When Andar began to kill 'Mira' he had anticipated a change but would have never imagined what came next, in hindsight, he blamed himself that he should have known what was coming.
From the ashes of Mira's body, a fair hand emerged, and before Andar's watchful eyes, a naked woman stood up from the ashes.
She had long blond hair and her eyes were red like burning coal, her features were beautiful, and a wicked grin decorated her lips. There were two small horns on her forehead and she slowly stretched her body as dull pops from her joints resounded.
The woman sighed, "Hah… this feels good,"
She looked down at the ashes she was standing in with a look of slight confusion and with a step, she seemed to glide to the side. Biting her red lips she looked at Andar and chuckled,
"That would have been impressive, the way you tried to kill me, if only you were not whimpering like a child, I would have enjoyed it more. Usually, my scent causes the opposite reaction in everyone else, but you are not just anyone else, isn't it… Andar." her voice was sultry and rich as if she had just woken up from a deep sleep.
The subtle sign of danger that Andar had been experiencing since Mira entered his room had multiplied by a factor of a thousand when he noticed that this lady was just a Rank 3 Mage, yet the level of danger he was sensing was a magnitude greater than what her ranking suggested.
"Where is she? What did you do with Mira?" he whispered. Andar had not yet recovered from slaughtering his lover, and at this time, his emotions were still burning hot, although he knew the Mira he killed was fake, it did not mean that the experience did not scar him.
She brought a finger to her lips and delicately bit on it, "Oh, when did you realize that your little girlfriend was no longer here? Hmm…"
Andar stalled his disgust and spat out, "You are not as smart as you think, your acting was filled with plot holes a mile wide."
For a moment he thought he saw a flash of irritation in her eyes before she laughed, "And yet for something so imperfect, I still made you cry, you know I can still taste your tears as they fell on my face… they are delicious Andar, I cannot wait to taste more."
He took a step back and accessed this Mage, she appeared to be around eighteen years old, which was saying nothing about her age, Andar would be thirty-four in a month and he still looked as if he was sixteen, although his height made him appear older.
Her body was curvaceous, and unlike any Mage that he had ever seen, this girl had no single Script on her body. Any Mage that could afford a Script would usually go for them since its importance could not be over-emphasized, from healing, defense, and offense, Scripts were a necessary part of a Mage's kit.
Andar had only a single Script which was the Aegis Script where he stored his Cloud Whale. Due to his abilities, he never saw the need for Scripts, his body was extremely powerful, and due to his sensitivity, more Scripts could cause unnecessary distractions. He had previously thought he was unique in this instance until he saw her.
The source of the danger he was feeling was now resolved because he finally found what was triggering his warning intuitions for so long. It was because he recognized the power inside her.
A sudden move from her made him back up again, but she crouched by the side of the smoldering ash, and using two fingers she gently pinched a bit of the ash, and as she stood up, she dragged the ash with her that appeared to be sticking together in a crystalline configuration and a black and brown robe was created from the gathered ashes.
All this while her bright red eyes were focused on Andar as she pulled the robes over her head. Perhaps the material she used was not enough because the robe was extremely short, and she clicked her tongue in annoyance,
"Wow… I am nearly naked, should there not be more of this? I guess your flames must have done far more damage than I thought. Unless—"
She looked up at Andar with a look of amusement and surprise in her eyes as a dozen large spikes of blue ice burst out from her body that nearly tore her to pieces, but she did not bleed, and inside her body, there was no heart or lungs, but leaves, stems, and flowers.
Her head was hung to the side, held only by a few pieces of muscle and broken bone, but she was already beginning to heal, and so rapidly that in less than three seconds she should be whole again.
Every action that Andar had made, including beating Mira to death with his own hands, was just to buy for himself these few seconds.
The training from the Steward of the Black Tower resounded in his head: Gain the advantage using whatever methods that you can, and attack first, don't stop attacking until there is nothing left standing!
Andar accelerated towards her, hundreds of tiny vortices of air pushed him from behind and he appeared beside her as if he had teleported.
His anger and backward retreat were nothing but a ruse, as he had been charging up hundreds of elemental energies since he was unable to use spells and weave them in a fashion that could cause damage, he had to focus on manipulating the pure energy of creation and mentally destabilize them all.
Usually, a Spell was like a firearm, and the energy of creation was the bullet, whether it came in the form of lightning, fire, poison, or whatever energy you were manipulating.
Andar could typically create the framework of the gun by himself without resolving to a particular model. A typical Mage would often practice a single spell until they gained mastery over it, so it was as if they understood everything about a single model of a firearm, but with Andar's unique knowledge he had access to thousands of different types of firearm models and he could interchange them any time he needed, even create a new type of 'firearm' by adding pieces of different types to it.
The problem here was that he could no longer access any of these methods because Spells no longer worked, and so he had to be creating 'bullets' and propelling them with nothing else but pure Aether.
He had never truly fought anyone before, but that did not mean he had never practiced. All his teachers gave him different nuggets of wisdom and he had absorbed them all.
When this girl appeared before him, he finally understood the last of the puzzle because the energy he was sensing from her body came from the Supreme Meditation Art that had been denied him by a member of the Supreme World of Magus.
Frost Mourn. Rowan had called this Meditation Art— The Lament of Celestials.
