Advocation - Fortress of Ash

Act 3

"But Reale has fallen, who could still be alive to send people to assassinate me?" Jezzerelle thought to herself, who could've survived the battle in Reale besides her?

There couldn't be anyone from Reale who survived. Nobody could, Jezzerelle was lucky, she was only alive because her mother willed her to. The only logical explanation is someone from the outside was hunting her down, no person no matter how strong would just go after Jezzerelle alone. Halice and Harlene were the strongest beings known to exist, and Jezzerelle coming in third didn't mean she wasn't dangerous on her own. In fact, she was more dangerous because of it.

So who would think of going after her despite knowing all of that? It was stupid, unreasonable, and unbeneficial. They would gain nothing from Jezzerelle's assassination.

'No time to ponder, I need to keep moving before I get found out.'

Jezzerelle then proceeded onwards, to where, she still didn't know. She had food to last for a little while. It was a horrible thing to do, to plunge so low as to resort to cannibalism, but Jezzerelle did not care. Whatever it takes to survive. That's all she lived by.

That night Jezzerelle dreamt of a man, he wasn't tall, but not short either, he was standing in a castle tower. Thriving with knights and merchants who were coming in to trade. Jezzerelle couldn't help but notice him, as if something was off about him, something about him gave off a sinister aura and Jezzerelle couldn't take her eyes off him. He was an Asian man, standing amongst the crowd, doing business apparently. He held up three stone tablets, each with something scraped onto it, one had two lines, joined at the center of the tablet, one longer than the other. The longer pointed directly north, the other pointing southwest. The next one had what seemed to be shapes. Three in total, one square, a circle, and a formless shape. It did not look like any shape she had seen before in her life. A mistake, probably. The final tablet had an eye. What these tablets and their markings represented she did not know. Perhaps a decorative piece for a home? The man was shouting to the merchants and knights and everyone there, seemingly looking for business.

'Come one come all! I bring you gifts from the Gods! These gifts will grant you anything you wish that you so desire!'

Gifts from the Gods? What on earth would those pieces of stone possibly do to fulfill any man's requests?

Someone from the crowd spoke back

'Gifts from the Gods? Why don't you prove it then if what you say is true?'

The man grinned. Jezzerelle sensed something bad was about to happen, that grin was all too familiar an expression.

'Prove it eh? Very well.'

The man immediately turned to the tablets, now placed in a row behind him. He stretched both arms out and shouted:

'Dieu est avec moi, Dieu est en moi, je suis Dieu!'

Jezzerelle understood, he was using French spirits to power his abilities.

'En tant qu'être suprême, j'évoque la réalité déformée!'

Immediately there was a reaction in the crowd. The people were unaffected at first, but something was taking place that she could not see, earlier he said something about Reality of distortion or something like that. What could it be?

The people soon began to change, they laughed at first at him doing seemingly nothing, but now they were screaming and scratching the skin off their faces, gauging their own eyes out, begging for death.

The man was the only one unaffected by this.

'I am Oliver.'

The man then turned to face Jezzerelle, and he only said these words:

'We will meet soon, my dear.'

He licked his lips.

Jezzerelle immediately shot up, frightened and sweaty. It had only been a nightmare, surely. What with all the chaos going on.

'Scary, isn't it?' said a voice from behind her

Jezzerelle shot up, grabbed her Acier and turned to face whoever it was, when she saw her, it was obvious she was outmatched in weaponry.

The girl was tall, well-grown. She had short hair and wore glasses. She was dressed in what could only be modern day work clothes. A skirt with a collared white shirt. Somehow in this world of destruction and chaos she had no scars on her skin and not a speck of dirt on her attire.

She wielded a Scythe, a cliché weapon to use in these situations thought Jezzerelle, but she knew better than to judge her opponents' abilities right off the bat.

'What do you want from me? Who are you?'

'Relax, I'm not here to kill you. I came for your help.'

She reached her hand out

Jezzerelle responded in kind and took it, and they sat down. Jezzerelle did not light fires when she slept, despite being cold, she had no need to worry of anything that could happen to her. She was no longer mortal when she decided to become an Advocate. Seeing that she now had an ally, she did not know if she too had power like hers, so she got a fire going and began to talk.

'First off, I know who you are Jezzerelle.'

'That makes things easier then. Who are you?'

'We save that for later. Let's talk about your dream earlier.'

'That was nothing more than a nightmare, nothing to worry about.'

'Oh, Oblivis is very much real, Jezzerelle. There is nothing you can do to change that.'

'Oblivis? Who the hell is that?'

'The man you saw in your dreams, he possesses the three tablets of distortion,'

'Sounds very much like a hoax to me, even the names he's taken are suspiciously childish,'

'You've been out here for a few weeks, I've been out here for all my life. I know.'

'...fine, tell me about these tablets.'

'The tablets each control a certain aspect of life, the one you just saw, The Distorted Reality, in layman terms it just messes with the head.'

'Define it for me'

'Those people in the dream, when he activated the Distorted Reality, all those people saw were the things in front of them, but their minds began to question its existence, it begins like that, it seems stupid but it's very very dangerous. They soon begin seeing things in a way that makes no sense, they begin questioning, and soon they begin to go insane. They can no longer make sense of anything they see or hear and they only want the sweet release of death.'

'I don't quite follow the concept but I understand the threat it poses.'

'It's hard to explain as someone who's never actually gone against it and lived.'

'What about the other two?'

'Apparently the Time of Distress tablet is similar to your own, you can speed up or add on to the time in a specific person's life with a sacrifice of your own time. The tablet however has an effect on time itself. It can either delete time in which certain events have taken place, and can repeat anything that will happen in the time to come. What makes this dangerous is that Oblivis has no control over it and it's completely random.'

'Sounds bad. What about the last one?'

'The last tablet is the tablet of Crumbling Matter. Simply put, it breaks shit.'

'Crude but easy way to explain it.'

'We need rest, I'll explain in the morning. Meet me north of here past this city ruin, and we can begin our journey.'

She stood up and walked off into the night. Just as Jezzerelle was going to put out the fire, she turned around and said,

'And by the way, you can call me M'