"Kyaa!" Anna cried out in pain.
Azalea frowned and turned to find her embedded into the other side of the wall, blood trickling down her lips. He stopped, his eyes going straight to his arm.
The tattoo was back, glowing.
"Slave mark," he muttered.
It was as he'd guessed. Something had happened and somehow Anna was now a slave, his slave probably, since it seemed she couldn't attack him without it turning back on her. But he'd never seen a slave contract like this before, and he had no idea when it had even happened, because slave contracts didn't work without the consent of both parties, and on top of that slavery wasn't exactly common in human kingdoms, practically outlawed in most of them.
"Could this be my blessing?" he wondered.
In this world, people who were lucky didn't just awaken an affinity to an element, they also received the blessing of a god, though the strength and ability of it varied depending on the god itself. Not everyone got one though, some people just awakened an affinity or two and nothing more. A blessing was exactly what it sounded like, an added advantage, nothing more and nothing less.
"What happened?" Anna frowned, her hands still hurting. She'd coated her body in ether just in time to protect herself when the ball of fire combusted on its own, and if she hadn't she would've taken it far worse than she did.
Then her eyes fell on the tattoo on her right hand and her frown deepened.
"What is this?" she muttered, dread settling in her gut immediately.
"My advantage," came the reply. She looked up and all she saw were cold eyes looking back at her, no amusement in them, just a coldness that made her retreat instinctively.
Wait, why am I afraid of him, she thought, then stretched her hand forward and conjured a huge ball of fire.
"I'd advise against that," he said, but she wasn't having any of it, because she hated that calmness, he should've been afraid of her, he should've been dead, and how the hell was he even alive, and his legs, she'd definitely chopped them off.
"DIE, YOU BASTARD!" she screamed, but then,
BOOM!
Once again she was thrown back, coughing, blood spilling from her mouth.
"Ahh, haaah, no, noo, NOOO!" She understood what it meant the next instant, the mark, the urge to kneel the moment she laid eyes on him.
"No!"
BOOM!
She kept conjuring anyway, ice piercing into her skin, fire combusting right in front of her face, and it kept happening over and over.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" In an instant the atmosphere heated up and turned cold at the same time, a huge combined shard of ice and flame that she'd never managed before, but in that desperate moment something in her was pulling out everything it had.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The walls were destroyed and the building began to crumble around them.
Azalea watched with an indifference that didn't feel natural, because for some reason the more the tattoo glowed the more numb he felt, and he looked around and noted that the whole place was coming apart, then turned and walked toward the door with unhurried steps. The ceiling was falling in pieces around him but there was no panic in him at all, and he walked like he owned everything around him, stepped through the living room, and came out the other side of a house in the middle of a forest.
He tilted his head. This didn't make sense, where had she even brought him?
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
A loud roar from behind him, and he felt a tremendous surge of ether, then looked back to see the house tearing itself apart from the ground up under the force of it.
He sat down on the ground and watched.
BOOM!
The building came apart piece by piece until there was nothing left but rubble, and then,
BOOM!
A girl blasted out from the top of it, looking more like a mad woman than a mage.
"Well, what do you know, she learned flight magic in a minute," he said, shaking his head.
She looked around and her gaze settled on him.
"I WILL KILL YOU, EVEN IF IT'S THE LAST THING I DO!" she screamed, and in an instant a humongous ball of blue and golden red coalesced between her hands as she directed everything she had toward him, her ether flaring and burning at full force, and then,
BOOOOOOOOM!
She shot straight back into the rubble.
He looked at his arm, the tattoo glowing more fiercely than before, and he couldn't feel anything now, no tension, no fear, no panic, just a mild and distant hate and a complete indifference to all of it.
"This is stupid," he said, then stood up and walked toward the rubble, taking his time, not rushing, and eventually he was standing right at the spot where she'd fallen and looking down into quite a hole. He could see her at the bottom, unconscious and bloodied, a few bones broken from the look of it, her ribs probably.
"Sigh," he said out loud, then looked up at the sky.
"Why didn't I die, what else is there left for me to do in this world?" he muttered, and then,
[#$%^&*()_]
[Kill them all, isn't that what you want?]
He looked at it for a while.
"Revenge...?"