Serial
96: Fang of the Wolf
March 22nd, 33 S.D. 13:34 Tafren Plains, Henron
She didn’t know what came over her. It were as if her mind, body, and soul were automatic. She moved according to an unseen plan, yet it came to her naturally, as if practiced time and again. Seras flowed through Losha as she began a series that wrapped around her servai. She’d never cast such a thing in her life, yet to her it felt so natural, so familiar, like it had been memorized. Her sword became curved, forming the tooth of a beast. Its color grew intense, near white as if burning. With one, single, downward slash, she cut the air before her. She stood a bit away from Govan, so her servai did not hit him directly. Instead, something else happened. Beneath Govan, her seras seemingly teleported underfoot. It rose quickly, shooting upward before the Prime Lead even realized the attack. In an instant, he was caught in a pillar of light. As the tower of seras reached the sky, Govan’s body was immediately consumed in brilliance.
“Yaaaaaaah!” he cried; his voice was soon drowned out by the swirling winds Losha’s move created as a side effect. The blue column spread high above the plains, reaching some 500 meters or so in altitude. It illuminated the entire battlefield, drawing shadows even in the darkness of the storm. At first, many thought it was a flash of lightning, but as they stopped and turned, their eyes fell upon the beacon. For as far away as Capital City, everyone could see the mighty ray aiming towards the heavens. The fighting all at once paused; both sides stood down as they looked at the light. Some were fearful, others bewildered, a few remained curious and puzzled, but the rest, the majority, they knew what it meant. They knew the conflict had ended.
Gradually, Losha’s series began to fade. The beam thinned out slowly; it shrank down to the earth, like a dying fire. As the radiance subsided, Govan’s shape emerged. When things returned to normal, the Prime Lead stood before her, hunched forward. His arms dangled back and forth; his hair tumbled over the front of his pale face. He breathed heavily as a multitude of orange sparks coursed up and down his body. He shook and trembled; Govan was obviously at his limit. At the corner of her vision, however, Losha noticed what looked like blue electricity dancing along her shoulder. She glanced at herself in a nearby puddle.
“Sa,” she whispered to herself. “I too am at my limit...” That last attack had taken away all but a slim portion of her seras. Her servai, no longer fed a constant supply of seras, vanished from her hand, winking out of existence. The flickering light on her proved she was almost empty, though her condition remained much better than Govan’s.
She touched the left side where she’d been wounded. An ordinary person would have been cleaved in two, but her kinetic force-field had reduced a significant amount of harm. Where the serasword normally ought to saw through bones, here it had given Losha a deep gash that ran all the way down to her breast. It throbbed fiercely for a while, stinging as the rain washed upon it, yet now the burning numbed. She knew it was her soul’s seras going to work, repairing the injuries. Even with so little left, she was using that energy to protect herself. The process happened on its own without her explicit order.
The Prime Lead rasped loudly, taking a step forward. He tried to look up at Losha, but his eyes couldn’t get a fix on her. Nevertheless, he stumbled forward, nearly collapsing with each foot he planted.
“Unng...” he grumbled as the orange, electric-like light increased.
“Govan,” Losha said. “Stop. Our fight is over. The war is over. There is no battle left for us. Do you not see?”
“... Unng... haa... uhh!” he sputtered laboriously, swaying to the side as if he were going to fall. “N-no, not over... not now. I... have yet to... to...” He raised the handle of what was formerly the serasword. All it was now was a lump of metal gripped in his hand. Sansat’s battery apparatus held on loosely, its various wires torn and exposed. With a quaking hand, he raised what was left of his weapon, as if he intended to run her through with it. Without the stone, however, the handle was blunt, and his strength had been depleted. By slight degrees, he kept coming towards her. All the while she watched, distantly, as one does when they pity a child.
They stood directly in front of one another now. The Prime Lead seemed dwarfed compared to himself just moments ago. Now no longer did he stand tall and erect. His once imposing stature crippled right before her eyes. Stooped over, he barely rose to her own height. He appeared to drag his limbs each time he moved. At last, heaving harshly as his breath escaped him, Govan tried to stab her. In reality, all he did was bump the blade-less handle against her stomach. If anything, it tickled her at the most.
