WMwnZ0sK

1I open my eyes. I don't see anyone anymore. The thieves who wanted to kill me are gone, no piece of them left except their iron blade which was in their hands a second ago, now on the ground. I get up from my fetal position on the ground, tears on my face, confused more than terrified, then I sit on the ground. "I don't understand." I say out loud, perhaps looking for someone to answer to me. Funningly enough, someone does answer. Or something, at the time I realy had no idea. I look around as it talks. "Do you think the worst person could change, that everyone can be a good person, if they just try?" I don't see anyone talking, or anything, any sign of movement except the road behind the house i am near, where hundreds of people are walking and talking, apparentely not hearing it. "W-What do you mean?" I answer crudely. "I know what you did. Repent." I shout for a while, asking him explanations, or who he was, or where he is going, but no answer, he is gone. I look down, finally, and my face turns aghast, as I notice that I am covered in blood. Not mine, someone else's, possibly the thieves' who were in front of me a second ago, my mind completely blurred, and so I get up. I stay still for a while, thinking of answers, waiting for the night to go around. Nobody is outside at night anyway, it's too dangerous. And there I was, nowhere to go, finaly got something to do: realise what happened to me. I figured instantly that the best way to learn what happened was to go away from the city, clean my clothes, move to another city. In that single moment I realised three things. The first one, I wasn't hungry or thirsty realy, as long as my eyes are closed, I haven't eaten since 3 days ago, yet I felt no weakness or pain for it. The second thing, is that everytime I close them, I didn't feel any pain, weakness, or feeling on my body at all, not even if I touch my arm with my hand, nothing, I also realised that I was being followed. I quickly figured out that my long blonde hair, and my manly appearance were curious for a girl of my age, 19, walking around the city at this time of the day. The most curious of the things that changed, though, was that closing my eyes allowed me to "see" things more than I usualy do, it's hard to describe realy, nothing but a glimpse of the entire power of the ability which at the time I ignored. I turn around, looking back into the long open road of the night illuminated only by the stars. I try to do this again, I close my eyes, and I see it. Him actually. Looks like a thief who has been following me around since the disappearance of the others. I open my eyes, and turn around, looking at the small road where he is hidden, doing nothing. Even if it looked like I was looking for him, I was actually thinking about how I did it. Seeing him, from afar, it almost felt like looking from eagle eye vision, from the sky, but it was all so dark. I shake my head, moving towards the road with no fear in me, just curiousity, which was pretty obvious from my expression. I arrive towards the entrance, where he tenses all his body, and puts himself in a defensive stance, ready for everything. I smile and chuckle a bit after an initial confusion, and then higher my hand, making it shake a bit, like a signal for him to stop. He doesnt drop the stance, and so I do the most "obvious" thing: walk towards him. "What's the problem?" I ask, smiling, walking, as he walks the same amount backwards, untill he is faced with a wall. He is obviously sweating, and so I realise he must have thought that I killed the other thieves, probably his mates. "I did nothing, I swear." I try to calm him down, succeeding a little. He lowers his knife he had in his hand, which I noticed only now, but still looking angrily. "T-Then who?" I close my eyes again, suddenly, scaring him probably, and try to look for someone nearby. More I stay like this, more I can see, I guess its a limitation, but no one is nearby. I reopen my eyes, looking at the extremely confused guy who now left his defensive stance. "Do I look like a killer now?" I then realise, I fucked up.
2
3I was dressed with a lovely pink dress, that opened below like a huge skirt, very dark pink, which blended in perfectly with the red blood stains on it. On the back I had a backpack of the same color, filled with the things I always bring around, mainly food, but some other utilities items aswell, a very simple backpack to be honest, it looked like something farmers would bring around to put hay inside. He in the other hand, looked like a 17 years old guy who lost everything and steals everyday and night for a chance to live. Which is exactly what I said to him a second later. He wasn't every pleased to hear me talk, since he was concentrating othe blood stains on my dress, and the fact that I wasnt tense, scared, or worried at all about them. That is only because I had forgotten about them, I am not psychotic. "Well I realy don't care about anything around here, and I just want to know what happened to me in that alley, and I think you want to know what happened to your.. "mates" I believe, so, fancy joining me?" I ask him cheerful. He is obviously reluctant, scared, confused, he won't ever accept , and so I turn around, ready to leave. "I can't join you, I can't trust you after what happened." he says, very sure of his words, I understand immediately that i cant convince him any further, and so I salute him from the back with a short word, returning on my path to outside the city.
4
5The city is very big, but has no defensive walls, mostly to the pacifistic nature of my race, the elves. It's something that has always bothered me and everyone else, an elf that has no elf characteristics, and looks very human. Yet it was impossible for me to be human, as humans lived in a continent completely different than ours, so I was a joke for my entire family and country to be frank. I guess that's why I don't realy feel bad about what I did back then, I would do it again if I should and could. I pass through a couple of guards standing around, who give no attention to me, I am known in the entire citadel, so its not like they would care about me. And so I do the first step outside the city, it's funny looking, it's like a huge like that separates stone of the road and the grass of the plains of Tundria, where I'm headed. I turn around with a spin, a smile on my face, looking back at the circular city which haunted me for these 19 years, and so I spin again, towards the plain.
6
7The idea of going towards the plain was a weird one, since its quite litteraly empty, and very dangerous. Wild and Soul animals, which are animals mixed with souls, are quite rare around here, but way more present than on the outside of the plain. I guess gaining this power either made me very mad or very happy, but I was already in the inside part of the plain, and very close to Claria, "the village of the insane" as they call it. It realy has nothing wrong with it, it's a simple village, but it's the only village in the area, has no commercial or communicative connection to cities or other villages, and most of all, it's in the exact middle of the plain, where the animals are most present. Somehow I was realy hoping for an encounter of some kind before reaching the village, but I got very lucky (or unlucky, depends on your point of view). Claria is a very unique village, as it's built in a "insane cross". It gained that name thanks to this village, a quite weird way of building a village indeed. It's a comjunction of two roads, such as a plus is, the marketplace in center, and houses, shops, canteens, restaraunts and inns are built around the rest of the cross, and many roads come out of it aswell, creating many ramifications to fit more buildings. It must be noted though, that in the middle of the city, the marketplace is built around a building called "Clarity", which named the city, I believe it's built for some religious reason, I never got interested in such things, I prefer architecture. And so I enter the quadratical village, on the main road. A very busy city if you ask me, the roads are empty on the outside area of the city, the tips you can say, that collegate the roads to the grass, more you go towards the center, more it becomes crowded. And so I walk on the stone that leads to the middle, looking for an inn to rest, I got some xanis, the coin of my country, in my backpack, should be enough for a week in the village, it is pretty cheap as far as I know. And so, walking, I realise there's a huge amount of people looking at someone, they are in a circle, shouting and being annoying in general, I thought. I was curious of what was happening ,as it is in my nature, and so I of course had to see what was going on. There were way too many people to look directly, so I thought to myself "I totaly should abuse my new ability.", of course. I went in the crowd, where no one could see me as they were too focused on what was happening, and I close my eyes, activating my eagle eye vision. This ability has limitations, as I can't see exactly every detail of everything, but it kind of allows me to get a general gist of everything. I see a man, a young looking man actualy, red long hair, physically fighting another man, who is obviously older than him, in his mid 30s probably. Seeing them fight makes me understand why everyone has stopped to cheer them: the fight is something completely outside of the ordinary. The older man is trying to hit the boy with punches and kicks, but all the boy does is jump on him, behind him, slides under him, evading him in every way without even touching him and keeping his hands behind his back. "He seems quite a jokester." I instantly think to myself, as I realise that, spending more time using this ability, makes, aswell as the area of sight bigger, everything more detailed and clearer, untill it becomes so clear that it's almost like I'm watching everything from above, able to move as I wish. I move my vision closer to the center of the fight, to see what's going on better. The fight goes on for a couple of minutes, untill the boy gets visibly bored, jumps on the shoulders of the man who tries to hit him with a punch, and then jumps in the air, and into the crowd, where people instantly move away to make space for him, but as he instantly enters it, he disappears leaving everyone fooled, but not me. I concentrate, looking for him in the area, and he somehow moved in the road on the side, empty, and dark, waiting presumebly for everyone to leave. "I can't lose this opportunity." I think, as he might have a power similar to mine. Before the armored guards arrive, with sword and shield already in the hands, moving everyone away to see what's happening, I slip away from the crowd, entering, or better, sneaking, in the road unnoticed, surprising the boy when I say hello to him.
8He stops looking towards the part of the road with no one, and turns towards me, with a quite shocked face, that turns into curiosity a minute later. We stand still for a while, looking at eachother. He is quite an attractive boy now that I look at it, green eyes, long red hair, cheerful face, small body but seems quite fit for a boy, a teenager probably, dressed with a long shirt of the same color of his hair, which leaves me quite baffled as to why long sleeves with the heat of the season, and short white pants. He smiles after the initial shock. "So, you saw through my trick." I get a little bit closer to him, and he backs a way a little bit, like we almost signaled to eachother in some way to move away from the main street. "It was no trick, I saw it clearly" I state, putting emphasis on clearly. "Then what it was?" I look at him face, he obviously had never heard this series of sentences before. "You vanished and reappeared here, my sight is never wrong." again, I put emphaiss on never, I seem to enjoy doing it. "Heh, that's impossible, magic is something only extraordinarily capable people would be able to do, certainly not me." I think for a bit, on how to make him spill everything, and suddenly, an idea comes to mind. "Do you think the worst person could change, that everyone can be a good person, if they just try?" I say, making it sound more similar to the original as possible, and smiling a little bit as I see his facial expression change to a more serious one as I pronounce the words.
9"Where did you hear this?" he says annoyed, a bit angry, and on the defensive as he looks at me. "You heard it too haven't you?" he calms down a little, but the anger shown on his face is completely apparent. "Yes, I have. He caught me on surprise as I was, well, doing what I usualy do, and completely changed my life." There is a lot of commotion outside on the main road, and so I forcefully take his arm, shocking him a little bit, and I bring him inside an inn on the side of the "ramification" road we are in. Noisy, annoying, full of people, which is very fantastic for people who just want to talk without being heard or annoyed. Holding his arm, he doesn't flinch or move, as I am moving him towards a table to the angle of the inn, and I shake my other arm in the air calling a maid of the place. Completely made of wood, tables, chairs, the bench me and him are sitting on, one in front of the other, the roof, everything is wood probably coming from the outside of the plain, where the Forest of the Deep is, a pretty scary one in my opinion, full of Soul monsters. I order something I have never ordered, a faesia drink, a drink made with the nectar of Elves most passionate pet, the faery. I always hated them, flying tiny nasty things who suck everything they find and release nectar during night, that tastes absolutely disgusting if not treated. Anyway, we are now completely alone, and can resume talking, even if his face seems quite embarassed by my shouting for a maid to come by and my extreme happiness and extrovertism caused by his arrival. "So, yes, what were you doing exactly?" His face becomes slightly more embarassed. "I was.. stealing." I shake my head slightly, putting all my back onto the wood of the wall behind me. "As I thought. I think I have an idea." He moves the bench slightly closer to the table, and his head slightly closer to me. "This.. being gives powers to people who need to repent something they did, which is why he says that sentence- what exactly are your powers anyway?"
10He goes slightly back now, his face showing the thoughtfulness of him thinking about my idea, while his mouth mutters the words "I have no exact idea, but I seem to be able to disappear in a blink and reappear slightly far away with everything I had on me, no changes." I nod with my head a couple of times. He then says:"That might be an idea, but we would need to find someone else with powers to certify that- what's your sin anyway?" I look at him in the eyes, smiling. "Oh don't worry, nothing much. Just many little sins stacked on top of eachother." he doesn't seem to buy it, but he doesn't indulge anymore, as a loud scream can be heard from outside, that rattles everyone around, and puts the red on a defensive position. I look outside the window, it's late now, the commotion outside should have stopped and, if this is a village like any other, everyone else should have gone back home, and so I look at the boy in front of me. "What even is your name anyway?" he looks back at me, all his muscles on the ready. "Xavier, you?" we both realise this wasn't time to talk, but in case we needed to call eachother, we needed some way to know we were refering to us. "Anne." We both go outside, running and jumping over the tables of the inn, finaly reaching the outside. We see a kid, short brown hair, girl, lifeless blue eyes, a kitchen knife on her right hand, completely covered in blood, and three bodies behind him. She was dressed in the most peculiar way: a Naos armor.  An armor put on by elements of the army who are trained in assassionations, black leather, covers only the most important parts of the body except neck and head, as in leaves the waist, top chest and legs uncovered. The bodies on the floor were armored guards, hit once by the knife and killed on the hit. I move my sight towards Xavier, to see if it was his first time seeing bodies, or to see any disgust, but yet he seemed so calm. She now looks at us both, the only ones in front of her as everyone is around us, but very far away. "No one can change" she keeps saying at a low voice, slowly walking towards us and finaly throwing the knife at me with a speed that made it almost invisible. I don't know how, but I closed my eyes in time, perhaps in fear, and reopened them a few seconds later, to see the knife in my hands, and Xavier face in complete fear. I was very confused at the time, and hoping to get some answers, but this wasn't the time. I shut my eyes again, focusing on what I just subconciously did, taking the knife, and I realise closing my eyes allows me to control something else than me, a weird undefinable creature with red eyes, completely black. It almost looks like a liquid sphere which keeps moving, with glowing red of the eyes on it. I realise the kid has another knife, that she took from somewhere, and is ready to attack again. I put myself on the ready, but before she is able to do anything, Xavier is behind the kid, he lowers and grabs her by the waist, and highers her in the air. The lifeless eyes disappear, and all that's left is a whiny annoying shouting kid that begs for Xavier to put her down. The tense air of murder becomes funny air of a crying kid, and so we couldn't stay there with everyone looking at us. I run towards Xavier and the whimsical kid, and he understands instantly what I was asking him to do without talking. We run, Xavier slowly as the kid is trying to resist him, and we go inside the road on the side, I grab Xavier arm again, and we blink on the outside of the city, in the plain, where everyone can't see us as they're too concentrated on the murders. We put the girl down now, much to the red boy content, and she tries to clean off the blood from her armor in a vain kind of way. "I suppose he contacted you both aswell." I look at her confused, as Xavier is too tired to concentrate on her words. "He?" I spout. "Yes, him. Do you think the worst person could change, that everyone can be a good person bla bla bla, that one." I nod, still confused now by her extreme annoyance. "He is a being who is trying to cleanse the sins of others, I have understood that this far, it's the only thing I took from him while talking." I nod again, my face now relieved knowing the purpose of his actions, Xavier now concentrated on the words nods aswell, looking at me. "Why did you kill those guards?" the red boy asks, looking at the kid. "They were abusing their power on a little inoffensive girl." I look at her for a while, trying to figure out what she meant, and then I finaly understood, showing a face of shock on my face, much to the amusement of the kid. Xavier was shocked aswell. "What about your lifeless eyes?" I ask now, trying to look at her in the face, unable to because of the darkness of the night. I take my backpack off, opening its knot and taking out a lighter box, starting a tiny flame. "Lifeless eyes? These are my eyes." she says. And she was right, the light  showed that she had blue eyes that looked like some belonging to a dead girl, it was quite weird. We talked for a while, and we discovered that she had the power to materialise weapons as long as no one is looking at the materialization, and she wanted to know as much as we did what was going on, and so staying in the village was not possible, annoying me extremely since I was very tired and hungry, still thinking about that faesia I ordered, and so we start moving towards the nearest place to rest: the Inn of the Giant.	
