Seal of Magic V

It was a stupid thing to dash towards where Panthera lay motionless. All common sense and the rules of hunting made it clear that impulse actions taken when a comrade gets wounded are bad ideas.

But I couldn’t just leave her there. I couldn’t just ignore what I had just seen happen to her, and who she was in my life. The best friend of my mother Eve who died 12 years ago, when I was just 10. The woman who I’d lived with for 6 years until I was 16 and old enough to inherit my parents’ house and join the archery unit.

She’d trained me and guided me through puberty and my teenage years, the years that really mold one’s life.

And there she lay, in her pool of blood which was growing steadily.

“PANTHERAAAAAA!” I screamed, dashing towards her,

I had only moved about three steps before I saw it out of the corner of my eye. That same accursed tail whizzing through the air towards me. Then, for I split second, did I realize how stupid the action I took was.

“BLOOD ART: PETRIFICATION!”

Blood Art?

“NOVA!” I screamed turning as the orbs appeared. The scene before me was one that remains etched in my memory to this day. Azael had stabbed himself in the palm so could use the blood to strengthen his Petrification spell.

Even I knew that bloodletting was something risky for him to do, considering his age and the fact that he had just used that Solar Kannon.

I had to do something better.

Whipping out my knife, I stabbed my own palm too, watching the blood flow out.

“BLOOD ART!” I screamed, and the flow floated in the air until it made contact with the orbs I formed from Nova. I’d only ever read about how to incorporate blood into my spell, but I knew from my research that the more the blood, the more effective the spell.

This was one-quarter of a pint of blood.

“SUPERNOVA!”

The comets whizzed through the air, aiming for Cerberus. As usual, it whipped its tail – which was not held by any of Azael’s Petrification Chains and tried to block. But I’d already saved two behind, and as the searing hot supernova orbs hit its tail, it howled out.

Our techniques so far had weakened its toughness and resistance. It was so engrossed in its howl that it did not realize the two orbs that went behind it. ‘Until they converged at their target, the right eye which Panthera and I had assaulted before.

“Boom,” I said, turning back and walking towards Panthera.

The explosion was of white light, akin to the death of a star, from whence the spell got its name. Grabbing Panthera in my arms, she smiled weakly at me, blood flowing from her nostrils and her mouth.

“Eve was always so timid,” she said, speaking slowly and weakly, with more love and care than I had ever heard her speak. “She really prayed you didn’t get those traits, Leo. Why do you think she named you that, huh?”

She coughed up some more blood, and I cried. I didn’t know any spells to heal. But at least I could do something. Something to-

“Don’t do it. Use your Blood Art spells to try and transfuse blood or vitality to me. I’ve already entered a pact – one I swore to Eve that I would enter when I was at the door of death.”

“You…swore to my mother?”

“She was my best friend, Leo. She knew she had her faults, and she was too weak and imperfect to raise a child that would be any different from her, so she told me about you. She was dying of pneumonia then, so she entrusted you into my arms. I could only do what a friend could do at that point, the most a friend could do…”

Cerberus roared in anguish, and I cried in anguish at this moment. I hadn’t really thought much of my parents before then. My father was a member of the archery unit and had been killed during a hunt when I was just four, so I couldn’t remember anything about him. My mother was the one I could remember, but she was always sick and frail, and all she could manage was a kiss on my forehead and a whisper to me when she died.”

Her last words were, “I have given you all I have, and another will one day give you all she has one day. You’re watched by three guardians now, Leo.”

It was only now that the situation sunk in. “You’re the third guardian, aren’t you? Why? How are you giving me all you have anyway?”

“At first it was due to a promise. But now it’s because I have seen the man you have become, and I’m proud of you. Eve would be proud, Eve and Evander, your father actually. The binding pact I made with your mother allowed me to store my peak vitality and magic ability and transfer it to you when I am at the brink of death. I shouldn’t be able to feel it until I am about to die, so that’s why I told you not to worry about trying to save me. I am about to die now…”

I broke down crying.

“Leo, we don’t have much time!” Azael said, his voice choked with tears as well as frustration. “This thing is getting rapidly out of control, and it’s because you got it!”

“You were always a very kind child and you still are right now. The son I never had indeed. I’m proud of you; I’ll say it again. You’ve got three people’s dreams; three people’s essence flowing in your veins now, Leo,” she said, pressing her thumb to my forehead, and I felt the power flow into me.

It was so much that I stumbled backward. The sheer power of the greatest warrior our city had ever seen was certainly unfathomable. I had obtained the strength of five men, all at once.

I brought my head back, closer to her lips, and she smiled weakly, lifting them up to kiss me on the forehead.

“Don’t be too hasty to join us on the other side, Ken,” she said, as her voice drawled off to silence. “Eve has been waiting for 12 years now, she can wait a lot longer than thaa-“

That was the end of a fierce woman. And the beginning of an even fiercer warrior.

Turning back to face the one-eyed, even smaller Cerberus just as Azael’s chains broke, I wiped the last tears off my eyes.

“You’ve overstayed your welcome, foul beast.”

*****

To Be Continued.