Nico braced his hands on his knees, drawing in steady, shallow breaths until the ringing in his ears settled. He paused at the water’s edge, taking in the pink wash of early evening sky, grateful that the swamp had returned to something gentler. His ears stayed down however, unenthused; the cicadas had taken over where the hum left off.
Beside him, Kai breathed in the dusk-lit wetlands. The air was clean again, no longer thick with mana. His breath came loud at first, shoulders rising in short, sharp pulls. Then on a longer breath, steadier this time, he straightened his jacket and turned to leave with a curt, “Okay, I’m going”.
Nico, equally exhausted, wasn’t particularly in the mood to stop him. The marsh still smoked black aura in places, distorted past the point reality could tolerate. The water’s surface was sheened in a metallic color he didn’t have a word for. It was expected from the long term rift exposure. Left alone, unstable mana blighted environments until only a shadow of reality remained.
Something was weird. Kai felt it too, hence his contained tantrum. Still, he did walk off instead of portalling, so he was at least enjoying the sunset.
Nico lifted his hands, flipping them as he checked for burns. His arms felt heavy as a fine tremor ran through them. When he flexed his fingers, thin threads of light flared between them, sparking out of rhythm.
The Riftborn had been relentless.
Considering the intensity of the swarms and the number of elementals they yielded, it must have accumulated about a decade’s worth of mana. The other alchemists sent here likely never even reached the core. And yet, when the two of them did, the guardian fell too easily, again. It lashed out with brute force instead of utilizing elementals, as if it had already been drained of mana. An echo of the guardian they faced at the border.
Nico let his gaze drift over the wetlands. He hadn’t seen many landscapes like this. Trees hung their green veils of flowers and vines above open water that reflected the blushing sky. Two herons glided above, wings catching the last of the sunset. Frogs croaked, crickets answered, and a raccoon lingered at the shallows, one paw lifted, studying him with round-eyed curiosity. He diverted his gaze, letting it comfortably scurry past him.
The calm scratched at his heart.
How long had the rift distorted this place?
His ears drooped as his eyes softened. Something in the view felt familiar, and a memory surfaced.
A younger him with smaller ears and scruffier hair stood beneath a sunset just like this. The pink sky glowed with the same warmth, but here the silence was deafening, as if nature had gone into hiding. The weight of a gentle hand rested on his back, meant to comfort and to keep him still. A hum rolled in, faint at first, until a wind blew through, carrying the metallic scent of ozone.
He blinked the memory away, shaking his ears out with it.
His ears twitched.
Someone was watching him.
Nico straightened and drew mana into his palm as he folded his hand into a little finger gun that didn’t entirely match the mood of this situation.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED ||
[ 火 Ember (C) | "fire starter" ]
A flick of the wrist sent a flare from his fingertips—
–that fizzled out before it could even truly ignite. The elemental unraveled mid-air.
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Nico’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t put a lot of mana behind it, but it shouldn’t have been that easy to counter. This was someone skilled, but rather than feeling threatened, Nico felt… annoyed. They were obviously aware of each other.
“What are you doing?” Nico spoke evenly.
A lazy voice answered, “Got lost.”
Nico blinked. The guy was obviously bullshitting. They were in a restricted area that even he and Kai had taken precautions to access.
Still, he played along. “How’d you end up here?”
“Just took a wrong turn.” The man gestured vaguely to his left, as if that explained anything. He didn’t even bother to lie well.
“….”
A long pause stretched between them. Perhaps feeling awkward in the silence, the figure finally stepped out of the shadows— partially. Not all the way, just enough for light to catch on silver hair and the smooth curve of amethyst horns.
This guy was shameless. Infuriatingly so.
Oh.
“Zhoumin,” Nico said flatly.
Someone who could navigate this territory with such nonchalance. Notoriously powerful, aloof, and irritating in equal measure. They’d never met, but the man’s reputation preceded him. One of the few S-Class Alchemists alive at any given time. Sage, as people called them, because no one had a better word for those who wielded skills that bent the rules of mana itself. Their existence alone warped the balance.
Zhoumin seemed to take that as an invitation to step the rest of the way out. He raised his hands in lazy surrender, fingers wiggling slightly. He looked pleased to be recognized.
Nico was not as pleased. Few ever met a Sage in person; they were closer to phenomena than people. But he had seen this face enough times in media and guild briefings to recognize it. Unfortunately, Zhoumin looked exactly like his reputation— hot and unbothered.
Nico didn’t respond, but he did look. The breeze caught the hem of Zhoumin’s coat, lifting his waist-length silver hair with it. Warm dusk light touched his tan skin. Two crystalline horns curled from his forehead just beneath the hairline, catching light the same way his amethyst eyes did. The fox wanted to dislike him more. But it was hard to commit when someone was annoying and hot at the same time. And–
What is he doing taking so long?
Zhoumin spoke with what felt like deliberate slowness, “You shoot at everyone you meet in the swamp?”
Nico countered with his own question, “Why are you here?”
“You seem very sure,” Zhoumin said, head tilting, “that I’m the one who should be explaining myself.”
Is this how a conversation works?
Nico squinted. Zhoumin squinted back. Nico almost respected how audacious this guy was, so he relented.
“Central sent us to audit the area due to suspected rift activity. The Governor authorized us here.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Okay.”
Nico blinked, but forgot the part where he reopened his eyes.
Is this real life? Was he still in a rift? Is this how humans talk to each other?
Nico decided to commit to the philosophy of out of sight, out of mind, and turned around, putting the limits of object permanence to the test. If he couldn’t see the Sage, then the Sage wasn’t there. With this technique, he could avoid being the one to open the obvious line of questioning:
Why was there an S-Class Alchemist here?
In a restricted area?
That Central was actively auditing?
Riddled with decades of unreported rifts and unstable mana?
Dozens of theories floated through his head. Nico ignored them all. If he just played dumb until Kai encountered the Sage, then it would be Kai’s problem to deal with. That was the true power of teamwork.
“You dropped this,” Zhoumin said matter of factly, suddenly appearing behind Nico to drop something into his hand.
Nico caught it on reflex, startled by the sage’s abrupt proximity. The object fit neatly in his palm— a mana stone of some sort.
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“Okay.”
His tail idly swished as he rolled the stone between his fingers. Faint earth and water inscriptions ran across its surface, tempting him to feed mana into it. Against his better judgment, he did— and instantly regretted it.
The gem flared in a turbulent emerald glow. Nico’s eyes glazed over as he withdrew within himself; to swat away more concerns his brain was trying to alert him to.
“You weakened the dragon,” the fox said absently.
Zhoumin hummed. “So you did drop it.”
Nico looked up. Zhoumin was too clean for someone who had trekked through that warped bog. It would have been suspicious, if Nico hadn’t spent the last two decades with Kai.
It wasn’t the rifts. It was these two that were warping his sense of reality. People get muddy in swamps. Wearing coats in hot humidity isn’t normal. He was not the strange one.
“So,” Nico said after his internal affirmation session, “are you here investigating the rifts too?”
Zhoumin tilted his head again. “Hmm. If that’s what you think.”
At least he acknowledged the question this time.
Then, casually, Zhoumin added, “You’ll run into something if you keep heading east. Might even be able to make it before the end of the night.”
Nico blinked. Wait. “What kind of—”
But Zhoumin was gone.
Nico stood there, wind tousling his hair. The sky deepened into a lilac purple as the sun retired. He injected another pulse of mana into the emerald. It glowed faintly in response this time.
…Okay. Bye, I guess.
The non-goodbye also reminded him of someone.