It was moments after they began staring each other down that Julius’s ears picked up on a soft rumbling noise, and his eyes immediately darted down towards the ground where it came from.

  It was as if something was clawing its way out of the ground, shifting the loose dirt around, creating a small mound in its wake.

  In that instant, the man felt his instincts scream and he had leaped backwards before he even figured out what was going on, just as the earth suddenly rose to a shape of a spike to graze his face before it suddenly stopped.

  The man spat and was about to curse at the boy, but held it in his throat as he figured he couldn’t afford to miss the soft rumble that served as the only warning before the ground went up for his life.

  And sure enough, the sound came again, and the man broke into a sprint to move away from the rumbles that were distinct from his own footsteps.

  Every few steps he took, the ground rumbled beneath his feet, and it wasn’t easy to completely dodge all of the earth spikes in the dark of night. But overtime, his body fell into rhythm and the scratches that caught him began to gradually become shallower and shallower.

  Two steps to the left and he stopped his momentum to turn away and took two steps to the right and back the other way again. With a zigzag pattern, he began racing his way towards his small opponent.

  Once he got into a comfortable distance away from Gale, the man pulled his sword close, and readied himself for a wide slash. A few more steps and he’s finally in reach, but the spike suddenly stops, he too stopped in his tracks.

  Julius was wary of the unknown that could be coming next, and slowed his steps to keep a better eye on his opponent, and his ears perked up for anything that moved. Though it turned out he didn't need to watch the boy that closely, as he swiped his hand up with an exaggerated movement that was impossible to miss, and a large cloud of dust kicked up from the ground.

  Julius had to immediately throw himself back to dodge the blinding cloud of dust, but a gust of wind blew it towards him, forcing him to retreat, lest he let himself get blinded.

  Fortunately, the wind moved slowly, and he was able to gain distance away from it even while moving backwards. And once he got a comfortable distance away, the man tightened his grip on his sword, and sidestepped the cloud of dust to make his way around, ready for the boy who he expected to be right behind it, but was instead nowhere to be found.

  His eyes began to dart around looking for his small opponent. His body tensed and began shifting in place, anxious of where the next attack would come from. Yet, despite it all, nothing came. It was as if the boy had vanished into the dark of night.

  Once his body recognized that no danger would follow, the tension slowly left him, and he lowered his sword. “Damn… that boy would’ve sold for good. Should’ve properly listened to what the old coot was saying.”

  He quickly gave up on the large payday that the young boy could’ve gone for and settled for just the village—his and his band of bandits’ initial goal. But not after a little more complaining.

  “Maybe it was for the best. Cecilia would’ve yelled at me anyway,” the man said before his eyes shifted towards the burning house. “Creepy brat. Did he even care for his mother or not?” he asked as he turned around to regroup with his men, and found the cloud of dust still being propelled further and further away by the wind.

  The wind fairy was no longer around so there’s no reason for the cloud of dust to not disperse and disappear entirely. Nor should it have been able to turn around a corner, making its way towards the village center.

  Once it clicked in his mind, Julius quickly burst into a sprint, and he raced towards the cloud of dust running away from him, threading through the houses with his eyes squinted to prevent the trailing loose dust from getting inside.

  The path he walked through was littered with bodies every here and there, with fresh blood still flowing out of their open wounds. The aftermath of his men ravaging the place as they went. And while they were hard at work, he just let a boy half his size walk away.

  But not for long. Julius was quickly catching up to the cloud of dust. In front of him, it made a turn around a building and disappeared from sight, but he was confident that once he turned the corner, a quick sprint was all he needed to practically grab it. But that confidence quickly shattered when he heard a scream from around the corner.

  “The hell is this?!”

  The man’s voice sounded all too familiar, and Julius panicked when he realized why the boy didn’t run to the forest where he could’ve had an easier time getting away, and instead went deeper into the village. He was out for revenge.

  Julius grabbed the corner of the wall, made his way around it and was met with a bizarre sight.

  A blazing flame flares on Gale’s hand, and he was swinging his arm towards one of the two men there. His opponent threw his injured friend to the side and had his sword just barely out of its sheath when the boy’s fiery fist first reached him and blew up on his face.

