Hiraeth [Plot/Solo/Training]

The black haired girl sat on the floor in the abandoned house near the battlefield, staring right at the ice coffin which was standing tall in front of her. She would admit that she hid the ice coffin pretty well, perhaps that… or no one really came to this area anymore to check. She had been there once, although the environment was not as…hideous as now. It was coated with sweet illusion with poison bursting everywhere as pretty as it looked with the illusion before. Ironically, she could see the illusionist trapped inside the ice coffin in front of her at the moment. She had a doubt, she was not sure about what was in her mind though. Noir had a feeling that the woman could be useful for her, perhaps she could be her mentor because of the skill that the older magician had displayed before? Although that might be impossible if she remembered how crazy the woman was… But Noir admitted she was able to defeat the older woman merely because of the insanity that almost took the mind of the woman that people of Kou called as a noble before, that clouded Shousui’s mind and possibly made her lost her clarity. More than once Noir thought that she should just leave the ice coffin be, letting the time to consume the former noble into nothing as soon as the ice spell melted. But the black haired magician couldn’t help but to feel extremely curious as to what had driven the once respectable lady into some kind of a sly witch. Not only that… she felt that she should keep her alive and although she was filled with doubt, she hadn’t let the woman to die yet until she could decide.

Perhaps today would be the day, she should decide what to do with Shousui right away because if not, Noir had a feeling that it would drag her into a deeper problem if she kept postponing her decision making. With a sigh, the girl stood up with her eyes locked towards the ice coffin. The older woman’s eyes were closed and her face seemed filled with peace, not only that, even when she was encased inside the ice, her beauty didn’t fade. Noir could feel her heartbeat slowly becoming faster, it was not because of Shousui’s beautiful face though, it was more because of the risk she kept thinking for either decisions she decided to choose. She let out another sigh for a countless times now, but what was in her face was more like a determination rather than a burdened expression. The ice would start to melt as soon as Noir hold her staff up and the girl would see Shousui’s face, clearer than seeing it through the ice coffin. Luckily for the older magician, the flying carpet would be ready to catch her unconscious body as Noir had prepared it before she started to melt the ice.

“Now to that empty house…but before that…” Noir murmured to herself as she kneeled down to see Shousui who hasn’t regained her consciousness, putting her hand on the woman’s shoulder before shaking her up to see if she was awake. There was no response but Noir knew how to check on someone’s pulse, so when she touched Shousui’s wrist and waited for a bit, she could feel her pulse although it was faint. She would cast another magic though, using heat magic in a tiny portion to warm Shousui up, at least to make sure she could stay alive. The house that they went to was nearby and empty as if it was abandoned just like the previous house they were in, but at least it had a better insides. Perhaps war made whoever the owner of the house flee for their own safety, leaving everything behind. The other houses was empty as well as the area was totally abandoned and there she was… in the middle of a ghost town with a dangerous woman…

Anyways, as she waited for the woman to regain consciousness, she thought she should use the chance to train herself. A perfect moment indeed, especially when she managed to ask Tenma to take care of her beasts in the meantime after she told him she had a really urgent business. It was not a lie… but she really wanted to practice at a place that would let her to cast any spells freely, even the dangerous ones without the need to be worried. Speaking about dangerous spell… so far most of her spells could be considered as dangerous… Another sigh escaped her lips as she thought about that. How come most of spells were dangerous… Oh well, it was pretty handy though. She would try to cast multiple spells that use different magic types, possibly wanting to make her control better as well as working on her magoi and stamina gauge for her next training regimen.

The girl would breathe in and out before starting to push herself to the limit by casting multiple spells in a short time, every spell that had a sloppy control didn’t make Noir happy and she would decide to cast it again as soon as possible until she think the control was okay. It was tiring indeed, but to get a good result, working hard was a must. The black haired girl would keep firing spells until she couldn’t do it again and her magoi was too low to continue her training, although she would preserve just enough to repair the ground and trees broken by her spells. She was not done after spending most of her magoi outside as she quickly get into meditating position and closed her eyes, trying to calm herself from breathing heavily. It became deeper and deeper, she could hear the sound of the wind blowing, and the other sound that she normally couldn’t really hear could be heard as well. The sound of an owl…the sound of the cold wind blowing the leaves that had fallen to the ground… her own breathing… and now she was inside her state of mind…

WC:1020/3000

It was still the same...her state of mind had not changed at all. She woke up on the same pool although the water was clear, it was not pitch black like before although from the sides, there was some ink-like dark substance floating. The black haired girl would open her eyes slowly before covering her still sensitive eyes with her hand because of the light coming from above. "A light magic, now? Oh, come on..." A playful voice could be heard from afar, although Noir didnt have to see the owner of the voice to know who said it. "Oh well... perhaps we can learn dark magic later on, we have something more important to be worried on right now anyways..." and with that, Noir closed her eyes again before slowly opening it, noticing she was no longer inside her state of mind. With a sigh, the girl would decide to call it a day to watch Shousui on her sleep just in case.

