Aster felt his senses scream danger at him as the intruder who had interrupted his fight with Etoile stepped forward between him and Etoile.

  The figure before him laughed in a soft, melodious way as she stood against him. She was easily a full head taller than him, lanky, but wore the dark red and black uniform of Despar in an elegant, graceful manner. The golden insignia and rank markers of her uniform stood out on her, the golden stars on her neck indicating that she was a higher-ranking officer of AXIS. She wore an opaque black face veil attached to her peaked cap that obscured her face.

  A captain of AXIS? Why was she here?

  Aster felt a wariness well up within him. He steadied himself, holding his bright blue arcana shield construct in front of him as he made himself small and tensed behind it. He could see the ghostly, ethereal waves of hate and anger exude from the interloper like an oily substance. Not bright like a flame, but as if it were a black-hole like vortex that threatened to unleash itself at any moment.

  “Captain Lelesia,” Etoile said as he turned his gaze towards her.

  Lelesia? Why did that name sound familiar to him?

  “Etoile, retreat,” Lelesia replied.

  “But Captain—”

  Lelesia turned her head towards him, the featureless black opaque cloth revealing nothing behind it. “There’s something else you need to do right now, don’t you?”

  Etoile stilled for a moment, then nodded, speeding off with a strong leap that sent him moving away to the side.

  Aster narrowed his eyes. What did she mean by that? What was…

  Then Aster’s eyes widened, and he leapt after Etoile to intercept him.

  The new interloper was at his side in an instant, as if she had already been standing there. She was fast, he realized. Far faster than him. She knocked him back with a powerful strike of her claws against his shield that sent him skidding hard against the ground, even as he had braced himself against her strike.

  Aster stared at her, gritting his teeth as he came to a stop. “Is this how AXIS does things?”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Lelesia chuckled.

  “Was this all just for the purpose of making me angry enough to cause an incident?” Aster ground out.

  “You're smarter than you look, boy,” Lelesia said. “Though, if you couldn’t at least put that much together, then you’d be a damn idiot, wouldn’t you?”

  Then Lelesia was in front of him, past his guard and arcana shield construct, faster than he could blink. Before he could move, he found himself with a foot in his gut, a heavy boot sending the wind out of his body and himself rolling on the ground, trying to use his shield to lessen the impact, then crashed into a tree behind him.

  Aster struggled to rise, the pain making him wince. He breathed heavily as he picked himself up and once more placed his shield before himself. In the corner of his eye, he saw Lelesia walking casually after him as if taking an everyday stroll.

  “Are you trying to kill Selenia?” Aster said, narrowing his eyes.

  “Well, if I said we were, what are you going to do about it boy?” Lelesia laughed as she shrugged at him.

  Then Lelesia threw her peaked cap at Aster at lightning speed. The sheer speed and force of the makeshift projectile impacted his arcana shield with a heavy thud, knocking it aside with force like a cannon shell.

  Before Aster could steady himself again, Lelesia was once again on top of him, and without her peaked cap and face veil that masked her face, he could see what… who she was. She leaned in against him, staring down at him as she got a look at him with her eyes.

  Her many eyes…

  Aster stared at Lesleia, who returned the stare in kind. She was a tall bipedal arachnoid with obsidian chitin, tall enough that she had to lean forward and tilt her head down at him. Her eyes were those of an arachnid, sharp crimson eyes surrounded by other similar but slightly smaller pairs of eyes around her central ones in an elegant pattern. She had sharp protrusions from her head that framed her head like a crown.

  An arachnid of Velzelia? Lelesia…

  Aster’s eyes widened as he put the pieces together. Smiling Scythe Lelesia?

  “Finally recognized who I am, funny boy?” Lelesia said, grinning and showing off her maw with all of its many sharp fangs. She laughed at him, that melodious tone of her voice in stark contrast to her appearance. She was spindly in the way that all arachnids of Velzelia that took on a humanoid appearance looked.

  In the history of Gaia, Aster learned that many had often remarked that the arachnids of Velzelia were demonic spiders. He could see why. They had fearsome appearances even when they took on more humanoid forms, as Lelesia was doing now. And even among arachnids, they had an intimidating presence. Unlike other arachnids, their chitin was black as the abyss, their bodies and limbs sharp and angular, eyes that felt as if they could melt people, sharp claws that could rend through steel, and maws filled with rows of razor-sharp fangs.

  “So you're that boy Aster I’ve heard so much about,” Lelesia continued.

  “And you’re… you’re Smiling Scythe Lelesia,” Aster replied.

  “That’s Captain Lelesia to you brat!” Lelesia scoffed as she lunged casually at him with her sharp claws.

  Aster dodged, the strike rending through the tree behind him. He narrowed his eyes. He felt uncertainty creeping into him. He had heard of Lelesia in the academies. The Smiling Scythe, one of the renowned figures of the End War, was a veteran of that war who had made her name among the kills she had reaped upon the Settlement Front Alliance in its war against the Gaia Sphere Federation.

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  She was a peer of Captain August, gramps, who also had made a name for himself in the End War. She was someone who could stand toe to toe with Gramps.

  No…

  She was someone who could defeat him.

  She chittered at him in the laughing way that the arachnids of Velzelia, who had come from the Fercynia Forest, usually did. Her people, the arachnids of Velzelia of the Fercynia Forest, had been one of the founding nations, one of the founding peoples, of the Gaia Sphere Federation. Together with their neighbors, the human nation of Ravenna, they had been one of the critical parts of the Federation that had asserted itself throughout the world of Gaia.

  Lelesia easily knocked a return strike with his shield.. “How naive, funny child. You think you can just mutter some pretty words, some half-baked platitudes, and expect some applause and everyone to just agree with each other with happy smiles?”

