Umbra Chorus, a Waltz of Depravity [Private|Training]

In the southern regions of the Kou Empire, there was a forest named Xuilong Tai. The forest was endless, dark, and diverse. Its canopy was competed for by black birch, aspen, linden, and bamboo, sufficient twinkling lights bursted through their crowns for a range of bushes to consume the moist and fertile bottom layer below. Silent tree limbs grasped most trees, and a variety of flowers, which desperately tried to avoid the shadows, were a welcome change in the otherwise colorless view. A discord of animal noises, which were caused by insects, echoed in the air, and were backed by the swaying of tree tops in the wind.

The forest was once a beautiful environment to camp or get away from the troubles of society, but someday rumor spread about a creature wearing a woman’s body claimed the territory. Many went in. Nobody returned. Save for the bandits that now occupied the woods and a lone woman reading in a meadow. The only light to aid her sight was the moonlight and the flickering of fireflies.

The woman was young and gorgeous, a goddess fallen from the heavens. Her beautiful raven black hair cascaded down her back and over her shoulders, her eyes, lined with black and dark like the blackest of nights, stared intensely at the words, oblivious of the world around her. She would have remained like that, content in her own realm, if it weren’t for the snapping of twigs and crunching of leaves behind her. With an exasperated sigh, she closed her book and eyes.

A man chuckled. Another whistled.

“Well, well, boys… Look what we have here?” A total of five men surrounded the woman, each wearing the same crooked sneer and lustful gleam in their eyes. The woman opened her eyes to stare coldly at the men, and yet she looked through them like they weren’t even there. She stood in silence. “Leave or I’ll make you leave,” she said coldly. “Permanently.”

They laughed. “Come now, we just want to have a little fun. A pretty lady just as yourself shouldn’t be out here all alone,” replied a tall slender man with short hair no older than twenty-three, who reached out to grab the woman’s arm. She snapped back and grabbed her wand, a small golden rod with a purple jewel at its tip, hidden in her bosom. Without hesitation, she casted a spell, firing a small flame that spread like wildfire around the man. The others backed away in surprise, their shock keeping them still as their accomplice flailed around while he burned, screaming for help. None would come, not even from his so-called friends who were paralyzed.

“Who’s next?”

They stared at her with wide eyes before running in the direction they came from. The woman watched them go. She hated weaklings such as them and thought that she should have just killed them all where they stood, but they weren’t worth that much of her time. With the nuisance out of the way, she sat down once more to enjoy her book, continuing where she left off.
“You’re a rose with thorns. Beautiful yet deadly to those that touch it,” said a voice. She hadn’t heard footsteps approach, and only now noticed that a shadow was casted over her. Standing in the center of the low hanging moon, on a black floating cloth, was a man dressed in black garments with fancy white trim. He looked like he spent much of his life absorbing the silver beams of the moon, because his hair and eyes resembled the same hue and his skin was that of polished marble under the white light. An obsidian crown sat atop his head, his fingers were adorned with rings, and a sword was strapped to his hip. The man’s posture was rather relaxed with one hand on his hip and the other carrying his wand.

Unbeknownst to the woman, the silver-haired individual had been training nearby with his wand. For a few days, he had ventured into these woods and fed magoi into his wand, hoping to create a new spell to use. Most times it ended in failure. Perhaps it was because he had no clear picture of what he wanted to accomplish or do with this new spell he was trying to create. He only found himself here because of the scream that reverberated through the trees moments ago and was curious.

He tilted his head as he looked at the woman. He almost wondered if she were mute until she finally spoke.

“If you come any closer,” she purred with a smile, “you’ll find out just how deadly I can be.” The man laughed boisterously, “Is that so?” He liked her feisty attitude. It reminded him of fire. He lowered himself a little more with a smirk plastered on his angelic face. As he moved, so did the woman, her dark eyes watching him as he continued his descent.

The man’s eyes studied the burning body. There was no way he could be saved, not that the magician really wanted to help. He was merely studying the corpse for its bone structure, trying to determine if anything could be salvaged and added to his collection. “I see you’ve already incinerated a man, but if that’s all I have to worry about…” He shrugged. The man would have said more, but loud footsteps approached from the area the other bandits retreated to. There were many men, but there was one that stood out from all the others. They were long, heavy strides, belonging to a big, burly man. The magician duo didn’t wait too long to see who arrived.

A broad, middle-aged man, easily Adrastos’ height, sauntered out of the shadows. His hazel eyes, set deeply in their sockets, shifted between the woman and the man flying on the carpet before resting on the still burning corps nearby. He frowned. The man looked at the magicians before him. “I don’t care which one of you did it,” he said as he unsheathed his warhammer, “but you’ll both pay for killing my boy.”


