"Yes, it is spelled with an x in your language but pronounced with a z sound," Xinyu spouted. "Zin-oo-ma! That is how you say my name!"
"That's too complicated," Brax said, scratching his scalp.
"It is not! You are just an idiot!" exclaimed Xinyu.
"Are you sure yer twenty? You act like a child."
"I would rather be a child than an old man like you!"
The weary middle-aged Westland man and the invigorating trader, far from home, made their way steadily down an ancient but peaceful trail along the vast plains of the west. Under the guidance of the deity Kitsune and the mysterious bartender from Brax's no-name town, they sought their way to Wunderdum, the Westland capital. Those bruised roads stretched far and reached for the clouds in the distance, always longing, yet never touching. It was a vast serenity only a western summer could bring, and in the sun's hot wake, purple paisleys bloomed, and brisly grass swayed like oceans of mint colored hair.
"Look, Brax! That looks like a phoenix!" Xinyu said as she pointed excitedly at a big bird in the distance. The phoenix, whose legend was common across all lands, was a mythical creature that only showed itself to specific individuals in the most dire of circumstances. One would not be seen so carelessly, that is, if they even existed.
"I doubt it," Brax said. "It's probably a large bird or some other flying creature."
"But it is sparkling and so shiny…" Xinyu muttered.
"Well, I s'pose anything is possible," Brax admitted, though he knew it wasn't. Xinyu kept staring at the winged speck in the distance, unable to fully make out its shape.
"Hey, Brax," Xinyu said, looking back down. "Are you able to use magic?"
"A little bit," Brax said.
"What kind?" Xinyu asked.
"Some earth magic and a few card tricks my brother showed me a while back," Brax said. "He taught me n' my other siblings to use magic, read, write, and a whole buncha other stuff people like us usually can't do."
"Ooh! You have a brother?" Xinyu asked excitedly.
"Had one," Brax said. His eyes shifted to the side, and Xinyu knew instantly she had made a mistake.
"I see. I am sorry to hear that," Xinyu said. "If we ever visit his grave, then I would like to pay my respects."
"Thanks," Brax said. "But it's fine. Don't worry bout it."
When the two of them began to grow weary under the gaze of Apollo's light, they kept awake by making their eyes follow rivers that led to small farming villages where watermills churned and windmills spun with each breeze. When their necks went stiff, they stretched them by looking up at the tall outposts stationed with sleepy guards scattered all around Wunderdum's grassy plains. Those knights lazily watched travelers of all kinds pass the main roads and listened all day to the steady clopping of horses and carriages. This, while mundane, was not inherently a bad thing, as a listless existence was a peaceful one. Bandits veered off this well-watched path, and the worst thing that ever happened was a broken cart wheel.
Eventually, as the radiating capital and its walls came into view in the distance, the villages and outposts grew both bigger and more abundant. As did the passersby travelers. Many of them stared longingly at Xinyu's stature as they had never seen a girl like her before, and thus were inclined to wonder what strange deformity the girl had in her eyes. Still, the voluptuous men drooled nonetheless, as they only saw what was below those almond eyes, a beautiful and petite young lady draped in the most beautiful amaranth silk. Some veered, others jeered, and all stared, but she ignored them by giving them each the same kind smile.
The journey was long, and Brax needed to rest. They decided to take a break at a pond Xinyu spotted not far off the road. It had a large magnolia oak standing tall over the sparkling water, which dropped a flurry of pink petals upon its thick roots. The little fluttering wings danced around, swirling all around the circumference of the tree, caught in a magical gravitation that perpetually kept them afloat. On the other side was a dock for fishing, not that either of them carried a rod.
They put their bags down under the tree and basked in the coolness of the shade. With a sign labeled 'The Pond of Beginnings' in terrible handwriting, the tiny paradise offered a lovely little stop for anyone journeying down the main road, though the only other traveler present at that time was a woman in a black dress across the lake, seemingly hovering over the blades of grass.
"Is that woman weird to you?" Brax asked. "She's, uh, floating."
"Floating is not so strange," Xinyu said with her eyes crossed, looking at a petal that landed on her nose. She blew it away. "It is just a levitation spell. Very easy to learn, but not practical. Flying like a bird is much harder, I hear."