“Gah... hah...” he wheezed. His arm could scarcely support itself and gave way moments after his attack.
“Govan... You lost.” Losha said, stepping around him. She began to walk away, towards the rest of the allied army. “Stop. Do nothing more. Your soul cannot bear further stress. If you push yourself any harder, you will kill yourself. Mine are not the ways of bloodshed; I have no interest in finishing off your life. If you continue this foolishness, however, you will force yourself to perish.”
Losha went on, leaving Govan alone. Suddenly, however, she felt what small seras Govan had spike all at once.
“Aaaaaaa!” he roared, standing up, tossing his head back as he bellowed into the rain. He clenched his fists firmly at his sides, whipping around and using the last reserves of his power. Losha halted, sighed, but turned back to the Prime Lead with a frown. His body now was nothing more than a cascade of orange sparks. She could only faintly recognize his form underneath it all. Govan charged at her, running with as much might as he could muster. Before he even made it halfway towards her, all of his seras evaporated in an instant.
Like a cloud, his body dispersed into dust, blown away by the wind. It were as if he’d disappeared in a puff of smoke. The orange light of his seras shorted out as the handle of the serasword clunked to the ground. For a while, Losha merely stood there; her lungs seized up; her mouth opened but slightly as her eyes widened. What exactly had just happened? Was she somehow hallucinating? She told herself that couldn’t be right; Govan’s seras frequency had completely ceased to be. She could no longer feel the presence of his soul, for he had already departed from this world. Was this what happened when someone pushed themselves to the brink of their seras? Was this what became of those who went down to zero? It were as if the vessel of the soul could not stand the abuse and simply wasted away in a mere second.
As she found herself breathing again, the shock eventually ebbed out of her system. After that, however, she realized just how tired she was. Losha sank to her knees, sitting herself on the ground. Through the opening of her pelt, the Wolf looked up into the storm. It may have simply been fanciful thinking, but she swore the day had brightened. Now the skies were a neutral slab of gray stretching across the horizon. The rain felt a little lighter; the wind brushed by calmly. Finally, she had put a stop to this pointless war. After so much fighting and so much violence, the plains could settle.
Her head bobbed forward as she struggled to keep awake, yet she could not help her drooping eyes. In time, Losha surrendered to the demands of sleep. She had no say in the matter at any rate. She fell on her side and soon lost consciousness.
Later, as she floated through a state of drowsiness, she heard things around her. Though her mind had technically shut itself down, the action near her made its way into her memory all the same, albeit like a dream. Footsteps approached, squishing through the saturated field. It was only one person. They stopped as if looking at her, then they came closer. Losha’s eyes opened, but the haze of her slumber made all things indistinct. She remained too worn out to raise her head or even mentally react. She remembered, however, seeing a pair of boots. Some words were spoken, but her ears slurred certain parts beyond recognition.
“... thought I would find you here... finally... really saw... You did it this time, ace.” Movement, then this someone stooped down beside her.
“Glaa...” Losha murmured in coherently, still a captive to utter exhaustion. Laughter, then the person spoke again.
“... no need to thank me.”
Vaguely, she recalled being picked up. Whoever was there hauled her over their shoulders, then they started walking. She passed out completely for a time, dropping back into her stupor. Occasionally, she’d halfway come to. It was strange; she could see the ground bouncing as they moved, but she felt no sense of motion, as if she were disconnected from everything. There were more voices now, but to her they only sounded like a drone.
In a brief moment of clarity, Losha wondered what had become of WOLFWIND, her teammates. Were they alright? What about Izel? She couldn’t make out any seras frequencies nearby; she was far too spent to even detect the person carrying her. For whatever reason, she thought she recognized them, whoever they were. Eventually they stopped. Gently, she was laid out on something soft. She rolled over on her back and slipped into nothingness.
