The Creatures Series

Second Mist

Second MistCreatures of the Mist

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##### Second Mist #####

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I wanna hold you.

I wanna love you.

I wanna hurt you.

But for now, I am an enemy of my own self.

I step closer, answering the call of darkness. What’s so enchanting about a forest, with dead trees and almost dry grounds? The loneliness you can find for eternity from it? Or simply a place where you can commit murder and no one will ever notice the dead bodies? No, it’s more than just personal needs, because someone actually needs you to be there.

At first it’s silent, with nothing slicing the air except for the dreadfulness that the dead trees had left before their ending. But then once a desperate scream hits through my body, begging my attention and miserably wants my presence. The source is also clear. It’s there, inside the dark woods. Cornered by danger and a horrid feature.

My body jumps through all the warning that’s hanging on air, with the thoughts in mind that concerning nothing but the fastest way to get there. He needs my help. I know that not just because I’m his magistress, but also because of the familiar care I strongly felt when I first met him.

He was just a boy, dirty and hungry. He had nothing to bring along when I spotted him, walking by hauling his feet in the city that had long been abandoned. Alone and injured, his eyes looked into mine as if he was a walking death.

I brought the little boy with me once my mission had finished. He had nowhere else to go, and I have room plenty enough for him. Was it the fact that he was dying, or was it because I just knew within that he had something special with him? I was still not sure. But he did need a special training in order to gain control.

What surprised me later, though, was the fact that he was indeed born from a clan that was confirmed to have been long gone. The Greymist. The name itself was believed to had been a legend all along. But I knew better, and Lulu knew more. He must had been keeping this as a secret for a long time, since he was indeed a watcher that never missed. Nonetheless his reasons were, so he let me took the boy in and named him Trace, because he was the last of what had left in this world.

“Trace!”

I want to call out for him, but suppressed it into my heart. I don’t want the enemies to know that I’m near. So I use my sight-seeing ability to zoom my eyes.

Everything is beating once I’ve started. The curving to find the right target is insufferable. It’s more active when using this ability while running, though. I also hit a tree, but my senses warned me before I do and my feet kick the ground so I move to the opposite way with a zig-zag right in time.

My sight travels to someplace with a hill, up to somewhere that used to be a pretty big building. And inside the ruins of grey timbers, Trace stood there. Injured at one of his shoulders, while two men just crawled down on the ground and turned to giant tigers under the crescent moon. I simulate the best steps before I reveal myself and attack the tiger shapeshifters.

Black fire burns on both of my clenched fists without the tips of my sleeves being consumed by it. I let the cold fire out as the first warning, while checking at Trace from the corner of my eyes, before turning back to them and see their reaction.

“Move out of the way, lady, if you don’t want to get hurt,” one of them says with a heavy voice booming.

“You’re kidding, right?” I ask, but no joking laughter comes out from my lips.

I let my fire heat up, burning it into a size as big as a basketball and up to where the ceilings of the ruins were supposed to be. The problem is, those tigers don’t even flinch. Looks like they really don’t know anything about me. Because if they do, then they would have gone long when I first showed up, not standing around here in four paws and being stupid.

Since that was my final warning, I start the attack when their eyes start to give away their square off to strike. With fog painted by dark shadows, I draw a bird of hell in the sky and let the fire be the tint. My drawing comes to life in a few seconds, flying and crashing towards the black-striped tigers. They let out heavy screams of pain, and ran off. I don’t even pay attention much when their shade have blended in with the dull forest and approach Trace’s side immediately.

“How did that happen?” I ask, gesturing at his left shoulder, where blood pours out and soaking half of his white shirt with red.

“I ran out of paper,” is his answer. Not even an ounce of regret crosses his tone.

“Again? Didn’t I tell you to check? Does that mean you lied to me?”

“No, of course not,” he assures me. “My stock was just not enough. I ran out of it when those trespassers attacked me and stole my shoulder bag.”

