Black Clover: Ash and Tarnish

A figure silhouetted in the shadows cast by a falling sun, stands in a field of faultess, grey stone. 

In the center of this field, stands a tower, made of cobblestone of the same dark grey hue, lit by the purples and oranges of dusk, it's shadow creates the illusion of a scar upon the land, a tenebrous ravine the likes of which could only exist within shade.

With a simple leap, the figure landed atop the spire in one motion, and disappeared into it's depths.

Now alone with the tower, the blazing oranges and reds of dusk gave way to the purples and violets of night.

Upon the night's embrace flooding the sky, the moon began to speed up in a miraculous manner.

What was seconds turned to minutes, minutes bled into hours, the sun rose in what felt like an instant and slipped away at an even faster pace, even as hours melded into days, and as the days morphed into months, it appeared almost as if the sun and moon began to dance together, leaving streaks of celestial light in their wakes.

As months formed years, the day and night began to blur, taking on the hues of purples and blues of night and day, while also keeping the oranges and reds of dawn and dusk.

But even as this awesome scene took form, the tower remained undaunted, the shadow dancing along with the lights, and never once, did that graceful being ever leave it's depths.

As more and more years past, small flickers, barely there for an moment began to appear.

First alone, then quickly in droves.

Soon, these flickers began to build around the tower, first up to it, then outward around it, and eventually, a small collection of homes appears, and the flickers of human silhouettes would enter and exit them as if clock work.

As the figures grew more constant and consistent, so too did the buildings, from once where only a few houses stand, now a town of winding roads and cobbled streets could be found.

But still, the spire remained standing, not even the great and terrible storms that had begun to break above the valley could affect it, even as it acted as a fulcrum for the lighting strikes that came from above, it remained untouched by even soot.

in what felt like a moment, where once was a barren wasteland of stone, now stretched a town, with winding paths, and houses made with the same grey rock that made up the surroundings, but in the next second, before the flickers could truly react, the town was attacked, the buildings set ablaze, in the same droves they came, the flickers of those people left, either dying and in so doing, allowing me my first true look at them, or running, it was all the same, the once magnificent town, was now ruined.

but even still, the tower stood.

Undaunted and unmarred, even as the attackers sent attack after attack at the towers walls, it still stood without a scratch.

Eventually, the flickers of those attackers disappeared all the same, but no one who ran, ever came back to that place.

Over the course of centuries, the wood rotted, and turned to ash, the stone became like sand, and was blown away, eventually hardening back into more of that same, faultess stone.

Storms began to linger, the dark clouds nearly blotting out the dance in the sky, always going from the east, traveling to the west, always leaving in the blink of years.

With them, of course came more rain and lighting, creating it's own kind of dance, more unique than the routine of the sun and moon, but fading far, far faster.

As time seemed finally, to slow, but not fully, I saw as a group of rough looking men and women come to the valley of stone.

Heedless of it's smooth nature stone, they tried to climb the tower, weather, day or night, they tried and they tried, heedless of even the elements.

Attempt after attempt, even if they got to the top, it was impossible to enter it's depths.

It's vault like entrance halted any advance.

That was, until eight of their ilk managed to gain footing on the peak of the spire at once.

And the vault glowed, and began to spiral inward.

The rest, the ones that did not gain entry, built encampments around the tower, much as those before them had, and again, they left, and brought back wood, and built homes, and once again, atop the now flattened, dark grey stone like remains of the once beautiful town, another village took it's place.

But, unlike the town, that took no heed to the tower and took advantage of it's height to avoid the worst of the storms, the village built stairs up to it, above it, and eventually, they even brought such things as wood and chests inside it.

These people could use magic, many different kinds, all in different ways, they could even change what element they used as they cast their spells it was a marvel all it's own, though they barely lasted a millisecond now.

When they spoke, it sounded like wind blowing at my ears, laughter sounded like thunder, and their steps found purchase with the sound of churning earth.

And when lightning met stone, the clamor of joyously laughing voices met my ears, and the rain dropped down upon their homes with the noise of all kinds of footsteps.

As they built, and as they lived, and as they ate, and as they drank, before I knew it, the mood of the now booming town grew quiet and somber.

It was made apparent as to why, after they began to prepare for War.

They sharpened their knives and spears, trained rigorously upon the grounds they had built from the rubble of a town less prepared for something like this, and then, the ones fit for combat, marched away.

I could not follow.

Time was about to start it's cruel race, and speed up in earnest again, but before it could, the sky and earth took on a cold, blue hue.

A mist of ice began to cover the floor of the valley, and the remaining townsfolk quickly began to shiver as they felt the temperature drop.

