X. Shadows of the Past
Caelum tentatively stepped foot into the empty space. It must’ve been the same place despite not having a door. Her hand grazed the cold stone walls. The familiar ridged torch was hoisted on the wall in the exact same place as it always had in his dreams. It was somewhat comforting to Caelum. Hector, on the other hand, exuded boundless nervous energy that made the hair on the back of Caelum’s neck rise. Caelum was a particularly sensitive mage. While her acute senses did wonders for her during training, it never ceased to bother her. She could feel the presences of other magi and it was unnerving. Caelum didn’t know how or why it happened but Sir Aevus reassured her that it was a gift.
“Hector,” Caelum boomed. “I’m going to illuminate the area. You’ll be able to find me.”
Eerie silence, which Caelum disregarded completely, was the response he got.
“Dance Infernale.” Caelum muttered as a purple flame bounced off her palm. It found its way to the torch and shortly afterwards, stray flames from the torch began bounding throughout the room at random intervals. Each flame eventually wandered into a torch and the vast expanse was slowly illuminated in a soft lavender hue. The magnificent scene always left him awe struck no matter how often he saw it. It was so surreal. Yet it brought back so many memories that he wished would die away.
“I can’t stand this. Caelum, how did you?” He cried out wearily.
Caelum didn’t respond because he couldn’t stand this place at all. Saying anything would’ve been untruthful and he still owed Hector a shred of respect.
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(Flashback)
After her disastrous first encounter with a Phantom, Sir Aevus insisted on accompanying him to the Phantom Lair. Though her intentions were reassuring, Caelum couldn’t help but feel even more frightened. This was all a lucid dream, so why did it affect her physical state? There was something he was hiding, though Caelum could never fathom what it was.
He’d showed him the ins and outs of the realm. How to find your way around, fight common enemies and whatnot. But he never told him what the realm truly was. Even after he had mapped out the area by heart and learned to ward off the weaker phantoms, Caelum was nowhere closer to finding out about the area’s lore.
Sir Aevus’s ambiguity continuously compelled Caelum’s wariness and there came a point where she just broke. The Phantom Realm was unwelcoming and soul sucking creatures lurked in every corner. How was he supposed to feel at ease in a foreign dungeon?
“What’s a phantom?” Caelum had questioned for the umpteenth time that night. “It’s not just a manifestation of fear. It feeds off fear. Saying it is fear itself is an oxymoron of sorts, unless fear is cannibalistic.”
Her speech was winded and convoluted but it incited a chuckle from his instructor.
“You can feel them but will always fail to see them. They’re always with you even when you feel like you’ve conquered your demons. Phantoms are a part of life,” He recited while strumming his lyre.
Caelum wanted to pry the damned instrument from his hands and hurl it into his head.
“This place does not affect my physical state, correct?” She asked Sir Aevus. The headmaster was preoccupied with humming an old folk tune that always drifted throughout the streets of Stratus but he managed to poetically answer “Yes.”
“If I’ll kill myself here, I’ll just wake up.” Caelum mused as she withdrew her dagger.
“If you kill yourself, you lose the experience you’ve worked so hard to reap.” Aevus warned as his quaint impromptu tune shifted to a haunting lullaby.
At this moment, Caelum couldn’t even bring herself to care. The whole affair was needlessly cruel.
Besides, how would crawling through the depths of an unknown ring of hell help him on the Aeromage Council? It didn’t teach her the customs and policies of the other regions. It didn’t enhance her magical capabilities more than training at the academy did. Diplomacy was devoid completely in this matter and the whole thing was confidential so he received no accolades. All she had learned was to persevere through ceaseless, fear binding darkness.
“What if...” Caelum said in a slow, low voice. “I killed you?”
“Dance Infernale!” Sir Aevus had cried out and a ring of white hot, bright purple flames sprung forth from nowhere. When the fires had ceased, faint purple light hovering over decrepit torches remained in its wake and Aevus was nowhere in sight.
“Your next task is to locate me.” He said without a trace of emotion in his words.
With a clenched jaw, Caelum pushed her palm against the jagged stone walls. The rough surface marred her hands with an array of criss crossed cuts and he had to admit, she relished the pain. The physical pain in the Phantom Lair was the only thing distracting her from the horrors it wreaked upon her brain. The endless whispers, the tortured cries of uneasy souls, and the flashbacks....
