Praetors' lives are counted in the centuries. Legates, oft in the thousands.
Power does not come quickly. And if it does, there is always, always a price."
- Yarnen, Anomaly 0.
Rasa eyed the human from his chair in the safe house, prepared for him by a trusted subordinate who had served him for many years. Claudius guided Dante through the motions of meditation, a skill and weapon used by countless Seafarers.
The Centurion almost scoffed at what he saw. Dante struggled to sit appropriately or clear his mind of thoughts. He couldn’t even do the bare minimum required for what a recruit for Judgehood would.
A mess. A frantic, fragile, and forced mess.
Does someone like him lead that crew? How? He’s not the strongest, the smartest, or even the most calm. I’ve heard much, which raised my expectations, but seeing this...
Rasa stood, walking past Eight, who sipped on the whiskey he had ‘grabbed’ long after they left the building. Rejo attempted to get some of the teleported juice, but Eight vanished, reappearing across the open warehouse beside Rosa. The Centurion glanced at the woman for a second, nodding at her.
He knew she was pissed. Claudius had chosen Rejo over her for the exam. While a Centurion’s crewmates weren’t guaranteed anything for their performance, some could receive field promotions to Judgehood. With that, of course, came wealth, fame, and status.
However, Rosa Heartwelt was no child. She was a soldier. Born and bred by their Empire. She understood the chain of command, no matter her disagreements. Furthermore, she was wise—wise enough to recognize the strategy in Claudius’ choice.
Rasa’s boots landed before the two men. He gazed down at the human who fought desperately to clear his mind while the Judge failed to guide him.
The Centurion knew the type of this human. Dante Penance. Scum. That is how he saw the criminals and varmin that scoured the fringes of legality, barely staying out of prison or worse. They did countless jobs and acts that should have ended with their head in a bucket.
Yet as he searched Dante, he sensed a familiar Sea Art inside his body. The energy sat frozen, in wait for the moment it was ordered to burst out.
Surewinter. Rasa had faced several Dirge recently that wielded this exact Sea Art. He had nearly died to it from Geist. He didn’t know why, but all the attacking Caesars had it within their bodies, barring Thanaris.
Still, it wasn’t quite right. It seemed... violent. Unnatural. How the energy in Dante’s body sat to his trained eyes didn’t work how it was supposed to. At least, as far as he knew. It was fragmented, broken, as if... done in desperation.
Ah, I see. He’s one of those.
Dante’s inability to meditate made sense in a single second as Rasa came to the only possible conclusion. The human wasn’t one of those who thrived in silence. He couldn’t study for the sake of knowledge. He couldn’t train for the mere act.
Everything he did, every minuscule act, had a purpose. A singular, primal directive. Survival. They were the same. Kindred spirits, one could say. All of Rasa’s growth came from life-or-death battles. Even the most recent struggle atop the Inferose’s planet granted him newfound mastery.
His mother took him in for that very reason. Rasa wasn't the most talented. He didn't possess a clever mind or a unique constitution. He merely had a trait spawned in scarce few across the sea of stars.
“Dante. This won’t work if you keep fighting it,” Claudius said, exasperated more than he expected.
In response, Dante gritted his teeth, already trying his best to make things work. However, he just couldn’t enter any sense of peace. They were asking for him to converge into the same level of focus as Nullify but even one step further. He had to not just concentrate but remove all wandering thoughts.
Finally, he shook his head with frustration as he shouted, “I am trying, dammit!”
Rasa clicked his tongue at the sight. Then, he drew power from the ‘Sea he hated and loved. Too few could truly appreciate its power and dive into it without trauma or pain. While the Centurion envied his Praetor’s favorite, she knew it was not without its own curses.
A blade of water formed at the tip of his hand before the edge hardened to snow, and then it crystalized further, forming a thin line of ice. Unlike most, Rasa had neglected to learn both sides of his affinity, disregarding Miro. He went all the way toward Cryo, toward violence. He was his Praetor’s sword, after all. Her sharpest blade. He had to live up to her anticipations.
Rasa, the Unfeeling River, refused to ever fail her, even after his mother's death.
