ARTHUR LEYWIN

She wasn't calm.

Her massive, bulky legs were straight and properly spaced. Her back was as straight as an arrow while her head was slightly tilted down to meet my eyes. The length of her arms were flat against the armrest of the jagged stone throne she sat on. Strong fingers tipped with deadly claws gripped the end of the armrest, forming slight cracks causing a bit of debris to fall towards me. Every muscle in her towering figure was twisted in tension, ready to explode at a moment's notice.

Compared to the nonchalant and carefree posture she presented herself with the first time I met her, the gaze of her eyes are slightly hostile, a hostility so foreign to me when it came to Sylvia.

The armored beast rose, the tip of her horns scraping the top of the cave's ceiling. Sparks flying from the top of the over ten meter tall figure. The large gaping hole in her chest stretched from her left shoulder to her right hip, with a constantly flowing trickle of blood leaking from the wound.

"Speak child. Why do you know my name? For what ends do you seek me out?" Just like I remembered it, Sylvia's voice was smooth and gentle, like the grace of a benevolent queen. Yet I could tell from her tense jaw and thinly pursed lips she was moments away from stepping on me.

"I know your name because you are the one who told it to me. As for why I searched for you, I've come to ask if you could tell me your name one more time." Tears still falling down my cheeks as I answer her questions in full. While a part of me wanted her to treat me as nothing more than her grandson, I was here on a mission, a mission that couldn't proceed if she treated me like a child.

"I believe you realize I've been trying to probe your mind and search in your past for answers, but you have rejected my entrance. Such a thing requires a near perfect control of mana or..."

"Aether" I cut her off, knowing I'd have to tell her everything she wants to know, something I was fully willing to do, but also something I probably shouldn't do.

"Yes, I can influence aether, but I'm no remnant of the ancient mages nor am I a forgotten dragon. I am something... a bit more realistic." I patiently waited for her next question while I wiped away my tears. Sylvia paused for a few moments before she let out mountain shaking laugh, which sounded more like a roar.

"Realistic? Surely you jest." Giggling to herself for a few minutes, she finally calms down enough to continue. "Tell me, what is realistic about a young human child prancing around these deep woods, killing every mana beast in sight, as he deliberately draws closer to my dwellings only to randomly blurt out my name and claim to be someone I can trust."

I keep quiet with a blank expression before she says, "I'll ignore the grandmother statement for now, so tell me, in direct words, who you are and what do you want."

With a slight smile, I hold my hand out to her, as I prepare my mind. With hesitation in her movements, Sylvia brings her finger to rest on my small palms.

In the next instance, Sylvia and I open our eyes to be met by an endless void. We were no longer in the barren cave, now resting in an empty mindscape that awaited input. Both of us stripped down to our bare essentials, appearing to each other in the way we view ourselves. Our ethereal projections bursting into shape in front of one another.

To me, I saw Sylvia in her colossal dragon form, her glistening white scale shimming even in this lightless void. Her wings stretched with her feathers rustling in empty winds. To her, I appeared as a man in his early twenties, light blonde hair and golden eyes contrasting against the colorless abyss. I could feel her consciousness focus in on the shimmering gold and white marked horns that crowned my head.

We both took a moment to observe each other, her gaze filled with amazement while mine was filled with nostalgia. Before she could utter her first comment, the void around us sparks to life, swirling in a myriad of color before it calms to form the setting of a memory etched deep into my mind.

The memory took place in a cavern we would both find familiar. Our ethereal selves drifted closer to each other while we both spectated the following events.

We watched as an injured little boy, who bore a striking resembled to myself, walked alone in the woods, taking confident steps, as if he was walking on a path and not unmapped wilderness.

We saw him make his way through a whole in ground, only to meet an armored beast he described as the living incarnation of evil. Yet the beast was wounded and its voice rang of isolation.

We observed the boy and beast interact, share stories and grow closer. The two creatures who lived and understood the world in completely different manners, whose lifetimes were generations apart, and whose futures were incomparable, lived along side each other in harmony.

We shed tears as we experienced the fateful departure of the two beings, forced apart by the agent of death personified by the towering Vritran hybrid. The two were force apart, and as dictated by fate they would never meet again.