“Well, it looks like it’s over,” Laven said. He sat on a large rock jutting out of the earth. Staring to the west, he could see the Tafren Plains in the background. Here, he and Einer occupied higher land, affording them a better view of recent events. Of course, the unaided eye could only gather so much at that range. Casting a light manipulating series, Laven had created a virtual screen that magnified whatever scene he wanted. Like a camera, he panned it on Losha.
“We have the results of her first trial. Looks like she passed,” Einer said.
“That is for King to decide,” Laven reminded him, wiping his hand across the air and erasing his series. “However, I should say you’re right. With that, the threat posed by serastone is contained, for now at least. But you know as well as I do that there will be more tests ahead for her. This is just the start. Serialization will be monitored for as long as it exists. If it ever gets out of hand, King steps in to end what he started.”
“If you ask me,” Einer said, standing up. “I still don’t get what Duke was after all along in the Central Plains. You said you thought he was trying to get King to react somehow, by stirring up trouble?”
“Yes, but if he wanted a response, a serious one, he failed to get it.”
“Tch. Maybe he was screwing with our heads after all.”
“Could be,” Laven murmured, leaning back and folding his arms. “We can say that Losha is of much interest to him. I can imagine why. She’s just like him; she’s starting to remember the last world. That final series of her, you know what that was, right?”
“Yeah,” Einer nodded. “That was her vante. Every serialist has three types of series only they can perform: vante, advante, and granadvante. It’s linked to their seras frequency alone, which is why it’s unique to only one soul. It’s an extremely advanced concept. There’s no way she’d learned that on her own, not with her current understanding of the art.”
“Exactly. She must have learned it once before. It’s starting to come back to her now. What an interesting ability though. Looks like her vante performs high-speed projection of raw seras, faster than anything you or I could do. In effect, she can launch attacks like that almost instantly.”
“Wonder what she’ll use it for later.”
“We’ll find out, one day. Our job is to watch her and the development of serialization. That is a long-term observation.”
“Tch,” Einer said, tossing his head to the side. “Ain’t like we don’t have time. We’re already a century old, you and me. What’s a few more decades?”
Laven paused as he looked back at the battlefield. “So, what do you think of number ten?” he asked his partner. “You finally got to see him after all.”
“Feh!” Einer spat. “We’ve seen him plenty before, just no one ever told us it was that kid all the time. Now that I think about it though, it makes sense. He was just as much behind the scenes as we were. Gotta say, I can’t wait to meet him in person. He may be just a boy, but he sure has fire in him. Just like that other kid from Palostrol, the one I beat up.”
“Denze?” Laven asked. “One of Losha’s companions? Yes, the one King left behind that night. Well, it will be a while before we return to the Palace of Shais, but when we do, you’ll undoubtedly get a chance to meet number ten. Until then, he’s still under orders, same as the two of us.”
“I can’t believe he hasn’t even been formally inducted into the ranks, yet he’s already pulling these secret tasks for King.”
“Like Marla said,” Laven began, “they have a history rooted in the old world.”
“Must be some history,” Einer shook his head. “King put a lot of faith into him, and he’s played a crucial role in these events. We were left entirely in the dark too, like King wanted us to stay out of the way.”
“Or it may have been a trial for number ten,” Laven pointed out. “He did everything without our help though. Impressive if I may say so.”
“What now, Laven? Losha’s biggest problems have been eliminated. Serastone, for the present at least, has been stopped. But there are still loose ends, like that doctor.”
“Let number ten take care of that.”
“What?” Einer asked, turning around to him.
“From what we’ve seen, it’s his job to handle those kinds of issues. We’ll keep watch for a little while longer as this place settles down, then we’ll go back and make our report. Another team will replace us whenever Losha starts that school of hers.”
“Hmph. Going back means we’ll have to train with Sambur’s little brats,” Einer sneered.
“Don’t be like that,” Laven frowned. “They’ll make a fine army someday. If serialization ever goes out of control - and it’s already happened once - we’ll need them...”