Dante’s eyes widened in recognition of effort and surprise as the whip-like sword fell to his throat. His gaze then hardened in understanding as Rasa said without remorse, “You will clear your mind. Or you will die.”
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The two men shared a look. Words were meaningless as the people they had slain, the loves they had lost, and the trophies they had failed to merely grasp transferred between them.
Dante nodded with the softness of a newborn bird, telling his best friend to stand down with the wave of a hand. The movement was fragile but no longer frantic.
Rasa grinned as he saw the calm overtake the human. He witnessed the focus slide in as the frigid blade sliced open a stream of blood against his throat.
He’s even better than me. Bloody savants. That’s what Mother called me. And the few like me. When the red hits our teeth...
The Centurion kneeled, meeting Dante’s height, as he spoke the honest truth, “Were you born Tianshe, you would already be a Centurion.”
Such words left Dante’s teeth grinding against each other. For a moment, it disrupted his focus, but then it was washed aside by the pain. He needed this. A threat. A giant, blaring beacon of danger.
Rasa remained silent as the entire room held their breaths. It was something so simple, entering meditation, but none of the Romans had ever seen someone do it with a blade at their throats.
Dante’s mind hovered without thought, without distraction as he delved into the endless sea. His imagination broke apart into thousands of pieces, yet none held a hand to grasp. They simply spread and entered the recesses that they could.
He didn't possess a mind without thought, but instead one that encompassed them all at once. It could only last a moment as adrenaline and cortisol shot his mind into a frenzy, but that was all Dante needed. A sea made calm by the cold, not the quiet.
The captain lingered in this otherworldly state for just a half-second before Claudius spoke, but his words were dark, heavy, and impossibly piercing, “Oh, ‘Sea. Oh, ‘Sea. Oh, ‘Sea. Hear me.”
Dante felt hands touch his. They were calloused, like his, but held the weird malleability of a Tianshe’s gray skin. For a second, nothing happened. No voice, no trembling sky, no hidden power.
There was nothing but the sensation of callous on callous as Dante waited. Seconds turned into a full minute.
At that juncture, the captain opened his eyes, holding onto his relaxing heart as the edge against his throat quivered. Dante’s azure eyes revealed Claudius’ face, stretched into agony. The Judge’s twin orbs were open, but they were not that of Tianshe.
They were twisted into spinning discs of a wave falling in on itself. The hands connected them shook from one end as Claudius said, with the same pace as before, “I beseech you, recognize this one before me. Offer him your power and take from him his own. You will not regret it. I. Promise.”
A chill washed up Dante’s spine as the words echoed in his mind. He struggled to hold onto his peace, even with the blade on his neck, but he lost complete control a second later.
An infinitely massive presence seemed to take notice of him. It was as if he saw a galaxy-sized eye spin open, not flutter, but spin, as the whirlpools defined it. Dante felt it turn from another toward him.
The mere sensation of being glimpsed at sent his entire body into devastation. His heart stopped, his lungs paced ten times the normal, and his eyes froze. All he could see were the pools of Claudius’ gaze.
No words came to him. There were only feelings. Whatever touched him had no true mind. And yet, it could think.
He felt it rub against his body first, judging him more aggressively than even Joan’s inspections when she thought he had hidden a weapon. However, it couldn’t be said to be the same.
His bone cracked from the pressure alone. Surewinter shattered, the energy dispersing into his body all at once. Blood burst from his many gathering points and those that were not supposed to exist. His hard work was set back again, not far, but at least a day’s worth of gathering the chilled energy from the Lightsea.
Most of his efforts were placed on finding the correct locations to keep the Sea Art from collapsing. Nonetheless, the damage done was brutal. The agony and shock sent through his system sent him into complete darkness.
He keeled over as Rasa cursed, grabbing his shoulders to hold him aloft. The Centurion’s focus flicked between his ward and the fugitive he had decided to work with. For all his power, there was nothing he could do here.
Rasa didn’t like this deal in the first place, but he trusted Claudius. More than that, he believed in his Praetor’s words.
