[CHQ] A Story Just For You

[Astolfo]

Ro held his breath. As he had hoped, the corrosive mixture he slammed into Ierne’s face had done nasty work. Both her and her dragon mount crashed violently to the ground. Within seconds, the dragon melted into shadowy mist that reformed into the shadow creatures that Ro had gotten sick of seeing at this point.

 

Ierne’s hoarse, but determined voice cut through the air. She was still alive, not that Ro expected her to die just yet. The mask that had covered the woman’s face was no longer present, but even he winced at seeing the human’s face, scarred and burned horribly from his attack. She was clearly blinded, but it was not slowing her advance in the slightest.

 

Underneath the burns is such… beauty, yet twisted and sad. Ah, the folly of humans and their desires.

 

He was given no further time to feel wistfully regretful for what Ierne had turned into. Swinging around a sword that appeared to be pure, solidified light, she sliced through her proximity with appalling force. Even the solid rock-paved roads were smashed apart into two with each swing that seemed to show no resistance or drag.

 

Dancing back out of her range, that turned out quickly to not be a solution either. Without the slightest break in her rhythm, she spun her sword around as if it were a wand instead. From the blade blasted forth barrages of solid light that ripped through houses like paper. As Ro continued to evade the salvos, his heart pounding, an unsettling feeling crept over him.

 

This world felt… real once more. If he got truly hit, he had a dreadful feeling the result might be quite bad. A close shave with one of the missiles streaked past his face just at that moment, slicing through his hair and making Ro recoil. The heat as it passed by was enough to cause a painful stinging sensation to his face.

 

“Y-Yeah, definitely do not want to get hit by those…”

 

He muttered to himself. They had done everything right to this part so far - or at least, he thought the group did. This was the final challenge to overcome to end this insane world and quest. Yet, despite being so close, it seemed so far away. Even without her eyes, Ierne remained a ferocious force, bringing ruination to her surroundings. What were they supposed to do against a monstrous fighter like this?

 

“Seems like being in a dream enhances whatever it is you can do.” Auburn said upon regrouping with the other three. His earlier feat left him in awe, which turned into determination to stop ‘Ierne’. “I have an explosion potion, that should do a lot of damage should I be able to hit her somehow.”

 

Miraculously the contents of it hadn’t combusted after withstanding the dragon’s fire earlier. Auburn wondered if that too was because of a dream. He briefly wished, as impossible as it may sound, for a strong fighter to appear and save the day, but it seemed his belief wasn’t strong enough. He realized he would have to do something by himself. No, he was absolutely determined to.

 

“Mina White, if I give you this flask, can you hit her with it?” He turned to her and held out the flask. Ultimately as a potion brewer, there was only so much he could do after all.

 

Dmitri had finally made his way to the group, with the old man still propped up on his shoulders.

 

“Wait...is that really Ierne? She was so cute befor-I mean she was so nice before! You don’t honestly want to destroy her do you?” Dmitri questioned the group, mostly Mina who had seen the girl herself.

 

“She’s not real, she’s a corruption of who Ierne truly was.” Auburn replied. “I know her, this isn’t the kind of person she would have become, no matter how tragic her life may have been. This fake Ierne has to be taken down.” He then turned again to Mina and shook the flask he held out to her lightly.

 

Mina hesitated a bit before reaching for the flask, she couldn't deny that this seemed wrong after she had seen how innocent Lerne was. But looking at her now, it was hard not to throw the flask at her. Mina thought for a minute before looking at Auburn and the others. "Well... I'll have to make sure she's not gonna just knock it out of the air... I'm gonna need her to be distracted..."

 

“A distraction…” Auburn wondered to himself. He had a shotgun, that could produce some sound but it wouldn’t do much else. “Can you do anything about that, Dmitri? Who’s the old geezer there anyway?”

 

“This old gentleman? His name is Myrdain. I think he lives in this place...claims to want to help.”

 

“Myrdain? He looks...older than I remember.”

 

From underneath Dmitri, a large magical circle began to form. “Hold him for a moment, won’t you please?” He said, passing the old man to Auburn. He cracked his fingers, as his palms raised upright. In that moment, hundreds of small prisms began to form. “This is gonna drain me of the rest of my magic for now. This is as best a distraction as you get!” Dmitri smiled, as he shot the prisms out towards the corrupted Ierne. “Prism Magic: Shining Storm!”

[Maeriberii Haan]

---

 

"Come and face me like true warriors! Do you think you have won when you blinded me?"

 

Ierne's thrashing of her surrounding lacked any rhythms to it, yet all were properly aimed towards where her enemies were. Despite being consumed by anger and hate and losing the function of her eyes, she still had her trained ears and some of her base instinct, allowing her to pinpoint the movement of the Cherry Heart guildmembers and guide her attacks. In particular, she was focused on the movements of the one she remembered as the inhuman-looking boy. Not that there were much dissimilarity between herself and him at this rate.

 

"Cowards! If you shall try granting death into this body, then face me head on!"

 

By taking control of this dreamscape for her last rampage, allowing her to hurt the trespassers, Ierne realized that she was simply a fake. A construct not even born from a buried memory, but from the malice of a scorned witch. A nightmare with the sole purpose to haunt someone. To tell a story that they didn't want to hear, even if such a story didn't exist in reality. In the end, she was fine with it. She was true to her design, becoming the tyrant that her creator wanted her to be. Her end would be near. She could feel that she was gradually losing her stamina as the exertion she forced herself into became more and more real. She decided to not go down without taking the rest with her.

