Aster spat up blood from the heavy injuries he had sustained.

  He breathed heavily, coughing and hacking as he watched his sister Fia accelerate towards Lelesia in rage and anger. A single flap of her arm-wings was powerful enough to cause rushing gusts of wind. His sister seemed to bounce off the air as she quickly accelerated and accelerated again, as if bouncing off the air in hard angles as she attempted to strike Lelesia with repeated kicks of her talons, only to meet empty air as she dodged. Yet, his sister quickly found herself on the defensive as Lelesia counterattacked with her claws, effortlessly matching his sister’s speed.

  The clash of claws against talon sent waves of wind, dirt, small rocks, and debris flying around from the force of their impact, as they struck one another.

  Aster struggled to rise. He spotted the arcana shield construct he had generated was lying away, and the arcana energy he had used was about to finish dissipating in little motes that vanished in the air. That was the problem with arcana constructs. If the arcana energy in the constructs were lost, then the arcana energy he had used would simply go to waste. And making pure arcana constructs like a shield was no small expenditure of arcana energy.

  He felt exhausted.

  Lelesia had been fast and brutal when she had stopped her playful toying with him.

  The bones in a leg had been broken.

  She had crunched down on his shoulder where she had grabbed it.

  One of his arms had been crushed where she had clenched down on it.

  The punches she had given him to his gut had caused some internal injuries. And the punch to his face had already begun to bruise purple.

  Yet, despite everything, over more than anything, he felt his head hurt. It wasn’t as painful as everything else. But it was a feeling he just couldn’t ignore. A strange feeling. One that made his head pulse and ache like it was on the verge of something. But what?

  He held a hand to his head with his good arm as he rose, struggling upward with a bad leg and arm, his injuries weighing down on him.

  What was this feeling in his head?

  He couldn’t understand it.

  He watched Fia and Lelesia continue to move back and forth in a deadly dance. Lelesia seemed to be toying with Fia as she casually dodged and withstood the flurry of blistering attacks as if she had some other sense. As if she could predict what was going to happen.

  Aster felt a flash go through him like a lightning bolt.

  Bottom left!

  Then, a large drilling spike of white string came from down below and to his left from below ground. He barely managed to angle his body away from the strike. Lelesia’s string had burrowed below ground?

  Another flash came to him.

  From below and behind!

  What were these strange bursts of realization that came to him?

  Why did his head hurt and ache so much?

  Aster quickly pushed off his good leg as he sped away at speed, dodging another drilling spike of string that cut through the air where he once was. He hopped again and again in powerful pushes with his good leg as more drilling spikes of string burst from the ground and struck where he had once been.

  “Aster!” Fia called from afar as she gritted her teeth. Then, in a sudden burst of arcana, she accelerated faster than she had previously, striking Lelesia head-on. The arachnid braced herself as she blocked the strike with her chitinous arms. The ground cracked and broke at the force of the impact, dust flying around.

  Fia took the opportunity to break contact and soared towards him, quickly grabbing him in mid-hop with her arm-wings and blasting off high into the air, away from the ground, as the drilling spikes of string followed from behind at accelerating speed.

  Fia grimaced as she glanced behind, seeing the spikes of string catching up to them. Then, she banked down hard as they followed from behind, twisting and weaving between trees as best she could. Encumbered with her brother Aster, she used the trees around her as shields as the string spikes burst right through them.

  Aster felt another flash go through him as the portion of the forest they were about to fly into somehow felt off to him despite looking normal.

  Those aren’t trees! And those aren’t normal plants or foliage!

  “Fia! Up ahead, that isn’t forest!” Aster said, his eyes widening.

  “What!?” Fia replied.

  Then time seemed to slow as the forest around them turned into masses of white string, revealing that this place had actually been a forest clearing all along. The string had been camouflaged as the forest itself, the illusion broken as the string came from all directions. There was nowhere to escape from.

  Fia and Aster saw Lelesia standing nonchalantly in the corner of their eyes, as if she had predicted this would happen.

  Then Fia gritted her teeth as she roared, her arcana flaring an abyssal black as she forced raw arcana outward, pulsing it like a shockwave as string drills impacted them from all around.