As it began to rain again, the rain frosted over, it turned to ice crystals in mid air, as the storm continued, and slowly got faster, and faster, days and nights began to blur again, but the clouds in the sky had become so numerous that nothing was to be seen of the dance of those celestial objects.

On the third day of ceacless cloud cover, simple seconds to my perception, the warband returned.

Of those one hundred and sixty who had left, only the eight that opened the tower in the first place, remained.

And as they walked to the tower, all injured, or carrying someone else who was more so, they climbed up the stairs, as they had countless times, and entered the tower.

I never saw them again.

However, they were followed, upon horseback, men carrying books of magic, riding on horses and clothed in bright whites and reds, came to the near abandoned town, and once again, the homes and fields of those people, the ones who had managed not to freeze, or run, were destroyed or frozen, widowed women, elderly, even children who had lost their parents to the same men, were all mercilessly slaughtered.

After there was naught but shards of ice where once was a town, they quickly narrowed their focus on the tower.

The attackers entered into the tower, and for last time, I never saw them again.

…

Buffeted by the now near constant ice fall, the landscape was near instantly covered in a thick layer of something similar to loose pebbles of hail.

But as the 'hail' began to consume the valley of stone, and even started to engulf the tower, something else began to occur.

The one side of the land that wasn't effected by the slight, blue aura around the whole valley, began to slowly rise upward.

Or rather, the stone land of the valley was beginning to sink.

The world began to speed up, and the sky finally lost it's mantle of cloud, I watched the valley become a half bowl shape, and a truly massive sheer cliff begin to form from a line the length of the horizon.

Flickers -barely seen for even a tick- came and went, none in the same place, none ever seen twice.

As the hail slowly grew, never once shrinking in size, the mountains of the east and west had too changed.

One was now covered head to toe in frost, and the other continued to spew with lava.

But even as time past, and flickers came, never again was another town made, and eventually, even the tower itself was eaten whole by the hail flat.

All the while, the entrance was never actually closed at all.

Eventually, something made of a pure white ivory began to cover the hole, and hail began to cover over even that bit of the once grand spire.

And then, after an untrackable amount of decades, a massive flicker came, and was, as the others, consumed by the hail, though it took around half a second for this one.

And then, only a few seconds later, the hole reappeared, the hail was drawn into the hole, the hail began to melt slightly, and a beam of white light fell from the moon, into the hole.

Two more flickers came then a bit after, blew something up, and just as the rest, were taken by the hail.

Mere moments later however, they ripped a way out of the ground, and flew off on a blurr of brown, and were gone, just like that.

A few seconds after that -a blurry flicker peeked out for an instant, then disappeared into the hole- and then, the flicker hopped out completely, and road off on a sled and sped off like a comet.

For the first time, I was able to follow.

After the sky began to darken, the flicker quickly made a simple camp, and went to sleep.

And as I watched it, time slowed to a crawl.

Decades became years, years shaped into months, which fell into weeks, that then shifted to days, which might have become hours.

Those hours then tumbled back into minutes, and the idea of minutes finally readjusted back to it's normal rate, second to second.

And as I watched this flicker, suddenly turn distinctly human, I realized with sudden clarity, that I was looking at a child.

One wrapped head to toe in the furred hide of a beast.

But as seconds passed, for the first time in countless life times, it did not fall into the step of minutes, hours, days…

And as time crawled forward, for what felt like decades, but were simple minutes, the child woke up.

And as it -she- she turned to me, it was not the eyes of a human I was met with.

Where her eyes should have been, were two bleeding voids of ichor, crying down her cheeks, one heavily marred by a scar that revealed the monster-wearing-the-skin-of-a-child's rows of horrifically razor sharp teeth…

As it peered into what felt like my deepest parts, a sudden and terrible fear envelopment my being, and my screams echoed within my mind, even as I had now mouth to vocalize them, I could do anything but stare back into those terrible voids as it got closer.

And then I woke up.

- - - -

I don't hate a lot of things, (that's wrong, I hate a lot) but one of the things I can say I despise -especially as of late- is my own dreams.

I'm not talking about my aspirations or something, but my actual dreams, REM sleep and such, that shit, it's very rapidly becoming one of my least favorite parts of existence.

Well, some times it isn't, I actually like sleeping well enough when I'm not getting bombarded with ominous messages or just really off putting stuff that leads to some creepy eye related jump scare at the end for no fucking reason.

It's been happening with far more frequency -nearly every night- since I portal two'd that book to the moon, maybe a bit before that.

Worst thing is, they're getting more and more realistic. So realistic in fact, that it's starting to become common, that I can't fucking distinguish the differences between reality and those dreams.