  Following the explosion, Gale’s ears then immediately got stormed with the blaring alarm sounded by the wind warning him of the next attack coming from behind. Julius had finally caught up to him, and he immediately stepped forward and grabbed the sword from the man whose face he had just blown off.

  Unfortunately, prying the sword out of the man’s hand proved to be an unexpected challenge. Because he was desperately trying to fight back just before the flames took his head, his hand just refused to let go of his weapon.

  With his back wide open, his little friends moved in to cover him. The wind fairy blew a gust of wind to push the man back, but was only able to cut down a fraction of his speed, which miraculously bought just enough time for the earth fairy to raise an earth wall tall enough to catch the man’s sword and stop it before it dug into their friend’s back.

  The man was visibly pissed at the unexpected obstacle, and quickly pulled his sword out and made his way around just as a small explosion sounded from the other side of the wall.

  Making his way around the newly raised obstacle, he immediately swung his sword wide, and it met something that let out a metallic clank. Gale had succeeded in getting the sword and held it up with both hands to block Julius’s swing.

  Not wanting to let go of the initiative, Julius kept up pressure. His sword went in for swings, slashes and thrusts and the boy met it all with his own.

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  Earlier, Gale couldn’t keep up with the man’s sword at all and it took all he had just to barely dodge the man’s flurry of slashes with the wind’s help. Now, with a sword in hand and the earth backing him along with the wind, the boy was able to put up more of a fight.

  But even then, he still couldn’t quite gap the difference in physical strength and experience. Julius’s slashes and thrusts may not make it past the innumerable annoyances, but he was still pushing Gale back.

  Keep it up and Julius was guaranteed to win the bout. But for some reason, the man still can’t quite get the feeling that he had prevailed. Instead, each time their sword bit into each other, his mind became more and more pessimistic as his body began to sweat profusely.

  It was fall, and the night should have been chilly, but he was sweating as if he was in a sauna. And it's not only the exercise getting into him, as the air clearly felt warm on his skin.

  His mind started racing to figure out what was going on, and his movement became a little more sluggish because of it, but before anything could happen, Gale’s back finally hit a wall and he had nowhere else to retreat to.

  A slash came, which the boy lightly parried with the help of the wind, but a thrust followed to pierce clean through Gale’s shoulder and through the wall behind him.

  Gale’s hand went limp and he dropped the sword in his hand. Both fairies tried to help him, and Julius felt both the wind pushing against him and the earth beneath his feet rumbling.

  In retaliation, he pushed his sword deeper into his small opponent, causing blood to spurt out of the wound, and both the wind and the earth immediately calmed. But he was still feeling warm.

  “What’re you trying to pull now, kid?” he asked the boy pinned to the wall by his sword, but he offered no response. Not only that, it seemed like the boy’s attention wasn’t even directed at him. His eyes were looking at something further behind him.

  The man tried following the boy’s gaze, and looked over his shoulder. There, his injured subordinate was sitting on the ground clutching his ribs, looking somewhat pathetic. Close by, another one was lying on the ground, with the upper half of his chest burned to a crisp and anything above his neck nowhere to be seen. Not only that, wisps of smoke were also rising from one of his hands, or, well, what remains of it.

  “Sure did my men good, huh?” he asked before turning his attention back to the boy before him.

  “Captain, I’m sorry. He came out of nowhere, and I—my ribs, I think I broke them and I—.”

  “Ah, no need for that. It is what it is. Still, the boy seems to hate you quite a lot. Look, he’s glaring at you!”

  “Well, I—uh, I did kill his mother, I guess.”

  “What?! Hahahaha! Well, that explains it! You sure are a bastard aren’t you? Don’t know if he actually cared about her or not, though.”

  “Cap’n…”

  “Well, can you move?”

  The man tried standing up, and while he had to grunt all the way up, he was able to pull himself up to his feet. “Barely,” he then said.

  “Well, get to where the others are, will you? I want to wrap this up as soon as possible.”

  “Right,” the man said before limping away.

  Gale’s eyes stayed on the man the whole time until he finally went out of sight. Within him, the heat was still burning strong, driving him towards the man. But no matter how much it was pushing him forward, he couldn’t take even a single step with a sword in his shoulder

  “Hey, boy. Who taught you the sword? You’re not half bad for a brat,” Julius asked, and the question fell on deaf ears.