  Aster closed his eyes as dark light washed over him and an explosion consumed them. He felt himself and his sister Fia roll hard on the ground, his sister wrapping his arm-wings around him as they did, trying to cushion his already injured body from further injury. Then, he felt them come to a hard stop as his sister Fia righted them and thrusted her taloned legs into the ground.

  Lelesia approached in the distance, seeming to yawn as if in boredom, in the way that arachnoids from Velzelia did, her maw full of fangs on display.

  Fia set him down by a nearby tree as she breathed heavily, kneeling by him, bruises and scratches all across her body. Her durable black and dark red uniform, created and sown with combat in mind, was showing signs of wear and tear.

  Aster felt a sinking feeling within himself as he stared at Lelesia, who approached in a casual walking stride. Both of them were outmatched. Severely. Lelesia didn’t even look like she had gotten a warm-up from all of this fighting.

  He turned to look at his sister Fia. Her face seemed to darken as a seriousness overtook it. Different from the anger he had seen on her previously. A calm resoluteness seemed to overtake her eyes.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  What was his sister thinking…

  “Aster…” Fia began, putting a claw on his good shoulder. “Stay here.”

  “What are—”

  Then, Fia rose, walking off without another word to him, walking towards Lelesia, who didn’t bother to stop as they approached each other.

  Aster began to rise to follow his sister, then stopped. As much as he wanted to help, he’d just get in the way.

  Was his sister going to…

  Then Fia stopped, gritting her teeth as she braced herself in a stance as waves of abyssal black arcana began to flame off of her. Aster saw the already black veins on her sister’s skin begin to grow further, her hair and feathers began to float in the air, and the dark sclera of her eyes darkened even further until her green-yellow eyes seemed to float in empty darkness. Sharper claws. Sharper talons. Sharper fangs. She seemed to grow more monstrous even as she retained her normal appearance.

  “Fia Lethea,” Lelesia began, an amused tone in her voice. “Didn’t your mother and father teach you that children shouldn’t play with things that they aren’t ready to play with?”

  “Playing?” Fia retorted sharply. “What do you think this all has been? A game to you?”

  Lelesia chuckled as she waved a chitinous claw casually. “What does it seem like?”

  “What do you mean?” Fia replied as black arcana came off of her like a raging bonfire, licking the air.

  Lelesia stopped walking as she pointed at him, past his sister Fia. “Haven’t you realized that I’m just playing around a little bit with that boy Aster?”

  Fia clenched her razor-sharp teeth in anger as she lunged at the arachnid in blistering fast speed that cracked the ground, practically vanishing as she moved faster than his eyes could make out.

  Fia’s claws were met by Lelesia’s own, who took the blow head-on without a care as whispers of dark arcana also began to flow from her.

  “Playing?! You call this playing?! You’re trying to kill him!” Fia said.

  Dark lightning began to crackle outward from where their claws met.

  Lelesia chittered as a mocking laugh came from her in response. “You think I’m trying to kill him? Doesn’t a child need to be disciplined if they start misbehaving?!”

  “As if I’d believe such a thing,” Fia said as she kicked upward with a taloned leg. Lelesia leaned backward as the sharp talons flew past her head. Then Fia rotated herself, attempting to slice at Lelesia with her arm-wings, which seemed to become more deadly than any steel blade.

  ‘Perhaps another child needs to be disciplined? Labyrinth Child. No… Child of the Sovereigns,” Lelesia retorted. “Didn’t your mother and father teach you that trying to use your abilities, untrained as you are, is a bad idea?”

  His sister Fia grimaced as Lelesia merely continued to dodge effortlessly despite the sheer speed and ferocity with which his sister moved.

  Then he saw his sister Fia cough, as she hacked and spluttered, as she breathed heavily, inhaling and exhaling at a fast speed, as she tried pushing herself further and further.

  If her sister pushed herself any more…

  His sister Fia was someone born of the Lethea Labyrinth, of the labyrinth itself. A Labyrinth Child. But unlike others who had been born of the Lethea Laybrinth, she was one of the few who his mother and father had a hand in birthing. A special child. Much like some of his other brothers and sisters, like Serenadelys and Nacht.

  They called them Children of the Sovereigns.

