Chapter 43: The final test

Kira wondered if Cat would help him fight the monster on account of how reluctant he seemed to provoke him and took matters into his own hands, as he was now behind Ark, and ran at the cat-man. He intended to land an aura-assisted punch to the back of their head, which would normally be enough to kill anyone that wasn't a manipulator, as he found that he could now punch through thin pieces of rock or bricks. However, taking Ark by surprise would not be so easy because, as he approached with his feet clattering on the stone floor of the quarry, Ark's ears twitched into his direction, and he side stepped to dodge whilst elbowing Kira in the chest as he fell past.

As a result of being stopped with such force, Kira could change his direction immediately and jump back out of the reach of any counter-attacks, but none came. Instead, Ark stood watching him with slightly narrowed eyes, "You'll have to do better than that." he commented, "And you should work together with your friend over there…."

In that brief exchange, Kira hadn't been hurt at all because he had had time to concentrate a barrier of aura where he was going to be hit, but Ark's speed had still surprised him. To defeat him and gain entrance, when he wasn't going to be taken off-guard, only a combined attack with Cat would work. The problem then would be to communicate with Cat about how they would attack him when they couldn't discuss aloud within Ark's hearing range. They would be forced to entirely rely on how well they knew and could predict one another.

During this thought process, Ark had been slowly retreating backwards so that Kira and Cat would both be in front of him and likely also to put his newly created wall behind himself. Not allowing this to happen, and hoping that Cat would be with him this time as they knew how each other fought due to their sparring sessions, Kira ran around behind him and jumped at him, aiming for the same spot on the back of his head.

"Not very imaginative, are you…" smiled Ark, revealing rows of sharpened teeth that could have belonged to a wolf, as he turned to face Kira and grabbed his outstretched hand, using it to swing him around into Cat, who was simultaneously approaching from the other side.

Falling over each other but quickly getting back to their feet, it again seemed that they had not needed to hurry back into a fighting stance because Ark did not come after them on the ground. That was excellent, thought Kira; if he only defended, they could take all the time that they needed.

Together they went back after Ark, with Kira approaching from the right and Cat from the left. To try and get them in a one-on-one scenario, their opponent took a few steps back and to the side so that only Kira would have a chance to attack him, but this was what Kira had wanted.

It meant that he could get in close enough to try something with Cat, and he paused his swing with his right arm just before it was stopped, like before by Ark, and hit forwards with his left. His hand was not coiled into a fist but instead was held out flat, and perched on its tip was a mouse.

Cat was clinging on for dear life and, when close enough, he transformed back into his usual form only with a sword made of bone as one of his arms that he used to strike at Ark's neck. Making use of Cat's ability meant that he was entirely past any defence that Ark could have made. However, the monster was still fast enough at turning so that the bone-blade only snagged the fur on his neck, and he hit back at Cat, who turned himself into a small bird to dodge the fist and fly away.

This gave Kira another opportunity to try and strike him, but he fell back as he realized that Ark was far too fast for it to be successful. Fortunately, Cat was fast enough, in a bird form, to avoid him and flew around Ark, just out of his reach, looking for any opportunities to attack. "That was a lot better," Ark said, praising them.

From then on, they tried to coordinate their strikes with one another, often with Kira initiating an attack and then Cat trying to land a hit from behind, but it still didn't work. Ark was clearly a far more experienced fighter than Kira and was mostly able to keep him at bay using little more than footwork and one hand to block the occasional punch.

He should have struggled more trying to fend off Cat, though, as his shape-shifting ability allowed him to move in from any direction, but Kira supposed that this wasn't too useful when a manipulator could just watch his aura to keep track of where he was. Because of that, it was as though Cat had a beacon on him that marked out his position, and he could never quite take Ark by surprise.

More often than not, this meant that due to Ark's constant movement, they ended up trying to go after him from the front, which he could deal with easily due to being more skilled. It was a terrible cycle made worse by them making no visible progress as their opponent didn't seem to tire like they did. Their only comfort was knowing that he never attacked them and always waited for them to come to him so that disengaging was easy. However, after a while, this began to irritate Kira as it was as though Ark was smugly saying that he didn't need to properly fight back to beat them.

