"Ghahaha, look at this — the most luxurious room in the whole city!"Marcus threw his arms up to the sky, jubilant at the gift Teacher Will had given us.
"...it looks ridiculous," Jax commented, looking at Marcus as if he were a loose monkey."Here," Rack tossed Marcus a banana as if it were alms.
"Can you guys be quiet? I'm trying to sleep."These guys — they'd only been in the city a few hours and were already acting like monkeys. I even had to play guide because I'd been here before. It wasn't even time to meet the other academies yet and I already felt dizzy from exhaustion.
"Oh, check this out — he used an ice bird in the final. I almost needed oxygen watching that bird in match five. What a team of professional clowns.""Those players are just a walking meme, lucky their cups at least placate the fans.""That team fights like it's just trolling, yet they ended up on the throne instead of in a wheelchair."
They paid me no attention — only yammering about the games — so annoyed, I threw a pillow straight onto their faces as a gentle reminder.When I turned my head, my arm buzzed. I sighed and reluctantly looked.
…
On top of a city built in Renaissance-style architecture, a red figure was leaping across the old towers."He's heading for the clock tower!" someone shouted, drawing attention, but people strolling the streets paid no mind.
"Huff, huff — damn it."A man in a long red coat with a knit cap pulled low over his face ran wildly from his pursuers. The men in long black coats behind him suddenly spread out to block his path. The hooded man spun and struck at those behind him, trying to break free.
"ADFAS!"A spray of threads shot from his hand and quickly filled the street, turning the bustling quarter into a web of white filaments. He reached for one of the white threads — but before his fingers could touch it he was hurled back by an invisible force.
"Don't let him touch the thread — nobody knows what he'll do with it!" someone in a long black coat yelled, warning the others.Boom!
Despite the explosions and the ongoing pursuit, not a single civilian seemed to notice — as if their eyes had been veiled from the truth.
A roof shattered from a heavy impact. The beanie-capped man rose, clutching the very thread he'd tried to grab.
Rrrt rrrt — a flash of lightning wrapped him in a cage, trapping him. He dropped the thread to the ground.
"Attack, now!" someone cried, and arrows flew toward the imprisoned man. A soft laugh, barely audible, broke through.
The white thread touched the floor. A finger brushed it, and the red-coated figure began to distort. He writhed, folded into a multicolored strand, and flowed into the white thread itself — everything moving like a sci-fi hallucination.
Inside that strange space where colors existed in the void and were linked by a white filament, patches of color clashed and yet remained connected by the threads — a complex system that made it hard to perceive what lay within. A tiny silhouette scurried across it like an ant crossing a giant bridge.
Suddenly a hand rose in midair; the threads were puppeteered, shifting and weaving a web that pulled all the colors toward a single point — the small dark figure standing there. The colors coiled, shrinking from grand shapes to a single slender strand that wound around the white filament, tinting it with dual hues and generating an uncanny optical effect.
The beanie-capped man lifted his hand and touched a thread that came to him — and then he transformed, dissolving into that bicolored filament.
Nearby, where the threads had shot out over the street, a short figure in black stood watch over a white thread.
Suddenly the white thread sprouted a white hand, wrapped in fibers. The dwarf raised his long spear, preparing to stab the hand, but he found himself unable to move — thin hair-like filaments had bound his limbs.
Realizing what was happening, he tried to warn others, but a hand clamped over his mouth before he could do anything."Uhm… uhm!""Shhh!!"
By then the beanie-capped man had escaped the fibers; his body stained with color, but he didn't care. His only concern was the dwarf — a dangerous obstacle in his way.
Dwarves were disadvantaged physically: short, less agile, weaker in close quarters than many races. But compared to others, they possessed insane regeneration. They trained until they were broken and could recover in days; their pain threshold grew numb. The man in front of him was the type to self-injure to break free of the cage he'd woven.
He slipped close and shoved them both into a dark alley. The dwarf's body hit the ground hard; he was badly hurt.
Sizzle — the dwarf tried to burn the threads with flame but failed. There were more people outside the alley now, so he couldn't act recklessly.
Thud. The red-coated man punched, kicked, elbowed the dwarf — striking everywhere: groin, head, belly, throat… he left untouched only the spots obstructed by the spear lodged in the dwarf's hand and the other hand clamped over the dwarf's mouth to muffled sound.
The dwarf lost consciousness. The attacker rose, grabbed the spear meant to finish him, but before he could do anything the dwarf's head was snapped back. Blood sprayed; brain matter spattered the wall — a gruesome sight.
…
I stepped over the corpse and wiped my gun, then moved to the fallen dwarf.'Only been a few hours since I arrived — four hours here and I've already had to kill someone. Seriously.'
"Hey, you okay?" I took out a wooden mask painted white in the shape of an eagle, put it on, and patted the unconscious dwarf.
After confirming he still lived, I radioed others and gave orders."Make sure you identify who tried to set off the terror today. Hurry — it's not hard to find those familiar with chroma-magic."
It wouldn't be easy, but at least this would be better than some of the things I'd seen before.