11
12On the road we talked a lot, tried to learn more about eachother. Xavier lost his parents when he was 15, he's now 17, and lived those years by stealing neglected by the village, and was given the powers because of his sin, stealing. The girl, whose name is Giuls, or Giuly, never had parents, and spent most of her life of 14 years on the battlefield, explaining her inclination to killing, not explaining though how she got on a battlefield so early, but she wasn't eager to answer so we did not indulge. I did not expect to find interesting people to travel with such as them, and I was extremely happy about it. We finally arrived to the Inn of the Giant, a very tiny building compared to its huge name, it's slightly bigger than the inn Xavier and I entered in the village, has two floors, the second one with rooms, and the first one with everything made of wood, apparentely it's iconic of the area, except the tables which were in darkwood, making the place less eye destroying to look at. We bought a room for the three of us, it's cheaper anyway, and finaly sat around a table, ordered food and relaxing like normal people. "So, what do we do now." I ask, after everyone was done eating. They look around for a while, thinking about this question deeply, obviously, we weren't given any instructions on how to "repent" ourselves, so we had to figure out what to do. "We could try to do things that might attract the spirit who gave us these powers to us, so we could ask for a direction!" Giuls almost shouted, annoying everyone around us. We all lowered ourselves, embarassed, the shouting girl most of all, as me and Xavier thought about what she just said. "That might work, for some reason, it's not like we have any better plan, but what to do?" the other two look at eachother for a while after I talked. "We could destroy the Terentia's, the bandit group who has been constantly raiding the villages." they both say, at the same time as if they both thought about it instantly, as if it was something obvious. We all nodded and agreed to go towards the center of the Forest of the Deep, where  Terentia's supposedly is, after a good night rest.
13I have no idea what happened. It was sudden and quick and confusing. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, there was nothing. The Inn where I was sleeping in completely destroyed, my blurred eyes from waking up allowed me to see the bodies of a couple of people, and when i scratched my eyes, the amount of bodies increased, and increased, and when I finally was able to see everything, every single person in the Inn was dead, holes in the body, blood everywhere, heads missing, and a horrible smell of death in general. It wasn't a nice sight, but I wasn't very annoyed by it. The first thing I did was looking for Xavier and Giuls' bodies, but they were completely absent, and so I thought that they ran away in time. Then, I went to look for the remains of my pink lovely dress, and my backpack, but apparentely it was destroyed in the commotion. So, I went looking for the best looking dress around, and strangely found a dress that wasn't normal of the area: a dark purple jacket made of cloth that was open from the tummy to below, but had very long and big sleeves, and below a  magician skirt, one of those skirts that are open on the side, and have a drop made of the same material as the dress in the front that arrives to the knees, and on the back it arrives on the bottom, touching the back of the feet.  I didn't have time for a lot of choice, so I quickly put on that "dress", and put my sleeping clothes that was gently given by the inn on the ground, on the body from which I stole the dress. After looking at it for a while, I realise it had a huge knife hole in it, on the head, probably from GIuls, giving me a bit of hope for their survival. There was no time to waste, I directioned myself towards the Forest, and started running with my eyes closed, to look in front of me from the sky, giving me a better vision of everything. Yet, I didn't need to enter the Forest. Right at the beginning of it, where there's the difference between the grass and the trees, two guys were sitting. Concentrating my sight, I realise they aren't two guys, yet a guy and a child, Xavier and Giuls. They are tired, dirty, and there's a lot of blood on them, apparentely not theirs. I open my eyes, and I finaly see them directly, with no powers, a smile on my face, but their face, well. They looked at me, and instantly got on their feet, scared, angry, on the defensive, Giuls instantly materialised two knives from her back, pointing the blade of both of them to me. I stop slightly far away from them, so that they could hear me, but wouldn't feel threatened. "What- What's going on?" I ask kindly, my smile transforming into confusion. "You killed them all, we saw you, we fought you!" Giuls was shouting as she said those words. Xavier instead wasn't talking at all, just staring angrily. "You acted all nice with us and during night, you killed everyone." I was completely shocked, I had no idea how to react, I do not remember anything they said I did, I just remember sleeping. I tried to talk, to reason, but before I could say anything, Giuls rushed at me, ready to jump. I had no choice. I closed my eyes, controlling the beast behind me, making it go through the ground, and back outside in front of me, pillars coming upwards from below, hitting her at the first try, bringing her upwards and tumbling on the ground, very hurt and coughing up blood. Xavier blinks near her, shouting her name as if they knew eachother for years, and he looks at me, even angrier than before. He lifts her, making some moaning sounds come out of the girl's voice, and he turns, knowing well that I won't hit him. They both disappear in the forest, leaving no trace behind except the huge holes in the ground I see once I reopen my eyes. They left me for something I haven't done, but I understand perfectly, I would aswell. Every single attempt of trying to redeem myself has gone terribly, and so I had no choice.  I was so confused, I had no idea what to do, I killed so much in my life, this wasn't the first time, and I had no idea on how to repent myself, so I had to do something else.I wasn't ever tired or hungry thanks to this power, but I could still eat and sleep as much as I desired as if I was a normal being, and so I decided to do something drastic. I go towards the plain, where once the Inn was. I close my eyes, and create a huge pillar below me, highering myself towards the high sky, the maximum where my power, or my "beast", can arrive, and so i lie on it. It was quite cold, now that I remember, but I got used to it very quickly. And so my eyes remained shut
14For a hundred long years.
15I remember waking up as if it was yesterday, it's something very, very hard to forget realy. I woke up suddenly because of vibrations of my pillar, apparentely someone was trying to take it down, and so I opened my eyes. Big mistake. I fell from a hundred meters, and I wasn't very awake, so I did the first thing I could think of, I closed my eyes and put my "monster" around me, to defend me, creating a crater on the ground. Much dust was highered from the contact with the gorund, so no one could see what actually happened. And there were a lot of people around me, confused people who were in a circle around the crater, trying to look through the dirt, so I had to act quick. I got on my feet, tried to clean off the powder on me, brushing it off, and trying to look presentable in some way, for the first time in a hundred years. After all the commotion was over, all the people around me were able to see me, and me able to see them. They were miners, farmers, normal people who started cutting through the pillar for curiosity I thought to myself. "Who are you!" one of the men ask ,or better, demands to know. He was standing in front of everyone else, even if they were in a circle, he was tall, red long hair, yellow eyes, he was an elf like everyone else around here, he had a saber on his waist, inside a scabbard, sheathed, but his hands on its handle, on his ready. He reminded me very well of Xavier. I had no time to deal with them, I had to see what happened to everythin and everyone. "Who I am is not of your concern, I shall not allow anyone to prevent me from completing my task, move." I demand, angrily. It's not my character, but if I didn't act strong, they would have finished like the others. The boy with the red hair laughs, and everyone around aswell, they knew something I didn't. The miners and farmers moved slightly away, making a bigger circle, leaving the man with the saber in the middle. He touches the saber, but doesnt unsheathe it, yet a strange cyan sword that you can see through appears as he makes the gesture of unsheathing. "I have been trained by the Two Leaders themselves, I have no reason to listen to your demands, you Unsin!" he said in a remarcably sure of himself voice. "Unsin?" I ask, as he puts himself on his defence position. "Oh yes, you are an unsin, them who use the Powers of Repentance to help yourself, and not 
16 you were supposed to do." I got very confused at that point, I had no idea I slept a hundred years, I didn't even know I could live or sleep for that long, so I was very baffled as to why something as Unsins, the Two Leaders and magic like this appeared in little time. "I don't want to hurt you, please back off." I ask one time, now showing my actual character to him, yet he doesn't seem to believe. "Yeah right, and then you will kill me as I am not looking, or go kill someone else, I know how you Unsin work." I sigh. "I am sorry." I close my eyes. The beast behind me is now even bigger than before, it now resembles way bigger sphere, and the red eyes weren't eyes after all, as a third, green, light appeared, creating a triangle in the middle of "It". It has gotten so fast. I controlled the ability, which I then called Shadow Tear, to move onto the ground, and then create many pillars around me and the red haired guy, blocking everyone out. I keep my eyes closed, but I can still see. "It's over. Surrender." I never realised my voice was so low when I had my eyes closed, it was quite creepy, I thought at the time. "You will never win." His face was showing complete fear, the confidence completely gone. "It-It's you! It's you!" he shouts, making my eyebrows frown in confusion. "You are The Traitor! The strongest of the four cards! Spare me I beg!" He shouts, he keeps begging for life, and my confusion keeps increasing, so I had no choice. "I'll let you go and.." Shadow Tear goes deeper into the ground, creating pillars outside aswell, closing the bystanders between two circle of pillars, creating a lot of commotion. "And your friends if you answer me some questions." He nods strongly, tears appearing in his eyes, which makes me quite annoyed. "What year is this?" "It's 1500 ADD" I risk opening my eyes for the shock. "A hundred years?!" I say outloud, showing my shock. "Explain to me who the Two Leaders are, and what are the four cards." He nodded again, even stronger than before somehow, it almost looked like his head was about to fall on the ground. "The Two Leaders are anyone who has been chosen to be worthy by the previous Leaders, who were chosen by the First Leaders, Xavier Motto and Giuls Foris. They command Terentia, the group who used to be bandits, and now are focused on hunting down power users to prevent them to abuse their own abilities" He seems to be wanting to add something, but he closes his mouth before, probably his fear. "And the cards well.." He gets up from the kneeling position he got into a minute before. "There are four special cards in a card game Terentia made, The Fool, The Traitor, The Magician and The Dealer, as they are all four characters that are rappresented in the stories of our group, four people who have interacted with Xavier and Giuls, and changed their path completely, you, The Traitor, are the most dangerous card in the deck." So much information, so many emotions all at once hitting me, I had no idea how to react or what to do, and so I opened my eyes. "Just go." I say, and not a single one of them stops running for a second after I said it, it makes me look like a villain. I was, from their point of view anyway.
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18The first I met was The Fool. Of course, after hearing all those information, I instantly thought to myself: "I should see if those cards, such as me, realy do exist." and so I went towards the Forest of the Deep, to find more information about them, in a way or the other. But, as I arrived towards the center without any obstacle, I found out one of them was trying to do the same thing. There was a huge wooden fort in the middle of everything, made of huge tree trunks, way too tall to be climbed on, so the only entrance was, well, the main entrance, guarded by ten different people. As I was thinking how to enter, another girl decided to rush in without mercy. She was small, a strange looking knife in her hand, and a huge smile on her face, very fast actually, so fast that when I understood that she was rushing in, she was already at the entrance. The guards tried to stop her, but they instantly got stabbed by the girl before they could even react. I was hiding behind a tree, to not be seen, but after what happened, I decided to just go inside normally, I was pretty sure I wouldn't have found any resistance. The camp inside the fort was rather interesting to look at. It was way bigger than what someone could imagine looking outside, it had tents, houses, restaraunts, it was like a city inside a forest. Even if the guards at the entrance died, no one apparently noticed them, as everyone was rather calm. I decided to muscle in the crowd, and move towards the apparent center of command, a huge building on the opposite site of the entrance, which looked like a church, it had a bell on the top of a long pillar, but below it was a huge house, but I simply realised it was the center of command because an insane girl with a bloody knife in her hands was jumping between the crowd directed there. There wasn't a lot of people, so I was surprised no one saw her knife, but I wasn't extremely surprised about that, I was concentrating on reaching the building. After the couple of minutes to reach the building, and not so couple of people pushed down to reach it by me and the girl a few meters in front of me, we finally reach the building. I didnt't want to be seen by her, not knowing her possible reaction, so I stood a little bit behind, and waited her to enter the huge doors of the building, which made a very loud noise as she got inside. Before they completely closed, I slipped in unnoticed, still staying behind her. Now that I looked at her better, she had black long hair, was slightly smaller than me, some pretty incredible muscles on her arms, which weren't a lot visible, but for a girl, and a girl of her height and weight, they were quite incredible, as she wasn't fat at all. I then focused on the building as the metal doors closed shut. It was a long corridor, tall as a tower, pavement made of marble, decorated, columns to hold the roof one in front of the other, put near the walls of the building, creating a smaller passage in the middle. "Where is she!?" she shouts, as I realise that at the opposite side of the room there were two thrones, as if it was the castle of their kingdom. On it, there were sat two people, one with red short hair, and the other one small and cute. All around them there were hundred of people talking to them, dressed as some kind of noblemen, which irritated me a little bit. As the girl in front of me shouted, everyone went silent, and turned towards us, which made me understand it was too late for me to hide, so I kind of did nothing but follow the woman in front of me as she walked ahead. "I must say, information spreads fast, but not this fast." I realised that below the two "kings", there was a red haired guy: the one I met a few hours before. "You will not do to her what you did to Grow!" The noblemen move away towards the columns, allowing free space between me and the woman, and the man who was talking. The small girl on the throne also gets down from her throne with a jump, as me and the "killer" in front of me finaly leave the shadow of the entrance and arrive to the throne area. "Well, I did not expect to have you here so soon." obvious shock was in his face, as his words were shakey. I moved my sight onto the two people in front of the thrones. They were very, very, very similar to Xavier and Giuls, in almost everything, except the height, eye color and face shape. "I see you also brought reinforcements." he says. His sight was obviously on me, and the woman in front of me realised it, turning around. She had, and has, some very, very pretty light blue eyes, very expressive, you could see anything in them if you looked at them long enough. She looked at me petrified, not saying a single word, her mouth slightly open. "W-Who are you?" she says. Instant silence in the room.