Frustrated, they took a break for lunch, and Ark came to sit with them to watch as Kira ate. With him on the ground with his legs crossed, Cat took this as an opportunity to try several half-hearted bites at him whilst transformed into a large, dog-like creature. Needless to say, these failed.

Kira's meal was cold and did little to raise his spirits as he was left to wonder if he would be able to get in at all. He knew that he would keep trying, as he knew that he had to enter no matter what happened, but he doubted that Cat had the same commitment and thought that he would be the one to let them both down if they needed to work together to get inside. This viewpoint was reinforced by Cat's lacklustre attempts to take on Ark, as he seemed like he was hardly trying at all.

"Will you be giving up?" asked Ark, "You won't enter if you aren't working together properly."

"Is there even a way for us to defeat you if we work together properly?" snapped Kira as, because of Ark's apparently infinite stamina, it felt as though he had been massively holding back against them. Not just this but, throughout the whole morning, he had only used his left arm when fighting them and had kept his right hand firmly on the hilt of his dagger.

"Yes, you just haven't found it yet."

"How long is finding it meant to take?"

"As long as you make it, just realize that it'll take longer unless the two of you are on the same page."

Hearing this really annoyed Kira because he was already getting along just fine with Ghost, but he held his tongue and was taken back when Cat whispered, "Is it even worth the effort? What's inside, I mean? It's kind of mad to be going after something that you don't even know what is."

"We have to get inside," stated Kira with as much finality and authority as he could possibly muster.

"Do you really?" said Ark, "Your little friend, no, maybe not. Your little companion here has a point. Take it from an outsider; it truly looks as though what you're going after is not worth it, particularly since, as he says, you don't know what it is."

"That's just what you'd say, though isn't it?" Kira snapped back, "You're guarding it after all."

"No, I'm not guarding it, I'm simply here to decide who gets it, and you won't unless…" here, the conversation went silent as Ark was cut off by the loud cawing of a crow above them. It circled a few times overhead, constantly eying them with beady eyes that seemed to never blink or lose their unrelenting focus on the group. After a few moments, it flew away, carried on a gust of wind that rocked the quarry, and Cat stared after it longingly.

"Kira," he murmured quietly, "After this afternoon, I'll probably be leaving. It's just… it's just that there's no point in staying any longer… you're just…."

"Fine," replied Kira, worrying what this meant for his chances of getting inside because Ark was adamant about the two of them working together to enter, "But I have to get inside this afternoon then."

"Fine."

Finishing off his lunch with a newfound sense of urgency, Kira climbed to his feet and turned to face Ark, who did the same. "Ready to start again?" Ark asked whilst Cat transformed into a small dog and headed around behind him.

Kira did not reply. This was serious now as it looked like this could be his last chance to achieve his goal, and so he would have to give it everything that he had. It did not matter how exhausted he became or if he killed himself by depleting his aura so long as he knew that he had done everything that he possibly could have to get inside. This was to be what all of his journeying had come to and to be what all of his visions had led him towards.

Not caring about conserving energy, he leapt forwards and attacked Ark much more ferociously than before, moving in as quickly as he could and trying to get past his opponent's defences to land a strike. This never happened. When he tried hitting at Ark, he just blocked it with an open hand and, when he then tried to kick at Ark's legs with his hand coupled with his enemy's, Ark could simply take a step back to remove himself from the danger. Even with Cat helping and trying to distract their opponent, they simply could not defeat Ark, who still hadn't yet used his right arm.

Soon enough, Cat was forced to try fighting him, alongside Kira, entirely from the front as Ark retreated up against his newly created wall. Here they should have overwhelmed him when trying to strike together, but it still did not work. One time, when attacking himself, Kira had got so fed up of making no progress that he had just rushed forwards to grab onto the arm that Ark used to fight them with, and he held it fixed against his body. This wasn't going to help him win as when Cat then attacked him from the other side, Kira assumed that he could block with his other arm, but he at least wanted to force the monster to use all of his limbs to defend himself for once. At least that would be some progress.

Unfortunately, Ark did not oblige; instead, he took a step forwards, with Kira still clinging onto him, and hit Cat squarely in the stomach with his knee, which betrayed a slight downside to being shorter than most other people.