Not all of them are as unsettling as the one I had last night, think more, massive spiders crawling out of an ocean in the middle of the night, or an endless hallway with a murder abomination that's trying to kill you and oh-no-you-stepped-on-glue-that-was-on the-floor-for-some-reason-and-now-it's-gonna-get-ya...

So really, I've just been having dreams that suck pretty much every night for, maybe a week and a half now? Or so.

But this one, I know it was a dream it was just- so, detailed.

What's worse is, that feeling I get whenever something's looking at me? Yeah, that's going off like crazy.

And I don't know why, but the feeling's as stubborn as a tick, it just, won't fucking leave me be.

But I'm not gonna look.

Not just because of that small part of my mind -the part that only talks when I'm still waking up- is constantly whispering foreboding things like 'don't look into the Eye' or 'not again, not again, not again' and other freaky things of that nature, but also simply because, I would really rather not look at whatever a part of my own still waking brain is so terrified of.

So, I'm not gonna fucking look.

I flinch as I hear a sound behind me that sounds suspiciously like something landing on the hail, my body tenses, as I start to - oh.

ringing in the silence of the desert night, more of that same noise -like marble beads mutely hitting more of the same- is produced from all around me, and I finally realize where that sound is coming from.

It had begun to hail while I was caught up in my own head.

The hail- ice crystals began to pelt down on my head, even through my hat, I could feel them land on me.

The sensation, to my relief, grounds me to the present, even as I untense, stand and stretch, and begin packing up my small camp, I make sure to keep my attention to the storm, so as to avoid inadvertently looking behind me.

After a few minutes -that to my relief, actually felt like minutes- of packing everything tight on my rather small sled, I push on the ground, and as I do so, I send a string of mana through the runes covering the underside of the sled, and it begins to rather loudly shutter to life.

As I feel the array begin to siphon ambient mana from to power itself, it begins to float, ever so slightly, off the ground, only by an inch or so, and just as designed, begins to dart forward, and gain speed at a good pace.

Even as it does so, the world above begins to alight in bright pale blue energy, crackling and distant it may have been at the moment, it was only a matter of time before the churning lightning began to try and make it's way to the mostly flat surface of ice crystals.

And -being the tallest thing in the area- most likely me as well.

While I traveled across the wasteland, my mind was given plenty of time to wake up fully, and the memories of whatever dream I had fell from my grasp as thunder rolled through the sky.

The goggles over my eyes did nothing to help me see in the hailstorm that raged on, but I could barely see a thing even without it, but I knew the hail would be reflecting all that light directly into my eyes if I dared to take it off.

I'm not giving you the chance, universe.

As if in response, the hail behind me blew up, as a streak of lightning struck down from on high, mere inches from me.

And before I could even react, the ring of of thunder invaded my senses, and as if two Miners had taken their picks to my ears, I was bombarded by the pain of the noise invading my brain.

I flinched again due to the pinpoint agony of that noise blasting at my hearing, and my hands jerked the hovering sled off course.

Suddenly I was launched forward through the air uncontrollably.

End over end, both the sled and I were sent spiraling through the air.

Desperately trying to keep my grip on the sled, even as the feeling vertigo and my organs pressing into each other had me feeling sick, on top of the shock of the noise, that had fallen to a ringing in the ears, that I accidentally let go, as the cumulative feelings of weakness and imbalance overwhelmed my senses.

I was sent flying away from the sled, and my mind couldn't understand what was up and down for a moment.

after a moment, the feather like feeling of floating left me, and remembered wha was down, as I met the rough terrain of hail beneath me like an old friend.

My mana skin began to engulf me instinctively nearly as soon as I felt the impact, but I was still left dazed as my momentum kept me rolling over the slightly more than lumpy wasteland of ice pebbles.

As I finally stopped, ears still ringing and snow goggles having fallen off in the tumble, I laid there motionless, spread out over the hail like a fluffy starfish, staring up at the roiling clouds above, as my grip on reality slowly began to reassert itself, I turned my head a bit only to see that my sled had continued moving, after being knocked onto it's center of balance again.

I remembered designing that balance rune, I remember how ecstatic I was when I realized that I had finally gotten it right, I also remembered that I had fallen unconscious soon after, and forgot to finish the failsafe for if it ever got away from me like, it just fucking did.

'My pack is on that thing…' 

…

'OH SHIT MY PACK IS ON THAT THING!' And at the double take of that thought -the feeling of my own state of disorientation being shoved out of the way, was remarkably refreshing- I quickly stood up and began to chase after it, nearly heedless of the storm above.

