Micro didn’t have time to be surprised as Ling and a dozen cultivators who had been hiding nearby suddenly jumped up and proceeded to spread a wave of panic across the sect. Micro walked to the edge of the gazebo after taking a sip of his tea, and looked down at the sect as people began to run into stores and houses, emptying the dirt roads in little time. Doors slammed, windows closed, and the roar of the panicked populace eventually quieted. Micro then looked back at Lena, finding her still seated comfortably with her face resting in her palm. He thought he could hear a faint laugh coming from the Elder of the Water Tiger Moon Sect, but she met his gaze with a look of exhaustion.
“You didn’t think such information was immediately relevant?” she asked.
“Dayra wasn’t very interested in conversation at the time, and then we started walking on those bumpy paths, so…”
“So?”
“I figured it could wait,” Micro said with a shrug. “I need to find Lo. Magicians aren’t really my problem.”
“Well, shall we see to the chaos you’ve stirred?” Lena nodded, then rose to her feet and clapped her hands together once. “I am hopeful that you were mistaken, as it would be shameful even for Ling’s sect to blindly welcome magicians into their temple.”
“I wonder what that girl was doing here,” Micro replied. “They’ve probably caught her by now. Information straight from the source would be a refreshing turn of events…”
~
Micro and Lena followed the sound of chaos down several dirt roads, seeing only the occasional villager scrambling to find a building to hide in, though most doors were securely locked. Kolt and Kira followed quietly behind Micro, while Lena looked around with her eyes glowing much brighter than before.
“There,” Lena pointed ahead of them. “They are gathering people in the square up ahead.”
“What kind of people?” Micro asked.
“They are weak,” Lena replied. “I assume they intend to question any person too weak to be considered a cultivator. You are certain you saw a magician?”
“What about the villagers?” Micro asked. “I’m pretty sure I saw one of the magicians who summoned me, but most of the villagers don’t have cores either.”
“Although they cannot be called disciples, those who are born within the sect’s sphere of influence are generally well attuned to the cultivation of whatever energy is prominent in the area. They are guaranteed a path to power, should they choose it.”
“So, they’re… potential cultivators?” Micro asked. “And they can’t be magicians?”
“Such a case would be unprecedented,” Lena replied. “Though the unprecedented and the impossible are things I should strive not to confuse in your presence…”
Micro was disturbed by the scene unfolding in the square when he arrived there shortly behind Lena. Cultivators had rounded up dozens of people and restrained them with ropes despite their desperate pleas. They were better dressed than any so-called mundane person Micro had seen, but their weak cries in the presence of the anxious and vastly more powerful cultivators made them seem as pathetic as any non-cultivator Micro had met. Ling emerged from the group of cultivators who continued to cautiously circle their prisoners, flinching at the slightest movement of the pleading men and women.
“Is the magician among this group?!” Ling shouted at Micro.
“Who are these people?” Micro asked in surprise. “Why are there so many non-cultivators here?”
“They are nobles of this very kingdom, child!” Ling snapped back. “They frequent this region on diplomatic missions!”
“They sound important…” Micro replied. “I don’t think there’s any reason to panic.”
Micro leaned to his right to look around Ling and get a better view of the prisoners, and noticed a single person among them calmly looking back at him. At first her expression was sombre, but when she took notice of his red eye, a wide smile appeared on her face. Micro felt a twinge of nostalgia as the feeling of the cold cave where he was summoned crept up his spine, but something caught his eyes before he could open his mouth to speak.
Micro had grown accustomed to seeing the physical world with only one eye, but the woman in the crowd looked different from any other person around him. He wasn’t using energy to see the immaterial elements in the world as he had learned to do, but he could clearly see her and the aura surrounding her with both of his eyes. He closed his good eye to confirm the oddity, leaving only the eye which had been blinded by chaos energy open to view her, and he saw the young woman standing in vast landscape of pure darkness.
Micro opened his good eye again, too distracted by his own confusion to quickly explain what he’d seen, but when the woman winked back at him, he regretted his indecisiveness.
