Chapter 217 (4/28): Scars from the Past

Camilla staggered as the full brunt of the meaning behind Victoria’s words hit her. “Humans are the origin of death magic and undead? But we templars…what have we been fighting for then?” she muttered. “You have to be lying…this is just an illusion, so you can show me anything you want.”

“You can believe what you like. However, what I’m showing you is reality as I know it,” Victoria said. “It can take a while to accept, but considering that your race as a whole doesn’t even have records that date back more than a thousand years, you can’t uncover anything that would prove me right or wrong.”

“No way…” As she floundered with the new information that unheaved what she knew, Kagriss honed in on something else entirely.

Her eyes narrowed. “You said ‘humans of the past’, didn’t you?” she asked Victoria. “Why do you specify something like that when you could have just simply said ‘humans?’”

Victoria laughed. “Leave it to you to find problems with things that I said. I guess I didn’t hide my thoughts quite well enough. You’re right; I was being specific for a reason.”

“What are you talking about?” Camilla asked, hopeful that there was some new information that might change the reality that condemned the humans to the role of villains. She clenched her fists.

“You might call modern humans an entirely new breed of beings,” Victoria said. Another wave of her hand and another change of scenery.

This time, Camilla saw a world engulfed by war as two armies sought to slaughter one another. On one side were the humans and the armies of undead under their control. The humans wielded the power of death, and things that the dark magic touched withered and died.

The battlefields that the humans fought in became devoid of life, as did the enemies they faced.

Their enemies stood no chance at all.

Even though Camilla freely admitted that the flugels were strong and that they possessed powerful magic, they were no match for the humans. Whenever the two forces faced off, the flugels were ultimately forced to retreat.

“Why are they losing?” she asked.

The flugels’ power of holy light surpassed anything that Camilla had ever seen. Their versatility was unmatched by anything the church could do, especially with the sheer number of people that were capable of using magic.

If one in a hundred humans could use holy magic, then one in ten, or even more, flugels had the ability. From what Camilla saw, it matched up quite well with the rest of the races, where a larger portion of the population could use magic compared to the humans.

She watched as the flugels put on a light show. A hundred beams of light rose into the sky and then streaked toward the ground, piercing through the charging skeletons and cleansing them of the magic that reanimated them.

However, there were just too many skeletons, and no matter how many the flugels were destroyed, there were always more.

Despite the flugel’s fighting retreat, the skeletons eventually caught up. Curious about just what it was that caused the flugels to be on the losing side each time, Camilla flew closer, and there she saw the truth.

A dark mist constantly wafted from the orifices of the skeletons. Nose, mouth, eyes…every part of their bodies were constantly wrapped in the black mist, and when the flugels got close and touched the mist, their pale bodies became spotted with purple and black dots that quickly became bigger and bigger until it covered the flugel’s whole body.

The flugel then fell to the ground, dead.

Camilla covered her mouth.

“No…”

“Your eyes do not deceive you, Camilla. For all their power, the flugels face one fatal weakness. Their affinity with light made them the natural enemies of these death-defying monsters, but at the same time, it made them weak to it. The touch of death magic is like a toxin that quickly spreads through their body, corroding everything it touches, until the flugel dies. Powerful flugels can resist the toxin for quite a while and even prevent the mist from touching them at all, but eventually, they will run out of mana to fuel their defense.”

Even the sky was no refuge. The mist rose up higher and higher, and although it became sparser, it merely meant the flugel that touched it died a little slower. Not content to simply slowly poison the flugels to death, some of the huge skeletons on the ground that Camilla recognized as jack-class skeletons swung some weighted chains and tossed them into the sky.

The chains wrapped around an unsuspecting flugel’s ankles and dragged them to the ground, kicking and screaming.

Unless the flugel could kill the humans controlling the undead, they could not scratch the undead army. However, every move that the undead army made spelled doom for the flugels. The war was never fair in the first place.

“It’s a shame. If the humans landed anywhere except the territory that the flugels lived in, they would have never been allowed to gain a foothold,” Victoria said. “As a vampire, you should know well how we can easily repel such an invasion. My other home, the elves, can easily stop the humans at the first treeline too. The vitality of their forests is not so weak as to be killed by their magic.” She pointed at the leafless, dead trees that had their lives extinguished by the passing undead army.

Camilla shook herself from her daze. “Why didn’t you help then? If it was so simply for you to stop the invasion, then why didn’t you? Where would the flugels be now?”

She gritted her teeth and forced herself to watch as more and more of the flugels died. Even though they were clearly outmatched and on the retreat, they never ran away. It was as if death was preferable to escape.

“Why don’t they run?!”

“Well, where can they run? You know as well as I that their whole territory is on a peninsula and that we the vampires are their border. Considering that the races didn't have exactly stellar relationships back then, it’s a bit of a stretch to think we’d let a whole race take refuge within our borders.”