It was as I began to run after the damned thing, I remembered to put my snow goggles back on, just as the lightning all around began to strike in earnest.

though I didn't notice it at the time I was going a tad bit faster, nor did have the time to acknowledge how the back of my neck and joints tingled slightly in disagreement, as if the way I was running was wrong.

Simply because I was concerned with the plumes of hail pellets that were kicked up by the sled's passing over them, and the possibility actually struck by a stray bolt.

At the time of making it, I was more focused on making sure it was actually stable -and efficient on top of that- I didn't really consider something like the detritus it would kick up with anything other than passing neutrality, but then again, I made it with the idea of staying on it, and unfortunately, I was too focused on making sure it would be able to run for long enough for me to get home without freezing to death, that I simply didn't think it would be that big of an issue.

As I have countless times before, I wanted to kick my past self for not thinking things through, especially before doing something like making a nearly unstoppable, frictionless, gods damned hover sled…

'Maybe, next time, you should actually listen to the voices in you're head when they say that it wasn't full-proof enough, who knows you might just manage not to lose your ticket to an easy way out of this hellhole next time.' Red said with a near smarmy kind of annoyance, like the asshole they are.

Fed up with getting pelted with hail -both from the sky and from the sled- I cast out a mana string, maneuvered it out of the way of the hail, then attach it to the handle of my sled, and tried to pull myself onto damn thing.

The sled is rather heavy (with all my stuff on it) and with only the clothes on, I'm still far lighter than it, on top of that, I designed it to accelerate until it couldn't anymore, (according to the simulation I ran about the array itself, that's what's happening) so, without much warning, my arm was nearly jolted out of it's socket as I began to get dragged behind my sled.

With a bit of reorientation and a lot of patience, however, I was finally able to get onto (the clam baked waste of good parts) the sled after trying for -I'd like to say a few minutes?- I don't really know how long.

Though, I was also covered in hail, so that sucked, even as I regained control of the vehicle, and guided it back on course, I tied one of my hands to the handle of the sled, so that I wouldn't accidentally fall off again.

Just as I did this, the hailstorm began to pelt down at a way faster rate, wave after wave, like a barrage of arrows from one of those over dramatic films about old wars, the light of the predawn sky was covered nearly completely in the shadow of the amount of hail.

The only light came from the lighting coursing like a current of centipedes through the clouds, threatening to smite the landscape or me, at any second.

My core had begun to buzz with that odd tingle after I had gotten nearly struck the first time, that buzz only had one name in my mind.

anticipation.

As this happened, I passively realized that the cold had finally started to get to me, since I began to shiver and twitch, even my teeth had begun to inadvertently clatter.

I felt a shiver go up my spine as from the cliff, I felt a Massive amount of untamed, raw Killing Intent, potent enough to be add the slight taste of iron and feathers to my tongue.

And before I could even snap my eyes to the sudden, new issue, it was as if the storm had gained sentience, and I felt the rumbling of a truely colossal beam of lightning raked upon the ground, followed by an impossibly bright light shining into the crack of my snow goggles.

I covered my ear with one hand, and pressed my other ear into my shoulder, since my other hand is tied down currently, but the sound of thunder still entered, as if barely impeded, and wrecked my mental facilities and balance with the sheer bleeding noise.

The Ki was familiar, though, the one who cast it out so freely, probably had no idea he was doing so, and by the looks of it, he finally got fed up by being held back by the other slowpokes in the Union, and decided to get his wrinkly ass down here.

Though, seeing as he decided to come in guns a blazing, he probably thinks I'm down here willingly, or dead or some bullshite like that…

Ripping my hand off the bar, and flipping over the sled, so as to crouch on top of it was all I could do in the second between the noise breaking into my head, and the shockwave that followed.

I'm lucky that this was all it took to counterbalance the sled into not flipping all over the place.

it would have been sending my sled and I end over end, just like that first one, but with the adrenaline of it happening once, along with the very slight warning of the sheer pressure of the Old Man's chimera like KI pressing down on me a moment before the strike came, it was enough for me to act, if only barely. (And it was also way, way further away)

The asshat didn't even register the human shaped Ki signature a few kilometers away, he just kept burrowing into that damned dungeon, he probably still thought his best scout was trapped in there.

Why it took him two. Gods Forsaken. Weeks. To finally get over himself and help with the situation… I have no fackin clue, what I do know, is that his actions inadvertently blasted me forward, And towards a rapidly growing mound of snow in the distance.

Due to my counterbalancing putting more weight on the front, and the momentum dying out as I reached it, the sled -and I along with it- nose dived straight into the start of the first snowy hill.

- - - - 

The end (of this chapter…) Pretty big chapter, more in a bit.