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20I had realy no idea what was going on, or who was who, but I couldn't admit it, so I had to pretend I did. "I have been sleeping for a hundred years, and this is how I am greeted? Not very nice." I say in a joking voice, the girl in front of me "wakes up", and turns her entire body towards. "Don't tell me you are-" Instant chatter of the noblemen, silenced a minute later by the apparently king figure. "Annabelle." the child like girl on the throne says. "A-Actualy my name is Anne." I say silently, heard only by the black haired woman in front of me, which chuckles a little. "I am here to look for the rest of the Cards rappresentants." I see a hand going up in front of me, the girl who chuckled a little bit earlier was trying to get my attention, and looked very excited. "Me! Me! I'm one of them!" I turn my attention to her, and walk closer to her, her face full of joy, which made me smile a lot. "I am The Fool, and I know where The Magician and The Dealer are! I needed to find you so I could find them later! I am so happy!" from completely insane, she became such a cute girl I was almost restraining myself from patting her head. "Well we are leaving now!" I say turning around for a second towards the thrones, and then towards the exit, Fool jumping instead of walking. The "king" laughs, but after a second, the laugh comes from in front of us, as he teleported like Xavier used to, him having a longsword in his right hand, a spectre one like the other red haired guy had. "I don't think you are going anywhere. The girl on my side smiles, walking ahead in front of me. "I'll take care of him!" she says happily, almost like she has to impress me. "Here we are again, just me and you Creed, right? Your funny swords and skill, you better be prepared because soon.." She clutches her knife stronger in her hands. "Your last hour strikes." She runs incredibly fast towards him, but the difference of skill is incredible, you can see it in the first hit, Creed stabs her in the chest, killing her instantly. He laughs, pushing her outside the sword, and now looking at me. It was so weird though, she was so confident, yet it ended that way. I closed my eyes, and looked at the sitaution from closer, creating pillars at the same time to block behind me and on the sides, preventing him from leaving, and shocking him slightly, but he was still very confident. "That was easy." he said. A moment of silence, and then another laugh, coming not from him now, but the dead girl on the ground. She gets up with a jump, stabbing him in the back a couple of times, and then he hits her with the hilt with the sword, pushing her back. "What?!" he shouts, his hands on the back, which showed no blood. She laughs again, running towards him once more. She was faster than before, the difference of skills was now almost cut in half, every attack from him was blocked by a simple knife. "Go ahead, kill me again, I see you are able." He tries to cut her head  now, to kill her permanently, but it seems no matter how much force he puts, he just cuts slightly, killing her in the hit. She falls on the ground, and for a few seconds she stays on it, he goes closer and tries to stab once again to kill her one more time, but she moves with such speed he was unable to even hit her. "Why not let me win? You can't dodge forever!" Her voice was getting slightly more broken with every death, but faster, better, stronger, her knife dealing cuts on his shirt, and he finaly shouts in pain. The sound is obviously heard by the "queen", that jumps over the pillars. "Leave, now." She jumps over me before I can do anything, puts her foot on Fool's head, and grabs Creed, jumping back again with him on her back, and with a sequence of hops returns behind the pillars.  My sight allows me to see that she had brough him back onto the throne, and was curing him with some kind of liquid given by one of the noblemen. I reopen my eyes, the pillars disappearing, and Fool's voice and face returning back to normal. "Come on!" she turns back towards me, with a huge smile. I was extremely confused, and couldn't wait to go with her somewhere where she could explain to me what was going on.
21
22And so we left the building, walked through the crowd and exited the fortress. After  walking for a while without a word, as I was too busy thinking and she was too busy finding where to go, we arrive to a part of the forest where there is a burning fire surrounded by a camp of tents, cheers and laughs are everywhere in the air, confusing me even more. The black haired girl turns around towards me now. "My name is Laris, and I am The Fool!" she cheeringly says, taking my arm and bringing me towards the fire, where already a couple of people are, drinking some strange red liquid inside big glasses. "So, first of all, if you have any questions, and you probably do, ask away please!" I finally stop looking around the place and put my concentration on her. "Well, first of all" putting emphasis on first of all, "My name is Anne, and I am The Traitor." Her smiles becomes even higher, and she shakes almost like a shiver hit her spine. "Yes I actually have many questions, a hundred years of sleep aren't great let me tell-" instantly, I felt hurt on the back, and a huge hunger stroke me instantly, like a punch. "Holy shit I'm very hungry." Laris eyes stop glowing as she runs inside a tent behind us to grab a funny looking pot. "Here!" she says, and opening it reveals the strange red liquid everyone was drinking. I look at it funny, as I was hungry mostly, not thirsty, but I don't indulge and drink a bit. Suddenly, the hunger quickly faded away. "Cow Magic Nectar, it's amazing! It takes the magic ability of something, in this case a cow, and fuses it with its meat, making it liquid! It's both good for thirst and hunger, and it costs more than a castle!" She chuckles, me smiling back as I put the pot behind me. It was very weird though, the hunger and the pain hit me so far away compared to when I woke up, it might have been half a day, but I didn't think about it too much, I would investigate later. "Well, so, first of all, what the hell happened to the Terentia?" She nods fastly, smiling and eyes showing almost dedication. "Well, when The Traitor almost killed the two leaders, the ran towards the forest, where they discovered that Terentia wasn't an evil bandit group, but a mercenary clan that lended their strength to any leader who paid them enough. So they joined the ranks, climbed, then became the leaders, rebuilt the city, and you know transformed into sinner killers praticaly." She rolls her eyes towards the end of the sentence, and later they light up. "Oh yeah, about sinners.." Her face became a bit disgusted. "Most of the people who originally recieved powers because of their sins, who we simply call sinners, are dead. The only ones who are still alive are all the Cards, and perhaps a couple more I couldn't find. In the other hand.." She took my arm again, now putting me onto a trunk on the side of the fire , and her sitting near me, with her legs wide  open with the trunk between, as her chest was put towards me. Now that I looked better at her, I realised many things. She was wearing Fire Robes, robes only wore by high nobilty. Very decorated, short on the bottom, completely fire red, big sleeves and almost attached to the skin towards the chest. The thing that made me smirk was that, this was a dress only wore by high nobilty yes, but high nobility daughters, making her look like a very nice and cute kid. I concentrate on her words again. "There are other people with abilities, Lightlords as they call theirselves.  These are people who have never committed a single sin, from when they were born to their current age. There are very few of them, but trust me, they must NOT be trifled with, as they are extremely more powerful than everyone else.Most of the power users now are all unsins." My body trembles slightly as I hear that word, the same word they refered to me this morning. Thinking about the morning, I higher my eyes and realise its almost midnight, so the pain arrived to me after an entire day. "Unsins?" I ask with a low voice. "Yes! Unsiins! They are Lightlords who have sinned! They are quite powerful, but they lost most of their abilities after sinning, transforming them into other abilities usable by unsins. They aren't as good as Lightlords in my opinion..." Her eyes always lit up when saying Lightlord, as fi it was a cool word she loved saying. "Right, yes. Why are you The Fool though?" Asking her this question made her stop moving, talking and doing anything for a minute. "Well.." she then says. "Every single character of Terentia's stories have interacted with Giuls and Xavier. I was their daughter, as they passed their mixed powers to me, but I have no idea how to use them all, so I am still training.." My head shakes slightly in disbelief. "Daughter? How old are you again?!" She highers her head slightly from looking at the grass. "I'm 87, but sons and daughters of pure sinners don't age, like you, right?" In that moment, I completely froze. First of all, I realised i was 119 years old. Secondly, that little girl was 87. Thirdly, my parents were sinners, the power users, and so I wasn't the first one. But the only thing I could say was. "87?!" She looked at me funny. "Sorry, grandma, you're 32 years older than me." "Right." We both chuckle a bit, she smiling and laughing looked extremely cute. "Yeah but that doesn't explain why you are The Fool!" She keeps her smile on. "Oh well, I neglected them as parents and left to be on my own, and everyone started calling me fool because it was such a stupid idea, but I liked the name, so I realy don't mind. You know, if you had two people doing a trick on you, one was a magician and the other one a fool, what would shock you the most?" I nod in agreement, Fool wasn't such a bad card to be, unlike Traitor. It made me feel slightly annoyed to be honest. "Um, if I may ask, what happened to Grow?" Her face blackened a bit. "He died by the hands of Xavier and Giuls 50 years ago, he was my, um, best friend.." My face instead lightens up of both shock and embarassment. I didn't mean to bring this subject up anyway. "Oh sorry, why did they kill him?" She shook her head, looking at me back with a slight smile now. "Well, Grow was the most powerful sinner there was before the arrival of Lightlords. He was able to travel through time and space without even moving. Sure, he didn't have any evolutions of power, but that was more than enough to be a menace for Xavier and Giuls, who killed him with an entire army." I felt bad for her, but I wanted to change subject as fast as I could. "Evolutions of power?" I say kindly. "Yes! Yesss!" She smiles hugely once again, almost jumping on the log, making me realise she wasn't such a child with what she had on the chest. "Evolutions of power, almost every single sinner and unsin have to use their power and fight to discover side effects  and more abilities. As far as I know, every single sinner starts with all their power unlocked, but as no one told you how to use it, it's up to you to find every ability you can use. I discovered only two for now." This made me think back to when I woke up, the strange being behind me was bigger than before, and had another light on it, maybe that signified his evolution of power? "Well I have one final question then!" I had more to ask, but I couldn't stay all night there, she was probably extremely tired. "Where are The Magician and The Dealer?" She jumped on her behind towards me, onto the log, becoming so close our legs touched eachothers'. "Soooo, The Dealer is in the main city.." where I came from. "And The Magician is, well, a huge troublemaker and is now stuck in the headquarters of the main city army, where The Dealer is trying to take him out of!" She laughs a bit, while my face was more confused than everything else. "You see, the ability my father taught me before I left him was Foresight, an ability that allowed me to see the past in the eyes of anyone I wanted just by touching him in specific points, which allowed me to see where The Magician and The Dealer were going to, and via some information dealers and some research myself, I know now where they are and how they look like and what they are doing, which is the second ability I mentioned I discovered." I nodded, finaly my confusion transformed into a smile. "About learning abilities, can everyone learn every single ability? I mean, I saw some people had strange see through swords." She shook her head strongly. "Nonononononono, teaching someone an ability is something that takes years and years, that's why mages are so feared in the country. The current "king", Creed, learnt that ability from his father, which learnt it from his father, and learnt it from his father and you get the point. In the other hand, the "queen", Creed's wife, is Sarya, the most powerful non-power user I know, so it's better if we leave her and Creed alone from now on." I get up from the log, much to the slight sadness of Laris. "Alright, so, I am going to sleep right now since it's very late, and you totaly should do aswell, because tomorrow we are instantly going to the main city." She was very shocked to see my sudden "take" of power, but she didn't seem to mind at all, as far as I could see from her big smile afterwards. "Alright, ma'am!" she jokingly says, jumping off the log. "Where are you sleeping?" I look at her for a second, then turn. "Oh, you know, somewhere comfy."
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24"Let's not do like the last time." I say outloud as I keep my eyes closed, and lower myself from the top of the pillar to the bottom, making it smaller and smaller untill it's completely gone. TO my surprise it almost took a minute at an incredible speed, I don't want to know how far I actualy have gone up in the sky. I keep my eyes closed as I touch the ground, and surround myself with Shadow Tear. I wanted to try something. I realised that when I keep my eyes open while using my power, parts of the pillars remain, or different things do stay and so I have to absorb them back. So I thought:" I could make a dress out of this." I concentrated, and put very thin pieces together to make very light clothes onto me. And I opened my eyes, my cover disappearing but my clothes not. Finaly, I could feel the material and see the color of my ability directly. The color was a strange mix between purple and black, while the material was very curiously normal cloth, yet the pillars I am sure are made of something harder. I realise that I can change the material of SHadow Tear as I please, as these clothes are made of normal cloth, and everytime I imagined pillars, I imagined them made of stone, and so they were made of stone. "You could have slept in a tent, you know." Laris appeared behind a tree, looking at me dressed like the day prior, yet hair relatively long hair were together with a ribbon, closed inside a tail. "I already had experiences with sleeping near other people, let's say it transformed me into a card." I laugh slightly, even if the girl didn't understand my "joke". "Right, let's go."
25As we arrived to the city, I realised much had changed. The city was completely surrounded by a very tall wall, as tall as my usual pillars perhaps, and guards were walking on top of it, and around it from the outside. "Did something happen in my absence?" I ask to Laris. "Well, the king has obviously changed. An elf thief decided to join the military ranks, and started to grow higher and higher in power and then became Major General of the entire army, took over the power of the king, controlling both the army and the city, he's quite old though, he's 117 years old, he has 50 years to live perhaps. I realised that the only weird thing about my age was how I looked, as elves lived up to 200 years if they were extremely lucky, perhaps I should never tell my real age around. "So, how do we enter?" I ask to the cute girl."From the main door of course!" I shake my head instantly and strongly. "No, I won't fight the entire Main City army today." She groans. "Come on it was going to be fun anyway, emphasis on the word fun." "Nope." I shake my head again, looking back at the castle walls. "We can go from the top, but we would probably be seen, OR.." I look at her again. "If you promise to not kill anyone, we can enter from the main door." She groans again, and waits a minute to answer. "Fiiiine.." Her face now looks like a child's face when you deny them a candy, which makes me visibly smile. "What are you laughing at?" she says. "Nothing." I smirk again, walking towards the entrance. 
26It was guarded by a couple of soldiers who said absolutely nothing as we entered with much more people who seemed to be pilgrims of other lands. "What's going on?" I ask to the girl who I have been making constant questions since the day prior. "Well, to be honest, I have no idea." She infact had the same confused face as I had, and was looking around, seeing all the different races of the land going inside the city, from elves to mears to humans, wearing all kind of clothes. "I guess this was our luck huh?" We both look at eachother smiling, increasing the speed of our walking to surpass every pilgrim around. "So, military headquarters." I say as she nods, taking my arm with her hand, showing her quite weird strength she possess, which made me shiver slightly. We move around the crowd with mastery, almost not touching anyone, and after a couple of minutes of walking , we reach a very tiny building. It was just two doors, and a connection onto the ground, probably signifying that the actual building is underground. It was very anticlimatic, to be honest, but obviously it's great for defence. "Yes, we can't enter here without an invite though, so we need to find The Dealer first, and it's realy hard since it's a huge city." I think about it for a second, then ask her a question. "Is there any Lightlord with the ability of knowing if I am using my powers or not in the area?" It was a very specific question, but I didn't want anyone attacking us in the middle of the  streets. "N-No, not realy, not as far as I know, why?" I close my eyes as I hear those words. "This may take a while." After around ten minutes, my visual covers the entire city. "Alright, where could he be now?" I ask her as Laris gets up from her sitting position she probably got when she was waiting, I didn't notice untill that point"Ummm, he is very charismatic as far as I know, so he probably is hiding somewhere with many people trying to find a way to enter..." This narrows the places to either open buildings or apartments, but apartments aren't very safe and are completely guarded as far as I can see, so he is hiding in places where no guard would look at. "Any other tip you could give me? What does he look like." She smirks slightly. "He has pink hair." I chuckle a little bit, thinking about a man with pink hair, but I don't indulge. I focus more on my ability, trying to find someone with pink hair. The search starts realy slow, but more I move, more I realise I can go faster than I thought, untill I understand that I can take entire groups of people and look at them all in an instance, and finally, I try to do the most obvious. Take the entire city and look at it as a group. And, it works. It felt like someone hit me with an hammer in the head, so much information coming in instantly, but I knew where he is. "Alright, he is-" I shake my head, and concentrate again looking for him. "He is inside the headquarters already, nobody dead, he must be infiltrated." I presume. "Okay, how do we get in then?" Laris looks at me smiling. "No."