Sylvia and I could smell the lingering scent of blood on the hands of my former self. Feel the dampness of the loose gravel I had previously cried on. The muffled sobs rand through our heads as we stared down at my lonesome self.

Sylvia's face was a torrent of emotions. Remorse, pity, affection, despair. She was no fool. She understood the memories I showed her couldn't be fabricated, unless I was lying to myself on a fundamental level.

As she began to accept the reality of my existence, she also began to realize what my existence implied. Why was I here? What was it that drove me to abandon my time, to restart? Most of all, she'd want to ask. "Why have you come to foolishly try and rewrite a uselessly rigid future?"

"I don't know. But I am this world's largest variable. If anyone can change its fate, it's going to be me." I respond to her, with a calm voice and stern determination.

In response, her form bursts into a blinding light, settling down to reveal a majestic dragon dressed in pearl white scales. Her body etched with vibrant golden runes representing her affinity for the aevum branch of aether. The dragon's large eyes shone in a bright purple hue, burning in light against her large onyx black horns.

"I trust you have planned this far ahead, yes?" Sylvia had a kind smile on her face, deciding to place all of her trust on me in this single instance.

My small form pulsed in aether, the area around me being pushed back as a brilliant black scaled armor forms around me. The scales were outlined in a golden color while my head was crowned by a replica of the horns I carried but lacking the white and golden markings.

On the chest piece of my peculiar dancing outfit, was a flower with three petals, each engraved with a symbol representing the branches of aether.

"Do you like candy?" I abruptly called out to Sylvia.

"Is such a question necessary at the moment? I don't think..." She stopped as she looked at my pouting face with look of disbelief. "Yes Art, I do in fact enjoy the occasional sugary treat." Said the dragon in a sarcastic voice as I rolled my eyes.

"Good to know." I jumped up to the edge of the ceiling as I threw a small pinkish orb toward Sylvia. The orb had a tinge of purple and would quickly dissolve in mouth watering goodness before swallowing.

It was a strange sight, the mighty, imposing dragon princess hesitating to move the orb from the cusps of her lips to her mouth. She quickly did however, as the top of the cave came crashing in revealing a horned fiend as he flew down in an arrogance pose, it's eyes poised down in judgement.

"Lady Sylvia! I advise you to stop your stubbornness and hand it over at once. You've already caused us quite the trouble after hiding yourself! If you submit, the Lord may even heal your wound." Cadell said in a calm, nearly whispering voice not expecting any real retaliation.

"I regret to inform you that my daughter is no thing! Go tell the snake, if he wants to see his daughter, he'd best stop his ridiculousness and start acting like a proper father!" Sylvia snarled back, baring her teeth in seething anger.

Her voice was strong, but I could see the slight glistening in her eyes. She has chosen to fully cooperate with me, permanently sealing any chances of recuperating the relationship with the man she loved.

I hid myself to the side of the ceiling where Cadell had bursted in from. Perfectly hiding my intent and cloaking Ellie's presence was only a single aspect to my stealth. To Cadell's senses, I would appear as nothing more than the air he breathes and the ground he walks on. I was blending myself into the world's reality, ripping it apart to make room for myself.

"If you wish to dismiss the Lord's mercy, as his Lesser Harbinger, I shall return to him with it and your burnt body in tow." He looked at her with the same looked you'd give to a stupidly, pitiful child.

He lowered his body down from the air, only to jerk back when he sees with his own eyes the results of my delicious candy.

Sylvia's chest wound was mending itself back together, knitting the torn flesh and growing in new scales. Her body visibly resuscitated, her muscles regaining a newfound strength, her wings flapping with vigor and the exhaustion around her eyes lifted off of her.

"How troublesome..." Agrona's tool didn't even seem to care, perhaps taking her performance as only a minor setback.

Sylvia crouched down to the ground to secure her footing and tilted her long neck up with her jaw slightly opened. The inside of her mouth glowed in a purple light with an ever increasing intensity. The runes on her body and the light in her eyes powering up in response.

The figure in the air had an unimpressed frown. The candy I gave her hadn't fully healed her, yet I could only assume Cadell had an artifact of some sort, allowing him to kill an asura of royal lineage, no matter how injured she is or was.

His mask of confidence and smugness gets ripped apart, as he is literally ripped apart.