Of course, even the most basic spells like such were unfamiliar to Brax's small town and others like it, who held very little magic or any understanding of the sort. Peasants were inherently born with few ties to magic and always became too focused on their poverty to strengthen them. He often wondered what it was like to live in a big city where magic was perpetually overflowing, and magical gadget stores lay at every corner.
He always wanted to show his family the beauty of magic, but money was scarce, and Nora never had the strength to travel. There were many things he wanted to show his family, actually. Like what it was like to peruse libraries full of books with knowledge about anything anyone could ever desire to know. He had heard places existed in big cities, but never saw one himself. Surely such a place would bring Nora's smile back, for his daughter loved books. He remembered a favorite book they shared about a small man who went on a journey and came back with vast riches straight from a dragon's lair. Though the title of the book eluded his mind, he remembered the story well and wondered if he could do the same for himself.
Lost in his thoughts, Brax forgot about the woman across the pond as he plopped himself under the flowery umbrella and shut his eyes to rest his wears. Xinyu might've been young and full of energy, but he was not. He was old and full of stone.
The hovering woman continued to stare at Xinyu from across the pond, but she ignored it. That woman was not the first to stare. The little trader turned around and gaped at the girthy wood.
"Wah! Such a sturdy tree!" Xinyu commented as she rubbed her hand along its old bark. "It must have taken many years to grow so large! I wonder–"
She didn't finish the thought. The air snapped cold, and light threaded thin as if someone had wrung the color from it. The hovering woman in black began to walk. She walked off the dock and over the water, each step sending out ripples that didn't disturb even a single fish. Xinyu readied herself, letting the goosebumps on her skin shock her nerves and banish any hesitation she might have had.
"It's you." A voice crept from the other side of the lake as the woman grew closer. Xinyu glanced at her, and her ominous ice eyes glared right back. Xinyu quickly jostled Brax and awoke him from his light rest. As soon as he saw the fiend in brackish cloth strutting straight for them, he winced and hit his head on a branch. Rubbing the bump on his skull, he started slowly backing away.
The creepy woman's movements were calm and slow. Closer and closer, her body grew. When she was at the pond's center, Xinyu and Brax realized her black dress was not cotton or wool or any other earthly thread. It was a crawling garment of pure tangible shadows. Not cloth spun by humans, but a swirling darkness enveloping the pale woman's tall, bony figure.
"Do not come any further!" Xinyu demanded, tensing her muscles beneath her silk clothes. As the woman kept walking forward, Brax watched nervously while Xinyu took no time to summon her power.
"Dragon King god, Longwang, endow me with your majesty and breathe unto me the power to control water," Xinyu chanted as liquid arms began to rise from the pond and grab at the baleful woman's feet, stopping her.
She may have halted, but as the magic energy left Xinyu's hands and flowed into the water, uneasy sweat bubbled on the eastern girl's forehead. When Brax looked back towards the woman in black, he saw the water at her feet had begun to turn black and erode away in ashy dust. It was as if Xinyu's magical energy had become infected with rot. The remnants of the dusted magic rapidly released a putrid stench that smelt of old carcasses, causing Brax's nose to curl and his skin to itch. The black that infected the waters was a vile disease that seemed to kill magic at its core, though spells that did so were unheard of. Instinctively, Xinyu cut her ties to the god, and the faint glow of divinity that shrouded her dissipated.
"What is it?" Brax asked, seeing Xinyu hop back, her hair prickling up like a frightened cat. "Who is that?"
"That woman… she decays magic. I am sure of it," Xinyu said. "If I had not cut my ties as quickly as I did, I would have certainly died. When my magic touched hers, I felt the blackness pulling me in."
The black witch, adorned in a lengthy dress of darkness, spoke in a womanly, yet abyssal voice.
"That girl is not a god, but god magic comes from her," the witch said. She was not speaking to those in front of her, but seemed to speak to herself. "Yes, I agree… she must die here."
"God magic?" Brax asked nervously. "What does she mean by that?"
"It is the magic I use," Xinyu said.
