The Runic Alchemist

They were crazy, all of them had lost their minds... But that didn't matter right now.. Without caring about the chaos surrounding him, Damian rushed to the wooden building that had been his prison for days, only to find ashes and broken wood scattered everywhere with still burning amber here and there.

'You could've helped me… I could've caught her… I was so close,' Vidalia said, approaching from behind, her body being continuously healed by the mages who had gathered around the smoldering building. Despite being covered in blood himself, Damian was, as usual, ignored.

'We did catch her. You let her escape,' Damian retorted.

'You don't know anything, kid.'

'I know I could've killed her, and you stopped me. That's all I need to know.'

Damian argued with her, not out of anger and frustration—though he felt plenty of that—but because he needed to distract himself from his hands, which were digging through the rubble in a desperate search for the people he had known, even briefly.

'Sena… Paul… Kyle… Maid instructor... Is it even possible..?'

He wanted to find them, yet he feared knowing what had become of them. Not knowing, at least, gave him some shred of hope. But as his hands grew numb, emotions clouded his actions, and tears blurred his vision. Damian summoned his golem, which began lifting debris at the slightest hint of mana, searching for his… his... What? His guards?

His colleagues? Just some faces among the thousands he had encountered? Friends?

'What kind of devious spell takes people's breath away? Could you always do that?' Vidalia murmured in his mind. She pointed toward him, ordering some healers to attend to him too.

With a golden flash in his peripheral vision, Damian felt the pain in his body ease, though, strangely, the relief only made the emotional weight heavier. After clearing a ten-meter radius around his landing point perfectly clean, still finding nothing, Damian collapsed on his knees. His golem stood still, waiting for more instructions that had yet to came.

Were ashes really all that remained of them?

Just as Vidalia placed a firm hand on his shoulder, Damian sensed a faint speck of mana about twenty meters ahead, it was so weak Damian wasn't even sure if he really sensed it or not. Clinging to the last threads of hope, he forcefully broke free from her grasp and leaped toward it.

Once again, he connected with his golem, carefully digging where he thought—maybe even imagined—a trace of mana remained.

"What the hell are you doing? Stop this madness! You're bleeding everywhere; stay still for a second!" Vidalia shouted, but Damian ignored her. He kept digging, pushing his senses to their limit, trying to sense that speck of mana again.

Finally, under the weight of a heavy beam, a charred figure began to emerge. Damian couldn't identify the person, but the shape of their armor, melted into their back, was unmistakable. Moments later, he uncovered another corpse in a similar position, as though they had been shielding something—or someone. Then, there it was: a small, unconscious figure with green hair, barely clinging to life.

A faint pulse of mana flickered from her body melting into the surrounding mana. She was releasing mana subconsciously..?

The two had sacrificed their lives to protect her.

Though Damian didn't recognize them, he could guess who they were. Their sacrifice had not been in vain. He gently picked up the small girl and staggered out of the wreckage, though his legs wobbled, and he was on the verge of collapse. Immediately, healers and rescuers rushed to his side, taking Sena from him and offering their support. Damian had done his part. He could finally rest now.

*****

Vidalia stared at the blood- and soot-covered boy collapsing into the arms of soldiers and healers. She could feel his pain—no, no child should be able to endure so much and still have the strength to stand, let alone dig through rubble.

"Damn you, kid," she whispered to herself. "I wish I could offer you more than punishment and judgment…"

That bastard Tristan had been right to try to bring him into his house, after all. If she was free to do it she would have done the same..

Vidalia herself was barely holding it together, but she couldn't afford to rest. Her army was in shambles. She had failed as a commander. They had lost before the battle had even begun.

The relic wasn't supposed to fail. It was impossible. Yet the very thing she had feared the most had come to pass: betrayal.

In every report about the unnatural waygate, there had always been a person present where the gate formed. It was a secret only a select few of her personal scouts knew, and they reported only to her. Someone had connected the waygate. Who in her ranks could have climbed so far in her own building without detection? How had they missed it? Or was the report wrong?

Could their enemy truly open a waygate wherever they wanted, with no limitations? If that was the case, they had been doomed from the very start.

The boy should have warned her if someone had been on the roof. Unless… No. It was foolish to doubt his sincerity after everything she had just witnessed and everything he had shown her over the couple of days. He truly had done more than any of her supposed helpers in this camp had... No boy—or man—could have such talents and waste them for no reason.

She ordered the able-bodied soldiers to continue searching the charred buildings, instructing the healers to accompany them to treat anyone still alive. She, herself, took the young girl—likely an orphan now, her mother probably among the dead. Because of her. One more promise she would have to keep. On more life she had changed forever and not for the best...

She will take good care of her... She had promised... Vidalia owed her mother that much, at least.

With the healed child in her arms, she made her way through the camp, which had finally quieted enough for survivors to begin helping each other or search for their comrades. Her own building was gone. She sighed, not knowing where exactly she was going... gazing up at the starless sky.

The cold wind, at least, helped extinguish the remaining fires, but the sight of the empty sky irritated her to no end, offering no usefulness in return....