Jason and Res were mad with rage and their emotions fed off of one another. “Bro, do you have an idea?”

“I was about to ask the same. I have so many possible ways I could kill him if I had the power.”

With an annoyed expression, the prince punched Res full-on in his face. He felt his nose and cheekbone crack under the pressure, but he was still held tight in his spot. The pain was nothing compared to the helplessness he felt. The person he cared for the most was dying in front of his eyes. Robert, the crown prince of Trianon, went back to his subject. “I don’t want this to be dragged out too long. Your suffering will end now.”

The prince stooped down to give Serafina the final clean cut across her jugular. All the while, the prince watched him and reveled in his pain. Suddenly, a figure jumped at the prince with a dagger glimmering in the air – Adrian. Res had forgotten the Ghostbound who was now grappling with the prince. He wanted to cry out that this all was hopeless, but he had no voice. With a snarl, Adrian was thrown to the side, and the prince was above him with his sword bared in an instant. When Res saw the killing intent in the prince’s eyes, something in him snapped.

“I have always thought about what this would mean for me - What would happen to me if Serafina died or what would happen to me when Adrian died. Fuck this. This is not me.”

Yet, when he searched deep inside him, he didn’t find the strength to fight, not for himself. A deep part of him still thought: “What can I gain from this?”

No matter how he tried to reason or twist his convictions. The primal egoism engrained in mankind remained. Jason cursed the prince, but Res could feel that he only feared to lose Layana. It would hurt him mentally and he needed her to stop from going insane. In a flash of insight, he remembered the entity’s bottomless sea of acceptance. When he recalled the entity, a white feeling shone in his mind.

It was the same feeling that had stopped him from plunging into the dark whirlpool and he embraced it. The feeling swept through him like a wave and empowered his will. In an instant, he felt Serafina’s fear, sorrow, and resignation, and Adrian’s self-doubt, anger, and panic. Somehow, he completely understood their motivations, feelings, and their essence. The prince’s feelings of anger, righteousness, and mirth flooded him. If he was in a similar situation, he would have …

“They don’t deserve to die!”, he interrupted that dangerous train of thought. Even if the prince’s motivation was understandable, the facts remained. He sank into cultivation to at least get some of his aether back when he was punched again. When he opened his eyes back again, he came face to face with the sneering visage of the prince. Not minding him, he closed his eyes once again to cultivate. The prince kicked his head and he tumbled away like a ball. The prince laughed: “You really are … ”

Res closed his eyes once again to cultivate. The prince cried in rage at being so thoroughly ignored and punched him once again. Yet, Res only let his eyes flutter open before he went back to trying to cultivate.

His body was secondary and if he served as a distraction for Adrian to get away, he was fine with that. The prince pummeled his head, but Res kept going back into cultivation. Finally, the prince roared out in frustration: “You want to ignore me? Fine, I have grown bored with you, anyway!”

When he opened his eyes, he saw the prince pulling his sword out of its sheath to finally end Res’s pitiful existence. In contrary to what many had said, his life didn’t flash before his eyes. Instead, he felt fear like he had never felt before. Not the fear of dying, he had felt that countless times before.

The fear of not being there to protect. Being unable to protect Serafina sickened and scared him. It scared him so much that he was sure that if he still had a body, he would have thrown up and shit his pants at the same time. In this tiny instant of clarity, everything around the prince turned black. It was like being in a plane of nothingness with only him and the prince on it.

“Bro, what the fuck? This is trippy AF.”

There was no ground, no grass, no people. Just blackness, the prince, and him. His frantic thoughts came to a stop as his survival instincts wouldn’t allow him to be decapitated. In a vain attempt, he tried to find a way out by feebly grabbing onto aether. When he felt resistance, he froze in shock. On closer inspection, he found that he was midway between cultivation and reality. In a flash of inspiration, a dumb plan came into his mind. He used up the last leftover skin cells on his bald head to push himself out of the prince’s grasp.

“Bro, are you crazy? You have something akin to a seizure right now!”

Res ignored Jason’s warning and pulled in aether while the prince caught his bearings. “Jason, do your thing!”

“You can’t …”

“Do it!”, Res interrupted.

“You don’t understand. What if your brain gets damaged? I would rather live my life without aether than in the body of someone who is mentally disabled.”

“What happens to you if I die?”

Jason shifted about mentally. The prince’s gaze had once again found Res. “I could choose to get sucked into another artifact, but I have determined that I want to die after this.”

“You know Jason, I was a selfish fellow. In the last days, I have determined that I want to change who I am. I want to be someone who protects and shares. Giving chances to someone even if it means giving up one yourself.”

For a short while, Jason was silent, and they both watched the prince running towards them. Finally, Jason spoke. “Bro, I have heard nothing in my life that sounded cornier …” Res resigned himself to dying when Jason added. “… , but I suppose I agree. Let’s fucking do this.”

Relief flooded him and he sent waves of thankfulness to Jason. Both of them exchanged grim nods and Res began to pull in aether. His body vibrated as he gathered aether from his immediate surroundings. While exhaling, he pushed it out in the form of aether influence. Hundreds of white pipes shot out of his body and he felt connected to aether like never before.

*************

The prince stopped and looked on in awe as glowing pipes streaked by. The pipes only stopped growing after they were a kilometer long. For a second, the prince had feared that this insufferable fool still had a secret technique left up his sleeve. When the aether streaks didn’t harm him, he only laughed: “Are you reverting to fireworks now? Are you hoping to scare me off with some simple raw aether manipulation? Pathetic.”

Instead of trying to deny the prince’s claim, Res only looked on with a single-mindedness that bordered on the insane. For some reason, the prince felt like Res had focused his entire mind, no, his entire being on killing him. Robert, the crown prince, chided himself for thinking such negative thoughts. It wasn’t like … An enormous wrench ran through his entire being and he felt drawn to Res.

When he looked up, Res had now laid back his head. He was screaming into the sky while lightning began to crackle along all the aether pipes. The entire aether construction around Res pulled in aether from everywhere. The prince watched in horror as Res’s chest, then his entire body reconstructed itself from pure aether. With a start, the prince realized that he needed to end this quick. With a sigh, he realized that his sword would impale the pesky peasant right about ... An ultrasonic boom racked the meadow and the immediate area around Res exploded.

The shock wave flung the prince and his sword back, but the prince quickly found his bearings. What emerged out of the spot that Res had occupied before was a monster. Res’s hair was standing end on end and he had gained muscle mass. The most disturbing feature of them all was his left black eye.

It bestowed judgment on the prince and would do anything to enforce it. When the prince looked into that black eye, he was sure that if he were to cut off that creature’s head, it would still hunt him down until he hacked off every limb.