"That's not possible! You're a human, aren't you?" Brax asked.
"I am, but that does not matter now," Xinyu said, trailing off. She looked directly at the witch. "You! Woman! Who are you?"
The woman in black said nothing more and made stagnant movements as tendrils of darkness unspooled from beneath her shadowy robes, vomiting inky tentacles that pierced the air and made their way to Brax and Xinyu. Xinyu nimbly danced around the brackish whips with a strange athleticism despite her small body, but Brax, who could not move as well, reflexively unleashed his magic to create a stone wall in front of him.
Xinyu looked at Brax in terror, but nothing happened. The attacks dented the wall, but the stone did not decay at their touch, and Brax was unscathed. Her mouth gaped as an idea came to her mind. Perhaps it was not any magic that the witchy woman could disintegrate, but god magic. That was, at least, the only rationalization she could make when Brax's earth magic perfectly deflected the dark tentacles that rotted away her god's energy. Whoever she was, Xinyu knew she wasn't a deity nor a human.
"That is interesting!" Xinyu said as she put her arms up. "That magic seems to be the bane of the gods! Brax! You must fight this foe, for if my magic touches them, I fear I will decay along with it."
"What do you mean?" Brax asked. "I thought you said you were strong! I can't fight!"
More tentacle-like orifices oozed out from the muddy puddle beneath the woman and hurled themselves at Xinyu and Brax even faster than before. Xinyu ducked to dodge one, then sprang into the air with her hand to dodge another. Her movements were fluid and flexive. This style of moving was a lost art, not tied to magic, but instead focused on physical feats of the body. It was like a dance but made for battle.
"It is okay!" Xinyu affirmed. "You are not alone! Together we shall vanquish this fiend!"
"I… I can't," Brax said in a panic, surrounding himself in a cocoon of rocks as black vines whipped at the shell. "I can't fight. I don't even got any spells for fightin'."
Brax peered out of a hole in his earthy shield and fixated on Xinyu's face. He saw that although she was not in control, she still smiled. He wondered what could possibly have been going through the girl's mind.
He did not have time to ponder long because a wall of black fire erupted from the grass and surrounded the area, trapping the three in a fiery circle of dark, blazing arms. The woman in black edged closer to Xinyu, reaching out skeletal fingers to grab the young woman's throat and tear it from her neck. Regardless of how slow she skimmed the watery surface, they could not run as they were ensnared in an inescapable black hell.
"Do not worry! It is okay if you cannot fight!" Xinyu exclaimed. "I said I would protect you, and that was a promise!"
Xinyu stood her ground and clasped her hands together, chanting a prayer Brax could not understand. At the signal of a slight breeze that had made its way through the cracks of the fire, her eyes shot open, and she launched herself from where she stood with a propelling kick. She began running straight towards the woman in black, who was upon the pond's shore. Xinyu ducked and jumped over the black whips all around until she was an arm's length away from the woman, and then, with a mighty jump, the Merchant of Joy leapt high into the air. Xinyu raised her open palm up, taking it even higher.
"Begone," the woman growled as a black mist sprayed out of her body, one that would corrode any trace of divine magic the instant it manifested.
But Xinyu did not use god magic. She did not even use magic at all.
Xinyu's hand sprang shut into a fist as she brought it down upon the woman's head. The witch stumbled back into the water, barely avoiding contact.
"When magic fails," Xinyu thought as she began throwing fist after fist, trying to smash the humanoid void creature's wretched face into the ground. "It is our unadorned fists that show who we are!"
The shadow woman lost her balance from the unexpected flurry of strikes, but managed to catch herself with her foot before falling. A sharp black saber erupted out of the witch's arm as she sliced at Xinyu, who stepped to the side and spat on the woman's face in retaliation. Not wasting an instance of the distraction, Xinyu wound up a kick, but was blocked by a shadow tentacle erupting from the ground. The witch's formerly icy eyes went red with rage as she waved her hand and created a shockwave that sent Xinyu flying back into Brax's rock shell. Xinyu got up with only a bit of dirt on her clothing and brushed herself off. She took a stance in which her feet were apart, and her open hands rested loosely in front of her body. She was bruised and bleeding slightly on her leg, but overall unharmed.