Overhead, the sky darkened as time and heavy grey clouds rolled by. A storm looked to be coming their way over the island, but still the battle raged on, lasting so long as to force Kira to stop properly defending himself from Ark, with his aura, to conserve energy and ended up covered in bruises. Yet he still continued, better to be dead than to not reach it, he told himself. Cat was still with him, so there was still a chance. The boy displayed surprising stamina and, thus far, did not seem to be faltering quite so much as Kira himself. However, it could never be enough; no progress was being made.

It began to rain when the clouds opened up and dropped their loads to turn the dirt beneath their feet back to mud that resembled the marshlands. The quarry, after all, was a large sunken basin, and in some places, the water was coming down so thick and in such heavy droplets that it became a good inch deep on the ground. This brought a new aspect to the fight as they hopped from exposed stone to exposed stone, working around each other and looking for opportunities to end their conflict.

An opportunity came sooner than expected.

Darkness had engulfed the day with the clouds blocking out any light and blanketing the world above them in a deep fog that reduced the size of their universe so that it could be entirely contained within the cliff-face walls that surrounded them. They continued to make their way to slightly higher ground, free from the rising water, in a reduced area. This allowed them to put more pressure on Ark as he was unable to retreat quite so readily. This was what caused the chance to come, right when he used his right arm for the first time.

Kira attacked around to Ark's left side, or his own right, and forced him to take a step back towards Cat who tried to land a strike, in his usual form, against Ark's side. Because of this step onto rocky ground, Ark was off balance and could not simply kick Cat back the way he had come. He had only one option to stop himself from being hit and potentially knocked into the slush developing behind him, and so he drew his knife and thrust it towards Cat.

Ark had figured out Cat's ability and knew that he couldn't change into anything larger than his normal form and that his shape-shifts were centred around his centre of mass. As a result of how he had already started moving towards Ark, Cat could not stop himself from falling onto the blade, and he could not change his body shape to move out of the way. This was because if he made himself smaller, he would just be moving back onto where the knife was aimed, and it was better to be stabbed as a boy than a bird or something even smaller. There was simply nothing that he could do but wait to see what happened, and he knew that he couldn't block the knife with his aura because of how much of his own aura that Ark had wrapped around it to supplement the sharpness of its edge.

However, there was something that Kira could do. If he wanted to, he would have just enough time to push Cat out of the way and stop him from being stabbed. Or, he could land his first proper strike onto Ark, who was concentrating a bit too much on Cat to properly defend. Time slowed to a crawl around him, and he felt as though he could watch individual drops of water falling from the sky as they passed through his vision comically slowly. He had to come to a decision, but he hesitated, was getting what he wanted really worth so much?

Fortunately, Ghost was there to remind him that it was. It was now wearing a red and white festive looking hat with a bauble on its end that hung down beside its lack of a body. "It's time to get your presents!" the Festive Ghost declared, stuttering his words, "Right in there is the purrfect festive treat."

Right on, thought Kira, Friendly Ghost always knew how to cheer him up in times of stress. Heeding the little gremlin's advice, he ignored Cat and struck Ark in the chest with everything he had just as Ark stabbed Cat just below his ribcage.

In a moment, it was all over; Ark began to disintegrate in a spiralling pattern out from where Kira had struck him, and the wall that Ark had put up flickered and fell too. However, the blade firmly implanted in Cat stayed where it was, and Kira ignored him to stride towards the stairs leading to the entrance to the underground.

Ark watched him go as he disappeared and smiled. When he saw that Kira wasn't going to look back, he called after him, "You don't understand, do you? I'm meant to filter who can enter so that only those worthy of death can. You'll never be coming back out. You aren't the right person to do it." before disappearing fully.

Cat couldn't have called after him even if he wanted to and lay, curled up on the ground, watching Kira leaving, utterly betrayed.

Climbing the steps, Kira passed under a large, arched entrance and into a cathedral-like space with light passing into it from the windows and balconies that he had seen from the outside and a ceiling that must have been the height of the towers in Ostermark above him. To either side of the central walkway were stone pillars that reached up to the roof and had carvings engraved into them, depicting people he could not recognize. This did not matter to him, and he increased his pace to reach the other side of the hall, which took a good few minutes of walking. Once there, he pushed open a thick, decayed wooden door that complained as he did so, evidently having not been touched for many years.

