"So, who are you?" Nayavu asked the woman in front of him, trying to keep her from noticing his shivering.
However, the lady wasn't going to let him off that easy.
"Wasn't I the first one to ask a question? Besides, those eyes of your tell me you already know the answer."
Hearing her astute remark, the boy gulped loudly, images of a past adversary flashing before his eyes. Without realizing, wind currents had already gathered at his fingertips.
"Oh? Is this how you want things to go?" the woman asked, her curly hair standing on end as she put on a winged helmet that didn't fit her style.
The boy readied himself for a fight—a fight he didn't want. If the person in front of him was truly who he thought she was, then his chances at winning were nonexistent.
As the two flexed their muscles, it was a more down-to-earth stag that stepped in between them.
"Tahu! That woman is dangerous!" Nayavu shouted, but the animal refused to move.
"How about you cool your head off for a bit, boy," the lady intervened. "It was with this one's permission that I waited here for you to wake up. Don't you think it'd be wise to listen to your friend?"
Listening to his friends—a task Izumo had failed at before—was now given to Nayavu. In response, he relaxed his body, petting Tahu on the nose as a "thank you" for his timely intervention.
"I take it you were the one to stop my fight with Giovanni?"
"Still asking questions without answering mine? Haha! I like the nerve, kid!" the woman said, her previous display of energy now fading in the air and making it smell like ozone.
"That's right! My name's Ayanda. The woman who breaks the rules more than she should! You can thank me for that intervention whenever you feel like it," she said, smiling with her chest pushed forward.
"Should I?" Nayavu asked, surprised. The strike she used to stop him could have killed an average soldier, and because of her intervention he'd also missed his chance at taking his revenge on Giovanni. If anything, Nayavu should have been annoyed at what the woman in front of him had done.
"But you'd have died if I didn't do anything, right? What's more, you would have died an amnesiac. Who knows how that would have affected 'you'?"
On that Nayavu could do nothing but agree with her. The hit that knocked him out when he first met Aurelio had him forget important things from his past lives. Those holes in his memory led to him acting rashly, and he made the village worry about him.
But that's not what he should focus on. The lady in front of him now spoke twice about things she shouldn't know. The only other time something like this had happened was when he fought against that monster.
"Do all representatives know?" Nayavu asked, trying to tackle one thing at a time.
"Beats me. I'm not the best at this whole representative thing," Ayanda said, gazing beyond the clouds above as she admitted to being one of those powerful individuals. "Besides, I'm not telling you anything more until you answer my question."
Letting out a sigh, Nayavu accepted the lady's terms and spoke.
"I don't remember too much. Only bits and pieces. Usually, the ones that stay are the painful memories. The more time passes, the more hazy everything becomes.
"Woah, it must be hard remembering spells that way!" Ayanda said, looking with pity at the boy.
"Now it's my time to ask," Nayavu said with no hesitation. "How do you know about this? Do all representatives know?"
"I guess we do, but was it even a secret?"
"Not particularly, but I've never told anyone before," the boy said. "Okay, my turn to ask."
"Hey! Not fa—"
"What do you guys want from me?"
Impressed by his attitude, the woman let out a scoff before answering the boy. Her eyes carried no hint of secrecy.
"I wish I could help you with an answer on that one, but I've never been one to listen to the rules. Not like that wind guy."
"Rules?"
"Of course. We have our own rules. All I know is that we have to kill you whenever we see you around. You'll appear somewhere again, and the cycle continues. We identify you, and we kill you over and over again. By the way, you're doing a really bad job at hiding from us," Ayanda said. When she next turned her head from the vast sky towards Nayavu, she saw him all tensed up with a knife in his hand.
"Pfft! Relax!" the woman continued. "I'm not here to take your head! I couldn't care less about that. After all, I'm already ascending."
"Ascending?" Nayavu repeated, confused by yet another notion unfamiliar to him, who thought himself knowledgeable.
"Yup! I've already defeated the thunderbird!" the lady said proudly. "I'm gonna become a god!"
*****
In this world, there are powers beyond what mere mortals could comprehend.
"Wait a second, can you say that again?"
Such powers influence everyone, yet few are those who notice them.
"Sure? What part went over your head?"
Some may think that the world goes ungoverned.
"Everything."
But they would be wrong.
"Ha? I'm not repeating all that!"
Many would argue that if such powers exist, there is no way mortals would stay ignorant.
"Okay, then let me sit on this a little bit."
But those who know about Them are either dead—or stuck playing Their game.
*****
"So, a hit to the head made me forget a lot of my past, and when bits and pieces came back to me upon seeing Giovanni, I overreacted," Nayavu reminisced.
"Is that where you start from? I mean, yeah, you were acting like a crazed animal out there. I did like the way you fought, though."
"You stopped our fight and knocked us out."
"Yup!"
"Why?"
"Because I like you."
To the blunt statement made by the thunder representative, Nayavu couldn't help but turn red in the cheeks and stutter his next words.
"Y… You like what?"
"You. Or more so your craziness. I'm also really curious what you're made of."
Figuring that this was, in fact, not a confession, the young man breathed out and continued.