WOOSH
“It’s her!” Micro shouted, but a loud hum filled the temple as the girl closed her eyes and began to whisper to herself. Before any of the people around him took notice of the girl, the innumerable statues which decorated the temple suddenly began to glow.
“Again?!” Lena suddenly shouted in frustration as she, along with every other person in the square, fell to her knees while grasping their chest.
Bright beams of light shot out of each statue toward the sky, meeting high above the temple. They mingled there shortly before forming a large barrier around the entire area of the sect. Kolt and Kira immediately fainted as chaos energy filled the air and the life force of every person beneath the barrier began to drain. The only two people left standing were Micro and the girl whose eyes remained closed.
“Nora’s divine intervention has made a blessed event of this unfortunate day…!” the girl proclaimed with a reverent tone, her voice echoing in Micro’s ears. “I thought our plans might have been for nought…”
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“What are you doing?” Micro asked while trying to discern if there was anything wrong with his body, though he was once again unable to easily circulate his energy. He tried to shout, but his voice was weak. “Don’t hurt anybody…”
“For you to find your way back to me at such a time, I can only rejoice in the name of the saviour of all mortals…!” the girl continued, opening her eyes to observe Micro’s confused expression. Micro was surprised to see both of her eyes were now completely red.
“Long time no see, huh?” Micro replied with a wave, but then he recalled her intentions. “What’s going on?”
“I blamed those old fools and their greed for the failed summoning which produced such a broken being as you, but I can see now that the plans of Nora were simply too grand for me to comprehend!” she said with excitement as the air grew heavier. “I should never have doubted!”
“It’s fuzzy now… but… You were the one who Nora spoke to in the cave… What are you?” Micro asked, taking a slow step toward her. “What happened to the rest of those people?”
“They never left the cave,” she stated while her smile only brightened. “They paid the ultimate price for clinging to their worldly treasures, rather than ensuring the ceremony had enough energy to proceed despite unforeseen circumstances. Who knows how many pixies they sold off before the ceremony? It frustrates me to imagine, but here we are, and now all is right!”
“Sorry to hear that, but those pixies…” Micro said, taking another step. “Chaos and magic are dangerous after all…”
“I heard a mysterious messenger of Nora intervened when the summoning planned in the imperial city to the east recently failed, and that many mortal lives were saved, but I never imagined it was you. It all makes sense now! Nora’s plans are truly beyond our humble ability to grasp…!” the girl shouted with teary eyes. “Nora even protects you now from the effects of this sacred spell of summoning. You are a blessed messenger indeed!”
“I think the soul of the dog in my core is eating all the chaos energy that makes its way into me,” Micro remarked, taking a moment to focus his attention on the contents of his core. He could clearly feel the volatile chaos energy in the air flowing through him, but it was quickly consumed by the dog running around his core.
“That’s the freak who caught me…!” Blue suddenly cried out as she clumsily crawled out of Micro’s pocket. She pointed at the girl, who was now levitating slightly above the ground, but Blue quickly fell out of Micro’s pocket, unable to fly.
“Woops,” Micro caught her in his hand, but the girl spoke again.
“Generations of my kind worked endlessly to fill this evil sect with the sacred writings of Nora, the saviour of humanity, according to her infallible plan,” the girl continued. “I am ashamed to have doubted her! I thought my capture would make waste of all her plans for these vile conspirators, but to think I would be chosen today as the medium for her greatest contribution to this world yet!”
Micro confirmed that he alone was able to stand among the cultivators in the square while the magical barrier continued to drain them of their life force, and he placed Blue gently on the ground near the sleeping children. He quickly confirmed that Trill was also unconscious in Kolt’s pocket.
“That crazy monster…” Lena mumbled from the ground. “She must be stopped…!”
“Stopped…?” Micro grasped his shoulder and winced as he turned to face the girl. Her eyes glowed with a bright red hue as the energy of hundreds of cultivators swirled around her, and a vague form had already begun to appear in front of her. Micro realized quickly that it would soon be the body of whatever being Nora was about to send to that world.