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28We open the huge metallic doors of the bunker, which reminded me of the gentle origin of our race. As I said before, elves are against the war and violence, so keeping something as important as military headquarters locked would be strange for them, something that surprised Laris. In fact, I didn't know what race Laris was, she didn't look like an elf, a human perhaps, but it was the cross between Xavier and Giuls, who were two elves, so perhaps sons and daughters of sinners have this strange race? Before I could finish my thought though, we were greeted by two guards. "Greetings noblewomen, you must be here for the debrief. We don't get a lot of noblewomen down here." We both nod, confused but not showing it on our faces. "Very well, follow the corridor to the right, there will be a room with "General Command" on it, enter it and you'll find everyone else." he says, moving away to let us pass, an opportunity we take without indulging a second. After walking for a while, it was quite a long corridor, I hear Laris talking. "This was very strange." I look at her as we arrive to the end of the corridor, turning right. "The debrief? Yeah, perhaps it's about the pilgrims." She looks at me confused and shakes her head "No, no, he called me a woman and not a child!" My face from curiosity turned into slight disappointment. "R-Right.." She in the other hand was quite happy. We arrive at the door, and open it slowly, trying not to make any sound to prevent interrupting the debrief that was already going on. There were a lot of people all around a cyan metal table in the middle, which had a bowl form, containing a liters and liters of water. Images were appearing on it, of lands and people as the main general talked, but we weren't here for that. We both stay in the crowd, and I close my eyes, looking for The Magician. And there he was, in the room, opposite side of ours, but being so close made my ability blurrier, for some reason. I move into the crowd, leaving Laris alone which made her almost shout "Hey where are you going?", but she stops in the middle of the sentence, disturbing some people around her who look at her wrong. I move swiftly, trying not to hit anyone, as I reach the opposite side of this rather empty room. It had some nice white walls though,very smooth to the touch, the roof and bottom made of concrete, quite good looking for a military debriefing room. I finaly arrive to The Magician, his canny pink hair was both ridiculous and attractive in some way, confused hair that didn't know where to go as I like to describe them. I move to be almost attached to him, which made him stop focusing on the debriefing and onto me. He was quite muscular, was wearing a military grade robe like almost everyone else in the room, dark green, made of hide, long sleeves, long pants, buttons to close it, and a funny looking pocket on the shirt. "Magician, right?" I say to him very very lightly. His face changes from curiousness to surprise to angriness and then acceptance, and he nods. "I was looking for you, aswell as The Dealer, do you know where he is?" He looks at me and nods again some times fastly, highering his arm which I follow with my sight and then he points towards the man besides the general. "Right. Yes." I say, then realising what he meant. "Wait what?! That one?!" He lowers the arm, as I realise that he wasnt looking at the debrief before, but at him. "Right, so, what did you have in mind?" He seems to be thinking for a while, but doesn't say anything. Laris said he was very charismatic, but to me it doesn't seem that way, perhaps I haven't known him for long enough. Laris is smart enough to go behind a plan, so it seems like it's my turn to do something.
29
30I close my eyes, and I have the sight of the entire room. Shadow Tear quickyl covers all around the room, below the feet of the men and women who panic as it's surrounding everything, and in the general chaos and panic move their feet away from my ability, which is great for me as it creates space to fill, and I also cover the table so that everything in the room is now black and slimey. The Magician understands that I was supposed to do something where I didn't want to be seen, so he goes in front of me, making sure nobody can see me, and he plays along. "I have been asleep for a hundred years.." I say, my voice low as it is always when I close my eyes, which makes almost everyone in the room rather scared. "Who is talking?!" the general shouts, as the man beside him, apparentely The Dealer, looks around the room calm. "You brought me away from my city, and did nothing when I needed help, you are useless, worthless creatures who only want to become stronger, mostly you, general." That moment made me realise that, if that was the general, he was also the king, and I am pretty sure I know who the king is. "Did you enjoy leaving all your dead friends in an hallway?" He becomes instantly angry, creating a spectre weapon like everybody else does, yet using no weapon as an example, and contrary to everyone else's, his was glowing red. He had short black hair, black eyes, he was tall and muscular, yet slightly thin, what someone could call the perfect soldier, he looks around the room again, looking for someone to hit. People start to panic, move towards where the exit was, and so Laris and The Magician don't lose the chance, and grab The Dealer's arm, taking him towards the exit. He doesn't resist, and so I open a hole where the door is, allowing everyone to run out, yet the General doesn't leave, he stays inside near the table. I quickly cover myself with Shadow Tear, to not be seen by him, its' such a dark element that he could never actualy see me. "Why are you back? I thought you left." Silence for a while. "You are the only one left who know what I am capable of, I can't let you go now." He shivers slightly, moving around on the spot. "You did great changes to this city, but you are old, it's time to let the successor take place." "My successor is an idiot, he is at the castle and refused to come to the debrief." I chuckle, which makes him jump on his spot, I didn't know my laugh was bad. "It seems he did one right thing. Now, if you tell me one thing, and you retire, I'll let you go, if not, well, you'll see what personal hell means." He nods, his expression quite serious, not showing fear, which surprised me a little. "How many lightlords are in this city?" He becomes shocked for a minute, then answers. "There are two for every big city, but in this one there are three" he laughs a little bit, almost like he thought of a joke. "Something tells me you'll meet him soon." I sigh, tired of this, a huge spike comes out from the Shadow Teared floor, hitting him right in the chest and fatally hurting him. I open my eyes, Shadow Tear completely disappearing, and he falls on the ground, a huge hole in his chest. "Don't EVER be ironic or sarcastic with me." I say as I walk towards him. He looks at me for a while, moving his eyes around my face."Y-You haven't aged a second." He says, spouting blood. "Can't say the same for you." Talking to him was something very strange, it's as if we had known eachother for years, and we had a long and big grudge that we solved with his death. I sit close to him as he is dying, even if I was hearing sounds of fighting outside. "What made you change idea and become a military man?" I ask, as I higher my knees to my chest and wrap them with my arms, he lying down on the ground. "You did, losing all my friends like that hurt like hell. If I had-" He is stopped by blood coming out of his mouth once again. "If I had known, I would have stabbed you when I first met." He chuckles, followed by my laugh. "C-Can you do me a favour?" he says suddenly as I was preparing to get up. "It's the minimum, what do you need?" He highers his back very slowly, stuttering a little bit, so I help him get up. "I-I thought about what happened that day a lot, and realised that you are a being of power that can't be contained or measured. Ple-Please, promise me you will spare my citizens." It was quite heroic of him to say those words, instead of praying for his life, which made me say the following:"I promise as long as I live, not a single life that doesn't need to be killed, will be killed." He smiles, as I remove the hand from his back and he now falls down on the ground at the same speed he got up, slowly, painfully, as his eyes close and his heart stops.
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32As the people left the room after I closed it, another man arrived in the corridor with Laris, The Magician and The Dealer: he looked like a normal guard, completely iron armor from head to leggings of pure iron, a long spear in his hand, which was of a strange red material, looked like a gem. I wasn't able to see him as he arrived, as I was busy with the king, but later they told me the about those minutes of my absence. Every man and woman ran behind him and towards the exit around the corner, leaving him and the three alone. The corridor was exactly like the room, concrete floor and roof and white walls, lightened by multiple torches on the walls. He looked at The Magician in the eyes, as he moved in front of the other two. "Alcart, we meet again!" the guard says, highening his spear and hitting the ground a second later. "Who would have thought that the infiltrated sinner was in fact, my second in command?" The Magician smiles. Alcart voice was, well, complex. Listening to it made you deconcentrate on everything else and only on it, it was immensely hard to ignore him, which made me understand when I heard it a couple of minutes later, when i exited the room, why Laris said he was "charismatic." "Sir, may I ask a battle?" The Magician asks the other man, both of them having a smile of rivalry in their faces. "Granted."
33I entered the corridor in the exact moment they started fighting, and well, oh man. The Magician had powers like I have never seen before, but the lightlord was on another level. The guard was standing still, his spear moving in his hands and touching the ground as he commanded, and what he commanded? Soldiers that he materialised from the ground some how, completely made of meat, wearing armors, they looked like actual people, they were incredibly fast, strong, they could run the entire city in a minute as far as I know. The Magician was also standing still, he was surrounded by three strange looking hands with a gem of a strange color inside: one was red, green, and blue. He used his hands to command them to do different things, the red one would shoot strange powerful torrents of light that pulverised anything they touched, the green one was able to create shields where they pointed, which he used to defend himself and the blue one was able to to manipulate objects from afar. The entire battle was amazing look at, but the winner was obvious. Alcart was getting tired and the guard wasn't slightly sweating, the summoned guards were too many, and he couldnt attack them all at the same time. "That's it." The Magician said, making the lightlord confused for a second. The three hands collide together, and then they open, all attached at the wrist together, they then close onto the same point, quickly creating a pulverising light like the one from the red hand, yet it was a "black light". He shot it towards the lightlord, which smirked as he highered his lance with the point onto the ray directed onto him, cutting it in two. But as the flashing light disappeared, we were already gone, The Magician took all of our arms together and teleported in the plain outside the city. He then faints, a second later.
34We didn't have much time to rest. The Dealer looks at us in the eyes, one at a time, except for Alcart to whom he looks towards the body. "Okay so if I had to.. "guess", I see The Traitor, The Fool, The one on the ground, and me, The Dealer." Me and Laris look at eachother confused, nodding as we move our concentration back to him. "Okay my name is Tophiros, we don't realy have much time, that guy was the leader of the guards, even if, well, he WAS all the guards, and what he just did isn't even close to his full power, as he was keeping most of his power to put his guards around the city." We say yes with our heads, honestly shocked by all he was saying, but we had no choice except to trust him. He grabbed Alcart on the ground, and we started to run towards the forest. But, it was too late. A wall of spears appeared in front of us, cutting off the road towards the forest, and the way behind, leaving only one place to go: ahead, where the head of the guards was waiting for us. I am very glad I did what I did. I say to everyone:"Go on ahead, I am sure I'll follow you later. Meet up at where we left, Laris?" She looks at me, confused as before, nodding quickly. "Right, right." The Dealer didn't know what my power was, and so he couldn't say anything except agree, and so they started to run fast behind the guard who was standing in front of me. "Are you ready?" I say, his creepy smile under the helm shows.
35The guards appear from the ground as before, holding spears and armors, rushing towards me, but it was useless. I close my eyes, and put almost all of the entirety of Shadow Tear underground, making spikes, pillars, tentacles that grab the soldiers underground, no mercy and no sparing anyone, making his smile disappear. "This is curious. You can keep up." I chuckle, and I suddenly realise something. As I was fighting versus him, on my back the small part of Shadow Tear i still had showed not three, but four gems. Apparentely everytime I kill someone with some power, I get one, so perhaps?
36I move the small part of Shadow Tear from my back to the front, in my hands, and try to create a sword like the king did, and what did you know, it did. A curved longsword, big as a longsword yet heavy like a dagger, an amazing feeling, and exactly what I needed. He was correct after all, I could keep up easily but couldn't hit him, but now. I rushed towards him, attack him with an expertise I never knew I had,perhaps I got that from the king, making him get startled and block me quickly with his spear, all his soldier disappearing. "You are a lady full of surprises, but, alas, this is over." His spear spins quickly, towards my neck, I open my eyes trying to stop it quicker without the blur, but it was too late, and I close my eyes in fear. I open them a minute of silence later, realising I wasn't dead, but he was pushed away and was incredibly hurt. "Y-You! Why do you have his power?! How dare you?!" He rushed again, now allowing me a lot of time to use my sword and abilities, and so I close my eyes quickly again, make the weapon in my hand fade away, and I point at him, making my spikes from the ground impale him, hundreds of spikes just to be sure. He wasn't breathing at all, his chestplate completely destroyed and his red spear on the ground. It was incredibly shiny, how could I resist, I picked it up for myself, but when I took it, it completely disappeared into dust. It was part of his soul as a weapon, incredibly powerful, he would have instantly killed me with no effort if he used all his power, but the idiot used it to defend the city from nothing while he was trying to kill me.
37I reopen my eyes, his body falls on the ground and I start walking away from the city and towards Laris accampment, while I think about the powers I had, the different gems. I had gotten two from my initial sin, one by killing the magician inside the tavern a hundred years ago, another one from killing the King, and now a red one from the Guard's death. Before I could conclude my thought completely, I arrived to The Fool's camp, where the other three were sitting around the fire, and when the girl saw me, first of them all, she ran towards me ad jumped in my arms, hers wrapped around my neck which made her completely detached from the ground, but she was very light. The others two get up aswell, looking at me very confused. "What happened?" The Magician asks, still pretty tired from before, it was visible on his entire body, he had changed his clothes into more comfortable ones, blue cloth long pants and a jacket of the same color of the bottom, making him look like one of those actual magicians of the old times, but slightly darker. "I killed him." They looked all kind of shocked, The Dealer was the one that was less surprised by this. "I thought you could take him on but, kill him, well.." he in fact says, wearing a funny looking black jacket that had a mantle on its back, and buttons on its front. Laris though, when she got the news, did a huge smile and gave me an high five, which kind of freshened the mood in general, and everyone else started smiling aswell. "Right, come here now." We both go sit down beside eactoher onto the log infront of Tophiros and Alcart.
38"What now?" I ask. "Well, first of all, we need to trust eachother." The Magician says, looking at all of us. "I got back all of my powers, I wasn't ready to fight him at all, my strength was extremely diminished from fighting another lightlord before." he says, which makes me say "Oh right" instinctivly, since he was quite weaker than any other of us. "Your powers are your business, and you know how to use it, but I think we should all know eachother sins." The air becomes tense after this sentence, a big silence for a couple of minutes, interrupted only sometimes by the fire wood breaking. "Right." Laris says, moving a little bit on the spot. "I think it's just right, so that we have something to make sure who's who, and we can protect eachother with no problem. I guess I'll start." She takes out a knife from her back I hadn't noticed, and starts cutting a piece from the wood of the log while talking. "People born from two sinners don't age, as I am pretty sure you all know since you all are, but they aren't born sinners,  which means unless they do the so called "First Sin", they won't recieve powers.