The male magician stared at the middle-aged ruffian intensely. “Trash like him won’t be missed because he was careless. Looks like you’re about to make the same mistake.” He tilted his head as he raised his wand, aiming it at the brute. “Aqua Vipera Glacialis Morsus.” He commanded the rukh to form an ice construct in the form of a snake. He spent more magoi into this particular spell to increase its strength. Then with a flick of his wrist, he sent the ice snake toward the man’s jugular. The magician hoped he could end it with one move, but ultimately knew fate would not be on his side.

The muscular man unsheathed his warhammer and swung, clashing the attack with his Hammer Swing. “You think this is the first time I’ve dealt with your kind?” He smirked and slammed his foot in the ground, causing the rocks and dirt to fly up into the air. The male magician held out his arm to tell the woman to stand back as his eyes focused in front of him, but the other bandits surrounded the pair and attacked.

“No, but I’m one of a kind.” The male magician’s borg activated and he raised his wand into the air, feeding magoi into his wand. Darkness spewed forth from the wand like a fountain of black ink and spread out fifteen meters and stood at ten meters tall. Within the black sphere, a Shadow Realm, the magician at the center could sense the location of everything that moved. Sensing the location of the assailant with the hammer six meters away, the magician aimed his wand and whispered to the rukh, “Aqua Cyclonas II.” By commanding the rukh to gather the water from the atmosphere and plants, the magician created eight swirling cyclones each one meter in diameter and five meters tall. They roared, but their location would be unknown to the enemy as the silver-haired man freely controlled the cyclones so he couldn’t pinpoint them by sound alone.

An enraged howl and a thud on the earth once the spell ended made the silver-haired man collapse the Shadow Realm. He turned to see how the woman was doing, but there was no need for his concern. She had taken out the grunts herself, though seemed out of breath because she used too much power against mere worms. She looked down on her enemies, her fallen prey, with hunger and fatigue glistening in her obsidian eyes.“Of course you took care of them,” he said with a chuckle.

She tilted on her feet. The man reacted instantly to catch her before she fell. His pale fingers caressed her cheek as he lowered her to the ground. “Why did you waste so much energy on trash?” She looked at him with a small smirk on her tired face before looking past him. “Look out!”

He turned. The man had not been defeated despite taking so much damage. Enraged, he dug his feet into the ground and propelled himself forward with his hammer in both hands. The borg appeared, but as soon as the hammer made contact, the magoi barrier cracked. The man pulled back. Another hit like that would break his borg.

Crash!!!

The brute sneered as blood dripped down his face. Looking between the thug and the woman behind him, the magician didn’t have much time to think. He needed to be this woman’s armor, even if she probably would have rejected the idea. He needed to be her black knight, her guardian of darkness. Raising his wand overhead, the magician fed as much magoi as he could and commanded the rukh to coat him in a black shell. It was his Shadow Defense, his armor if his borg would ever be shattered. The assailant stared with wide eyes. He pulled back once more, but this time the magician was ready: he dodged and unsheathed his sword to perform Serpent’s Fang on the man’s pressure points to one of his arms.

Then, the magician stepped back and swiped his wand in the air. “Black Death.” A black mist curled from the tip of the wand and travelled to the other man. With a single touch, he became nothing more than a frozen block of ice.

It was the last the woman magician saw before passing out.

---

Training Word Count: 1,739/1,000

Being Trained:

Spells Used:

Items Brought:

When the woman awoke, she was no longer under the canopy of trees but the canopy of a tent. The sweet smell of a cake wafted to her nose as she stirred. “Good morning,” said a familiar voice. Her eyes focused on a silver haired man sitting cross-legged while cutting a slice of cake. “It’s not a good breakfast, but you need to eat something to replenish your magoi.” He slid a plate over to her before slicing a piece for himself to enjoy. The woman watched him eat neatly, careful not to spill any crumbs on the ground.

“I didn’t ask for your help,” she snapped. The woman took the plate and slowly ate. The cake was sweet and offered relief to her empty stomach. She stared at him with her dark eyes. She didn’t trust him, but how could she keep a man like him at arm’s length forever? She shook her head. No, she didn't have to be nice to a stranger. It didn't matter what he did, she wouldn't let him melt her ice cold heart so easily. "Who do you think you are?"

“Hmm….” He paused and looked thoughtfully at the woman. “You can call me Neo for now. What about you?”

“Yukimura Tsukiko.”

Neo smiled. It was a beautiful name, but in no way matched the appearance of the woman before him. Snow town. Moon child. Perhaps she came off as cold as snow, but in no way did she look like a moon child. She resembled an eclipse better. The look in her eyes the previous night and her power, though she lacked control, was a drug to the male magician. Plus, there was her name… Yukimura rang a small bell in the back of his mind. Was that a noble clan? Did they fight for Gao or Yoshiro?

He’d hold off on such questions until she was well rested. In the meantime, they ate the cake in silence and rested under the tent that was surrounded by corpses and a frozen statue of a man that was once alive.