You better know what you’re doing, kid.
Instead of interfering and ripping the two apart, the Tianshe inhaled a steady breath. Then, he sat between them and held them still. His job was to protect Claudius, first and foremost. The relationship they shared came second.
However... Rasa held back his anger. He would wait until he couldn’t any longer.
Claudius acted as the conduit for the Lightsea, an unfathomable dimension. Whether it was a proper ‘entity’ as one would imagine was unknown, but Dante’s unconsciousness shattered the instant that its presence came to his mind.
He didn’t know what it was. The human mind recoiled, swinging its proverbial fists as it flailed pointlessly. Without a Psion’s talent, his mind held no power outside its fleshy suit. The Lightsea violated his brain, diving deep to read his thoughts, emotions, and state of mind.
With his relief, it didn’t touch his memories. They were the one vault held safe, but he, as of now, was bared to the Lightsea. It knew him more than anyone else. Perhaps even his ex-fiancee would fail in such a degree.
Between his mind and his body, the man hovered on the verge of collapse. All it would take was for the Lightsea to turn on him. That was it. A single move from it.
The worst part of this wasn’t the threat of death or the knowledge of his insignificance. No. He felt its disapproval. After all he had done, after all he had overcome, this ‘being’ thought he wasn’t enough.
That made him revolt. His body shook from within the darkness, straightening all on its own. Nevertheless, his actions mattered not.
It was Claudius who saved him.
Dante felt a feeble but direct link transfer something. It seemed as though a flash of light to him, yet after it flew past his mind, the Lightsea’s aggressiveness lowered.
Then, he felt a nod, occurring somewhere, somehow, in that great, dark sea.
“Make your deal. It is listening,” Claudius said shortly. A moment later, he added, “Careful. You are not worthy. This is akin to a baron sharing knighthood or a manner of the sort. We are on thin ice.”
The advice left Dante with a groan as he remained under this presence. It didn’t like him. In fact, he could tell it disliked him. The reason was beyond him, but he sat helpless to such a fact. All he could do was raise his chin and open his mouth.
With straining muscles and his entire body suffering quakes throughout, he spoke the words he had practiced, “I will trade the easy and instant preparation and use of Matchlock. It is not powerful enough for me. I am unsure how these work, but I would like it to empower the Tides I place within it at the cost of greater restrictions.”
Dante winced the instant he finished speaking. He had heard much about Lightless Pacts from Astraeus, but he didn’t know it all. In fact, he had learned more on the way here from Claudius than he did from Astraeus.
While he waited for a response from the entity, he recalled the Judge’s words.
“The Pact can’t give you anything you wouldn’t manage alone. Or... could unlock. It wouldn’t let me fly with a wave of the hand, but it could allow me to skip the training to do so with a Tide in exchange for being unable to walk. These are shortcuts to power. Risky ones. Mine is... I was unaware of just how much potential my eyes held. I recommend you do something similar. Make a deal for your Stigmata. They are ‘you’ after all.”
Dante had built the Lightless Pact in his mind. He needed power. Raw power. The skills and knowledge granted by Geist’s impartment meant he didn’t have to learn the basics, especially for Arido, but the Tide was too distant to acquire soon.
As such, many of the tricks and ways to boost his Tide were pointless. He couldn’t even share them with Sonna as it was more instinct than thought. What it did mean, however, was that he had a firm foundation.
If he wanted to create a whip? A sword? A blanket? All of it was possible in but a moment with his water. Such versatility often took years of practice.
All he missed was strength. He hadn’t the time to...
Beneath the gaze of the Lightsea, Dante laughed. The man laughed because of how ridiculous his musings were. Strength? He lacked strength? He hadn’t had time?
In four months he had crossed a decade of training, much of it thanks to Geist. He had fought head-to-head with the likes of Friday, Melody, and Hana. The first battle? One could attribute that to Ego’s help and sway on his Tides.
But in the second? That was all Dante.
He had plenty of power, and he possessed the versatility to back it up.
What he didn’t have was time. And he felt the Lightsea laugh in return.
It found his desire humorous. So, so humorous.