39I ran away a long time ago from my parents, all they wanted is to transform me into a sinner killing machine, but i was completely against that thought, all I wanted was to have a normal life in the fortress with them, but they didn't agree and so I left. But they didn't stop, they sent guards and part of their army to get me back, so I had to use what they taught me against them, killing the guards. Eventually I learned how to avoid them, to prevent more deaths, and so they sent three of their friends, extremely able with swords and different weapons, to fight, Creed, Sarya and Filas. They found me, we fought for a while, and I killed Filas in the heat of the fight, making Creed extremely angry and he killed me back. Thanks to my ability, though, Fool, I came back and attacked them back, hurting them in the process and made them run away. Filas was the man who pratically spent most of the life with me, taught me everything, and it was the man I had the most fun with at the time, yet killing him was just as easy as taking any other men's life.
40My sin is rinnegation and, being an heartless being."
41We both look at her, she is obviously ignoring our gazes looking at the knife into the log. We of course didn't feel angry for what she did, it made us realise how evil of a person she realy was even if the body showed someone else. "Thank you Laris." The Magician said, making her higher her head and look at him, she had some tears in her eyes, but I believe it wasn't for the story but because someone thanked her. "It's my turn then. It's realy easy what happened." He lowers his chest in front of himself. "I was an apprentice magician when I met Xavier and Giuls a long time ago, and I taught them their full powers and how to discover them and at what extent they could go, that is why my card is, obviously, The Magician. But meeting them made me realise how I also wanted to discover more, more abilities, more knowledge, and so that's what I did. I studied and worked hard to learn even more, but in the end I reached the maximum I could reach without doing anything illegal. But I couldn't stop there. I entered the king's private library, disguised as the king himself with my magic, and stole all of his books, and read them all, but I wasn't satisfied, and I stole the banned book of "Magic And Mysteries Related To Death". I wanted to try as I always did every spell and ability I found one named "Resurrect". Apparentely, there is no way to bring back someone from the dead, and I learned by my.. mistakes. I killed the population of a village to attempt to resurrect a single person, but it was useless, there was no way, and so I wasted human lifes.
42My sin is greed and waste."
43This one was way more surprising than the other ones, I would have never thought him as a very knowledgeful person, but in fact he was. The Dealer looks at The Magician with a smile. "I believe the ideal was quite an amazing one, but nothing ever works at the first twenty thousand tries am I right?" we all chuckle slightly, then feeling bad for chuckling about the death of twenty thousand people. "Well, as you know I am Tophiros. I used to host a building of bets and card games based on making money, it was a pretty good experience, it taught me many things, but mostly, it taught me how to lie and cheat. And there I always did, it prevented me from getting killed at night, it allowed me to make my guests always lose and make me gain money, and one day I discovered that because of my lies someone had burned an entire city down. Did I stop? Not for a second, it wasn't any of my business, I had a real business to keep up with and I couldn't stop there because of "one city". Or two. Later on, I had slept with Fhara, the councelor of Terentia's king, and so I met him, Xavier, which tried to kill me as it was because of me that one of his cities got burnt down, and so I ran away, I changed location and kept hosting, untill the lies one  day caught up with me and burnt the entire house down, from which I survived only thanks to my powers.
44My sin is lying and egocentrism."
45They all look at me now, waiting. "So, Anne, you are the last one. What's your sin?" I close my eyes.
46"It was a dark night of winter, I had to sleep on the couch because my bed was broken, and so I was able to hear the arrival of a thief inside our house, I always kept a knife near me, and they said I was insane because of it, but it gave me a sense of security that only a weapon could give me, and I had no fear of using it. As he entered in the shadows, I got up from the couch and instantly stabbed him in the back, covering his mouth to prevent his scream, it's almost like I knew what to do, I kept walking down the corridor of my home, inside my parents bedroom, and murdered them both in their sleep, silently, leaving only blood on their backs and on the bed. And so I left the knife in the thief's hand, and left through the main door when the day came, feeling nothing except happiness from having gotten rid of two idiots who just wanted to control me and exploit my inner magic vein to the maximum and almost kill me in the process. I had nothing else to think except to murder them."
47They looked at me confused, Laris was actualy pretty scared, which was weird considering she did kill a person she cared about deeply. "Sorry your, uh, look kind of, didn't.." The Dealer failed to explain why they were confused, crushing words together. "He's trying to say your cutesy look failed to show your, nature." Alcart said with his soothing voice, which made me instantly understand what he meant. "Yeah, I guess if you find me cute it may seem that way." There's silence for a while, it's almsot like they pretend my sin is worse than theirs, killing populations and whatnot, while I killed only three people. "Right. So." The Magician interrupts the silence. "The.. spirit that gave Anne powers and our parents a long time ago..." I use all my force to stop him talking, it takes quite a lot of self control. "Um, you are all children of power users?" I ask, thinking about my parents. "Y-Yeah, we all are aren't we?" Laris says, as the other two nod looking at me. "R-Right, you are all kids." It was pretty funny to call people of over 80 years kids, but to me they all were, much to their annoyance. "As I was saying, the spirit talked again and said that because no one repented during these hundred years, one person was chosen to never age and never die because of it, to bring to future generation the objective of repention, untill someone achieves it and so the person will die, releasing all the sins he has accumulated in all this time into a gem, the "smallest thing inside the biggest thing", that will destroy everything in its radius depending on how much sins the person has committed. Before we even find that person, even if I am pretty sure it's Anne right here, we need to find the gem, and see what "the smallest thing inside the biggest thing" is."
48We listen interested in all his words untill the end. Perhaps that is why I didn't age in all these years, I was chosen by the spirit and my parents weren't sinners, and I was the first one in my family to ever have any, but that doesn't explain the two power gems inside Shadow Tear. I need to find out what the two powers from those two gems are. "The only thing I can think of is the Capital's castle, where it is said that there is the smallest but most rare gem of all, the smallest thing inside the biggest, we get in armed and ready and we kill everything untill we reach it, it seems like the only way, it's heavily guarded, there's not a single angle not watched by a guard." We nod, killing was something like eating at this point, natural and normal, we didn't mind, we were sinners already, another sin would have not changed anything. The Dealer wasn't amused though, almost hidden beneath his long brown hair there were his eyes, colored red now that I realised it, that were looking at Laris.  "How.. old are you?" She looks at the Dealer seriously for a second, perhaps not realising the question at first. Then she does her huge smile. "87!" she cheeringly says, shocking both of the present people. The Magician is the first to talk "I'm 57." followed by The Dealer "I am 68. You are the oldest one?!" She does a sweet nod that makes me smile. "Right, we sleep, then we go to the castle." I say, as I get up and get ready to leave. The Magician stops me while the others are leaving. "Hold up, I need to talk." I turn around, looking at the Laris talking to the red eyed man while they walk away inside the accampment. "The spirit told me something else. Those two are obviously very calm persons, but very emotional, I realised it talking to them while waiting for you. You instead, killing that man was no easy talk, but you were not slightly scarred by it, so I think talking to you about it it's the best thing to do." I turn my whole body towards him, realising that under his quite attractive pink hair were some blue eyes that were remarcably nice to look at, making me smile despite his seriousness. "There is a man or woman controlled by the spirit between us four."
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50As we enter the castle of the "Lords of Lightning" I think about those words again, a traitor in our ranks, I think this was the best way to find out who was actually who. We entered the castle with almost no problem, the guards at the entrance died instantly, but as we went in the main room we realised that there were many different paths we could take, and so we decided to do the most obvious thing, divide untill we find the place and then call the others. I go on the top floor, and close my eyes before going anywhere, to see where everyone was going and if they were going to be okay. We weren't. The first to fight was The Dealer, he went in the corridor at the bottom floor and met a good looking man. He had short blonde hair, a noblemen armor that looked like a dress which allowed him to move quickly, and an annoying smile with two cyan eyes that made me almost hate The Magician's, which is quite a statement. "I hope you are ready to die, intruder." He highers his hand towards the sky, making a blue rapier appear in his hands, and then pointing it towards him. The Dealer face was very calm, it was quite interesting, it was obvious the man was quite strong from his portament and stance. He almost instantly teleported in The Dealer's face, a couple of meters away from him, attacking him with the rapier in his chest.
51He just moved away like nothing. The other man looked at him incredibly confused. "What? You don't think I can dodge?" The rapier holder got very annoyed by that sentenced, and started hitting faster, while he just put his hands behind his back, escaping every hit. There was no way he was this fast. "You remember me don't you?" Tophiros asks, much to the extreme confusion of the other. "Never saw you once." He jumps back, slightly tired, while The Dealer was feeling absolutely no sweat at all. The man now highers his rapier in the sky again, starting to flash with light. "Oh, now you are going to lower your weapon and make crush the ground beneath me while attacking me from the front with your rapier aren't you?" The light stops, as the weapon falls on the ground because of the shock recieved. He shakes his head now, grabbing it again, slightly trembling. "W-Who are you? Have we met?" Tophiros smiles. "How can't you remember me? I'm your best friend." He aims his right hand towards the enemy's sword, taking it away from his hands and making it float in the hair. "You know why they call me The Dealer?" The enemy now makes the floating sword disappear, and reappear in his hands. Lightning starts to appear around it, and then around his arm, and finaly his entire body was flashing with lightning, every single move he did was so incredibly fast he seemed like a static image moving. "Because I have your cards in my hand and I play them for you." The speaker's right hand was instantly cut off by the other man, with speed nobody as ever seen, it shouldn't even be calculated as speed. "How can you play cards without a hand?" He screams slightly, touching his cut hand with his left, and then he smiles, pain obviously on his face. "Die, insect." With his left hand he touches the enemy sword, making it turn instantly towards the enemy and inside his head, on his forehead, as the lightning disappears, and so does the sword, as he tumbles on the ground, near the hand he just cut a second ago.
52Secondly, The Magician. He went towards the opposite corridor of Tophiros, a woman greeted him. Tall, red hair as long as her,two huge light wings behind her that covered the entire alley, and empty open hands directed towards him. "Do you know what megalomaniac means, Alcart?" He looks at her, putting his hands in his pocket, as he smiles. "A person who has an obsessive desire for power." She smiles, a gentle smile, as she puts her right hand as if she was throwing a dart. "Correct, pupil." She puts her hand back now, a lightning spear-like thing appears, almost like a lightning rod, she throws it towards The Magician who blocks it with his red hand's ray that appeared behind him. His white hands made of bones weren't three anymore, but six. Red, blue, green, purple, white, black gems floating inside holes of the bone hands, all turning around the man and aiming towards her. "Shall we have a good time?" 
53The wings close behind her back, as they re open majestically making her float in the sky. Her hands highered more, but no lightnings created in them, but they came from the top of the ceiling, falling down on the man, which moved away with teleporation, probably the same thing he did to go to the garden far away from the main city. The lightnings started slow, but they started to increase both in number and in speed, the Magician not counter attacking but charging something with his purple hand. "I have not seen those three hands before, purple black and white, I hope you will surprise me, child." He sends forward the red hand, making it move around the lightning hits, as the lady in the sky fails to notice it as she is trying to hit the man below him. The hand shoots the ray, almost hitting her, but at the last minute, the ray was vaporised a few centimeters away from her, and mirrored towards Alcart, who now physically moves away from it instead of teleporting, not having enough time. The lightning stops, the woman now getting on the ground, her wings closing. "Enough fooling around, come at me!" She highered her hand, a bow now appearing in it, and a quiver on her back, it was quite see-through, it almost looked like light, an impressive sight. She picked an arrow from the quiver and shot, but it wasn't a single arrow, three arrows splitted, then nine, then twenty seven, they kept multiplying, The Magician jumps, his green hand put toward him to create a shield, as the arrows completely destroyed everything in that radius she aimed the arrow at, if he hadn't jump, he would have probably died. He takes this chance to takes his hand out of his pocket and aim towards the woman, the red hand shoots the ray again, and the lady turns towards it, with open arms, but at the last moment the blue hand activates, moving it slightly to the right, missing her of very little, but making her get pushed to the opposite side of the small explosion because of the hit. She was still on her feet. "Surprising, student, you have learned." The Magician falls on the ground aswell, slightly tumbling as he gets back on his feet. "You could say that." She quickly aims an arrow again towards him, and shoots. It doesn't multiply, and so Alcart tries to use the blue hand to control it, but he fails, and so he has to move away on his left, the arrow hitting the red hand, apparentely its target by the precision it hit it. A small crack appeared on his head, making blood fall from it. "Good hit." He smuggingly said, cleaning the blood from his head with his thumb. The purple hand is still charging something, which makes the "angel" slightly afraid. "Is that going to be done any time soon?" she asks, looking at it. The Magician now smiles, pointing his arm and his open hand towards her, the black and white hands following it and going closer to the angel that very quickly tries to strike them down with two consecutive arrows, yet the hands create shields to protecting eachother with no effort. As they get close the lady jumps into the sky opening her wings, making the bow disappear and now making arrows appear from her back, a huge array of arrows that shined as bright as the sun firing towards the hands, blinding The Magician. Yet, the hands moved around, avoiding them and shielding eachother in case they couldn't evade them, getting closer and closer. But the hands couldn't evade everything, and the "angel" rushed towards them, creating a blade looking thunder that stroke them down in an instant, creating more cuts on The Magician face. "H-Heh..." He pants, as the lady gets down on the ground, walking slowly towards him, he moves the blue hand in front of him wtih a gest, the hand grabs the ground and throws it towards the lady, that cuts it with no problem aswell as the hand, a bigger cut appears on Tophiros face, he protects himself with the green hand, but an arrow behind her appears and destroys that too, he kneels because of the pain. "You are a megalomaniac." she says, putting the blade on top of his head. "And you are a fool." he smiles, the purple hand exploding in a huge light, that blinds the lady. After a minute, she shakes her head and was able to see again, and what she saw she couldn't believe. The magician, a few steps in front of her, smiling, his cuts completely gone, with six hands and a new one, yellow. "The bad kind of fool." he says, all his hands put together like last time, but instead of three now they were seven strong hands, starting to charge a ray. She looks at him in the eyes, the lightning blade disappearing,she was showing a defeated face. "It's time to die." The ray charges faster and faster, untill its a almost competely black sphere. It now shoots towards her, stopping at a centimeter away from her face, but her shield isn't able to deflect it, and goes through, into her, killing her instantly and leaving nothing behind. The Magician falls on the ground tired.