“I hate this place,” Caelum muttered through gritted teeth as her heels crushed the exoskeleton of a weak floor dwelling phantom. As soon as the figure dissipated with a sickening sizzle, the familiar intensity of a phantom’s death seized him. In a matter of seconds, a flurry of emotions and sequences of events cascaded through his mind and then left at an agonizing pace. His brain was swimming and his senses were mush.
The phantom had been following an orphaned boy, preying on his hatred. It had taken the form of a bright, attractive beetle to rouse the boy’s attention.
How conveniently similar.
Aevus had always said that Caelum was here to conquer her fears.
The Headmaster was a brilliant man albeit a draconian puppet master who saw no restraints on his guinea pig. Truth to be told, that applied to every professor at the Academy but even more so to the esteemed Headmaster.
His only incentive was the dream he and Hector shared. They wanted to completely change the Academy system so it’d nurture its students reasonably instead of bombarding them with pressure to be like the fallen gods. It was a naive child’s fantasy but if a well groomed scion and the Headmaster’s pet protege couldn’t even stand this treatment, who could?
“Nobody,” a nagging voice in her head sneered.
The Council was full of ludicrous aging aristocrats who were paranoid about not having enough power. Yet, there was no reason for them to. The empire of Nebulous had practically eradicated every powerful creature from the floating lands and it struck fear into the nations below. Even the most capable mage folk on land offered excessive tributes to the Aeromage Council as an olive branch.
It was twisted but the successful nation of the aero magi ran on the blood of those it had slain. And the aero mages had slain every region’s guardian Titan. The Council wasn’t even needed to ensure peace among nations. It was just a fancy way of flaunting the capabilities of aero magi.
Caelum blinked twice and blinked hard. Those weren’t her thoughts. They were flashbacks from a nearbg phantom. She knew it was true yet it shocked him all the same. Those thoughts mirrored his deepest fears.
She needed to find the person who held these thoughts, Aevus be damned.
“Congratulations, you found my old pupil.”
-|-
(Back to the present; Hector’s perspective)
Inexplicable fear. That’s what this place evoked from within him. Hector was just an animated corpse and he found it quite funny that he still got the adrenaline rush that only emotions could bring forth. While he was quite aware that the dead had a special, emotional connection to the Phantom Realm, he would’ve never fathomed that it’d make him feel so alive again.
Or that his lingering feelings of passion still remained.
He saw it affect Regina in a variety of ways. She had morphed from cutthroat and efficient to careless and tender. The moment she had set her eyes upon the alluring amethyst orbs was the moment she lost all her willpower. Her past caught up to her and devoured her in its rosy nostalgic haze. Their dream was no more. Regina was reunited with her former devotion.
Collaborative dreams never worked anyways. It would always consist of two type of people: One who supported it when it was convenient and one who stood by it until the end of time. Hector was always the latter and all of his partners were the former.
So when Caelum Nubis had responded to him with curtness laced with malice, Hector had been genuinely surprised. Caelum was always soft around him but now her true callousness rivaled Hector’s own.
Hector would explain everything since his body was truthfully no more. His ghost form was transient and its death was drawing near.
Caelum wouldn’t forgive him, that much was certain. He had fallen through the same abyss the deceased Cenyths and the headmaster failed to crawl out of.
But Hector longed to hold the shorter mage in his arms once more and to grip tightly onto his delicate frame until he faded away. It was selfish and it would stymie their goal and-
It would never happen. He was no longer human and Caelum was a stone cold phantom slayer. Neither of them were capable of expressing or reciprocating sympathy and intimacy.
Ignorance was bliss and a luxury Hector would never have. He tampered with time and saw every possible journey and the ends it entailed. And he knew very well that if he let his personal desires take the reigns, the future would be bleak.
The true watch of reparation was attached to a short chain that stopped right above his heart. Before following the purple light that Caelum had summoned, Hector held the trinket close to his dying heartbeat and sighed.
It wasn’t a relic of atonement. It was a relic of knowledge that nobody should’ve used.
That’s why he had given Caelum a cheap carbon copy. The aftermath of the original were far too much for a mortal to bear.
Ignorance was bliss, change was inevitable and anything good was always elusive.
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