  Instead, Gale had other questions running through his mind. Why couldn’t he do what he wanted? Why does this man have to stand in his way? What is he supposed to do about this feeling burning inside him now?

  Well, there was nothing else to do but to let it all go.

  So he did.

  The temperature around him began to rise and the warm air began to swelter to the point that Gale’s immediate vicinity began to crackle. It was as if the mid-summer sun had risen, and his immediate surroundings began to look all bent with the heat haze.

  “Hey, stop it,” Julius said before pushing his sword deeper through the boy’s shoulders, but the boy ignored it.

  Though it definitely hurt having cold, or rather, warm steel sticking out from his shoulder, Gale’s face didn’t let it show. Instead, he reached a hand up and grabbed Julius’s blade, keeping it in place. Once he did so, the temperature began to climb incredibly, and the air started sparking.

  Shocked by the sudden light show, Julius tried to pull his sword out, but it was embedded too deep and was being held in place by the boy. “Let go! What are you trying to pull, kid?!” he asked with a rising panic in his voice.

  In hurried desperation, Julius began bringing his fist down on the boy, pounding his head again and again in an attempt to take the boy’s hand off his blade. But even as blood began to trickle down his head, the boy still refused to let go.

  Seeing as it won’t work, Julius brought a foot up and drove it onto the boy’s stomach, causing him to cough up spit and blood. And he once again tried pulling his sword out, now with an added leverage. But that too didn’t work.

  Now, the sparks that formed around Gale had grown into ever burning flames the size of a balled fist, and Julius finally realized he no longer had any time left. And when the air singed his skin, he left his sword behind and turned around to run away from the boy engulfed in flame.

  Blood had trickled down to and from Gale’s nose. The heat was burning so harshly within him that his body was starting to take a toll.

  It was as if a fever was eating him from the inside out, begging to be dug out of his skin. And when he let it all go with a deep sign, it all went away. Both the heat with, and the heat around.

  The fist sized balls of flame rose to the sky and danced. It was as if the stars were raining over Carmul, and onto the village. Some immediately crashed into the house around Gale, and some kept on rising high into the sky before then falling down in every direction. Everywhere it crashed down, explosions roared and flames rose to engulf everything.

  As his surroundings quickly turned into inferno, the boy in flames began to feel sleepy. His eyelids started to feel heavy, and he could feel his head dropping. The drowsiness was also starting to pull the strength away from his body and his grip on the sword’s blade finally slacked, and his arm fell to his side.

  The wind then began to pick up. It blew gently on Gale, but harshly on the sword embedded in his shoulder. The steel wobbled slightly from side to side until eventually, it snapped halfway down the blade.

  Gale pulled his consciousness together, and moved forward, half a step at a time. The wound on his shoulder grew larger as he dragged himself towards the widest part of the blade, and when he finally tore free, he fell limp to the ground, feeling as if he was about to fall asleep at the spot.

  His eyes fluttered, and was falling out of focus, but when the wind sounded in his ear, his consciousness pulled itself together. The wind fairy was trying to guide him somewhere and Gale brought himself to his feet to follow its lead.

  It's not too far away. Just past some houses engulfed in flame.

  While dripping blood on the ground, leaving a trail that leads to him, Gale made it to his destination. A man sitting against a fence, with his right side completely charred.

  It’s the man that hurt Gale’s mother. The wind did a proper job of guiding him to this man, just like he asked.

  “No… st—stay away, you freak.”

  His eyes stayed at the boy with apparent horror as he slowly made his way towards him. He wanted to get away, but his body could no longer move in any capacity, leaving only his arms to flail slightly, desperate to drag his body away.

  Silently, the boy reached for the sword on the man’s hip and pulled it out of its sheath. Then, without much strength behind him, he pushed it through the man’s stomach.

  The man grunted and screamed, but the merciless cold steel kept on pushing deeper and deeper into his stomach. Until, eventually, the pain proved too much, and his consciousness slipped into nothing.

  Once the blade couldn’t move any deeper, Gale stood upright and look upon his work. The heat within him was no longer burning, and quickly turned into a chilling cold. And when it took hold of him, his consciousness drifted away, and he fell into a deep sleep.