54Last but not least, The Fool. She went upstairs on the secondary stair near the one I went to, arriving to the top of the castle, which was strangely empty, except for a curious looking man in the center. She approached him with a smile, jumping instead of walking towards him, untill he was a couple of meters away. He was wearing a black sombrero looking hat, a orange long jacket that covered his entire top body, and light cloth pants below, that moved as the wind arrived. He got up from his sitting position, showing that he had an empty sheath on his waist, and his face and hair were completely shadowed by the hat. "Hello handsome sir! I am looking for a certain green gem, could you show me where it is?" He tries to slash her quickly with an invisible sword with a long blade only seen by his hand closing on an handle, but she jumps away quickly. "That is very rude!" She puts her hands behind her back, where she takes two long knives with serration on its blade, probably made to hurt. The knives weren't there, so she probably got the power from her mother, materialising weapons. "It's a beautiful day isn't it?" The man said, he face still completely dark. "It sure is." She answers. "On days like these, well, people like you.." She tries to see under the hat. "They shouldn't be fighting." Both his eyes shine, they were completely white except the pupil that was black, he puts his blade towards her, and slides incredibly fast towards her, a centimeter away from her head. Yet, she jumps and lands on the sword that stays in its position, the face darkening again. The blade moves to the right and then left again, but she blocks it with both her knives, pushing it away and rushing towards the man, that trys to kick her, but she jumps from it, and tries to hit him over the head. His eyes light up again, his hand instantly goes on her face, he grabs her and forcefully pushes her in front, where he instantly appears and kicks her before she falls on the ground, as the eyes go black again. She gets right back up again, feeling the pain on her back. "Do you feel it now?" She looks at the talking man panting. "Your sins crawling on your back." She rushes again, the man's eyes start to glow again, his entire body arriving near her and his sword inside her chest. He slides it out slowly, and moves back from her, putting the invisible sword in its hilt. She smiles, jumping back in her feet. "I don't have any sins." He takes back his weapon with both hands, eyes reappearing and teleporting in front of her slicing down. She blocks it with one knife without a problem. "I am sin." She realy enjoyed poetry and talking smug, it was obvious by her talks while fighting, something that the enemies never enjoyed. The bladed man tries to attack her multiple times without using his "eye" power, but everytime she blocked it and counterattacked, missing him slightly. "You killed my son." He says after he was pushed back by the brute strength of the girl. "You know who I am talking to." She smiles, the blades rotating in her hands. "I have no idea who you are or how you know, but I won't let you leave alive." She rushes incredibly quickly towards him, his eyes light up, and she is hit by an incredible force behind her, that pushes her towards the sword in front of him, and inside the blade. He jumps back as he removes the blade very quickly, on the ready. "Hehehehehheh..." She starts to laugh slightly, running even faster towards him, his reactions now too slow to prevent her from hitting him slightly, enough to cut the clothes he was wearing. She laughs even stronger, putting her knives behind her back and making their blades longer, attempting to him his flesh now. His eyes blink, as she falls on the ground, full of cuts. Her laugh because almost maniacal. "It's too late papa, you are dead." She rushes towards him, his eyes light up, teleporting instantly towards her, but inside her blade. "Your time stopping ability won't help you now." She laughs even more, taking out the knife and stabbing him a couple more times to be sure. "I am made of love, I don't need love."
55 After seeing all their battles, I decided to start heading up the stairs, I couldn't wait more. The steps were way too many, a red carpet were covering them, but after a couple of minutes of running I arrived to the top. The gem was there, inside a square glass on a pedistal, and beside him a man. Very blonde hair, green eyes, not that muscular, quite thin actually, he is smiling. "Hello, Anne. I am the fifth card, The Wicked."
56
57I look at the rest of the body of Clarisse below me after I got up, the beautiful angel with wings that I loved for so much time. I bring my bone hands behind me and make they disappear as usual. I put my right hand onto my face, to see if the scars are still there, but much to my happiness they were gone. I do a sigh of relief, looking again to the corpse in front of me. I put on my knees near her, moving her hair away from her bloody face. I bring out my purple hand and put it onto her, making it wrap around her head. It charges, and after a couple of minutes she coughs up blood and wakes up. "Teacher, are you alright?" I ask, as I notice that the body started to put itself back together. She has her eyes closed, and she gets up from the ground with her back. She almost falls back again, so I have to put my hand behind her back. Finaly the angel opens her eyes, and looks at me with a smile. "Y-you have quite grown." I nod happily smiling, moving closer to her to bring her head on my chest, hugging her. "You idiot you almost died, why didn't you fight back seriously." She shakes her head slightly on my chest, bringing her hands on my back aswell. "We are lightlords, we can't win versus sinners as we do not commit sins." I sigh strongly again. "I know, I know, that's why I didn't kill you." the winged girl chuckles now, taking the arms from behind my back on the front, pushing me slightly away to look at me in the eyes. "You didn't kill me because I'm me, I doubt your friends did the same." I smile, removing my arms slowly from her back to lay her down on the ground. "I did it, you know." I get up, her eyes still on me. "What I promised I would do for you" I make my hands roam free around me, to make her understand, her eyes light up. "I may be a megalomaniac, but I am a smart one." I chuckle, she follows my chuckle as I return my hands behind my back. "See you later, Alcart." I suddenly stop, and turn around after a minute of silence. "You never called me by name, I don't think I ever told you." She smirks looking at me. "I know everything." I shake my head doing a half smile, turning around and towards the end of the corridor to look for the gem. Much to my annoyance, there was no gem in the lower floor, and no one was down there either, no guard or any other of the four cards, and so I return to the main hall. When I arrived, I found no one else except one girl, Anne, on the stairs, looking towards me as I arrived in the hall. "Oh, hello Anne, found it?" My eyes flashed, my hands instinctivly coming out from my back and teleporting back, as one of the Anne spikes appeared to where I was before. "What's going on Anne? What do you want?" She smiles without saying a word, pointint her finger towards me. Another identical copy of Anne appeared beside her, havbing her same expression. They both pointed at me, hundreds of spikes and pillars started to appear from the ground try to hit me, I have to teleport and run and jump to avoid everything, nothing to do except fight. I jump on one of the pillars, and into the air, unifying the red and yellow hands to shoot a ray of lightning towards one of the Anne, that cuts it in half with a sword made of the same black material she uses for spike that she just made, and so she jumps towards me, as the other one keeps making spikes from underground. It's very intense, I have to keep the green hand positioned on me, shielding from every attack she does with her sword barely, trying to dodge every spike and pillar pushed towards me, while my red and yellow hands shoot rays and lightning respectivly, one opposite to eachother to try to hit her with luck, but she is incredibly fast, technique seen only by the most able of the swordsmen, perhaps the king itself,cutting both powers together and having still enough time to damage my shield. I charge my purple hand again, ready to use it, but I doubt I will have enough time or mercy to win with this cheap trick. I now use the blue hand to move the pillars and spikes Anne pulls from the ground towards her, but she moves around them like its her normal habitat, keeping her quite creepy smile on her face. "It's for the better good Tophiros, you understand right?" Another Anne appears beside the one far away in the hall, same sword in her hands and rushing towards me. It's incredibly difficult now to do eveything at the same time, but it's not like I can stop, and I start to feel my stamina end. It's over. I slip, about to fall on a spike, my doom arrives, and I close my eyes. I don't die, but I feel a breeze on my, like wind on my cheek, and so I reopen my eyes. It was Clarisse, holding me up with her wings. "I can't leave you a second alone child and you almost die? This is bad. Let's call of your friends now shall we?" The three Anne look from above angrily, spikes appearing from the top now, but my angel avoids them easily. She rushes towards the main door, breaking it with an arrow created from behind, and into the sky. I look on the top fo the building where Laris was supposed to be, and I see her fight the same woman I was fighting a minute later, quite a fight indeed, she was teleporting around the place trying to hit Anne, but everytime she just killed her over and over and over. We would never have a chance with someone like that, and the reason of her betrayal is confusing, I would need to find the gem. "I need to go back inside the castle, in the gem room. I need to know what Anne is doing in there" Clarisse lands on the grass a bunch of meters away from the castle, and then looks at me in the eyes, her shiny wings closing behind her back. "If you are sure, I am coming with you, we need to get past the three Anne there." I nod, she grabs me by the waist, and we fly at ground level towards the entry. There weren't three Anne now, but seven, running around with swords slashing both people i had never seen and Laris aswell as Tophiros, while on the back, there were the two from before making spikes, pillars, tentacles appear from every part of the room, debris fell from the top of the castle, probably caused the arrival of The Fool, it was a full scale battlefield. We both go down on the ground, and start running aswell around the room, trying to talk to eachother while defending eachother and attacking the copies of The Traitor. "What's going on, Tophiros?" He pants, looking at me and running around avoiding everything like it's nothing. "My believe is we have let every enemy live and now Anne is mad at us and trying to kill us, but that would be way too funny to be true, so there must be a deeper reason for it." He is forced away from the talking, as he jumps away to escape an arrow from one of Anne copies. "Oh fuck it." I jump in the sky, teleporting behind the illusions, on the stairs where she went, and luckily not seen by any of the illusions, and so am able to arrive at the top. It's very dark, and so I take out my yellow hand, to make a bit of light. I hear something from the ground, I teleport away, slightly to the right. A spike appears from right below me, and hits me. I scream.
58
59I lay on top of the samurai looking man, three holes in his chest. Hah what a fool, he thought he could win versus me, but indeed I have won. I sit close to his body, playing with my knives and making them jump in the air like an entertainer, untill I hear the man groaning. "Oh, welcome back." I say, as he gets up with his back, in a sitting position. I turn around towards him. "What did you do to Laris?" I chuckle. "She is still in there, somewhere, she'll come back when my lust is cleansed."He nods, his smile finally appearing under his hat. He puts his hands behind the back of his head, making something click and making long hair fall down, as he takes off his hat. "My name is Florice, I am Grow's mother." I jump back slightly still sitting down, very surprised. The hat wasn't a normal hat, but was a magic hat that covered the entire face area aswell as hiding the real voice, quite incredible. She had slightly long cyan hair, a quite young face, and two eyes that were identical to his. "I have to ask, how did you win against time? YOu knew I was stopping time, yes, but knowing and defeating are two different things." I laugh a bit, thinking back at the fight. "And how did I survive?" she asks again. "Well darling, you may think I have only two abilities, Phaseshift from my mother, as to change when Laris dies to me, an immortal version and well, to be fair, very insane version of her, and Terraform, the ability of my father to move around the ground and modify it to my pleasure. Yet, I have an ability of my own that isn't as strong as these two, but in combination it's absolutely fantastic." She looks at me confused, moving slightly back with her bottom, to sit more comfortably. "I have both Foresight that allowed me to see what your power was, and Assume, that allowed me to learn how to use your ability during the fight. The more we fight, the more I learn, but at the end of the fight, I can't use it anymore. So the longer the fight is, the easier is it for me to win, and because of Phaseshift, I always win." She nods, showing a face of shock. "You survived because I always put a self healing gel on top of my weapons. I commited a sin once, I am not going to commit more. In our entire story, we four sinners have never commited a sin except the original one. Or atleast, we always tried not to. Every guard, every soldier we "killed", simply was healed back a bit later." She was completely shocked now. "What? But you are sinners! And you most of all, you're insane!" I nod, making my knife juggle in the air again. "That doesn't mean we are all evil, does it?" She scratches her head slightly, getting up from the ground covered a bit in blood. "I guess it doesn't.". I now jump from sitting down to standing up, in a single leap, turning towards Florice and making my knives disappear into dust behind me. "Well op op, come on, aren't you coming?" She shakes her head, getting up slowly from the ground. "Not realy, no, I think I'll stay here for a while, and think about everything." I nod with a smile on my face, starting to walk back towards the stairs where I came from, or well, Laris came from, and ready to get down. But a figure appears, and makes me walk back, and it's Anne, looking at me with a creepy smile. "What's wrong, my lady?" I ironically say, an half smile on my face, she points at me when she arrives at the top of the stairs, and a spike arrives from the ground, killing me again. Dying is very annoying to me even if it doesn't seem like it, it's not like it hurts, i lost the concept of pain a long time ago, but it's losing for me, it's not being able to defeat it with my own strenght and have to balance my power with theirs. I put my hands on the bottom of the spike, and push upwards, I go in the sky and fall on my feet back on the ground, where she tries to hit me again with another spike, but my definitely increased power makes me notice it a couple of seconds before it even appears, Anne's power must be immense. I make the same knives as befor eappear from the back, very confused on what's going, atleast, Laris is being confused inside me while I am concentrated on fighting her. But I died. Over and over and over and over and I could never get close enough, her spikes and pillars kept hitting me, and I am becoming very, very mad, I teleport near her and with incredible speed that I could have never thought I would be able to reach I attack her, but suddenly, an immense light appears from where I hit, and power that I have never seen before pushes me back towards the hands of Florice, that grab me. "Glad you are joining the fight." I say when I come back. "Eh, don't count on me too much." she says, appearing behind Anne in a second and stabbing her from the back. She jumps away, right into my arms, but a strong tentacle hits me from the ground and pushes me away, while a pillar pushes Grow's mother in the air. Her eyes light up again, and she appears near me. "This is one tough woman." The hole created by the invisible blade was now completely black, and now that I looked better, Anne's hair started to become slightly black more the time passed, aswell as her eyes. "This doesn't look good, we need to go down to the first floor and go see what's going on." I say, as I jump away from the hundred of spears that appear and disappear from  and into the ground. She nods and runs towards the middle of the roof, as I try to keep Anne occupied. She puts her hand onto the roof. "Exlavia!" she shouts, as the inside of the roof explodes into dust, making the outside layer very very thin. The tentacles and spears that Anne created instantly destroyed the roof in hundred of pieces. Florice light flashed, and me and her were onto the ground now, where The Dealer, a man I didn't know, and more Anne's were fighting. We both joined the fight, even if every attack against her was completely futile, we couldn't even get close, it's almost like she knew every action and attack we did, but still couldn't hit us. I saw The Magician enter the fight for a while aswell, but he seemed to teleport behind the two Anne's that were spawning the pillars and spikes from the walls and floor, and up the stairs. I couldn't resist, I had to check aswell. I ran towards the two Anne, they tried to hit me but i jumped onto the face of the one on the left and up into the sky, and ran up the stairs. As I arrived to the top, I realised it was pretty dark, but I stumbled upon something. The Magician sitting down, hurt on the leg. Four tentacles appear from the ground, way too quick for me to avoid, and two take my arms, the other my legs, blocking me in the air. I look at what's going on better. I wish I hadn't.