"These clothes are not easy to clean!" Xinyu exclaimed. The shadow woman's scowling face was not amused by the merchant's frivolous antics. Xinyu knew well that brute strength could never stand up to the power of magic, but it was the one weapon she was intent on using when all else failed.
"Ah. It is tough without magic…" she said.
"Come through here!" Brax shouted, opening a hole in his dome large enough for Xinyu to crawl in. When Xinyu had tried to punch the foreboding entity, Brax had used his last resort escape move. It was a spell he always kept in his back pocket; one to create a tunnel away from danger. He never thought he'd be using that one again, but he was glad he had never forgotten it. Luckily for them, the wall of fire that trapped them did not burrow beneath the earth and allowed Brax to form this desperate escape route.
"It seems you have opened another path for us. Good job!" Xinyu exclaimed as she hopped into the hole after Brax. "While I would prefer to defeat this threat here and now, I do not believe a fight would be advantageous now!"
Brax and Xinyu ran far away until the darkness in the sky subsided. Even then, they still ran from the wretched thing until they were certain they were safe.
"W-who the hell was that?" Brax panted, hunched over, and slumped his hands over his knees.
"I do not know," Xinyu admitted, looking back to the dark clouds behind them. "But they are not a human or a god. I wish they were not a foe, surely their ability to destroy god magic would be useful to me. The ability to decay magic, how scary is that? Ha, I sure wish I had such a power!"
"Magic that decays magic?" Brax asked. "Could such a power exist?"
"Anything can exist," Xinyu said.
"Which reminds me, didn't you say somethin' about stealing the gods' magic?" Brax asked. Xinyu looked at him, then sighed.
"The magic I use is not my own, but the gods," Xinyu said. "It is a forbidden technique that allows me to take a tiny bit of their power, though a dangerous one at that."
"And the Eastland gods just let you do it?" Brax asked.
"Of course not," Xinyu said. "Do you allow flies to feast upon your blood?"
"No…"
"It is the same," Xinyu said. "The more magic I suck from them, the greater chance they have of noticing. I am sure you can guess what happens then. That is not to say the other ill effects. Small amounts of their power are fine, but taking too much will rip apart the body in a most painful way. It is like the fly drank too much blood, and it is now gushing out of its skin."
"That so? Is that kinda magic really worth the risk?" Brax asked. "Why are you going to such lengths?"
"Because…" Xinyu started. "There is no other magic to defy them than their own. Heed this, Brax, for both of our safety: do not tell a soul of my powers. There are ears everywhere, and few can be trusted."
"My lips are sealed," Brax said. He could hardly believe her, though, oddly enough, there was a part of him that did. "So now what do we do?"
"Let us resume our journey," Xinyu said. "Let us forget the witch for now. She will come back in time, and with her, answers."
…
Back at the pond, the woman stared at the indent on the ground her foes had made as the blackish fire walls simmered down.
"Do you think I'd let you get away that easily?" she grumbled as thunder echoed in the distance. "Your fate was sealed the moment I sensed you using god magic from the mountains."
She took a step forward, but was met with another opposition. By chance, the one that flitted above her this time was not mortal. The mythical being was cloaked in pearly white robes, which had two slits in the back where soft, feathery wings waved up and down.
"So, you are the anomaly that's been wreaking havoc in the Southlands," the shiny being said, descending from the sky. He was draped in majestic white cloth, as one would expect from a divine being one step below the gods.
"Or perhaps not," the woman said, grinning madly. She was pleased with the gift that was presented to her. "What business have you here, angeeeeeel?"
"You're no deity, but you're not a mortal either, " the angel said, drawing his divine sword of light from his back. "I take it you're from the Moonless Terra?"
"So Zeus has caught wind?" the woman asked, drawing her own blade of darkness.
"No," the angel said as he raised his golden blade above his head. "But he shall know when I present your corpse to him."
The sky split open, and a hundred glimmering swords fell like stars as an army of angels emerged from the clouds and descended upon the witch.
"Savor the words you speak, for they are the last you shall ever utter," she muttered as black energy swelled all around. "The end rushes forward faster than ever before."