Inside was a corridor that led further underground and, although there was no obvious source of light within it, Kira found it possible to see as though he was stood outside on a warm summer's day. The floor was a smooth, grey surface, but the walls were jaggedly curved inwards at the top, which gave the impression that the passageway was really just a cave that had had its bottom surface smoothed out by whoever had built this monument.

It didn't take long before he reached several junctions leading off in all manner of directions. Some were heading back up and to the surface, some continuing on to where he could glimpse banqueting halls with stretched out tables and some leading to what seemed to be places of worship with lines of pews set out inside of them. However, only one passage was lit, again with no evidence for a source of the light, and he instinctively followed it onwards.

It led into a perfectly circular chamber with a precarious wooden bridge built around its circumference that allowed someone to walk to its other side, where the exit was visible. Whilst Kira was in a hurry, he could hardly help but stop and observe what was floating in the space's centre, leaning onto one of the railings, hoping that it did not give way. From the very bottom of the sphere, a statue of an outstretched hand reached upwards with seven fingers that all ended in flat platforms where an individual could stand. In the centre of the hand, looking as though it was being grasped by it, was a hole.

Kira had never seen a gate to another world before, but he guessed that this had to be one because, walking around the edge of the room, when viewing it from different angles, he could see different scenes within it. From what he could make out, it looked like this gate led into a valley surrounded by white-peaked mountains.

It was a truly attractive site. Leading up to the snow line, the landscape was lush and green and filled with oak trees that swayed gently in the wind that he could feel coming from the hole. Furthermore, the sky was a light blue, and a red star hung in it in such a relaxed manner that it was a far cry from the winter rains releasing themselves outside. He thought that, once he had found what he was after, he might go and explore the space simply because of how peaceful it looked.

He couldn't allow himself to get distracted for long and, with Ghost's encouragement, he continued onwards. His journey now took him up a steep set of stairs, each being as tall as his knees, which he practically had to climb up, and he soon grew tired of constantly being forced to throw his weight against such a hard and cold surface. Fortunately, they didn't last for long, and he counted there to only be twenty steps. At their top was another door.

This had to be it.

It was far too ornate of a structure to not be guarding what he was looking for. The door was not wooden, and this time it was made purely of iron - forged to depict images on its surface of the original Progenitors - and its handles were smelted gold. It was a dark grey, verging on being black, and was a daunting thing to approach, being twice as tall as Kira and as wide as any castle portcullis he had ever seen. However, this did not stop him from leaning onto its handles and pushing against them with his full strength. Surprisingly, it slid open easily with each door being supported on small wheels that rolled backwards, within indents on the floor, and squeaked as they did so.

Ghost disappeared as he stepped through. That did not particularly bother Kira because his attention was immediately fully taken, engulfed even by what was now a few dozen feet before him.

Cradled on a podium of light was a sword. It was what he had been looking for; he knew this as soon as he saw it because it simply had to be.

The blade was as long as a longsword but was ever slightly curved and had a much smaller hand guard. Just from seeing it, Kira knew that it had to be much lighter than any weapon he had held before, and it looked so sleek that he thought that he might be able to use it without it slowing his movement at all. The handle was long enough for two hands, but it may even have been able to be used with one given its lightness. This meant it was the perfect blade for a manipulator because it was long enough to keep any opponent manipulators at bay but fast enough to not slow its holder down. Perfect really was the only word that anyone could use to describe it.

Running down its length was a black scabbard broken up by golden patterning showing long and snake-like dragons whose snouts peaked at where the scabbard ended, and the cross guard began. Hanging from the same end of the scabbard was a pair of short golden-coloured braiding.

Kira just had to see the blade itself to admire it, even if only for a moment, and he started forwards but after only a few seconds of being taken back by its beauty. Approaching the podium, he climbed up beside it and felt its presence as though it were a living being. That was quite odd, but he ignored the feeling and reached for the handle, closing his right hand around it and feeling how well his fingers fit around it as though the blade had been made to his specification.

When he did, everything disappeared.