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Training Word Count: 2,086/1,000

Ability Trained:

Items Used:

Come morning, the Yukimura woke first, opposite from Adrastos. She stirred, putting her arm on her forehead as she stared at the tent’s ceiling. The silver haired man didn’t say a word to her most of the night, but it wasn’t his silence that bothered her. Or was she bothered at all? Was she confusing being bothered by being intrigued?

Sitting up, she stared at the man as he slumbered. He had taken off his upper garments; the nights had been growing increasingly hotter as the warm weather arrived. She noticed the scars on his back, some faint from age while other seemed fresh or newly opened. Yuki quietly crawled to the sleeping magician to get a closer look at the markings etched into his flesh. Her hand traced across the dark lines on his pale skin. The patterns were scattered in some areas, but they were concentrated across his upper back. The scars stretched from his shoulders and upper arms to his lower back. She wondered how such a perfect canvas could be tainted, and yet he still looked god-like.

So engrossed in the etchings of Neo’s skin, she didn’t realize he woke. He grabbed her wrist with such swiftness, she had no time to react. She gasped, giving away her shock. His grip was firm, tense, and despite that, there was the slightest of tremors. Anger? Fear? Her black eyes looked into the icy pools that bore into her core. His eyes were ice. The two magician’s stared each other in silence, his rage a silent brewing storm and her annoyance a boiling volcano.

“Do not touch me,” he said with a stern voice. Yuki wretched her wrist from his hold. She responded in the same tone, “Nor you me.”

The two magicians stared each other down silently until Yukimura stood abruptly. “I’m leaving.”

Adrastos was left alone in a tent with a melting ice statue outside. He sighed, rubbing his temples. “So much for your questions, eh?” He frowned. There was still so much he wanted to ask her, but instead of that, he snapped. To be honest, the young magician didn’t think the woman was that weak willed to be hurt by his hostility, especially when she responded exactly as he did. However, he couldn’t dwell on such matters. He got dressed and stepped outside the tent, ready for another long training session with his Malevolent Shadow.

Meanwhile, Yukimura went back home, to her mansion not far Xuilong Tai. The mansion property was a beautiful paradise, its front yard filled cherry trees and dotted with fancy shrubs in all shapes and sizes. A small bamboo thicket was growing to the left of the entreeway, and a massive fountain rested in the center, near the mansion itself. The mansion was of typical Kou style, with red slanted roofs, open windows with wooden patterns covering them, and sliding doors, but its size was no joke. Some might have confused it with a palace.

Yukimura entered her home, slamming the door behind her. She felt her heart race but dismissed it for anger. “Who does he think he is? Touching me with those filthy hands?”

“Who?”

The young magician’s head snapped up to see a dark, foreboding figure. “Father…”

The man stepped into the light. He was middle aged, his features sharp and stern. A short black beard stretched along his jawline. He wore a blood red kimono, which matched the color of his eyes. “Do not make me ask again,” he growled. “Who?”

Yukimura felt small. She bit her lip, fighting the urge to snap at her father knowing she’d only receive punishment. “There’s a man with silver hair in Xuilong Tai…”

---

Training Word Count: 614/2,000

Adrastos was training deep in the woods, not too far from where he met the young magician Yukimura, when he heard sounds that made him stop. He sighed, obviously annoyed at the interruption. “Think twice before you confront me during training. The last men to do so died; one ended up as an ice sculpture.”

A group of thugs emerged unsurprisingly from their perches. They parted, making a pathway for a nobleman dressed in crimson. “Perhaps I should repay you in kind for laying your hands on my daughter.”

The magician raised his brow. Was this old man implying his daughter was touched inappropriately? Or that any manner of contact was forbidden? Which girl was his daughter even? There had been countless women he touched, some diseased, some corpses, and there was probably a few living sprinkled in the mix. Somewhere. But none were touched sexually if that was what he was implying. This man didn’t resemble any of the females Adrastos came across while in Kou either. With a shake of his head, Adrastos turned his back on the nobleman. The nobleman clenched his fists. He reached for his wand and cast a shard of ice with a single flick of his wrist. The impaled straight through Adrastos' shoulder.

Adrastos grunted as he pulled the icicle out and threw the pink-tinged crystal on the ground. He took his crown off his head to slick back his silver hair before turning his attention back toward the nobleman. His eyes dead cold as they bore into his new nuisance. "Your next hit better be meant to kill."

The nobleman sneered. "No need! Take that as a warning. Next time you are near my daughter, you will be dead. I'll make sure of it."

"Perhaps it would help if I knew your daughter's name," the magician said. With a slight turn, the nobleman replied with a single name before turning and leaving the silver-haired magician alone to train: Yukimura. Adrastos chuckled to himself. There was nothing more enticing to him than something deemed forbidden.

"What secrets are you hiding?"

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Training Word Count: 941/2,000