thank you very much." He said grabbing the orb and placing it on a platform.

The thing hummed and I could feel thr mana in the ball slowly being sucked out an powering the artifact Gideon was tinkering with.

It was cylindrical in shape and had gears of all sorts with a small emptied mana core at the center, there were many small components and the whole thing looked like it was completely made of feather steel, having a heavy mana core can be pretty annoying afterall.

It also had small holes that were highlighted in two different colors, those must be the mana channels and veins it simulates.

The whole thing began powering up as it was jumpstarted with mana, with a bit more tinkering it began to levitate and suck mana from the orb by itself.

"No way." I said in awe.

Gideon ecstatically wore a leather glove with artifacts attatched to it, the glove was wired to the artificial mana core and he also wore a metal cap that was also directly wired.

"Now comes the real fun part." He said closing his eyes.

Suddenly the artificial mana core stopped absorbing mana from the orb and began obsorbing mana from the atmosphere.

Then, it stopped completely. The mana core lost its magic and dropped to the floor causing it to form cracks.

"Attempt number two hundred, result: progress." He recited.