 

She could feel one of her projectiles almost hitting Ro, and with it as her guide, she rushed with a sudden burst of speed towards that direction and slammed her sword right to the ground. However, there were no sounds of flesh being sliced, nor gasps of reacting to someone's death. Once again, after many of such tries, she missed her mark.

 

"Why don't you attack? All of you wanted to kill me, so just try it!"

 

Her words became more laced with frustration the more she missed her mark, yet she ended up smiling. Partaking in such a destructive act made her feel like this fake life of hers was more than what it was. The more she tore down the streets, the more buildings she demolished in her missed shots, she felt more and more alive. She didn't know a thing about the real Ierne, but she wondered whether she would feel the same too with her.

 

After all, one's worst nightmare would be something that was based from something in reality.

 

However, at that point, she lost track on where the rest of the group were until she ended up hearing some faint whispers. Ro ended up merely being a distraction rather than someone that genuinely attempted to combat her, and the rest were figuring out a plan by now. Preparing for another volley of projectiles, Ierne took aim, trying to empty her mind for a moment to pinpoint the exact location of the whisper-like sounds. However, before that could happen, she felt as if there were a rain of something clanging on her armor, ruining her focus with the sound they make.

 

“Prism Magic: Shining Storm!”

 

What little was unprotected on Ierne drew blood from the persistent rain of prisms, but her armor withstood the barrage without much issues. Such minimal flesh wound would not deter her. Her focus returning, she located where the attack name was declared, and brought her sword down.

 

At least, that was what she would have done.

 

Those seconds of distraction ended up being fatal. Just as Dmitri's storm started to cease, Mina had thrown Auburn's flask towards Ierne, whose instincts and remaining senses barely able to notice it until it was too late. The flask broke by the time she realized what happened, and the next second, Ierne was consumed in flames as the deafening sound of explosion consumed the area.

 

"Curse you all...the fate of these lands wouldn't change without..."

 

Those that were able to see as the fake king burned saw that her broken down body still produced a smile even as she uttered her last words. As more and more of Ierne burned to ash, the flames grew larger and larger from her loss of control of the dreamscape, and when the last of her armor dropped to the ground, the flames simply exploded, consuming the entire city within it.

 

However, rather than finding themselves on a similar fate to Ierne, they would find themselves on the same city of Taxus as the one Auburn and Dmitri visited before. Before them, a woman lay on the ground. Her hair was white and her attire was both regal and profane with several decorations harkening to foul magics. After their long search, they managed to find the witch that caused all these headaches. In the meantime, as the witch's control of his mind ceased to be, Myrdain slowly gained his vigor back, growing younger and younger from the state he was found by Dmitri, until he looked as young as when the guildmembers first met him. He rose up on his own and reached for the witch. Shaking his head at her sorry state now, without a word he made several gestures on the air, and wrapped the witch in a coffin-like construct made out of rose thorns. Who was that witch? Without that even getting any answers, everything ceased to be.

 

And then everything turned dark.

 

---

 

"Breakfast time would be up soon, but first, I would need to clarify on some things."

 

When the group regained their consciousness, it was already morning. They would find some bandages on their body, seemingly covering injuries that had since been healed, and that each of them were on a bed wearing plain white clothing. Their proper clothing and belongings were neatly folded on the side of their bed. The one greeting them was Myrdain himself rather than Jacques the head butler. On the distance, they could see Mira was busy playing with Myrdain's familiar, chasing it around as if it's a cat.

 

"First of all..." The next moment they would notice the existence of a neatly bundled something, wrapped completely with roses' thorns, a familiar sight for the guildmembers. Once he was sure that they noticed the bundle, Myrdain continued. "Her name is uh...Gerda. She's just a witch that manipulated her way into this household, pretending to be poor Mira's long dead mother. She targeted me because I ended up figuring her trick after giving her husband his dream order, and she proved to be quite more than what I expected. Once again, I couldn't thank you all enough for saving Mira and me." There were things that Myrdain seemed to be hesitant on saying, but he didn't waste time to continue talking.

 

"Second, she caused a wagon accident on your way here, allowing you to be in a vulnerable enough position for her to try taking control. She didn't want to kill you as that would raise suspicion about her activities here. Instead, she wanted the four of you to clear this quest in the way she wanted, so that no further attention would be paid by unwarranted parties here."

 

Jacques approached him at that time, whispering something to Myrdain. He smiled at it, and returned his attention to the four not long after. "Third and most important, breakfast is ready. Come, Jacques will escort you to the dining hall. The four of you deserved the best for what you've done."

 

---

 

And so, the quest officially ended by daytime, with the four guildmembers being escorted out after being given their rewards. Myrdain had doubled the promised monetary reward for letting things go way out of his control with the wagon incident and what it led to, and they were given one Dream Souls each, leaving the group with 4. He explained it as his own invention - a magical artifact allowing the dreamer to be fully aware in their own dream and affect and manipulate it to their own liking, activated just by hugging the soft ball-like strange object while going to sleep.

In the end, despite the setbacks, the quest was over without further incidents, and the group returned safely to the headquarters. They would feel that Myrdain was hiding an awful lot of things still regarding the incident, and about himself and the alleged witch. However, due to their fatigue, it might not be an immediate concern yet. And should the four of them try finding anything in the history of the different generations of Fraxinus, they would fail in finding any mentions of a king named Ierne. She was not the only female king through the kingdom's history, but none of them were her.

 

As the day on the guild continued on like normal, a strange fluffy creature locked its stare on the guild building before disappearing into the nearby bushes.

 

FIN

 

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