Ra Side Story (6/13)

"Ah, your dad kind of sounds like my friend," I said to Aria. I ended the chat after the quick mention, but she seemed intrigued enough to hear more.

"I didn't know this friend back when he did all of these things, but he was quite the cold-blooded man. That meaning, if it were him, he would put that guy out of his misery..." I muttered. As I mentioned the threat, the attacker vanished. He didn't even try to sneak up on us, and disappeared altogether. It was as if he was never even here.

"People can change. That's what my dad taught me. I try to listen to him, but sometimes I think he's wrong about things." Aria said. She fiddled with her fingers by the front of her hip. It seemed there was a part of her that wasn't confident enough to question her father.

"Nobody is ever a hundred percent right, Aria. It's possible your father isn't right, but you should still trust him because he's been the one raising you."

"I suppose you're right."

The conversation died out between Aria and I and we began to walk back toward civilization. While we were walking, I realized that the conversation I had with her was very intelligent for her age. She continued to surprise me, time and time again. Between her fighting abilities and intellectual, I believed Aria to be above me.

While we were walking further, I held up the staff in confusion as it seemed to go back to normal coloring, and asked about it.

"So, why did it listen to my thoughts, is this one of those weird things nobody knows about?" I asked her.

Aria turned around while holding her staff up. She kept a straight line of sight toward the road in front of us, and meagerly stared at the length of her staff.

"No, it's pretty widely known where I'm from. It's Black Ichor, it listens to your will and amplifies it so long as your goals align. After Dad created the original timeline, he became the sole controller of Black Strands and set their Incarnation free to help the Arkians, rather than to challenge them. I learn about this all the time in school." Aria scoffed halfway through her explanation as she came up on school.

"Your dad created the original timeline? Like, as if he is a Deity figure? Or did he standardize the year?"

"Well, everything before A.D.E. was before his time, then after it is our current time. Then there's the normal Gregorian Calendar for a wider outlook. If I was going by that time, I would say Zero A.D.E. probably was twenty-four forty-nine." Aria said.

"What...? Wait, you said that you're further along than..." I paused as Aria's body began to illuminate in Strands.

"What? This is what happened before I moved away! Maybe I'm going back?!" She announced.

Aria vanished as quickly as she appeared and changed the trajectory of my thought process. She very obviously was from the future, as the timelines were confusing in both of our eyes. I had no idea what she was doing here, but I did know that she wasn't supposed to be.

Holding the staff up, I looked at it deeply to understand it's purpose. The weapon itself was from the future, and it was highly possible the technology was too advanced to have a fair competitor in my current time. My mind was absolutely boggled as I thought about how time travel was absolutely a thing of this world.

However, since I joined Sky's ranks as a, although harsh, lesser soldier of his, I noticed that the world had rapidly changed around me. He was a person capable of changing the world with his mere existence, which in and of itself was a terrifying feat. 

While I held the staff, I remembered the training that I went through directly with Sky.

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On Sky's large balcony stood a ton of wooden boards with people carved into them. The people had marks of slashed swords and piercing spears, all uniquely placed besides different labels that told me what kind of practice it was for.

"So, you want to learn how to use your Dad's beam more? Why did you ask me for help?" Sky asked me. 

I answered his question by stating that Dad himself barely knew how to use it. It became such an instinct for him, that he had no true knowledge on how to activate it or use it properly. He mentioned that it was fueled by Strands, and I sought Sky out because he knew the best how to control them.

In addition to what little Dad was able to teach me, I had learned from experience that I was more powerful than Dad because of our generational gap. I was the generation underneath him, which mean my power was double of his. Whatever Dad could teach me could not encapsulate the full extent of my abilities, not without Sky's advice.

He had me train with just Strands for a little bit. Even though I couldn't use Asterio Strands, I was able to use Essence, which was the shield to the spear that were Asterio Strands.

"Hey, Sky, where did you learn all this stuff? Did this really come from experience?" I asked him. I knew very little about Sky, so any information helped.

"Meh, sort of. I never really told you about everything that happened to me...now isn't really the time for it, but a lot of my growth was forced. Then, I went through The First Trial, where I was reborn and grew up from a baby back to my current age before I entered. There, I learned how to control, manipulate, and wield Strands." He started.