I look around. “It seems like there’s no hope on getting your bag back,” I say when I can’t find it.

“I guess I just have to buy a new one.”

My eyes dart to him for a few seconds before I turn my face back to him and squat on the ground. “Get on,” I order him. I let him climb up when I noticed that his jeans are also torn and bloody. Now, to get to Madam Fluidora and ask for her help.

“So you’ve finished your business,” Trace states when I start walking.

I’ve handled the mission, yes. But it was a bit complicated that I first thought it would be.

Lane didn’t know his past before he was reincarnated as well. Who he was, until the point when his reincarnated human self was turned. That was how the method of Contigue worked. The three-hundred-year old vampire got arrested and being held captive in an academy of humans. The principal, who’s also the owner of the whole area, didn’t know Lane’s true identity and just treats him like a human. Well, wasn’t so refined either. The old man had a very harsh and strict personality, although he didn’t mean any harm. But Lane was forced to stay there, around hundreds of students, teachers and staff, until he repented from destroying the garden that belonged to the principal while he was out hunting.

As a vampire, it was very predictable that he wouldn ’ t listen to him. He refused to share a room with a bunch of humans and looked for a new roommate instead. What surprised me was the fact that he didn ’ t attempt to leave. Of course this had led to somewhere else. Lane finally found a roommate he considered fit the criteria to his liking, and stayed with a green-haired professor. And he even liked her, to the point where they got intimate and they ─ (I stopped him before he could brag about the details, though. I ’ m sure Lulu will figure out the blank in my report). But then he found out just how psychotic she really was. Lane then locked her up inside her own secret dungeon/ lab underground that was equipped by implements such as ─ , ─ , and even things like ─ (I ’ m sure Lulu already know about these parts).

The dark place, as Lane told me, was dark and right just below the room they were staying. It was also sound proof, for specific reasons I didn’t even want to know and didn’t even think hearing it was worth of my precious seconds.

Lane then really stayed at the dorm for academic reason. He started studying there and even tried to hang out with humans. He even got along with a boy. The human then one day took him to the old section of the academy just for fun, but then awakened something inside. But that was later, after Lane felt something very déjà vu about the woods’ structure and mosses. Flashes of someone else’s memories that flow through him.

While having his brain invaded, the hungry Syrchase then took that moment to attack them. The human boy almost got killed because of it, but Lane saved him and got both of them out of the section. Too bad, the gate that was used to seal in Syrchase wasn’t able to keep him inside. The white snake kept hitting the gate until it broke and he escaped to the water canals. Not only that, but he also brought an entire species of poisonous, little snakes of its descendants freed into the human population.

Everyone at the academy panicked and ran for their lives. Who knew how fatal the bites of those snakes could be? But I managed to collaborate with Lane, after agreeing to not attack each other anymore through a blood-sealed treaty that I made with my magic powers.

The key to keep everyone safe was to seal Syrchase away, and its descendants would automatically become powerless to hurt anything. With the use of Lane’s strength and my magic to seal him off, we managed to lure Syrchase back to where he was before and locked it away in time. Its descendants then turned to normal snakes and were released into the wild.

“Yes, indeed,” I reply Trace while passing a secret message through the air to His Majesty Lelouch.

His injury is being handled by Madam Fluidora’s senior apprentice once we arrived at her cure house. She is not there when we knock her door, apparently. There’s a gathering she needs to attend, since it is the meeting for worldwide wizards’ recovered that proposes occupations just like hers. Nevertheless, Trace is in good care. I’ve heard Fluidora say a few words about her apprentice’s achievements. And he is not disappointing her at all.

We can just come back home after he has been cured, but Fluidora’s apprentices say that we can stay for the night. So they prepare us the rooms. Before I turn off, though, Lulu’s message manages to get back at me.

‘I think it’s time for the birthday woman to receive her present. Come meet me soon.’

The night just can’t end so easily like that.