Two weeks had passed since then and she filled her days with some magic training, meditation and routine check on Shousui. At that time she was able to not only train herself the light magic, but also wind magic. It was not boring since she had learned how to spice up her training regiments from Tenma, it was pretty important doing that because she never felt so excited to train before. She would sometime try to combine dancing with magic casting, a thing she never done before but because she enjoyed it so much, she decided to try and mix it up in her future training. It would be nice to be able to do it with sword though, just like what that one eyed man did when she watched his training. Well, she will save that plan for later. For now… Noir thought that she should try to learn another magic. She was never really interested in this certain magic type, but because of that item that she used in her Kodor test, Noir thought it was kind of deadly. As curious as a cat could be, Noir would begin to remember about her magic lecture, wondering what she had to do to learn the light magic… as well as wind magic. She sighed, it was a shame that she was never really interested in those magic types although it could be very inconvenient for her to have it at some point. But it was never too late to learn, right?

With that lame excuse and a bit of rosy cheeks because she felt a little bit ashamed, Noir would began to close her eyes and tried to get the feeling. It was not that simple to try and learn new magic type, but Noir knew she could try. At first, she began to imagine how the rukh danced into a beaming light when she used her magic bow and she would try to concentrate as she lifted her staff. She whispered to the rukh, a different kind of rukh from most of her spells, but definitely not unknown. It was faint but she could feel the energy as she fused her magoi into the staff of storm slowly. She would then accidentally fused her magoi stronger by accident, causing a loud explosion. “Ouch…” She pitied herself before sighing, the beam of light struck the tree and nothing left could be seen from the tree as it burnt down into ashes due to the heat of the light. Lately she could feel that her magoi control was kind of out of control and she wondered why. It happened after her fight with Charles and Nautilus, there was a lot of theories on what was happening to her. But the most reasonable one was the fact that she was getting a lot stronger and she was certain. She was not bragging or stuff, but she was a little bit afraid… well, afraid might not be the correct word, perhaps worried was the right word.

WC: 1688/3000

What did it mean to be strong…? Being even stronger than anyone else until there was no one else that was as strong as you. Will she start to lose her mind…? Will she start to…seek for something horrible? She didn’t know, but it might happen and if it really happen, Noir didn’t know what else would happen. Although being stronger than anyone else could mean that you can easily help other people, using your power to do something good. Noir sighed, it was no use to worry about that kind of thing at the moment where she could utilize the time better to train new magic types. She knew she worried too much and the source of her worry were either dead and unconscious at the moment, who knew what could happen after the unconscious one finally woke up from her deep slumber. Perhaps only Ilah knew what the future would hold for them and whatever happened after Shousui woke up, Noir wouldn’t complain or sulk because she was fully sober when she decided to release the former noblewoman from the ice coffin.

“Excuse me…”

Noir’s body jolted as she jumped because of the surprise, that faint voice… the aura… the pitch black rukh… She knew who was speaking and she was just thinking about what would happened when Shousui woke up, thinking that maybe Ilah was playing with her by forcing her to face one of her current worries at the moment. The black haired girl turned around and looked at the woman who just woken up from her sleep, she looked pale and somehow weak…like she had no energy at all. But of course, she was in a comatose state for weeks and it was just normal if Shousui looked like that. “Yes?” Noir answered as she approached the older woman, slightly checking the older woman’s body language just in case she wanted to try to do something funny. After all that things that the older woman did to turn the black haired girl into a lifeless body, the young magician was being cautious than ever, not only that, knowing that Shousui was very capable to perform a very strong magic made Noir a little bit worried at the moment. So far it was clear that no wand, staff or any medium of spells could be seen from Shousui. The young magician could being less worried about things now, although she would still keep an eye towards Shouisui.

“Do you… happened to see my child..?" The woman in white kimono asked, she looked very worried and sad as she looked at Noir with pleading eyes. The golden eyed magician wondered about the child that Shousui mentioned and there was only one kid that popped in her mind, Yakutetsu. “No, I don’t know where he went to.” Noir replied, even she wondered about what happened to the kid. She also wondered if Shousui would start to force Noir into being Yakutetsu’s slave again or not when they managed to reunite. Was she a bad person if she thought like that…? But Shousui was not a good person as well… she tried to put Noir back into slavery and had done nothing other than giving the black haired girl hard times. Although when the woman started to let water droplets to drop from her eyes, Noir was not sure if that was a genuine tears or not…

WC: 2256/3000

Noir and Shousui would be walking together now, the older woman would be guiding both of them towards a certain destination, while the younger one followed from behind. The younger magician recalled about the reason why she got in this kind of situation and it was because of the sudden urge from Shousui to go to a place that she called as home. Shousui would cry and let out a depressed question about her child although the young girl could only say that she didn’t know anything about her child’s disappearance and she was being honest. Yet, suddenly there was like a snap inside Shousui’s mind as the older magician suddenly begged Noir to come with her to her house, as if she remembered something. Noir did ask the older magician about her manor where she was brought before but the answer that Noir received was just that she didn’t know about that manor, as strange as it sounded. As she felt a little bit confused, the golden eyed magician was still a little bit of suspicious on the woman’s behavior. She didn’t look as hostile as before, but the pitch black rukh was still there, fluttering all over her as if she got something that attracted all of those rukh around.