60
61"Come on, get up, clown." he says, I slightly flinch. I then get up from the ground with my back instantly, like if I had been waken up from a nightmare, my face slightly scared. "Welcome back." He say, chuckling at his expression. "Why am I not dead?" I irritated ask. "I thought your power was controlling the others' powers against them." He shakes his head, smiling, that power would be pretty amazing though, I think to myself. "Lying and fooling the opponent is my inner capacity, but I do not have that power." He walks towards him, and puts his right hand forward for me. I relunctantly grab it, annoyed by the need of his help, and then i get up, leaving it quickly to clean my pants from dust. I then jump shrieking. "Your hand? You still have it?!" He laughs seeing my reaction. "Yeah, I do, you see..." He puts his hands in his pants pockets. "I have the power to control the enemies' senses and emotions, aswell as thoughts. I am a master liar." My eyes open slightly by the surprise. "You never got hit by the sword, and I haven't lost my hand. I always gave you all your ideas of what to do and where to attack, so I could avoid everything realy easily, it's like reading ending of a book with a big twist at the end, and then reading the beginning, it's like if you read this part and then went back to the beginning of the story." What? I look at him confused, not understanding what he is talking about. "Anyway,let's go back, there's something I'm looking for." He starts to walk away, but I am very doubtful. What is a man like this doing here? And what are the sounds in front of us? But I had nowhere to go, and I lost to him, so I don't have much else to do except follow him. We arrive to the other room. "What's your name anyway?" He asks me, turning around only with his head. "Finnex." I say slightly annoyed, talking to someone I lost to isn't something nice for me. "Oh, that's a good name isn't it? I'm Tophiros" I slightly nod, nobody ever told my name was any good, they usually attribuite it to animal names. As we walk back towards the hall, I get closer to him behind. "What are you doing here?" I ask with a low voice, gently. "I am looking for a green gem inside the castle, I have to put it in the ground forever and prevent it from doing any damage." I'm pretty sure it's an important reason, but saying it like that is kind of funny. "There we are." We arrive at the arch that divided the corridor with the hall, the empty hall. "Right, I did it to prevent you from running." Me what? Running? What is he talking about? He waves his right hand in front of the arch, and smoke appears in front of it, aswell as another man that goes through it and into his arms. "Hey darling." He says as he jumps away too fast to hear it, back into the battle. What was he fighting? A woman with completely dark hair, black eyes, a huge creepy smile, two blades made of a strange material that was also filling he room with pillars and spikes. No wait, two women. Three, actualy six as the roof fell revealing Florice, a young woman, and another one of the dark haired girls. They were all completely equal to eachother, except their roles were very different, some wer edefending the stairs, spawning the spikes and pillars, some where fighting with swords, others making arrows spears and swords fall from the sky, and everyone was brillantly avoiding everything. Who was I to refuse a battle? I jump in, trying to attack one of the woman with the swords by dashing with my Electric Speed, but as I almost touched her, she instantly blocked my ether rapier, with a hit from behind, and kept attacking in front. "Right, so, everyone went in so I'm glad you'll help us yes?" Tophiros says in the air after having avoided the enemy's attack, looking at me, Clarisse and Florice. He then falls back on the ground, and suddenly fills the room with smoke, that disappears in a couple of seconds making him seem to have disappeared. "Did any of you win?" I gently ask looking at them, as the enemy is realising our presence. "Not realy." "Nah." They say at the same time, as I put my sight onto the enemy in front of us. "Good."
62
63"Haven't you understood, Anne?" He looks at me, his ironically wicked smile on his face. "There is no repentance. I have been alive for a thousand and two hundred years, I have learned more powers and abilities than anyone you could have ever seen or imagined. There's no spirit, there is no incredible ending where what you have done, what every single one of your friends have done disappears and you are free to go." He laughs, the room becoming darker as time passes, untill it's only illuminated by a torch behind him, he sits down on a stool that just appeared behind him. "The Wicked is a card in the Lords of Lorderon, Terentia's most famous card game, that rappresents the root of all evil created against the main heroes of the card game, Xavier and Giuls. It rappresents the dark spirit that gave them powers, and everyone else, that gave power to the woman who betrayed them, the magician who stole their knowledge, the fool who killed their best friend, the card dealer that tricked them, the person that caused all their anger, sadness, rappresented into one single being, me." He highers his right hand, making an ice sphere appear floating on top of it. I walk slightly closer to him, much to his confusion. He keeps talking. "I gave every one of you powers for a reason, I have only two powers, given me by hundreds of hundreds of years of training. One is giving anyone I touch any ability I desire." I stop walking, a few meters in front of him. "The second one, is to absorb every ability I want when I kill someone." I don't have much time, I need to call everyone else, or it will be over for all of us. I close my eyes, he tries to stab me very quickly with a spike created by his ice sphere, but I quickly jump back, sliding on the ground. "You're quick eh?" They are all still fighting, I gotta fight by my self. I surround myself with hundreds of spikes made of the same material that looked towards him, to prevent being hit by him running, and then I start my attack. Soldiers with bows, spears, swords and shields, trying to attack him that killed them in every way he wanted, fire, ice, swords, even a sickle, making arrows appear, making a huge mouth appear from the ground, creating another soldier to attack him and instantly kill him to then disappear, more I spawned, more he had fun destroying them, and so as I kept creating I tried to attack him directly, with a pillar, but as the pillar arrived, he jumped and hit the ground in front of him, to directly hit Shadow Tear's tentacle that was going there to place the pillar, making a huge cut in my left arm, that I instantly try to cover with my left arm. "You think I haven't watched and seen what your stupid little power can do? You are nothing compared to me." He rushed towards me, I make spikes to try to hit him, and my soldiers try to slice him aswell, but he just kills them and cuts everything I create with a bloody, long knife. Curvy, with a point at the end, almost an hook realy, that glitters with fire and ice all along it, completely white, its an amazing sight, something that everyone would like to see as the last thing. But it wasn't me. I break all my spikes with a hit, pushing them towards him, he creates a wall with the ground to block them all, and make it disappear when the barrage stopped. But I already ran behind him, near the gem. "Clever little girl, but that gem will do nothing except make all of you fall into a trap." Right, the gem does nothing, obviously. I attack again with spikes and pillars, he cuts them easily, but it gives me enough time to create the sword I usualy do to attack him. The difference of skill is immense, he toys with me with every hit, not even the king ability could arrive to his. He deals different cuts to different parts of my body, destroying piece by piece my dress, finaly pushing me away. "Well, you lost now." It's time to try it. I smile, as I look around and realise they are all done with fighting. I jump in the air, and cover myself completely with the material that I always use to make spikes and pillars, and then attach it to the ground. Though, make it not physical, but gel like, his attacks would be stopped by the strength of the material, and physical attacks would be stopped by the properties of the gel. "Hiding in there won't save you, I'll wait." I spawn different me's in the hall, and separate them to go to differnet positions of the castle, while I make them pretend to be able to use my abilities by creating the spikes and pillars and arrows myself, I didn't have any problem concentrating as I had no one to worry about, I made myself an impenetrable bunker. It took around half an hour to make everyone reach the room, but The Wicked hit The Magician with an ability similar to mine. "Well well, looks like your cute friends caught up." They all look at my sphere, that became more defensive every second that passed, full of spikes as The WIcked got close, it was grotesc to look at, Laris obviously noticed. They instantly attacked all together The Wicked, Laris and Tophiros running attacking towards him, while The Magician shot a ray, he repelled them all with a single attack, making them fall on the ground. I make the sphere disappear, showing the other card rappresentants my terrible shape, as I try to hit him with a spike, slightly hitting him before he moves back, a bit of blood comes out. "How dare you." He pushes me away with incredible force towards the wall, making it crack, as the others try to attack again, but he somehow makes them heavier and heavier, making them fall on the ground. "W-Why did you attack us, Anne?" Laris faintly says. "I needed to get you here, and only you here." I say, chuckling, looking at The Wicked that was now sitting beside me. "I need you to trust me guys, will you?" The man sitting started to look at me, confused. I move my sight onto them, as they nod. "See you later then." Spikes appear under every single one of them, killing them instantly, aswell as Laris, as I hit her in the heart, the only place where she could instantly die as far as I realised. The Wicked jumps back from me, and towards their bodies, laughing. "W-What have you done? That's so stupid!" He looks back at me, his face from laughing turns to aghast. I get back up, completely healed, looking back at him. "It's time for you to pay for your sins."
64
65"I have let you roam carefree." The Wicked says, as Anne looks at him from the opposite side of the room, already armed and in an attacking position, while the other man is relaxed, his hands in his hoodie pockets. Hoodies though, weren't something that were seen around at all, and it was shown in Anne's confused face. "I have let all of you be free from anything, ageless beings that had powers, and you were all doing fine, you sinned, understood your sin, and moved on. All your allies didn't do anything bad did they? They even saved the lightlords." The Traitor's weapon disappeared, as she got straight up. She knew that they were alive, as she was fighting them aswell a minute ago, but the realisation arrived as he told her. "But you didn't, did you?" He moves towards the stairs, blocking them completely now, her body turned towards the girl. "You told them you sinned once, killed your parents, then understood your mistake and didn't do anything. That's cute though, isn't it?" She rushes towards him, Laris' classic blade in her right hand covered with a black smoke that was the same color as Anne's ability, but The Wicked just jumps away easily, much to her confusion. "What? You think I'll stay there and take it?" She attacks again and again, making spikes and pillars come out without needing to move her hands as she needed before, but the man just dodged everything with his hands in his pockets, apparentely not even trying, something that makes Anne realy annoyed and angry. Suddenly, The Magician's hands appear above her, a new one appears aswell, one with a pink gem inside, the white and black ones go ahead and move towards him, while pink and red start shooting rays colored as theirselves. "You see Anne, we are the almost the same." He puts his right hand in front of him, and white spikes appear from the ground, similar to anne's, but thin and a red aura was around them, and they hit every hand that Anne sent towards him in a single blow, making her bleed slightly. "The first time you arrived here I almost lost." A bow suddenly appeared in his hands, and Anne covered herself with the green hand's shield, the arrow The Wicked shot towards her multiplies and surrounds her, attacking the shield and exploding on contact. "The second time, I almost won, but your desire of killing was too strong." Anne's body on the ground gets up, she had died and come back. Hundreds of spears appear on top of him as they fall on top of the man who doesn't move an inch, while Anne rushes towards him to attack him with Laris' knives, making him jump back. "The third time I lost because of an illusion like this.." Anne gets visibly angrier as she's hearing him talk, her blades become darker, her hair and eyes are now completely black, as she got close at an insane speed to her, the man takes her by the neck and shoots her at an incredible force to the wall behind her. "The fourth- well, you got it by now." Spikes, pillars, spears, arrows, soldiers, different Anne's appear beside her, as she gets up from the ground. "Give up now." The Anne's and soldiers rush towards him, as every single projectile is sent towards him, and spikes appear under him, destroying the entire room, and behind the room, and almost half of the castle, showing that the night had come. A enormous light appears from him, creating a sphere around his body that propagates outside and kills instantly every copy of Anne and soldier she had made, showing also that he was completely unscathed. "I have killed a man with a power that was outside his comprehension, a certain Grow if you know about him. I went to the future, and past, and learnt so many different powers and abilities that allowed me to live for hundreds and hundreds of years, I have used Laris as a puppet. As I have used you, The Dealer and The Magician to do things they didn't want to, without making them feel bad for doing them. Have you never asked yourself why you killed your parents?" She stops now, jumping down from the broken room and into the cold grass outside the castle, where The Wicked was standing on, removing all of her weapons. "Sinners like you can't exist. I have seen again and again what you do, you fake being friendly, you sin, and you pretend that you won't do it . Then maybe you don't do it for a while, and return doing it." He puts his hands back inside is pockets, Anne panting. "It might be fun staying together, but your brutality can't be undone. Contemplate your cruelty. Remember what you have done, all the people you have killed while having powers and not, ruining people lives, I have to eliminate you. I hope your friends know that you aren't returning them back." Anne looks at him seriously, his panting slowing down. "So, I got a question for you." The man looks at her confused. "Do you think even the worst person can change? That everyone, can be a good person. If they just try?" She walks towards the extremely confused man, untill she's a meter away from him, both looking at eachother.
66
67A boy stands on the ground hurt by a punch thrown by other boys that are now fleeing the scene, as another man approaches him. He chases the boys for a while, but fails to pick any of them, and so returns to the kid. He picks him up, him slightly crying, but he doesn't know what to say. The crying boy then calms down, sniffing up while looking at the blonde haired man, with green eyes. "H-Hey papa.." he calmly says, while the savior gets slightly shocked. "Y-Yes son?" he answers, as he walks towards the plaza. "Do you think that even the worst person can change?" The man sits on a bench under a tree, the kid on his lap now. He thinks about the sentence for a while before giving a definite answer. "If, you know dad, they just try? The kids made fun of me because of what you and mom do as a job, but I believe that the kids and you can become good people!" the dad smiles, caressing the boy's short black hair. "Everyone can change, Max, they do when they start to believe they can."
68
69Anne hugs The Wicked, completely shocked by the action, not knowing what to do. "You have never done this." he says pushing her away from him, making her fall down on the grass sitting, as she looks at him in the eyes. "Forgive me." she suddenly says, closening her knees untill her kneecaps are near her head, and putting her arms around them. "Why have you changed? What's going on?" She gets up from sitting, she crosses her arms, her eyes lit up as if she were someone else. "Tophiros power allowed me to see through your memories, your experiences, your emotions, your powers.." She moves closer towards him, even closer than before, not even a meter of difference now. "I can't win versus you, nor should I." The man looks at her, not saying a single world, in her eyes. Her mouth opens and air strongly comes out of it as a blade hits her heart, making her cough up blood a second later, and fall on the ground. "The worst person can't change." he says, as she crawls slightly away. "You have killed the protector of a city, the leader of guards, for no reason whatsoever, you killed the king of a city because he was ironic with you, I may not be able to see inside your mind, but numbers don't lie." He gets closer to her, sitting down close to her body as she slowly starts to close her eyes. He sighs, gets up, and starts to walk away, his hands in his pockets again. Suddenly, it appears. Shadow Tear appears on top of her, making The WIcked turn around towards her. A now huge liquid black sphere with seven gems of different colors inside, that start to glow stronger and stronger as time passes, Shadow Tear now goes in the air, spinning, and suddenly exploding, making the seven gems fall on the ground, and cracking, releasing different smokes of the same color of the gem. As the smoke fades away, they appear. All the rappresentants of the gems, the King, Anne's parents, the guard leader, and all the cards appear in front of Anne, all looking towards The Wicked. "Anne may have sinned, but we saw through your memories aswell." Laris says. "You have killed and tortured more people than we ever did, destroyed more villages and burned more lives than anyone could ever imagine." The Magician continues, as his hands appear around him, equal number to when Anne had them. "We were inside the gems, allowing Anne to use our powers as she saw fit, but we could have stopped her at any time." the voice is now heard from the head of the guards, which spawned hundreds of copies of guards behind him, aswell as making his red spear appear. The explosion was heard, though, by the lightlords in the hall, making them arrive just in time with everyone else. Now, Laris, Alcart, Tophiros, The King, the leader of the guards, Clarisse, Finnex, Anne's parents and Florice were standing in front of The Wicked, aswell as the hundreds of guards that formed an entire army. "Welp."