Once I deemed him distracted enough with Sylvia, I pulsed aether from my core to perform the most painful Godstep imaginable. My body warped to follow the aetheric pathways, flashing to Cadell's back. As the godrune on my back fades back into my skin, a godrune encompassing my entire body burst to life as a thin sword manifests itself into my right hand.

The colorless, invisible blade only appears for a split second, yet that fraction of a second caused blood to pulse out of every orifice in my body. The bone rattling pain invades my body, the nails on my finger prying themselves off as every muscle I have twitches in agony.

It's been I while since I felt such intense physical pain. Kinda nice.

My centuries of life and mental fortitude allow me to stay awake, ignoring the pleads of my body to allow it to drop dead. I land on my feet in front of Sylvia and activate one of the artifacts I had crafted so many years ago, mainly for domestic purposes.

Looking up, we watch as Cadell writhes in overwhelming pain, his body dissected into dozens of segments. His state of matter shifting from gaseous to solid with black flames in between, while liters of blood spill onto the floor below.

His body was in a grotesque state, but I was sured to avoid disrupting too many vital organs. As if to respond to my thoughts, his body slowly reforms itself, the mass of his body solidifying.

Though he still had many wounds decorated around his limbs and armor, he manages to open his eyes only to widen them in shock. In front of the towering dragon was the silhouette of a tall woman, whose entire body was covered in golden runes.

Only the faint outline of her body was visible, but her most defining feature was her immaterial body. Much like the remnants of the Djinn I discovered in the depths of the Relictombs, the women's projection was simply a swirling mass of purple. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Perhaps you should back it up a bit little mutt. This dragon is under my jurisdiction for the next 30 seconds, so unless you want all three of us to die together I suggest you leave. I have no quarrels with the likes of you." I said to him under the guise of the ethereal woman, even my voice coming off as feminine as possible.

He floats there for a moment as he ponders his response. "I have no troubles with you either. I shall take my leave after I retrieve my Lord's belongings."

I make the woman's projection cock an eyebrow as it turns toward the dragon behind me in an appraising manner. I make the woman form the closest thing to a sadistic smile of glee, as she turns back to Cadell.

"Well if it isn't my lucky day! At least 3 people are going to die in this cave today, and two of them will be dragons! What a jackpot!" I conjured the projection's voice to be as innocent as possible, her high pitched squeals echoing in the cave sends shivers down all of our spines, even my own.

Cadell ignores my exclamations and rushes forward, his hands filled with blazing blacks flames and eroding grey winds.

Before his spells can properly form, I go against my body's protests and Godstep towards him once again. Instead, this time I pop a physical sword out of my ring. It resembles Dawn Ballad, but its blade was white, the handle was golden while it was small enough to fit my current body.

Without his eyes being able to track me, I moved to dice up his body. However, this time I couldn't move my blade through his whole body, only able to rip chunks of meat off.

Alive but in a state worse than before, I put my hands on what I assume are his shoulders, using Godstep on him to send him as far away as I could manage.

I slump down as I cough out mountains of blood, letting go of my sword as the armor around my body melts away.

Sylvia rushes over, carefully placing me over over one of her wings as she looks at me in panic.

"Do you have another of those little orbs? Perhaps you have another way of healing yourself, right?" Her voice was strained as she looked me up and down, searching for some form of an answer.

I raise a bloody hand to touch her pristine snout, my voice shaky and quiet. "You know, the first and last time I touched your dragon snout, you were punching a hole through my chest, talking about useless things like gifts and futures."

I ripped out a harsh cough as I continued. "Maybe this time I'll be the one to tell you that you aren't ready to know the whole truth." I give her a smug smile and she lets out a throaty chuckle.

We sit there in silence and comfort, waiting for myself to heal from my vicious self inflicted damage. After a few minutes, we're startled into focus by Ellie's cries, as a slight shift in the rubble around us forces us to turn our heads.

Impossible, it should've taken him days to recover from the damage.

Sylvia was the only one who could put up a fight, but I took in deep breaths in preparation regardless.

"S-s-stop right there! Let the b-boy go or e-else!?" In front of us stood a naked, blue haired woman pointing a dagger at Sylvia with a shaky hand. Her entire body shook in fear, hell I was sure I could hear the rattling of her teeth from here.

I had nearly forgotten about this one... Poor girl.