Losha groaned as she began to stir. She didn’t want to awaken, but rather desired a return to sleep. Nevertheless, she came to, rising from her rest.
“Uhnnn...” she mumbled opening her eyes. The sky above her was now a soft, light gray. The rains had ended and the wind was no more than a faint breeze. Immediately, she could sense a sea of people close at hand. Their voices spun noisily into the air like the banter of a crowd. Even so, she could see no one near her. She realized her Wolf of War pelt had been removed. Turning her gaze to the right, she saw the fierce headpiece glaring at her on the ground.
Her left side felt very stiff; she found a long series of bandages wrapped around her chest and shoulder. Someone had dressed her wound and changed her soaking clothes. For a brief while, Losha wondered if she’d need stitches. The last time she’d suffered a serious injury - when Koter had pierced her side with a crossbow - she healed perfectly without any medical attention. Not even a scar remained from that incident. In that case, she believed she would do fine without stitches again. Curious about the aftermath of the battle, Losha slowly sat upright.
“Ghh...” she grunted, still feeling quite tired.
“Se? Are you awake now?” asked a woman behind her.
“Not like I want to be...” Losha admitted. She could do with another hour of sleep. Still, she had to know the situation.
“Please, try not to move, Ver Holvate,” the woman said, stepping in front of Losha’s view. She wore an armband indicating her rank as a Field Lead; her uniform was Sventa.
“I am fine, Ver...?”
“Doctor Seka Sante,” she replied, stooping down next to her. “Your shoulder was ripped up badly. Your chest was gouged up here as well. Fortunately, no damage to the heart or lungs is evident. Your wounds were extensive nevertheless, but... by the time I started working on you...” Seka said, pointing at Losha’s body.
“It was already getting better,” Losha said, finishing the doctor’s sentence.
“Sa. Ver Holvate... You are an incredible woman. It is one thing to hear the stories, but to see you...” Seka stood up. “Just do not push yourself. While I have had years of practice, you probably know your capabilities far more clearly than I do.”
Losha nodded silently. She looked out ahead at the Tafren Plains. She’d been moved away from everyone else and put on a large mat. A few soldiers stood a bit off, guarding the area around her. Most of the allied army had spread out, supervising the disarmament and detainment of Govan’s troops. The Prime Lead’s forces complied peacefully and orderly. In groups of lines, they marched back towards the capital with their hands on top of their heads. All the while, mixed units of Sventa and Henron kept watch. She sighed and leaned back, propping herself on her right arm.
“It is finally over, sa?” Doctor Seka asked.
“Sa,” Losha replied. “The war is over, yet so much more remains to be done. Henron will begin to reform itself. A new government for a new age. Meanwhile, Sventa will have to learn to build relationships not on conflict, but on the basis of cooperation. That starts here, with Henron. Neither path is going to be easy, but if we never allow ourselves to think beyond the old ways we used to live our lives, we will trap ourselves in a cycle. Every crisis, every dispute, every misunderstanding will escalate right back to the battlefield if do not try something different. We put a close to this war, but war will happen again. It should be our job to see that such instances are rare and short, and make it that much harder to take place in the future.”
“Do you really think these lands can ever be calmed?” Seka asked, pouring some water into a mug for Losha. “It just seems so strange to imagine, Ver Holvate.”
“Just Losha is fine,” she said, taking the offer by the handle. “It will not be so readily done. Hating your neighbor is so much easier than understanding them. Ours is a world of rivalries. A dozen major clans all competing for their own slice of power. But, when you get past all other details, each of us is Asten. Perhaps the only thing we share today is the same tongue, but tomorrow... I see a time when surnames are meaningless syllables. Someday, I see us all walking under the same banner.”
“You speak so optimistically,” Seka smiled; her words formed a genuine compliment.
“After all that has happened, we would do well to remember this one lesson,” Losha said as she held her left palm up. She looked into it as her fingers gradually curled into a fist. “Nothing is beyond reach.”
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