  “That’s just your opinion. Why does it have to be naive?” Aster gritted out as he leapt sideways, deflecting another thrust of Lelesia’s claws as he did so. He was tired of people who just refused to think that anything could change at all. “Does it have to be so hard to let go of the past?” Aster leapt back as Lelesia followed. “Why must everything revolve around the End War and the Astral Nova? Can’t people just move forward with the future?!”

  Lelesia’s many crimson eyes bored into him. “I wonder if you have the strength to back up such stupid words?” Lelesia said as she turned angry, her grinning maw turning from an amused grin to an angry scowl. “What the hell do you know boy?!” She accelerated right in front of him, moving quicker than he could react.

  Aster recoiled as she was so close he could see his reflection in her eyes.

  “What were those stupid things you said?” Lelesia said as Aster stilled. “Why!? Why you ask!?”

  Lelesia laughed with no amusement. It was an angry, mocking laughter.

  “Listen boy!” Lelesia growled. “Children like you shouldn’t be talking about things you don’t understand. Especially when you’re talking awfully high and mighty for someone who doesn’t know a damn thing about what you’re talking about.”

  Aster tried to hold himself steady under her gaze to no avail as he felt himself begin to sweat from it. That black hole of hatred and anger within Lelesia seemed about ready to burst out at him at any moment. Is this what Rita had been talking about when she had warned him earlier? About something… someone’s hate that was too much for him to comprehend? Had she been talking about Captain Lelesia?

  Lelesia punched him in the gut, and Aster doubled over, stunned from the blow.

  “What do I need to know to understand right from wrong?” Aster coughed as he dodged another swipe of her claws.

  “A whole lot damn more, that’s for sure,” Lelesia replied as she quickly got around him and sent a kick which he blocked with both his arms, but that sent him flying upward in the air of the forested area he was in.

  The hatred emanating from Lelesia began to make his eyes hurt. And his mind ached at the sensation of it, even though he wasn’t sure why that was.

  Aster had Lelesia in his eyes, then she vanished right before him from where she stood on the ground, appearing behind him effortlessly and with speed that felt like she had teleported right behind him.

  Aster’s eyes widened as he quickly turned to face her. Then, she vanished again and reappeared around him once again. Aster turned and turned, struggling to keep her in his sight to no avail as she moved so quickly that she was always at the edge of his sight.

  Then he saw the string being formed all around the surrounding area, realizing that she had been layering up the environment around her with her silk string as she continued to move around him effortlessly.

  This was bad.

  This kind of three-dimensional battle sense…

  As expected of an End War veteran.

  Aster gritted his teeth. He rotated quickly, trying to locate Lelesia, who seemed to move in and out of his vision with ease.

  Then, the silk string began to wrap around his limbs, and he found himself slowly being immobilized.

  Aster formed an arcana blade in a panic, even as he found himself quickly tiring from the effort, only to find that the silk string itself had been reinforced with arcana as he tried to cut it. It was impossibly tough, and he didn’t even leave a scratch on it. He had little doubt that she had been merely toying with him, playing with him like a prey trapped in a spider web.

  Lelesia laughed as she danced about in the air, on the ground, and seemingly everywhere while he was unable to track her. Whether it was vertically or horizontally, she moved as if she wasn’t weighed down by gravity at all. As if she were weightless in space right here in the gravity of Gaia.

  A chittering, melodious laugh met his ears to his side as a figure dropped from above, and their faces met again.

  Time seemed to slow down as their eyes met.

  Lelesia’s eyes zoomed in on him. “Stupid boy. What would you understand of our pain? Our suffering? For those of us who lived and fought in that war. The End War. When those Settlement Front Alliance bastards dropped the orbital colonies so painstakingly built through so much sacrifice, when they dropped the hopes and dreams of this world from the stars.” Her razor-sharp fangs ground together, her voice turning into a deadly hiss. “When our homes were destroyed, our people massacred, our friends and families murdered! What the hell would you understand about any of that!?”

  Lelesia’s previously playful attitude took on a more sadistic turn.

  Then Aster was unable to see her as she moved even quicker than before.

  He felt an arm crushed.

  A leg break.

  Then a shoulder crunch.

  Aster yelled in pain as he felt the sudden pain strike his nerves all at once.

  Then a few heavy blows to his gut that made him cough blood, and a punch to his face that sent him flying down and into the ground, breaking and cratering it at impact.

  As Aster futilely struggled to get up, his severe injuries immobilizing him, his eyes widened as he saw Lelesia come straight for him, a claw reaching out to skewer him through his chest.

  Then, Lelesia turned her head to the side as if sensing someone else, and a supersonic flying blur came straight towards her from the side like a cannon shell. Lelesia quickly leapt back just in time to dodge.

  “Aster!” Fia roared as she sliced through where Lelesia had once stood. His sister, Fia, looked murderous as she quickly thrust off the air with arcana, moving in sharp angles as she flapped her arm-wings to accelerate towards Lelesia. Aster could feel the waves of arcana flowing off of her.

  His sister Fia and Lelesia clashed, talon against claw, as they struggled against one with the force of their strikes. Then Fia flapped her arm-wings, causing an immense blast of air. As she did so, she was able to thrust her talon forward against Lelesia, sending her skidding hard backward against the ground.

  Fia looked angry. The waves of arcana that flowed off his sister were dark and heavy, the scelera of her green-yellow eyes were clouded over black. Likewise, dark veins appeared upon her skin where her black and dark red uniform didn’t cover.

  “What the hell are you doing to my little brother Aster!” Fia roared as she flapped her arm-wings and, with a great gust of wind, flew towards Lelesia, murder in her eyes.