"You're a representative, and you guys are hunting me down."
"To be more precise, we only hunt you down once you make a ruckus. That fight against an army would fit the bill, I couldn't have known for sure it was you if not for those spells."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Don't ask me. I've been skipping classes."
To Ayanda's unbothered remarks, Nayavu could only sigh.
"And now, about the thunderbird. Did you kill it?"
"No, but I did defeat it."
"… You know, you could also try to explain things. Why did you fight it?"
"To become a god."
Nayavu paused for a second, looking in the eyes of the lady and waiting for her to notice something, but in the end he had to address it himself.
"You do realize that what you're saying makes no sense, right?"
"Oh wait, is the god thing the part that you're confused about?" she said, holding back a laugh.
"That's probably the most crucial part of it all! I've barely learned about a secret world of representatives, and now you're telling me you are also fighting ancient beasts and turning into gods?!"
The woman nodded as if nothing Nayavu said was in any way out of the ordinary.
"Well, to be more precise, it's actually a cycle."
"Care to explain?" Nayavu asked Ayanda, taking a seat on the grass next to Tahu—who seemed just as confused as him.
Joining them on the grass, even if nobody invited her to do so, Ayanda used her electrifying presence to raise the hairs on the boy's arms.
"It's really as simple as it sounds. We all walk down this path of magic, learning how to control energy that is given to us by Nature. I guess you know that much, right?" the woman said, looking Nayavu in the eyes.
In return, the boy stood silent, encouraging the thunder representative to stop pointing out the obvious.
"Right…" she continued with a smirk, impressed by the courage the one who was supposed to be her target displayed.
"While those who want to delve into every type of magic are many, few are those who ever learn their second element. That alone is an impressive feat, but it's not the path we chose."
"I take it you've only trained with one element your whole life?" Nayavu asked, memories of the tremendous powers he had once faced off against resurfacing.
"You can count transmutation as our way of interacting with other elements, but you're right for the most part. I've trained with the sole purpose of mastering lightning, electricity, or whatever you want to call it."
Nayavu tried to understand the woman dressed in deep purple, but there were too many parts she'd brushed over.
"Yet this doesn't explain the things you know about me. Neither does it explain your mission," he pointed out.
"Acting like the main character, aren't we?" Ayanda retorted. "It's simple. There was also a time when I didn't know those things. I've also started learning about them just recently. That's all. I wasn't born a representative."
As she spoke, the lady looked at the clear sky, her gaze getting lost in the clouds, or maybe further beyond, looking for something only she knew about. From Nayavu's perspective, she looked a bit lonely, maybe even troubled, as her gaze got lost from her speech and drifted away.
"It was after the gods recognized my strength that I was selected."
"The… gods?" Nayavu repeated, unsure whether he should consider her or himself delirious.
In the many lives the boy had lived, he'd learned about many deities revered in many different nations. Some would even change their belief with time, and Nayavu would wake up in the same nation but with a different religion ruling it. He'd come to understand that nobody was truly right. 'He' always respected the traditions taught to him, but his faith had long been shaken to the point of not believing in the existence of actual higher beings.
Now, hearing those words come from a woman who ruled over one of the elements on this planet, his eyes once again opened wide.
"What do you mean by 'gods'?" Nayavu asked, looking with a lot of interest at the lady who didn't bat an eye at him.
"Gods are gods. I can't say I've talked with them too much to know who they are. All I know is that each of them rules over an element. Once I was chosen by them, I suddenly knew all those things. I also knew about you, but I never cared to dig deeper. I just sealed off whatever was useless to me, and I've focused on reaching the thunderbird all of this time," Ayanda explained, her gaze finally falling from the heavens on the boy who kept staring at her.
"I'm sorry, boy, I only know my orders, not what makes you our enemy. I have no idea if it's the will of gods or simply the will of Nature."
Nayavu shook his head gently.
"You've given me more than enough. Thank you," he said. "So, what's this about the thunderbird and becoming a god yourself then?"
"Ah! I almost forgot about that!" Ayanda said as she jolted herself onto her feet.
"Every representative has to one day defeat their respective elemental beast in combat. That way, we can ascend and replace the old god."
Another sentence that Nayavu found hard to digest, yet was spoken with so much ease. Were the old gods assimilated? Or maybe the representatives were the ones getting erased. Did they die? Were they sacrificing themselves for the next generation? Nayavu had more and more questions clogging his mind, yet one look at Ayanda convinced him that she didn't hold the answers.
"But enough about that!" the woman interrupted his thoughts.
"It's about time we start our training!" she said with a thundering voice, stretching a hand to the boy and lifting him up.
"Training?" Nayavu repeated, suddenly forgetting about all of his other questions.
The next moment, he felt the taste of ozone again, but it didn't come from Ayanda this time. It came from the sky.
As the boy looked up, blue flashes of energy pierced the clouds, and soon after, a giant blue bird landed gracefully next to the two.
"Wasn't the thunderbird supposed to be—"
Nayavu tried to say something, but before he could finish his sentence, Tahu lifted him on his back and saved him from being zapped by the beast.