  They were special in a way that he wasn’t. For while he had been found as a mere infant one day within the Lethea Labyrinth, his origins a mystery, the origins and purpose of his sister Fia weren’t, for she was a Child of the Sovereigns.

  A biological and archaeological weapon.

  His mother and father, the Sovereigns of the Lethea Labyrinth, had made those like Serenadelys, Nacht, and others like Fia as weapons of war for the Despar Dominion… For the Gaia Sphere Federation.

  For it wasn’t just through diplomacy that the Gaia Sphere Federation had been formed.

  Then Fia flew upward, trying to dive against Lelesia repeatedly in furious speed, making multiple passes at her as she twisted and weaved in sharp, heavy accelerations against Lelesia. But despite Fia’s attempts, Lelesia effortlessly dodged or deflected every swipe of the claw, every thrust of the talon, or every swing of her arm-wings against the bipedal arachnid.

  Then Fia came down directly above Lelesia, gathering arcana in her taloned legs, sprialing into the ground with a leg talon that shattered the ground in a heavy boom and sent dust flying into the air.

  Aster shielded his face with an unbroken arm.

  Then moments later, his sister Fia came flying out of the dust cloud, rolling to a stop by him. She struggled to get up after being heavily injured as he was.

  “Fia,” Aster said as he went over to her. One of his sister’s arm-wings had been broken, and she seemed to have suffered from internal injuries as she coughed up blood.

  Lelesia sighed as she began walking towards them again without a care in the world.

  “Children,” Lelesia scoffed. “If only you knew what we had done for the Gaia Sphere Federation. What we had sacrificed in the End War,” Lelesia began. “And not just the End War. But the Foundation Wars. The Unification Wars. All the violence and struggles that our mothers and fathers, and their parents, and so on struggled for over a century to accomplish a dream that few thought possible.”

  Aster hadn’t lived it. He couldn’t speak to any of that. It was hard for him to imagine. All that pain and suffering. A century of violence and conflict to struggle for something that had culminated in the End War, which had seen it all come crashing down. In some cases, literally.

  Through sacrifice, as Lelesia had said to him. For everything she said was true.

  The Gaia Sphere Federation had been the hope and dreams of the people of this world. People like his mother and father, the sovereigns of the Lethea Laybrinth. People like Lelesia. The nations that had been formed within it, the Despar Dominion, Ravenna, and Velzelia, along with so many others. They and so many others strove for a dream. All those heroes and people who had risen to defy the world and its fate and destiny. To break the chains that held this world in stasis.

  Aster picked himself up as his sister tried to reach out an unbroken arm-wing to try and stop him, before falling back down from her injuries.

  Even now, Leleseia seemed like a wall that couldn’t be overcome.

  Smiling Scythe Lelesia. Someone considered an Ace of Aces. Was she really trying to kill him? Kill his sister?

  He didn’t pretend that they could get away. All this time, Lelesia had merely been playing with them. Toying with them. Like a prey caught in a spider’s web. If she had truly been serious from the beginning…

  Aster grimaced. If they couldn’t run, couldn’t fight, then at the very least, he wanted to know why. Were they really trying to kill Selenia? And if they were, why did she have to die for something that hadn’t involved her? If Lelesia criticized him for being a child who didn’t understand the things that he hadn’t experienced, then it was the same for Selenia. Why did she have to pay for the actions of others for things that had happened before she had actually been born?

  Why did anyone who lived in the present have to pay for the actions of those who had lived in the past?

  Lelesia chuckled as she saw Aster rise to meet her. “And what exactly do you think you can do, boy?”

  “Why?” Aster began. “Can’t people just move forward with the future? Do they need to be burdened by the past? Why can’t people just move on from the End War and the Astral Nova?” He steadied himself as he held his broken arm and tried to avoid putting weight on his broken leg. “You say I don’t understand anything because I’m a child. Then explain why so I can understand!”

  Then Lelesia was there in front of him, gripping his throat with her claws, hanging him off the ground with a single chitinous claw. Her voice was still melodious and mocking as her multiple pairs of crimson eyes stared into his own blue ones.

  Lelesia growled, a dangerous edge to her voice. “Has the beating I’ve given you not taught you to stop saying such stupid stuff boy?!”