“But why didn’t you at least help?” Camilla asked.

Victoria shrugged. “The undead we can defeat, but the flugels are not so easy. For our leadership back then, it was simple to decide which we’d rather have as our neighbor.”

Camilla’s answer subsided as she realized that she could not blame Victoria for anything.

Even if Victoria had political power and was strong now, it would have been different a thousand years before. A different political landscape where every race kept to themselves, and different leaders with their own values and ideals.

Those leaders were the ones that chose to stand by and condemn the flugels to oblivion through inaction.

The scene changed again. Camilla closed her eyes, not wanting to look any more, but a gasp from Kagriss made her open her eyes. She looked below her, and there it was: Amaranthine Point, the very same fortress that Camilla and Kagriss had traveled through to obtain the feather stone.

The fortress was now surrounded by writhing crowds of pale white bones led by hooded figures. Liches stood by the figure’s side and at the figures’ command, the many liches surrounded the fortress.

Back then, the fortress was still full of life. Camilla’s eyes instinctively moved over to the place where Kagriss had once taken her, a little house in the shadows of the walls, but she could see nothing except the worried faces of the flugel.

She grabbed Kagriss’s hand, aware that this was the point that Kagriss became who she was.

There were no soldiers left to fight the undead except for a small contingent of guards that tried with futility to thin the enemy ranks.

Close to a hundred liches of various ranks all pressed their hands on the ground. Using the bodies of countless undead as a catalyst, a circle was drawn around the grand fortress. A black aura rose from the ground, enclosing Amaranthine Point.

A golden holy barrier that protected the fortress kept the aura out, but the mist quickly corroded the barrier, eating it away and destroying it. From there, no obstacles remained. The mist poured into the fortress city and filled the streets. The flugels, be they in the streets or shut in their homes, died the same painful death as many others had on the battlefield in the battle against the humans and their undead.

The mist crawled inwards and Camilla felt her heart pounding as the mist came closer and closer to the inner walls, and closed her eyes the moment the mist engulfed the house that Kagriss once lived in.

When she opened her eyes again, the old Amaranthine Point was nowhere to be seen. All that remained was a city of the dead, a testimony to the human invaders’ doctrine.

All things that Camilla had seen from the humans suggested ruthlessness and a disregard for the lives of their enemies. Why do they need to keep the natives of conquered territory alive when they can simply replace them with undead labor?

How many lands across the seas had the humans conquered in the same way?

By now, the humans had swept through half the peninsula, pushing the flugels back to the southern half of their territory, and day by day, the lands that the flugels still held shrank. It’s not as if they did not try to mount a counterattack, but since their enemies were poison to their very existence, nothing they tried was successful.

Yet, they continued to make their stands, never running away.

“Why…” Camilla began another question, but when she looked over at Victoria, she saw there were tiny droplets hanging in the corners of her eyes as she watched the massacre. “Victoria…are you crying?”

Victoria shook and she quickly wiped away her tears. “No. Why would I be?”

“It’s better to not push her. I’m sure she has her own things to think about,” Kagriss said in their minds.

“Since when did you start thinking of her?” Camilla asked, a bit surprised. Since they first met in that forest, Victoria and Kagriss had not seen eye to eye.

“Am I that rude in your eyes?”

Camilla chose to not answer. However, a few questions rose in her mind. It’s a question she had asked before, but Victoria never answered her directly.

“So where did the flugels go? Did they get wiped out?” Camilla asked.

Victoria shook her head.

Camilla knew she wouldn't be able to pry open Victoria’s mouth, so she didn’t press any further. Victoria already promised to hide nothing, so she’ll know the truth eventually.

However, the more she watched the events of the war, the less things made sense.

“What about the human death mages then? If they’re so powerful, then where are their descendants? Power begets power and the descendants of powerful mages should be powerful in their own right. How come humans ended up being able to use holy magic and so few of us are born with the ability to use death magic?”

Not to mention, humans are so weak now.

Once again, Victoria shook her head. “Just keep watching. Everything will be clear in the end.”

“You’re not the one making this illusion, are you?” Kagriss suddenly asked, interrupting them both. “You’re making it seem like you’re showing this to us, but in reality, you witnessed none of this.”

“...Nothing escapes your attention, do you?” Victoria grumbled.

“So you’re admitting it?”

Victoria nodded. “It’s a record that… a friend of mine left to me. By the way, a question for the both of you: what do you consider the most powerful magic?”

The question caught both of them off guard.

“Most powerful magic? Something like the strongest shield?” Kagriss suggested, answering first.

“Is it something that the vampires can do?”

Victoria glared at Camilla. “It’s a serious question, not a chance for you to score points with me.”

Camilla looked away, having been seen through. “Well, I can’t be faulted for thinking you asked that question with some kind of ulterior motive.”

“...Whatever. You’re both wrong. Listen up; the most powerful, ultimate magic is one that can rewrite the world.”