70
71"Fragile, isn't it?" I hear as I open my eyes weakly. I see The Wicked sat near me, looking at me directly in the eyes. I then get up with my back, to sit aswell, looking at the area near me. It was night, illuminated only the fire on the castle where we were before, on the grass around us, and the forest some meters away from us, the seeming dead bodies of my friends, my parents, blood everywhere, nothing left. It didn't make me sad, or mad, I had given up, he was immensely more strong than me and us put together, even with their souls and powers inside me, I couldn't beat him. "Hope, I mean." It is something weird to say, but he was someone realy pretty in my opinion, it was quite sad he was my enemy. I inarc my back to make a "snap" sound come out of it,  and then relaxing, sitting beside him. "You could have it all, all the hope that exists in the universe, and in a moment you could lose it instantly." He moves his sight towards the front, the line of the horizon marked by the grass of the plain that was burning, but my sight was on his figure. "I haven't lost hope, though." I say, making his head turn towards me. "Then why have you stopped fighting?" he asks. "I understood your motives, and admitted my defeat, that doesn't mean I lost hope." I smile kindly. "And who said I am done fighting?" I close my eyes, almost like making a cheerish face. "You seem way too tired to fight now." he says, as he puts his hands on the ground behind his back, to keep his back erect. "Eh, maybe you are right." I say, as I fall onto the ground again and keeping my eyes closed. "Come on, don't you want to fight me? To have a chance to win, to end it all. You still have hope don't you?"he says,while I nod, and then strongly say "no" with my head, shaking it. "You want to destroy all sinners because of what they have done to you. Tortured and killed your child, your wife, hundreds and hundreds of years ago." His face becomes slightly grim now, as I say those words. "Forgiveness is something hard to come by, but I can't not forgive you, even if you.." I face my head towards the bodies. "You know, you did that." I chuckle, my head towards him now. "I don't blame you for not forgiving us." He stays silent, biting his lower lip full of thought. "Well now, don't be sad, I have a question for you!" I do a quick jump, and from laying down I get up. He quickly looks up at me. "Do you know why you can't kill every sinner?" He gets up from the grass, cleaning his pants from ash and blood. "Why?" he asks. "Because you don't know what's the difference between a lightlord and a sinner." He looks at me confused. "Of course I do!" I shake my head smiling. "A sinner is someone who committed a sin, a lightlord is someone who is going to do one."He suddenly realises he forgot to do something: look at the bodies. "From absorbing The Magician I learnt so many important things about science, philosophy, history, gems, abilities, powers, and mostly, the soul, where our powers come from." He jumps back from me, his face serious as ever. "I know that the soul stays on a body forever, untill it's either removed or absorbed by someone or something." His eyes light up, as he realises I had put Shadow Tear in the ground and onto every body, absorbing their soul slowly, but extremely efficiently. "I also learned that appropiating yourself of someone else's souls by killing them tears the soul, making the power way less efficient, instead slowly absorbing it grants full power." I smile strongly, as a strong light comes out of me, blinding him for a second.
72The fire around us had stopped, everything was silent except the wind that passed through the grass and the trees. "Here we are again.." I think about the first time I met Laris. "Just me and you comedian, right?" I put my hands behind my back, and I amterialise Laris' knives. "You should be prepared because soon.." I open my eyes, looking at him directly. He was on the defensive, an ice sphere on his right hand and a fire sphere on his left, looking at me smiling. "your last hour strikes." he says, finishing my sentence. I jump, going through the ground and behind him, trying to attack him but he blocks with an ice spike he made while trying to hit me with the fire sphere , which I block with a pillar from the ground. He jumps back, showing that my knives hit his jumper, and I rush towards him again. I get hit by an arrow from behind me. "I know who you are, but you probably don't remember who I am." he says as I get back up from dying, activating Phaseshift. "once in a timeline we had grown to be good friends, even more." I run towards him again, filling my daggers with Shadow Tear, and shooting rays with The Magician's red hand, him jumping and moving away from every hit, only for a centimeter, making his clothes slightly burn from the rays. When I get close, he pushes me away again with the same ability he had used once to crush my friends, but as I fall on the ground I go through it and behind him, scarring him on the back, but he pushes me back again, and makes a spike of white Shadow Tear come out of the ground and through me, killing me once again. I laugh, slightly maniacally, Phaseshift power slowly corruping mine, my laugh startles him. "Go ahead, kill me again, I see you are able, but inside you know the end can't be evaded." I laugh again, running incredibly fast, and before getting close to him, making myself multiplied hundreds of times around him, illusions, to make him miss, but he simply makes a red circular blade that surrounded him push outwards, hitting them all and me in the process, killing me again. "Can't you not just see the truth?" I say as I get up, making him get even more worried. "Or can you not just see what this all means?" I drop the daggers onto the ground that turn to smoke as it touches it, and I higher my hands, making not seven but fifty red hands appear around him, in the sky, all aiming towards him. He starts to jump away, but I hit him with a spike quickly, and make him go in the air, where all the red hands shoot at the same time, hitting him. Yet, only a log falls down from the spike, and he hits me again from the back with a enormous column of fire, killing me once again. I get up, uncontrollably nervous and energetic. I look at him, his body slightly hurt, scars and bruises are present. "You're not giving up, are you?." he says, panting, surrounding me with an enormous wall of stone. I make it explode with my spikes, that were as quick and strong as ever. I slowly walk up to him. "Only when I'm out of hope." I laugh stronger now, irrepressibly agitated, I run towards him, but I get close to him almost too fast for him to realise it, but then, I see it, him accepting his loss.
73His eyes light up.
74"Hey, are you going to sleep forever? We have a castle to go to!" I hear someone screaming, and I fall down from the sky, and onto the ground. I open my eyes, and realise it's Laris, sitting down under a tree, with The Magician and The Dealer. "..What?"
75I am back at the bottom of the stairs now, everyone else divided and into the different corridors like before, nothing was different, it's exactly as it happened before. I presume I must have returned back in time, transported with The Wicked, but why did he make me keep my memories? I start to walk, step by step, untill I arrive to the top, where I see him again, in the exact same position as last time. Perhaps he lost memories and I didn't, did he screw things up? "Who are you?" I ask, as his eyes roll.  "Hello, Anne. I am the fifth card, The Wicked." Exact same words, he doesn't know I know, perhaps he even forgot about the last time, this is good. "Fifth card?" I ask. He laughs, nodding as the lights in the room start to fade slowly. "There is no repentance. I have been alive for a thousand and two hundred years, I have learned more powers and abilities than anyone you could have ever seen or imagined. There's no spirit, there is no incredible ending where what you have done, what every single one of your friends have done disappears and you are free to go." He starts to talk like last time, saying everything again, I wonder if he gets bored of saying the same thing over and over, I am getting annoyed just by listening to it the second time, even if I have to act interested. When he's done, he puts his hands in his hoodie's pockets, ready for my attack. "How does your ability work?" I ask, something that startles him slightly. He had no idea I wasn't going to attack, but I was perfectly concious about the fact that attacking him would mean my instant defeat, as even if I was going to win, he could have just restarted, this time perfectly, keeping his memories and not mine, and I would be stuck again in the loop. "W-What ability?" he asks, his head quickly moving back confused. "Time travel, that one. You must have it right? If you gave everyone abilities, and took them, you must be the one who killed Grow, so you must have his ability." He nods slowly, his defensive position starting to weaken. "Well, I don't know why you ask, but the time travel ability is composed of two abilities. Control and Leap. Control allows me to only stop time, and restart it. Other people have this ability, like Grow's mother, only I though can revert and push time ahead or forward as I desire, with some.. limits. The other ability that only I have is Leap. It allows to jump from a timeline as much as I desire, but then I always have to return back to the main one, and stay for the exact same time I spent in the other one, giving enough time to the timeline to fix itself." My eyes light up, in that moment I realised everything, how he gained his powers, what is he doing, why he killed Grow. "What's the difference between timelines though?" He completely relaxes now, sitting on the same stool he created last time. "I don't know the exact number of them, there must be an infinite number, there are slight changes that allow me to get something I want, even one single thing changed can create an entire timeline, it's useful." I see what happened, he must have gone to the wrong timeline in the chaos, and when he came back he had forgotten everything, the problem is I don't know how much time he spent there, so I have no idea how much time I have before he can leap, and he can still stop time and revert it, so there's no point in a direct attack with abilities, but I have one card to play. "I know who you are, you remember who I am, you know that once in a timeline we became good friends." His face completely light up, shocked. "But I know what you did." I start to slowly walk towards him, while he isn't moving of an inch. "Curiosity over all your morals, you killed me, you took my powers, and came back like nothing happened." I have gotten very close now, almost touching him, not even a meter of difference between us. I put my right hand on his left leg. "It's time to end it, once and for all." An enormous cheer appear around us, as he jumps back from his stool in panic, his feet touching sand. We are now in a colosseum, something that frightens even me slightly, I had no idea it worked like that. "When I got very close to killing you, I had absorbed everyone's abilities, memories, souls, and I discovered the two abilities my parents had left me. My father, Divine Intervention, and my mother, Duel. The first one, well, it's a surprise." I smile, blinking with my right eye. "The second one, makes me and who I choose disappear from the location and into an arena, where we can't use any abilities, and we will return when one of us will be wounded strongly and unable to fight, or you know.." I take the longsword on the ground with my right hand, and then take it aswell with the left, putting myself in a ready position. "If someone dies." He chuckles. "Well, you got me good, it's time for one of us to burn in hell." He takes the same longsword that was in front of him with one hand, his left behind him, almost like fencing. "Well, come at me!"
76
77I attack from the top, bottom, right side, the King full absorbed ability is extremely better than before, it mixed with all my friends', and mine aswell, makes for a extremely balanced duel with him, as he blocks and gives every hit with the same difficulty I attack and defend myself, it was quite fun. I give up my dual handed position and go into a fencing one aswell, almost like it was a game, I could never kill him in that stance, he perfectly knew that fencing stance is good only with a rapier. "How did you return with memories?" he asks me, as we are fighting, both with a smile on our face. "I believe you went to a wrong timeline and when you returned your memories of what happened somehow got removed." He looks confused for a second while he blocks my attack from the front. "What happened in that timeline?" I had as many questions as he had, if not more, but it would be very rude not to answer him. "We fought, you completely destroyed me, then my allies came, I absorbed them but still lost, they got out from my soul and fought against you while I was unconcious, and when I woke up we talked while I absorbed completely their souls and then we fought once again. I believe I almost killed you and then you Leaped to another timeline." Him listening allows me to scratch him slightly on the cheek, something he is not pleased with as he instantly counterattacks making a tiny cut on my right arm, cutting the dress aswell. "I guess when I Leaped you were too close, and I brought you with me. I wonder what was in the timeline we went in though." I nod, stepping back to evade his hits. I was extremely curious, but there was no way of knowing now. I put my sword normally now, on my right hand, while he does the same on his left. "You're left-handed?" I ask extremely confused. "Well, yeah?" He was using his left hand the whole time but I had never noticed. "How many times have you tried to become my friend instead of killing me? And why only me?" He stops attacking for a second only to think, deflecting my hits in the meantime, and then he resumes with a strong attack from the top that I hardly block. "You many not know, but in most of the timelines that I visited, you are the most evil, despicable person that I have ever met and known, the worst sinner, you have killed most of the people you have met, in the past, in the future, I have tried many times to become your friend, to prevent you from killing them, but the guilt didn't allow me. Leaping allowed me to train and find ways to fix things here the best way possible, but there is no way to." I push back his sword from the top when he finished talking, now attacking him. "But now I have seen, I have changed, this error allowed me to see that you are Good and I am Evil, but it's you who said it right?" I stop attacking when I finish talking, as he does aswell, putting his sword toward the ground like mine. "Do you think the worst person could change, that everyone can be a good person, if they just try?" We both stay silent now. He puts his sword towards the air, his face angrier, attacking me as i block with a kick, pushing his sword in the air and behind him. "Even if restarted, your actions won't erase." He looks at me, more serious than before, his smile disappeared completely. "That isn't a reason to keep going! I don't want to kill you, you are The Wicked, your name says that you are "evil", but I prefer saying that you are "mischevious". I want to help you, and stop this loop you got yourself into, please." He chuckles, nodding with his head, his eyes looking upwards. "You always say that, everytime I try to become your friend." I walk towards him, dropping my sword on the ground, and then I hug him, I strongly hug him, completely paralizing him, untill I hear him sob a bit, and hug back a bit later, slightly crying. "It's nice not being stabbed while hugging someone." He chuckles, tears still falling from his eyes, as they touch the sand below they instantly burn. I stop hugging him now, he goes slightly back, his head looking below to not be seen. I turn now, towards the sword, and pick it up. But alas, I hear him pick up the sword quicker, and launch it towards my back, but it stops in midair, completely frozen, its point only slighty touching my clothes. "And the other ability, from my father, Divine Intervention." I turn around, and with me the sword, which launches towards his left shoulder at a speed so quick I could not even commence to process it while it was already inside his shoulder. The colosseum disappears, and cheering stops, as we are teleported back to the gem room, him laying down on the ground extremely hurt, struggling a bit. I get close to him, and sit down beside him, he turns towards me. "Why?" He smiles while coughing up blood. "I can't live as long as you live, we are the same thing, I'm sure you have.. realised it.." His eyes close, while he is talking. "I think I'll relax here for a while, but first I have got to ask, what's divine intervention?" I turn toward him on the ground, looking at his extremely bloody face, as his shoulder was completley torned apart. "When I activate it, my ability based attacks are extremely weaker, but, the first time I attack ,the full power of all my abilities is released in a single point, which is the point that attacked me, and towards the attacker. It takes a long time to recharge, but it almost instantly kills everything." I sigh, his smile becoming bigger and more docile as he listens. "You know what to do right?" I nod, his eyes slightly open to look at me. "Exactly as she said it:"As good and evil has now been unbalanced, and one won over the other, it's up to the most wicked being in all the timelines to balance it.", am I right?" He coughs, smirking. "Exact words, yes, you have dug deep inside my memories to have learnt that." The Wicked says. "I have two questions: Is that where your name came from, and, what's your name?" He nods, putting his hand onto his right shoulder, his voice slowly fading. "My name is Maxwel." He completely closes his eyes, his huge smiles turns slightly more serious. "And Anne?" he calmly and faintly says. "Yes, Max?" his whole body trembles hearing those two words. "You have a very pretty smile."