“The vessel…!” Blue cried with a hoarse voice. “Kill it…”
Micro immediately tried rooting himself in the ground, though he was unpleasantly surprised to find the energy of the world beneath him difficult to absorb as it moved steadily toward the vessel in front of the summoner. He quickly gave up on charging an attack, and used what energy he could control to coat his fist with a dense layer of aura.
The girl watched in confusion as Micro ran forward and struck the centre of the accumulating mass of energy as hard as he could, dispelling it before it could completely take the shape of a person. The shock of the energy’s displacement flung him and the other cultivators in the square back against the walls of the surrounding buildings with a cloud of dust.
“I see…” the girl said softly, her confusion seeming to dissipate as the energy around her began to swirl around her own body instead. “Indeed, such vessels have failed too many times. As a prophet, I should have understood this.”
Micro was too winded to reply, and he struggled to stand as the girl took a single step forward. Suddenly, the energy began accumulating within the girl herself. Her expression transformed from one of excitement to extreme pain as a core began forming violently in her chest. Micro could clearly see the unnatural way energy poured into her body, dissimilar to the way a cultivator would gather energy. It looked more painful than he could imagine.
“It’s like the chaos energy is doing the work for her…” Micro mumbled. “But what about…”
CRASH
The barrier shattered with a terrible noise as a streak of lightning spread across the sky above. Micro looked up, expecting to see a cultivator, but he saw nothing but strange lights filling dark clouds. Then, he heard a voice, a voice which he thought he’d forgotten the sound of.
“Why do you mortals fail in all you do?!” Nora’s voice fell upon the temple grounds like heavy rain, causing Micro to fall to his knees under its weight.
“Nora…!” Micro tried to shout back, but he struggled even to breathe.
“Noble goddess!” the girl shouted through the pain of her core’s construction. “I give myself to your will!”
“You’re not much of a vessel… Oh well.” Nora sighed, causing a fierce wind to blow through the temple. “It looks like things worked themselves out. My arts contain redundancies for such occasions, but your soul is too pathetic to even joke about. I’ll find another. Wait a moment…”
“I wait on your every whim!” The girl cried back with tears of joy.
Micro felt the air grow still again, and quickly confirmed that all the energy which had been taken from the cultivators and the world around him had now settled comfortably in the body of the summoner as she remained suspended in the air, waiting on the voice of her goddess. Her core didn’t seem to have any discernible colour yet, being held together by an external force, but an unbelievable amount of energy coursed through her body. The aura she now emitted made Kel’s grandfather seem small and weak in comparison.
“There we go, got a good one this time…” Nora’s voice returned. “I should have thought of this before. Human souls are so fragile and slippery. These things are much more robust.”
“I… what…?” the girl asked Nora, doubting what her ears had heard.
“This one should put some fear into those self righteous fools who dare stand in my way!” Nora shouted, her voice now filled with a laughter which shook the ground. “Here we go—”
The lightning in the sky vanished, and Nora’s laughter faded, but a fierce presence replaced it in the sky. Micro stood up and strained his eyes, enhancing his vision with his new Spirit Vision Skill, but he noticed the source of his dread too slowly to do anything to stop it.
A fierce red light fell down from the sky like a shooting star, and Micro had only taken a single step toward the girl before the light collided with her. Micro watched as the terrified soul of the girl was forced from her body by the summoned soul, vanishing into the air like smoke, and a new expression appeared on the girl’s face.
She fell to the ground, landing heavily on her feet, and she drew a deep breath of air as the dust settled around her. She closed her eyes, then opened them again, and Micro immediately closed his undamaged eye. Where her eyes should have been, Micro could only see chaos energy. Even his damaged eye, with which he could only see such energy, ached as he looked into the girl’s eyes, and he backed away slowly. The girl looked around with a look of fatigue, and sighed.
“This world is primitive…” she said with a disappointed tone, and a grin spread across her face which sent a chill up Micro’s spine. “But it will do.”