“We are here…” Shousui halted her step as they arrived in front of a mansion that looks… a little bit abandoned. There was no one there and it was entirely different from the manor from before. Noir got no time to be curious though since Shousui would start to walk towards the entrance and guided the black haired magician inside. It was interesting though as Shousui led them both towards a hidden room that looked like a lab and Noir wondered what kind of experiment that Shousui had done inside. “What is this place…?” Noir asked. “This is the place where my child was born.” The older woman answered without hesitation and she didn’t sound like she was lying. It was pretty surprising though that the woman made Yakutetsu here and it was like he had his own will, moreover, he really looked like a fully functioning human being. “It looks like he was not here… let’s move on…” Shousui would say as she began to walk down the stairs, leading them to a room where it looked like it had been wrecked by havoc.

”What was going on…?’ Noir looked around the room and tempted to go around, wanting to explore it before Shousui’s sudden movement made her stop herself. The older magician was running into something before covering her lips with both of her hands before kneeling down as tears began to fall down. “My child…” She said. It made Noir raised an eyebrow but the black haired girl could say anything. “…I remember now… I just left him here all alone… How could I have done such a thing to my poor child…”

Gulping, Noir would began to approach the weeping woman and she couldn’t believe her eyes. It was not Yakutetsu that the woman was holding… it was more like… a creature. A beast with a jewel embedded in the head…and with a glance, Noir could recognize the beast very well. “A chimera…” She stuttered as she said it…feeling confused and didn’t know how to react. “Yes…” Shousui nodded as she brought the lifeless body into her embrace, “And my dear child… Akatetsu was more than just another beast, he was created by using a part of me and he died protecting me. Fate is cruel isn’t it? The child passed away before the mother… while it supposed to be the other way around.”

Noir didn’t know what to say, she…never felt like that before and couldn’t imagine about it no matter how hard she tried at the moment. All she knew was she was all by herself…although her family were killed, since they were a ‘stranger’ to her, she didn’t know how it felt to mourn for a family. Should she force herself to cry? Should she give Shousui a comforting touch on her shoulder? Should she…just stand there and wait until the woman finished the mourning? But she had to speak, she had to say something, she had to… do something. “Let’s give your child a proper burial.” And that was unexpected, even for Noir herself to be able to say something like that. But the look on the older woman’s face when she heard Noir’s word was different from the black haired girl’s imagination, instead of being angry, she was smiling although her tears still flowing down before nodding as if she agreed to what Noir said. “Yes, let’s give my Akatetsu a proper burial. I supposed I have to try to move on and live longer to bear the sin as I let my child to die before me.” She would stand up as she slowly lift Akatetsu who was still in her loving embrace before exiting the manor and would carefully put her child on the ground. “Would you do the honor to burn him into ashes? So the wind can carry him up and he can fly to whenever he wants…”

Although not sure if she had to do it, Noir would nod and cast a spell by using her staff before incinerating Akatetsu before letting the wind to bring the ashes away. She would take a look at Shousui, wanting to see her expression before remembering about something. “What about Yakutetsu…? I thought…you were looking for him before.” But Shousui tilted her head, as if she didn’t know what Noir was talking about. “Yaku…tetsu? My apologies, but I…don’t think I know who you are referring to.” Noir’s eyes widened, “But I thought he is your child…” She said, but all she got as an answer was a head shake. “Akatetsu is my only child. Perhaps you are mistaken?”

Noir shook her head as well before bowing down, “I…apologies as well, I might remember it wrong.”

“It is alright, but I feel very indebted to you for taking care of me and somehow helped me to find my child. I don’t have any place to go back too, so if you don’t mind, can I stay with you until I can find a place where I belong? I promise I will not give you any trouble, I will lend my strength and knowledge if needed too.”

That sounded like a sweet temptation for Noir as she wondered how vast the knowledge that this magician in front of her could have… and how much Noir could try to learn from her as well. She seemed like an entire different person though and perhaps, she would be back to the same evil Shousui from before. But the black haired girl thought that she had to take the chance despite of all the worries that she had, “I don’t mind…” And as she said that, there would be no turning back for whatever that might be waiting for her in the future…

WC: 3427/3000
Magician Omega Training Done